An-Najah Staff

This paper investigates the problem of terms of address (social honorifics) in Arabic-English translation. In order to highlight the problem under discussion, the study uses five honorifics, identified by the researcher as comprising difficulties to translators, from Mahfouz’s (1947) famous novel Ziqaq-Al-Midaq. Twenty M.A. students of translation at An-Najah National University served as the subjects in this study. They were asked to translate these address terms in the light of their original contexts. The study also looks into Trevor Le Gassick’s renditions of these terms in his 1975 translation of Mahfouz’s novel. The study argues that relational terms of address are harder to translate than absolute ones due to the fact that relational honorifics have drifted extensively from their traditional usages and acquired new significations which are initiated for social purposes.