Intercultural communication competence : investigating culture-specific translation performance of Arabic students

Abstract

This study examines the role intercultural communication competence plays in translating culture-specific terms and its impact on the performance of Arabic-English translation students. It highlights the role of translation as an effective form of intercultural communication and emphasizes the importance of intercultural communication competence for translation students. A qualitative method was used in this study. The researcher developed a translation test from Arabic into English, and it consists of 15 short paragraphs. Each paragraph includes a culture-specific term. The 15 culture-specific terms include proverbs, collocations, or idioms from socio-cultural and religious materials. Ten translation students of Arabic backgrounds, who studied translation at Western Sydney University, were recruited voluntarily to participate in translating these cultural terms from Arabic to English in an online setting. After the translation test, they participated in a semi-structured interview via Zoom to provide more information and reflections on their translations. NVivo 14 was used to code, sort, and analyse the student translations and interview data. The results of the study showed that translation students encountered some challenges and intricacies when translating culture-specific terms due to a lack of or insufficient skills and intercultural knowledge of the source culture and target culture involved. Accordingly, this impacts their performance and the quality of their translations in terms of the use of such translation strategies as cultural equivalence, literal translation, paraphrasing, omission, domestication, and foreignization. In light of these results, the study ends with recommendations about the importance of developing the intercultural communication competence of Arabic translation students and trainees by incorporating more intercultural communication training into translation programs.

Date of Award	2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Western Sydney University
Supervisor	Ping Yang (Supervisor)