Strategies Adopted When Translating Culture-Specific Concepts in ‎Naguib Mahfouz's Palace Walk: A case study of Students at the ‎Faculty of Al Alsun, SCU‎

The translation of culture-specific concepts represents one of the paramount challenges encountered by translators, as they result in a potential source of untranslatability. The primary concern of the current study is to identify the main strategies employed by second-year students in the Department of English, Faculty of Al Alsun, Suez Canal University, when attempting to translate culture-specific concepts (CSCs) in Naguib Mahfouz's "Palace Walk" into English. Also, the study aims to assess the accuracy of their target translations. The sample of the study comprised 100 students enrolled in the second year at the Faculty of Al Alsun. The students study literary translation, and were asked to translate (15) extracts from Palace Walk, including CSCs arising from different bases: religious base, food items, and cloth items. The strategies employed by the students were analyzed in light of Mona Baker's (2011) Taxonomy of Translation Strategies. The results of the study show that the second-year students faced obstacles when translating the CSCs. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that the students applied different strategies when rendering the CSCs into English, as follows: the strategy of transliteration (alone) was applied by the majority of the study sample, and it came in first place. The strategy of transliteration and paraphrasing together got second place. The strategy of omission came in the third place, and it was used by a large number of students who ignored the importance of the CSCs, as they represent the heritage of the source language. The strategy of literal translations came in the penultimate order. The strategy of translation using a superordinate term came in last place. Applying transliteration and paraphrasing together helped convey the correct meaning, while transliteration alone and literal translation did not convey the meaning. So, this study recommends: 1- integrating the most prominent translation theories of literary translation in the curriculum of literary translation, 2- specifying a part in the academic course to address the potential obstacles encountered when translating a literary text, 3- providing students with the strategies of translation, 4- conducting further research to identify tother hindrances faced when translating literary texts.