Translation Quality Assessment of Iraqi Condolence Expressions Rendered into English

Mahmood, Saba Turki; Hussein, Asst. Prof. Dr. Gailan Mahmoud

doi:10.25130/Lang.10.2.P2.15

Translation Quality Assessment of Iraqi Condolence Expressions Rendered into English

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Saba Turki Mahmood

Asst. Prof. Dr. Gailan Mahmoud Hussein

Department of Translation, College of Arts, Tikrit University, Tikrit, Iraq

https://doi.org/10.25130/Lang.10.2.P2.15

Abstract

Translators have highlighted, in the course of the last decades, the challenge of transferring culturally bound terms rich in religious and affective sense. Iraqi condolence messages, being almost oversaturated with Islamic philosophy and local tradition, are likely to have an element of divine will, destiny, and social solidarity features lacking for such a statement in English or that need to be drastically reformulated to fit the target culture. The worst issue in this paper is literal translation or misinterpretation of such idioms may cause awkwardness or loss of the desired effect in the message. This paper therefore investigates the nature of translating Iraqi condolence expressions into English and strives to evaluate the effectiveness of such translation in communicating the intended emotional and cultural meaning. The evaluation is conducted against a paradigm based on modern translation quality model, which takes into account both the linguistic correspondence and the pragmatic appropriateness. In doing so, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of the intersection between language, culture, and emotion in translation. Five Iraqi condolence expressions are selected to be translated by five translators to see how to what extent good quality of their translation is achieved in the TL.

Keywords

Translation

Translation Quality

Assessment

condolence expressions