From Loquaimat to Munchies Cultural Erasure in the Translation of Emirati Children’s Literature

Abstract

Despite the growing body of scholarship on the translation of children’s literature from English into Arabic, little attention has been given to the translation of Arabic children’s literature into English. To address this gap, this article examines the English translation of Emirati children's book حين يشتهي الجمل اللقيمات, by Maitha Al Khayat, published as When a Camel Gets the Munchies. Drawing on Venuti’s ethics of difference and Newmark’s categorization of culture-specific items (CSIs), the study investigates the strategies used in the translation of Emirati CSIs in the source text and assesses the implications of these strategies for cross-cultural engagement. The analysis revealed an overwhelmingly domesticating approach that produced a more readable and playful target text, but resulted in an over-sanitized translation that significantly flattens Emirati cultural difference. It also exposed an underlying “child image” whereby the Anglo-American child reader is assumed to lack cultural curiosity and only enjoy familiar frames of reference. The article concludes that while readability is necessary in children’s literature, a translation that embraces an ethics of difference by resisting homogenizing pressures and preserving cultural specificity is more conducive to cross-cultural engagement and to a richer learning experience for child readers.