Translating Slavery, Gender, and Religion: The Translation of Jokha Al Harthi's Sayyidat Al-Qamar into Celestial Bodies

Applying the Appraisal Framework, developed by Martin and White (2005), this thesis seeks to identify and analyze some ideologically significant translation shifts taking the translation of Sayyidat Al-Qamar, dubbed Celestial Bodies, as a case study. The study follows a qualitative, textual based approach with a particualr focus on the approach adopted in the translation of three themes: slavery, gender and religion. It highlights some representative contrastive examples of each theme and analyzes the evaluative shifts made in the target text. The analysis part on slavery demonstrates that the translator opted for intensifying the harsh practice of slavery and highlighting the social hierarchy between slaves and non-slaves. The voices and images of female characters are found to be more feminist in the TT than in the ST. When translating religion related items, a shift towards negative value is detected. Key words: translation, literary, fiction, slavery, gender, religion, shifts, evaluation, ideology.