Translating the culture-specific items related to gestures and habits in two Arabic translations of Orwell’s 1984: A study of Achami (2006) and Nabhan (2014)

Owing to their distinctive characteristics, the translation of gestures and habits culture-specific items in literary texts holds a critical position. This study intends to investigate the translation techniques (Pedersen, 2005) employed, together with the strategies (Venuti, 1995) espoused, in rendering these items in Orwell’s 1984 from English into two Arabic translations: Achami (2006) and Nabhan (2014). Within Newmark’s (1988) classification of CSIs, this category refers to implicit and explicit cultural non-verbal cues and their connotations. To achieve trustworthiness, Toury’s (1995) descriptive translation methodology and Creswell’s (2012) explanatory design were adopted. The quantitative results revealed that Achami equally domesticates and foreignizes these items. He mostly employs direct and substitution techniques. Nabhan’s frequency of foreignizing techniques is a little bit higher than the domesticating techniques since he translates 23 items using direct translation techniques. Other translation techniques are either scarcely or never used. The qualitative analysis proposes that various factors and parameters influence translators’ choices at the textual micro-level and orientations at the macro-level.