Adaptation in Translation: Howells's Short Story 'Christmas Every Day'

The present study aims to highlight the importance of adaptation in translation. To convey the message, translators need to take into account not only the text, but also extra linguistic factors such as the target audience. The present paper claims that adaptation is an unavoidable translation strategy when dealing with texts that are heavy with religious and cultural themes. The translation task becomes even more challenging when dealing with children’s literature as the audience is children whose comprehension, experience and world knowledge is limited. The study uses the Arabic translation of the short story “Christmas Every Day” by William Dean Howells (1837- 1920) as a case study. The short story will be translated and the pragmatic problems involved will be discussed. The focus will be on the issue of adaptation. i.e., the source text should be adapted to the target language audience's social and cultural environment.