Social Deictic Shifts in Animal Farm: Evidence of More Intense Class Struggle and More Marked Social Stratification in Translation

Abstract

This article examines the shifts in social deixis in an Arabic translation of George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm. The results show that the translation moves toward a more frequent use of social deixis and more lexicalization of social/interpersonal relations between characters, bringing some major characters closer to readers in the emotional/psychological space while distancing some other minor characters. The translation moves toward a more emotive language/style, more accentuated/marked focalization, more subjective perspective and more involved reader. There is a tendency toward more explicit social differentiations that improve the text’s clarity and communicability. This explicitation pattern can reflect the translator’s (intentional or unintentional) attempts to reverbalize the original text after his concretization of the social realia of the original story. The explicitation may also be looked at as textual traces of the translator’s (intentional or unintentional) endeavors to speak for the original author, narrator or characters and adopt their speaking voice(s) in the story.