Repatriation of Rakha: The Ideology of an Egyptian Feminist as Manifested in Metaphor

Language is the carrier of all the cultural, ideological, affectional, psychological, and cognitive dimensions of both individuals and communities. The impact of these dimensions on language extends beyond expression to influence and circulation within a consenting community. A sample of an ideological work on issues of feminism and relationships in Egypt is translated from English into Arabic. The author is Arab, but she writes in English. Then, the translation is examined against the source text to explore and describe the ideological implications in it, as manifested in metaphors. The translation process is intended to transfer the ideology as is, without promotion or alienation, so that the Arab readers can accept or reject it freely with no translator interference. In light of Newmark’s literary metaphor translation strategies, the metaphors in the text are categorized by translation procedures. Most of them are found to be valid for translating ideological metaphors, while two strategies are not used. Because the text is complex and ideologically persuasive, some cases require a combination of strategies to give the desired result. As regards the types of metaphors, critical discourse analysis (CDA) is applied to identify their semantic fields. The text includes stylistic metaphors, cultural sensitivities (such as nudity, sexuality, and defiance to religious and social norms), idioms, legal metaphors, medical metaphors, naming, pejorative language, satire, and war metaphors. All of these semantic fields of metaphor serve certain ideological purposes in the text.