Culture-Specific Items in the Translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: The Case of English Arabic Translation

The purpose of this study is to determine culture-specific items in the novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone translated from English into Arabic by the Arab translator Sahar Jabr Mahmud. The objective is to contribute to literary translation through exemplifying and presenting potential translation strategies for professional and prospective literary translators. Adopting descriptive translation approach, this study aims at identifying Venuti’s (1995; 2001) strategies: Foreignization and domestication. For this purpose, 316 cultural specific items and their translated Arabic versions were collected. To decide the type of the strategy used by the translator, the following categorizations were adopted: Klingberg’s (1986) references (mythology, popular belief, flora, fauna, weight and measures) and his procedure (deletion, purification and localization); Newmark’s (1988; 2010) classification (people’s names, geographical names, objects’ names, personal life and customs); Aixelà’s (1996) naturalization. Davies’ (2003) procedure (preservation and addition); Fernandes’ (2006) method (rendition, transcription, substitution). The results of this study revealed that Foreignization was highly used in the translation of the cultural- specific items in the novel, while domestication strategies were rarely used. Still, the latter were efficient in terms of understanding the source novel better and, thus, guaranteeing better cultural communication