AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, Volume 7, Number 1. February 2023 Pp.2-3
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol7no1.1A
Foreword
Academic research is always a stimulating test for the limits and potential of human understanding. In the 21st century, modern technology is enhancing academic resources and publication outlets. Moreover, research in the humanities and social sciences remains essential for the advancement of cultures and human civilizations. This kind of research allows us to examine human behavior, motivation, cultures, and societies from different perspectives. And in this rapidly changing globalized world, better communication and efficient language use can be trusted to redeem us. As areas of knowledge, humanities and social sciences are interconnected, and an interdisciplinary approach is highly relevant. Traditionally, English studies are an integral part of humanities and social sciences. They comprise studies in linguistics, literature, translation, and rhetoric/composition. However, a focus on textuality unites them and equally an attention to how texts (in different forms) are produced and interpreted by different kinds of readers or audiences.
Those articles in this February issue of 2023 are in different yet related fields of English studies. In one way or another, communication as language use is their ultimate concern. They create, among other things, a culture that can serve as the basis for a robust interdisciplinary development. And they can be read in light of each other and viewed, in some cases, as writing back to each other and moving back and forth between English and Arabic. This issue consists of versatile articles covering issues like modern Iraqi poetry, modern Irish poetry, children’s literature on disability, discourse markers, Arabic cognitive linguistics, collocations in translation, subtitling strategies for swear/taboo words, post-Nietzschean though and translation, legal translation, collaborative translation, machine translation, translating metaphors, informal Arabic, Book of Al-‘Ain in Mu’jem Al-Buldaan, Kitāb al-Fāshūsh fī Aḥkām Qarāqūsh, humor in contemporary Egyptian fiction, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, and Choukri’s Al-Khubz al- Hafi. Many articles in this issue display an interesting use of linguistics theories in the field of translation. Their orientation toward applied linguistics adds substance and nuance to the whole issue. And the literature articles give this issue the necessary balance and integration, in line with the journal’s title and scope.
What is special about most of those articles is their interdisciplinary outlook. For example, visual analysis and disability theories are brought to a children’s picture book in one article. In another piece, insights from philosophy and literary theory (Derrida and Borges) are juxtaposed against post-Nietzschean thought in an attempt to elevate the status of translated texts contra original ones. Another article integrates cognitive linguistics and cultural filtering in its approach to metaphor translation. Articles which analyze tweets and use twitter for collecting a dataset or examine problems in the machine translation (Google Translate) of legal texts are also trendy in their utilization of social media outlets and technological tools towards formulating and solving research hypotheses. If in today’s world getting published in reputable journals is a real challenge, then a good topic selection and an interdisciplinary approach are useful. The articles of this new issue of AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, I assume, come in this line, reclaiming (in the process) marginalized voices and writing back to dominant cultures. I recommend this issue to the journal’s readership and wish for continued cooperation with the dedicated team of AWEJ for Translation and Literary Studies.
Prof. Shadi S. Neimneh
Guest Editor
Ph.D. in Literary and Cultural Studies and Director of The Hashemite
University Library, Zarqa, Jordan
Email: shadin@hu.edu.jo
February 2023