Shifts in translating T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland’ into Arabic

This study investigates shifts in translating T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ into Arabic, by examining two translations by competent translators(1). It gives a brief account about poetry, its translation, ‘The Waste Land’, and translation shifts. It shows how translation shift is an unavoidable phenomenon due to the different systems and cultures of both the source language (SL) and the target language (TL). The study aims: (a) to shed the light on the concept of translation shift and its types, (b) to find out what types of translation shifts are the most frequent, (c) what functions are affected and to what extent, and (d) to examine the applicability of Zwart’s model in English-Arabic translation. This study hypothesizes that (a) the microstructural shifts affect the functions of the text on the macrostructural level, (b) the number of transemes in the (ST) is equal to that of the (TT) and that (c) the syntactic-semantic modification is the most frequent type of shifts in English-Arabic translation of ‘The Wasteland’. Based on Zwart’s model of translation shifts (1989-1990), it has been found that, in both translations under study, the syntactic-semantic modification is the most frequent type of shift, affecting the three functions of the text: the ideational, textual, and interpersonal functions.