Translation of Present-Day Egyptian Slang into English

Document Type : Translation science

Abstract

 In this article, I try to present an English translation of idiomatic expressions that
emerged in Egypt during the first decade of the twenty-first century. This translation is
achieved through semantic, rather than literal, interpretation. The slang items
translated are often populated by the Egyptian media, cinema and literature. Thus, the
article is considered a comparative overview of modern Egyptian artistic works, and
how their discourse has been affected by socio-political background of Egypt today.
Slang appears to be associated with the culture in which it is created, so I found it
would be irrelevant ( as well as difficult for a non-native speaker of English who is not
used to English culture and habits) to transfer the Egyptian-Arabic words and
expressions into culturally-based English slang; rather they have been translated into
standard ( formal or informal) English. This paper may be safely regarded as a minute
contribution to the roughly limited number of attempts to translate slang.
 

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