Abstract

This study aims at highlighting the importance of translation in modern times especially literary translation as a tool for inter-cultural- interaction among world cultures. It also aims at directing the attention to the need for more Arabic-to-English literary translation in order to help eliminating the ill intended propaganda which is promoted by certain multiple groups around the world that want to stereotype and sustain a negative image about the Arab world and peoples.

The study has a more practical and more focused immediate goal that relates and supports the broader aim of Arabic-to English literary translation; and that goal is to tackle the technical and linguistic difficulties and the cultural barrier that poses a serious challenge in literary translation. That barrier becomes more evident when translating poetry, because poetry is a mirror of reflections of the poet's self and environment. It reflects political, social, and historical aspects of the poet and his homeland, his emotional and cultural background, as well as his personal linguistic and creative attributes.

Those aspects tend to create cultural signals along with the definitive existence of intertextuality in almost all literary texts, which carries the characteristics of the parent text as well as the inferences and messages it passes through to the new text. This study will analyze the difficulty in translating lines of poetry that is rich with cultural and intertextual signals.