The Prisoner and the Jailer: A Case Study on Drama Translation

This paper is an inquiry into the translation strategies that Nayla Naguib used in rendering the famous Egyptian drama "The Jailer and the Prisoner" into English. While translation strategies are often employed to maintain an acceptable level of faithfulness to the target text, the present translator seems to have applied some translation strategies: deletion, substitution, and addition in such a way that distorted the meaning of the original text and brought about false impressions about the original text. The paper shows that the inclusions of such strategies by the translator has added less clarity to the expressions in question and concealed the cultural element to a high degree. The paper concludes by asserting the importance of context and pragmatic situation in bringing about better understanding of the text and appropriate use of strategies.