The translation of fashion journalism : between foreignization and domestication

Abstract

The first traces of fashion found by archeologists go back to prehistory where men and women used to create their clothes out of animal skins and bones. Fashion evolved afterwards with society, and with each epoch passing by new trends appeared. Decades later, fashion industry became a multimillion business that took over the world in no time. Hence, fashion journalism was born to transmit the latest hair and clothing trends to all fashion lovers. It soon reached the Arab world and has been in continuous growth ever since in order to cover the needs of Arab women known for loving fashion. This study is about a selection of articles which are taken from Vogue Magazine reporting the latest trends showcased during runway shows. The translation of these articles was intriguing due to the fact that in Arabic, journalists tend to write short paragraphs in which the terminology is mostly borrowed from the original language and written in Latin letters, alongside a number of photos. But in fact, during this process, the translator has to adopt one of two strategies; either foreignization where the strangeness of the original text is preserved; or domestication which reduces the alien impact and renders the text easier for the target readers to understand. Moreover, the new terminology of fashion remains alien to the Arabic lexicon; therefore, various procedures should be applied to produce a reliable and correct translation. This thesis begins with a general introduction of the topic, followed by an introduction of the journalists and their various works in the first chapter. While in the second chapter, fashion journalism is presented with all its characteristics, in addition to a look at the history of fashion. The theoretical frame will show all the translation procedures and strategies that were adopted in order to overcome the constraints in the aim of proving weather domestication or foreignization is the best strategy to be used. The fourth chapter includes the corpus consisting of original articles and their translations. Finally, in the last chapter practical examples will lead us to the synthetic conclusion which strategy to be applied in such translations.