Cultural Translation of Euphemistic Expressions from English into Arabic With Reference to Political Texts

Abstract

Euphemisms and language have a strong relationship in which the former is used as an artistic tool in order to beautify the latter. Euphemisms as a word or expression are used as a replacement for some disprefered words which may cause harm for the receivers. That’s why people opt for applying these words to avoid harshness and aggressiveness. As it is the case for politicians, they tend to use such euphemistic words or expressions in order to hide some of the horrific reality of words. Also, they apply it in a way of saving their public image. The purpose of this study is made upon investigating the cultural translation of euphemistic words or expressions from English into Arabic with reference to political texts; in which the main focus is on analyzing EUPH(s) that are used in the political context and how they are translated into Arabic. Also, this study attempts to examine how political euphemisms are created in accordance to the application of Warren’s modal to deduce the strategy used for forming each P E, then analyzing the translation of each euphemism and how they rendered it following which of translation strategies. Finally, the study comes out with the results that political euphemisms are used in attempt to keep a polite public image and to minimize some of the harsh and offensive effect on the target receivers, also the results reveal that politicians intended to hide the original meaning that is disfavored by one that is soft and polite in which a number of PE(s) are applied than those EUPH(s) are translated into Arabic using different strategies in order to render them whether with the same EUPH(s), different one(s) or non-euphemistic expression with an application of Warren’s modal which helped in identifying the type of the applied political euphemism.