Narrative Point of View in Translation: A Systemic Functional Analysis of the Arabic Translations of J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians

Located within the framework of narratology, linguistics, stylistics and translation studies, the present thesis principally probes the nature of the translator’s voice/presence with the purpose of identifying its effects on translated narrative texts and uncovering his or her certain linguistic habits. The thesis adopts the Systemic Functional model of research in descriptive translation studies. That is, identifying translational shifts by mapping the lexicogrammatical systems (lower level) of the source text onto these of the target texts may result in shifts at the global level of translated narrative texts (point of view). The present study sets out to construct J. M. Coetzee’s systemic profiles in his novel Waiting for the Barbarians ([1980] 2004) and compare them against those of the two Arabic translators of his novel, ʔibtisām ʕabdullāh (2004) and Ṣaḫr Al-Ḥājj Ḥusayn (2004). In particular, it looks into the renderings of the linguistic triggers of the original narrative viewpoints, namely deixis (i.e., tense and time and place deictic terms), thematic structures, modal expressions and techniques of discourse representation. The comparative analyses show varying degrees of discrepancy at the lexicogrammatical stratum between the original and its two translations, mostly attributable to the two translators’ linguistic preferences and interpretations of the original. These discrepancies, in turn, bring about radical transformations to the original mode of narration, the modification of its perspectivization and the portrayal of the principal character, blurring the narrative style of the author and thus offering a different readerly experience to the target audience.