Kurdish Studies

ISSN: 2051-4883 | e-ISSN: 2051-4891
Email: editor@kurdishstudies.net

Translating Literary Classical Texts into English from Hermeneutic Circle Perspective

Ghassan Nawaf Jaber Alhomoud
Department of English, College of Business Administration in Hotat Bani Tamim, Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia,
Sayed M. Ismail
Department of English Language and Literature, College of Science and Humanities in Al-kharj, Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia
Keywords: Hermeneutic circle, interpretation, classical texts.

Abstract

Hermeneutics is meant to address the interpretative problems stemming from traditional and ancient texts, whose meanings, connotations, allusions, and even metaphorical expressions change over time and space. The present study is a mere attempt to reconstruct the historical experience and the culture in which certain literary texts were written in order to realize relatively accurate interpretations for those texts types. In other words, the ancient texts were written during a specific historical period that follows the prevalent cultural, social and historical norms of their time. These cultural, social and historical norms contributed largely to shaping the meaning of these texts, as the texts are not produced in vacuum and their meanings cannot be, at any rate, factored out from its circumstantial realities; there is a mutual relationship between the textual meaning and its cultural milieu. That is to say, are the meanings of the ancient texts changeable over time? Since the cultural, historical, socio political norms are spatiotemporal, the textual meanings are the resultant of an instant process and complicated process of interaction between culture and language, the textual meaning tends to be more vulnerable to changes when travelling from time to time. When the ancient texts travel from the past to the past, they are transplanted into a different culture and received by different recipients. In addition, many lexical items embedded in these traditional texts can lose their old meaning either through pejoration or amelioration, which might be confusing to the modern readers. The cultural values and the occasions of these texts which were used a key clue in decoding the ambiguity no longer exists. Therefore, the idea of getting closer to the authorial intentions has become so abstruse and a difficult task for the contemporary reader to get or even to make sure that his interpretation is true.

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