Problems in Translating Five Days in Paris into Arabic: Linguistic Analysis

There are daily countless translation activities around the world. Translators undertake different text types including, but not limited to, scientific, literary, religious, cultural, business and philosophic. Translation takes place between languages which are either related or distinct. It is generally hypothesized that the more related two languages are, the easier the translation task and vice versa. English and Arabic belong to two different language families and are thus different in their linguistic structures. Given this, there may be some challenges in rendering certain linguistic structures between these two languages. The degree of such challenges may vary according to text types. In this respect, this paper discusses the Arabic translation of Danielle Steel’s Five Days in Paris. The linguistic analysis of chapter one aims to highlight the linguistic inaccuracies the translator faced while working on this novel and the effects thereof. The paper starts with defining translation, translatability and equivalence and offers the linguistic analysis and discussion of the problems encountered while translating the above mentioned text into Arabic. Based on the findings, the paper offers some useful pedagogical suggestions.