Document Type
Honors Project
Abstract
The driving question behind this translation project is whether translating Egypt’s constitutions from their original Arabic into English aids in comprehension of linguistic and contextual meaning of the texts. From my experience, I found that reading the constitutions in Arabic and translating them into English provided much greater insight into both Arabic language and Egypt’s history than did reading the constitutions in their English versions. I also found that including relevant contextual or linguistic findings from translating and from supplementary research improved the translation overall. Existing English translations of Egypt’s constitutions lack historical context or explanations for selecting one word rather than its synonym, which is unhelpful considering existing Arabic versions and English translations often contain errors. The purposes of my translators notes throughout this project are twofold: (1) transparency in the translation process and (2) highlighting contextualized meaning that a reader may overlook by reading the existing Arabic or English translations alone.
Recommended Citation
Sivak-Reid, Kayla, "Tracing a State and its Language from Province to Republic: Translations of Modern Egypt's Constitutions" (2016). Classical Mediterranean and Middle East Honors Projects. 22.
https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/classics_honors/22
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