Evaluation of the Proverbs in Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz in Terms of Translation Equivalence

In this article, the Arab proverbs in Naguib Mahfouz’s novel Midaq Alley will be examined in terms of translation equivalence. After giving information about the proverbs and its types, the translation of the Midaq Alley from the source language of Arabic into the target language and from the intermediate language English into Turkish will be compared in terms of equivalence. Referring to the contexts of use of proverbs in the source culture, the translation of the novel will be evaluated based on Mona Baker’s dialectical equivalence method. Since proverbs are stereotypes that describe events in a short and concise way, translating a proverb in the source culture in a way that it can create the same effect on the target language is an action that demands a lot of effort in the translation process. Proverbs are the means of giving meaning to feelings and ideas, and they exist is all cultures and languages. However, the words, chunks, idioms, and collocations that are used to express these meanings differ from language to language. For this reason, the translation of the proverbs which have been transferred from both of the languages to the target language Turkish are examined, and an evaluation is made in terms of translation equivalence