Foreignization, Domestication, and the Translation of Gendered Meaning in Raja’a Alem’s The Dove’s Necklace

This study examines how translation strategies—specifically foreignization and domestication—reshape gendered meanings in the English translation of The Dove’s Necklace by Raja’a Alem. While the novel has been widely analyzed through feminist and cultural lenses for its portrayal of women’s bodies, agency, and marginalization within Saudi society, little scholarly attention has been paid to the role of translation in mediating these gendered representations. Drawing on Lawrence Venuti’s framework of translation strategy and feminist literary criticism, this paper conducts a qualitative comparative analysis of selected gender-sensitive passages from the Arabic source text and its English translation. The study focuses on how translational choices affect representations of female voice, bodily presence, silence, and agency, as well as culturally specific concepts such as honor, shame, and spatial restriction. The findings demonstrate that domestication strategies systematically soften and reframe culturally embedded gender constraints for the target readership, whereas foreignization preserves the sociocultural weight of gendered discourse, albeit at the cost of increased interpretive distance for English readers. By foregrounding the intersection of gender and translation strategy, this research contributes to both translation studies and feminist literary scholarship, demonstrating that translation is not a neutral transfer of meaning but an active site where gendered narratives are culturally renegotiated across languages.