Cultural Capital of Agents in Two Arabic Translations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Abstract

Bourdieu’s sociology has continued to inspire the shift from translation studies to translator studies that conceive of translating and interpreting as a social practice. As suggested by Bourdieu (1992), the amount of capital an agent invests in a certain field affects his/her force, position, and strategies in the field. This study, thus, aims to contribute to translator studies by investigating the influence of the cultural capital of a trained translator, as opposed to a non-trained translator, on their products. With the focus on two translators participating in the translation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland into Arabic, the study conducts a comparative analysis of the translation products to identify the translators’ strategies in addressing certain problematic features of the text, using Nord’s approach to translation. The study argues that the agent’s cultural capital influences the way translation is practised and, consequently, the position of the products in the field of cultural production. Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus, capital, position, and doxa are used to describe and interpret the translators’ practices.