A Study of Cultural Propositions in the Urdu Translation of The Alchemist

Abstract

The present study aims to show how cultural items of source text in terms of domestication and foreignization technique have been translated in the target text in the translation of the novel entitled ‘The Alchemist’ by Paulo Coelho translated by Muhammad Zaki Kirmani in Urdu. Translators may find it difficult to translate cultural concepts in a way that the intended readers will comprehend. The cultures of both languages should be recognisable to translators (i.e. source and target languages). The novel was originally written in Portuguese entitled as ‘O Alquimista’ by a Brazilian author, Paulo Coelho in 1988. Later, it was translated in English entnitled ‘The Alchemist’ by Alan R. Clark in 1992. The methodology used in this study is Venuti’s theory of foreignization and domestication. The translation model by Peter Newmark (1988) is applied in combination with Venuti’s theory. He proposed 5 domains for culture-specific items. 17 translation procedures were applied and among these only 13 were found. The most used procedure was modulation and least used was through-translation. The researcher has collected and analysed the culture-specific items based on both models. There are 110 culture-specific items highlighted and discussed in this study.