The translation of the absurd in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot into Arabic under the test of theatricality

Abstract

This article is devoted to the study of theatrical translation, more specifically, the translation of the theater of the absurd into Arabic. The objective is to see if the Arabic translation of a play of the absurd will it be absurd, would it preserve the aspects of the absurd of the source play? Should we translate the sense or the senses? The game or the game effect? To this end, we analyze two Arabic translations of certain extracts from Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett in which the linguistic manipulation is clearly perceptible, where the play on words, in the dialogue as in the stage directions ^[1], constitutes an essential element for decoding. Artwork. The two translations under consideration are: one by Paul Chaoul ^[2], and the second by Rania Khellaf ^[3]. To circumvent the difficulties, the translators propose solutions, negotiate their choices before making a decision, but to what extent have their translations taken into account in addition to the theatricality of the original work, the absurdity emerging from the language? The results of the analysis reveal that the absurdity arising from the play on words in Beckett's work: Waiting for Godot, is not found in the Arabic translations of the moment when the primacy was granted to the meaning, instead of the effect. play on words considered to generate the absurd.