Translation and Poetry Translation and Loss of Meaning: A Critical Analysis of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poetry
Abstract
Abstract
The article addresses what gets lost in the literary translation process. Although "meaning" is ill-defined at best, it refers to how a message loses meaning in translations. Nuskha Hai Wafa", by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, one of Pakistan's best-ever classic anthologies, is selected as the Source Text (ST) and Target Text (TT) "The Way It Was Once "by Shoaib Hashmi (1999) is selected. The research investigates how translation exploits languages in relationships to handle potentially difficult conflictive situations in cross-cultural differences. Research has suggested that meaning loss in literary translation is the untranslatability of culturally particular vocabulary because language and culture are inextricably interwoven, cultural values and social standards are important considerations when translating poetry. Urdu and English have fundamentally different coding and writing systems, translating between the two languages inevitably results in meaning loss. However, this loss can be mitigated using various translation techniques, methods, and strategies. During the process of comparative analysis following questions have been tried to sort out: how do cultural disparities resist the process of poetic translation? how is meaning lots in the process of poetic translation? What strategies are used to translate the poetic expressions from Urdu to English? What causes loss of meaning in transmitting culturally specific items from one language to another? In this paper, the translator focused on the Urdu cultural domain of poetry concerning the loss of meaning. The research results verified the hypothesis that despite different tactics and strategies, the unavailability of culturally specific equivalent expressions causes hurdles in the process of translation, which causes the loss of meaning either due to omission, reduction, or addition.
Key Words: Culture, loss of meaning, translating, source text, target text.
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