THE IMPACT OF LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE AND CULTURAL PROFICIENCY IN TRANSLATION QUALITY

Author: Ahmed Haggar Sakin Ahmed 

ABSTRACT

This paper attempts to investigate the importance of linguistic competence and cultural proficiency in translation quality. It aims to find out the impact of linguistic competence and cultural proficiency on students’ translation quality production. As such, this study focuses on English and Arabic statements that require linguistic competence and cultural proficiency to translate correctly. It intends to present the Sudanese students with the importance of linguistic competence and cultural proficiency on how to produce an acceptable translation, towards a means of a particular written text and arrival at its intended writer’s meaning through linguistic competence and cultural proficiency. Therefore, this study is an outline of a model of implementing linguistic competence to translate English and Arabic contexts correctly. The previous studies have shown that most errors of students in translating from English into Arabic and versa are due to mother tongue interference and overgeneralization. Therefore, this study targeted the students of Gezira College of technology.

To achieve the objectives of this study a sample of 90 students from the population was chosen. The instrument of this study is a test that is handed to the students to inspect the influence of linguistic competence and cultural proficiency in their translation production. For data analysis, the researcher adopted (SPSS) program. The main findings of the study are that fourth-year students in Gezira College of Technology encounter problems in translating sentences from English into Arabic or from Arabic into English but the errors increase in translating from Arabic into English. Also, the study showed that the students lack facilities needed for effective translation such as their linguistic competence is should be enhanced in order to play a vital role in translation, as well as the students, must orient themself to different cultural facilities such as reading different books in English and Arabic such as Islamic, scientific, religious, etc… to achieve cultural proficiency so that they can translate different texts easily.

Abbreviations

EFL     English as Foreign Language

TL       Target Language

SL       Source Language

ELT     English Language Teaching

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