Translating Poetic Voice: A Comparative study of creative strategies and omissions In Al-Nabie & Girls of Riyadh

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how poetic voice is negotiated within literary translation through two contrasting cases: Rajaa Alsanea’s Banat al-Riyadh (2005; trans. Girls of Riyadh, 2007 by Marilyn Booth) and Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet (1923; trans. Al-Nabie, 2000 by Tharwat Okasha). I set out to explain how creativity (transcreation, compensation, adaptation) and omission (deletion, simplification, sacralization) reshape cadence, imagery, register layering and intertextuality. A qualitative, comparative design combines close reading with a triangulated framework (Jakobson’s poetic function; Boase-Beier’s cognitive stylistics; Venuti on visibility/domestication; Lefevere on rewriting; feminist/postcolonial critique). Findings show that Okasha preserves Gibran’s solemn rhythm yet sacralizes the prose, narrowing ambiguity and attenuating bilingual hybridity. Booth initially sustained hybridity through glosses, transliteration and literalist fidelity, but editorial intervention removed these strategies, producing a fluent, standard text that softens feminist performativity. Thus, omission functions as fossilization in one direction (English-Arabic) and as flattening in the other (Arabic-English). Practice-based alternatives demonstrate feasible, effect-preserving options (measured foreignization, selective paratext, functional compensation). The study concludes that poetic voice is highly vulnerable to institutional pressures—reverential or market-driven—that govern legibility. It contributes an analytical spine (creativity versus omission), a toolkit for re-voicing embedded poetry in prose, and recommendations for translators and editors to protect high-value voice markers.