Arabic-English Translation of Culture-Specific Terms in Legal Documents: A Case Study of Palestine Marriage Documents

Abstract

This study tackles the Arabic–English translation of culture-specific items in legal documents. It aims to identify culture-specific elements in Arabic and English Sharia marriage documents, to assess their translation in terms of accuracy and acceptability, and to identify the translation procedures used to overcome translatability problems in legal documents. As a qualitative descriptive study, samples of translated marriage documents were collected from Palestinian sworn translators and certified translation offices. Data were collected manually and analyzed using purposive sampling. The study concludes that lack of understanding of religious concepts and their intended Arabic meanings, the culture-specific nature of some elements that are absent from the target language and culture, and the polysemy of certain items, which appear to have the same meaning while functioning differently, are the main problems encountered by Palestinian sworn translators when rendering culture-specific content in Sharia court marriage documents.