Gastronomic Culture-Specific Items in Literary Translation: Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929) in Arabic

The translation of gastronomic culture-specific items (GCSIs) poses a significant challenge to translators, particularly when they translate literary texts from English into Arabic. Despite this challenge, very few studies investigate how GCSIs can be translated and what translation strategies can be used, particularly in English-to-Arabic literary translations. Against this backdrop, my thesis examines GCSIs in literary translations from English into Arabic, focusing on two Arabic translations of Ernest Hemingway’s (1929), A Farewell to Arms (AFTA). The thesis navigates three key objectives: to investigate which translation local strategies (TLSs) are used to translate GCSIs in the Arabic translations, to understand the broader implications of using these TLSs, and to gain insights from the overall translations of GCSIs. To meet these objectives, I have qualitatively analysed the TLSs used by the translators to translate GCSIs across excerpts from AFTA source text (ST) and their corresponding Arabic translations, exploring their implications on the way the ST GCSIs are conveyed to the target readers. The analysis identifies three significant groups of TLSs, including source-orientating, target-orientating, and neutralising TLSs used to translate the ST GCSIs. Source-orientating TLSs aim to maintain close translations of the ST GCSIs while target-orientating TLSs substitute these with elements that resonate better with the target reader; neutralising TLSs represent a middle-ground approach between the two. The neutralising TLSs were the most common, highlighting the translators’ endeavour to avoid a pronounced inclination towards maintaining close translations of the ST or producing translations that are relevant to the reader. The analysis also underscores the dynamic interplay of TLSs and the complexities involved in using them to translate GCSIs. Overall, my thesis outlines the challenges GCSIs present in English-to-Arabic literary translations and offers valuable insights into the complex TLSs used to address these challenges. While the scope of this research is limited to two Arabic translations of Hemingway’s AFTA, I encourage further research encompassing a broader range of translations, works and languages to enhance our understanding of GCSI translation.