Polysystem Theory in Acculturation Studies: Arabic Model
Ahlam Sbaihat, Dept. of Translation, Al-Isra Private University, Amman,Jordan.
Abstract
Since the beginning of the 20th century the West has witnessed the foundation of many theories that serve scientists and scholars in the field pf translation. However, the bulk of the theoretical production, known to research institutions and universities in Europe and the States, has been out of reach for Arab scholars. This period was followed by a development in some studies that deal with the functionality of language within cultures, though they have not
received much acclaim, on the global or Arab level, in specializing in linguistic variety and function within communities.
The Arab scholars in the field of translation maintains a distance from tackling translation itself and its cultural power as a means of communication on a multilingual earth which may contribute to a significant change in the fields of research and theorizing in the Arab world. Consequently the need arises to conduct a research that will cater for the needs of our scholars to familiarize themselves with more theories to handle in the context of scientific research
developing them in a way to suit the Arabic context which has been absent for the last century. The research also aims at establishing a gateway in Arabic literature and translation that presents scholars of humanities with the theory of polysystem on the one side and relating them to the acculturation theories in literature on the other.
This work is concerned with introducing both the theory of polysystem and acculturation theories and describing the terms and concepts of each of them within functional and literary studies. Next, this work develops a relation between the aforementioned theories to present a new literary comparative and critical view showing the lack of interest in these two theories within the interdisciplinary studies.
Moreover, this study will try to add some rules to the study of acculturation within the Arabic model and context, a scientific approach which encourages positioning translation with comparative studies. We would like to confirm that through this research we do not intend to pass new general rules of literary overlapping rather we try to redirect them.
We would also like to point out that studying this theory cannot be restricted to translation as they are theories worthy of attention within the field of interdisciplinary studies because it is considered a phenomenon which interrelates, in study and application, with many fields of knowledge such as translation, general linguistics, comparative literature, literary criticism, social studies, etc.