Pre-Translating Process in Literary Text

Literary translation represents a crucial sub-field of Translation Studies. This sub-category has inadvertently spurred researchers and academics to unleash practical and theoretical controversies. It involves transferring canonical literary genres into different languages and cultures. While the genres themselves may not stem from similar experiences or similar perceptions of the world, they share the same concern of addressing cultural, historical, philosophical, and religious innermost thoughts of the people and countries they represent. Thus, if these various genres are not properly repainted in a different language and culture, many of the finest pieces of literature produced by well-known writers will remain beyond reach and/or lost. This paper attempts a translation assessment of the Arabic oriental mythology of Sindbad al-Rahhal at the extra-textual level translates into English as Sindbad and the Sailor. It, therefore, applies Nord’s Model (2005) and compares the Arabic version of the story with its English counterpart as traversed from the East to the West by Malcolm C. Lyons (2008) in order to examine the extra-textual factors of the ST and TT. Eventually, this will invite discussion in this paper on issues such as background knowledge, literary expertise, and cultural knowledge as essential factors for translators before they embark on their mission. The results of the current study reveal that Nord’s Model (2005) is applicable to the ST and TT.