Exploring Challenges in Translating Culture-Bound Items and Suggested Strategies:

Fadwa Tuqans's "A Mountainous Journey" as a Case Study

Introduction:
This thesis constitutes a relatively new area that has emerged from understanding challenges
faced by translators in translating cultural items. In a world full of languages, cultures, customes,
religions, and social habits, a bridge must exist to join communities. Translation proved itself a
successful tool for proper communication among nations. Translation is a process of
communicating the meaning of a source text employing an equivalent in the target text. The
concept of equivalence is significant in this study because it provides the target audience with the
nearest and most suitable equivalence for concepts during the process of translation. Translating
literary works from one language to another has been a rich source to understand other cultures
and travel beyond sociopolitical borders. Therefore this kind of writing is important for its great
role in shopping our world. When literature is translated, it gives people of other cultures the
opportunity to enjoy a new culture and discover new horizons, as nothing is exciting as reading a
nation's literature to have a deep insight into the minds and lives of its people. Translation, in this
sense, serves as an efficient tool for communication. Without literary translation, it is impossible
to know about the wisdom and knowledge of others. The main characteristics about literary texts
are that they contain specific words and have special styles. I've (1991, p:7) says, "the difficulty
in translation just lies in the fact that both the content and the style are already existent in the
original and as a result, you will have to do your best to reproduce them as they are in quite a
different language." Being two languages belonging to different language families, Arabic and
English by no means have a theory of equivalence. Because language is not a nomenclature, it is
not easy for translators to translate from one language to another.
Moreover, as we all know, acquiring a new language will be much easier. In fact, there is no one-
to-one correspondence between orthographic words and their meaning within or across
languages. When choosing the right equivalence of a word, many factors play a role in doing
this. Some of these factors are purely linguistics, and others are not. It is quite impossible to give
a guide for translators on how to deal with the problem of nonequivalence, but many linguists
and translators have written about the matter, and all of them suggested strategies to deal with
this notion. One of the most common problems of nonequivalence is culture-specific
expressions.
Statement of the problem
Based on the short review above given by the researcher, Arabic is a semiotic language, while
English is West germanic. Being related to different language families implies that there are
talking about two different cultures. Until now, translators face many problems translating
culture-bound expressions, especially when they are mentioned in a literary text. This is because
of the cultural gaps between East and West. With regard to many aspects like traditions, customs,
and behaviors, among many others. Thereupon, the present study highlights such difficulties in
translation, especially those caused by culture bound expressions mentioned in Fadwa Tuqans
autobiography "A mountainous journey. " The researcher focuses on the translation strategies
employed to solve such problems.
Purpose of the study:
This study attempts to provide Arab translators with practical suggestions while translating
literary texts, especially those who may translate the autobiography of Fadwa Tuqan, "A
mountainous journey." The researcher of this thesis investigates the difficulties posed by the first
translator of the autobiography Olive Kenney. Then the translator examined the strategies the
translator resorts to in her attempt to provide the most suitable equivalence for each expression.
Significance of the study:
This thesis documents several key contributions made to the field of translation. Many
researchers have written about the issue of translating culture-bound expressions. Some wrote
about the translation of these expressions in literary works, but the latter are very few. The
present study focuses on the problems that arise when translating Arabic culture-bound terms in
the autobiography of Fadwa Tuqans, "A mountainous journey. " The researcher hopes this thesis
will help translators who experience culture-bound expressions find the most suitable translating
strategy to encode them by providing the nearest, most suitable, and natural expression. This
thesis and the like help interested readers from other cultures to understand Palestinian culture.
To this end, the thesis gives life to the autobiography and her author, the Palestinian poet Fadwa
Tuqan.
Questions of the study:
This study attempts to find answers to the following questions:
 1. What kind of translation problems are experienced by the translator of the autobiography
when rendering culture-bound expressions?
2. Did the translator succeed in providing the nearest equivalence for the selected culture-
bound terms?
3. What strategies should be followed in translating culture-bound expressions?

Limitations of the study:

The present case study examines some of the culture-bound expressions mentioned in the
autobiography by Fadwa Tuqan, "A mountainous journey." These expressions are one-hundred
items. A second limitation is that the ST is written in Arabic, so the whole work deals with
problems p