Sabir Hasan

Language is a living phenomenon; languages change, evolve and develop over time. One of the ways that languages change is through the influence of foreign languages, which is mainly reflected in loanwords. This paper addresses a new trend in translations produced in the Kurdish media, which is a shift from using Arabic loanwords to using English loanwords. In the absence of a language policy, Kurdish has become receptive of foreign words. In the past, Sorani Kurdish (otherwise known as Central Kurdish), spoken predominantly in Iraqi Kurdistan, was primarily influenced by Arabic. With the turn of the new millennium, Sorani Kurdish seems to have experienced a new sociolinguistic shift or trend whereby the use of Arabic loanwords in Kurdish has declined, in turn, English loanwords have gained currency. Through a research questionnaire, the paper aims to attest whether the new observed trend is a mere perception or a factual phenomenon. The questionnaire aims at journalist-translators working between English and Kurdish. They are required to translate 40 fairly short English sentences (from the journalistic genre) into Kurdish, each sentence containing one or more unmarked words that are thought to represent the aforementioned trend when translated into Kurdish. The results show that the use of Arabic loanwords in Kurdish journalistic translations is disproportionately low compared to English loanwords. Strikingly, the use of Kurdish equivalents is considerably high, given the fact that the chosen words are perceived to be generally translated as loanwords. Moreover, over ten per cent of the translation occurrences demonstrate exceptional cases whereby the chosen words are translated by procedures such as near-synonymy, generalization and expansion.

This paper explores English-Kurdish translations produced by the Kurdish section of the Voice of America (VOA). It is hypothesized that such translations are marked by unnaturalness and foreignness both in terms of linguistic and cultural aspects. This feature seems to be a peculiar characteristic that sets the VOA Kurdish apart from other media outlets producing Kurdish translations. Applying Venuti's (1995/2008) theory of foreignization and domestication and taking a translation-oriented textual analysis approach, the paper sets out to qualitatively examine a set of 15 English journalistic texts translated into Kurdish by the VOA Kurdish. The study encompasses both linguistic and cultural matrices to identify unnatural or foreignized translation occurrences, which are expected to be otherwise rendered naturally in other media outlets. The results of the study show that Kurdish translations produced by the VOA are peculiarly outlandish and orientated towards foreignization. For journalistic translations to be comprehensible by the target audience, media players ought to present their outputs, translation or otherwise, as naturally as possible. Therefore, the paper recommends that the VOA Kurdish change its tendency from foreignization to domestication.

This paper explores the translation of idioms across a set of languages (viz. English, Arabic, French, Kurdish, Persian and Turkish), applying Baker's (1992/2011) strategies for translating idioms. The study first examines Baker's strategies as to whether they can be considered a practical model to extrapolate in rendering idioms across languages. Secondly, given the type of strategies employed, the study attempts to find out whether idioms can be treated as a culture-specific or universal phenomenon. The results show that Baker's strategies require modification to be considered a practical model, and that idioms generally carry properties of the culture in which they emerge.

This paper explores the translation of news headlines across certain journalistic cultures, specifically focusing on headlines translated from English into Arabic, Kurdish and Persian. Headlines are an extraordinary type of text, which are considered a separate genre on their own. Since a headline is an entrance to the news details, journalists have to utilize different techniques to make the headline concise, effective and eye-catching to the reader. In translating news headlines, these features should be attained so that translated headlines achieve their intended aim in the target language. To do so, journalist-translators ought to employ a variety of translation procedures. This paper postulates that journalist-translators have to be equipped with necessary translation skills and apply multiple translation procedures to be able to translate news headlines effectively, as the use of a single translation procedure is generally insufficient to produce an effective translation. Moreover, the paper argues that this trend is not restricted to a certain pair of languages but the postulation is true of news headlines translated between the aforementioned language pairs and, by extension, any other languages across different journalistic cultures. The results show that over a dozen of translation procedures have been implemented in rendering headlines in each language pairs concerned. The results thus confirm the validity of the postulation put forward in this paper.

This paper explores the possibility of detecting mistranslations based on logical judgement. The paper examines translations carried out from English into Kurdish by translation trainees at the university level. The importance of this method of translation assessment is that the target text (TT) alone is sufficient for the purpose of identifying mistranslations based on logical judgement, without any reference to the source text (ST). The logical judgement can be based on an established fact, general knowledge or common sense. This model of translation assessment is particularly important in translation settings where the process of translation revision is carried out on the translation product alone due to time constraints, such as in the case of journalistic translation. The model can be crucial for translation students and translation examiners alike. On the one hand, it will help translation students to avoid mistranslations that run against logic. On the other hand, it will help translation examiners to detect such mistranslations if and when they occur in an actual translation.