A Study Of Translating Figurative Language In Prophetic Hadith About Woman

Research Abstract

Figurative language is a linguistic phenomenon that is an essential part in all forms of communication. Figurative language has many functions such as making the abstract concrete, discovering new meanings, and achieving novelty. A religious text has a special nature and a distinctive style that keep it unique in character. This makes the translation of figurative language in Prophetic Hadith stand as a challenging task for translators. Thus, the present study aims to arrive at the impact of translating figurative language in producing an effective language and the extent to which it is relayed accurately in the target language. The corpus of this study is drawn from Prophetic Hadith about women in Sahih Al- Bukhaari and its translation by Khan (1997). This study is chiefly oriented to analyze three major tropes of figurative language: metaphor, metonymy, and simile. These figures are extracted, analyzed, and followed by the evaluation of their translation. One of the purposes of the present research is to identify the extent to which figurative language devices in Prophetic Hadith deepen their reading comprehension and investigate the strategies of translating figurative language in Prophetic Hadith. In order to observe the highly figurative style of Prophetic sayings and not to sacrifice part of their meaning, the foreignization strategy is recommended here. It is the most appropriate strategy for translating Prophetic Hadith as it aims to render the taste of the original culture to the target reader and enables him/her to understand the source text.

Research Keywords

figurative language; linguistic; Prophetic Hadith; Sahih Al- Bukhaari, metaphor; Khan’s translation.