A Linguistic Analysis of EFL Learners‘ Interpretation of Generic Pronoun Shifts Through the Cultural Projection of ―Dhameers‖, Using Translated Novels as an Example of Professional Interpretation With Reference to (―The Forty Rules of Love‖ by Elif Shafak)

Abstract

The present research investigates the interpretation of generic pronouns by EFL leaners, by taking the translated novel ―The Forty Rules of Love‖ and its Arabic derivative as an example of a professional interpretation. Thus, studying the effect of Arabic as a language with a wide variety of gender specific pronouns ―dhameers‖ and a carrier of its culture, on the shift from the gender-neutral, to the male-based generics. The first part of this paper gives a theoretical overview of notions such as gender and ideology, in relation to the critical study of language and translation. While introducing feminist translation theories, with an emphasis on the criticism of the sexist language. The second part consists of a practical research carried in the English language departments at: Ibn Khaldoun university of Tiaret, Mohammed Boudiaf university of Msila and Ammar Thelidji university of Laghouat, Algeria. A sample of 50 students from the master‘s students of both linguistics and literature majors, and 10 teachers was used alongside the ―forty rules of love‖ novel and its Arabic translation. This research adapts a case study in which a hybrid of both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods are used through triangulation. The data is collected from the learners through an online questionnaire and a translation task. The first tackles the learners‘ familiarity with the workings of gender references, and to what specific gender they would relate them in decontextualized settings. The latter aims to see how the learners‘ mother tongue affects their interpretations. On the other and, teachers were given an opinionnaire to account for their opinion on the ambiguity of generic pronouns for readers from an Arabic background i.e. the speakers of a language with opposing cultural and linguistic systems (EFL learners). We also analyzed the novel and its translation as an example of a professional translation in terms of miss-shifts, to test the effect of the translator‘s cultural awareness on the accuracy of his interpretation of generic references. The results reveal that unlike the professional translator, EFL learners; meagre cultural awareness causes them to miss interpret gender-neutral references as male based due to the effect of their cultural and linguistic backgrounds