A Relevance Theory Perspective on the Quality of Simile Translation in Al-Mutanabbi’s Selected Panegyric poem on Sayf Al-Dawlah

Simile is a figure of speech, which involves “an explicit comparison between
two things or actions” Cruse (2006, 165). Similes compare things “normally
felt to be incomparable, typically using vivid or startling images to suggest
unexpected connections between the source and the target (Israel et. al, 2004,
124). Like metaphors, similes, especially creative and poetic similes or ‘open
similes’ (Walaszewska, 2013) involve ‘open mapping’ (Croft and Cruse,
2004) and normally leave out the grounds or the connections between the
source and the target domains. This elliptical phenomenon creates a cognitive
challenge for simile interpretation and translation as the relevance of the
ground on which comparison is based, is usually implicit and tends to be open
for multiple interpretations, hence the difficulty of establishing relevance.
Purpose : Based on these cognitive features of simile and using a relevancetheoretic
framework (Sperber and Wilson, 19861995/ and Gutt, 19912000/),
this paper aims to answer the following two questions: (1) What are the
translation strategies used by the three translators Arberry (1967), Wormhoudt,
(1971) and Ibrahim, (1992) to achieve optimal relevance in translating simile
in one of Al-Mutanabbi’s panegyrics on Sayf Al-Dawlah? (2) Comparing the
three translations and the translation strategies used by the three translators,
which translation is the most optimally relevant? Results:The paper shows that
Ibrahim’s translation seems to be the most optimally relevant because it tends
to design the translation in such a way as to provide the target addressees with
the shortcuts to the intended meaning, sometimes even by ignoring ostensive
stimulus provided in the source.
Keywords: simile, relevance theory, Al-Mutanabbi, translation, translation
quality assessment, Gutt’s model.