Translatability problems of Euphemistic Expressions in Najuib Mahfouz's Palace of Desire: A Pragmatic-Stylistic Perspective

Abstract

This study addresses the question of the problematic translation of Arabic politeness formulas into English in Palace of Desire. The selected translated utterances were critically reviewed using Brown and Levinson's model of politeness (1987), Culpepper's Impoliteness framework, and Grice's Cooperative principle. The study reveals that the translations of politeness formulas may not necessarily jeopardize the translation's overall authenticity, they do however lead to the loss of some of the text's cultural implications, in the sense that the offered translations remove some stylistic and cultural features that the original author intended their work to have.