Allusion in Three Translations of Hamlet into Arabic 1

A translator who embarks on the laborious act of rendering a Shakespearean text from Early Modern English into his/her contemporary language and culture is expected to communicate the gist of Shakespeare’s art. The challenging task of identifying and rendering the quintessence of a literary work is referred to by Lawrence Venuti in his seminal article, “Translation, Community, Utopia,” as “an inscription of the foreign context in which the text first emerged.” ² The translator thus assimilates the source text (ST) culture and presents it to the target text readers in domestic terms. Such translations promote what Venuti terms “the utopian dream of common understanding between foreign and domestic cultures.” ³