Linguistic Factors Influencing Translation from English to Arabic - Coursework Example

Linguistic Factors Influencing Translation from English to Arabic Abstract This research paper seeks to contextualise the linguistic factors that influence the efficiency with which a native Arabic speaker or one who is fluent in written Arabic can translate from English to Arabic. The paper considers two specific linguistic factors that affect English-Arabic translations namely, lexical malfunctions/limitations and semantic approximation/equivalence. As the paper establishes there is a link that weaves through these two factors, and that is the cultural differences between the societies that speak either of these two languages. It thus emerges that cultural differences between English speaking communities and the Arabic-speaking ones have great impact on semantic achievement of such a translation venture. The two linguistic factors discussed have the most influence to the success of a translation exercise from English to Arabic mainly because of the pronounced cultural difference between Arabic and English speaking contexts. Deductively the paper concludes that when one is translating from English to Arabic, a translator must be well aware of the problems arising out of the linguistic and cultural differences between the two languages. In areas where the meaning will be hard to realize using direct English translations, it will call upon the creativity of the translator to understand the concept and then phrase it in Arabic using words and semantic units of meaning that agree with both the linguistic and cultural aspects of Arabic. The paper postulates analytically that any translator will necessarily qualify for the task of an English-Arabic translator if he or she is familiar if not fully conversant with both languages and the cultural settings in which either language thrives in. Lexical and Semantic Issues in the Translation of English to Arabic Introduction This research paper attempts to contextualise the linguistic factors that influence the efficiency with which a native Arabic speaker or one who is fluent in written Arabic can translate English into Arabic and vice versa. It is important to note outrightly that the translator in consideration here is either a bilingual with English and Arabic competence, or a native speaker of either but also proficient in the other language. The paper begins by looking briefly at translation as part of applied linguistics theory before analysing important linguistic features of both English and Arabic and comparing them and their usage in normal linguistic environments. This discussion helps to create a backdrop against which to analyse the linguistic factors that are relevant to translation between these two languages. The paper details two specific linguistic features namely lexical limitations/malfunctions and semantic approximation/equivalence influencing English-Arabic translation. There is a special emphasis on how cultural differences impact the semantic achievement of such a translation venture. Based on these three issues, the paper concentrates only on those linguistic factors that have the most influence on the success of a translation exercise involving translation from English to Arabic. By far, both of these linguistic factors are made more pronounced by the wide-ranging cultural differences between Arabic-speaking ones. This is perhaps because language itself is a product or an extension of culture and an important medium through which one expresses the specific culture, English or Arabic, as the case may be. This paper involves not simply a cultural comparison, but also an identification of the linguistic parameters that are of importance in English-Arabic translations. Translation in Applied Linguistics Recent theories of social linguistics have helped raise interest in the role of intercultural translation, such as that invoked by English-Arabic translation, not simply to consider the question of faithful meaning transmission, but also to examine how well the hermeneutic issues of language use are addressed (Faiq, 2007b). Most contemporary translation theories are thus cultural in orientation, emphasising on the role and relationship between culture and language during translation exercises (Faiq, 2007b). Knowledge production with one culture’s context influences how well the same, same information is first interpreted and then transferred to another culture’s expression (Hatim, 1997). This phenomenon has been called cultural translation, resultant when cultures interact via languages such as when alien cultural experiences as framed in an alien language are internalized (interpreted) and then rewritten (transferred) in the language used by the receiving culture (Al-Najjar, 1984). Besides cultural hindrances and impacts on translation, contemporary theories are also concerned about the translator himself or herself. It will make great differences when the one translating English texts to Arabic is an English native speaker (a descent of England, America or Australia) and when the translator is an Arabic scholar who is fluent in English but originates and or resides in Middle East (Ilyas, 1989). Al-Najjar (1984) says that intercultural translations call to question how well a translator understands the alien linguistic and cultural elements compared to the language and culture he or she is most competent in. The specific languages involved during transition are also a determining factor to the success of the exercise since translating English to French will be way easier and highly efficient that translating English to Arabic (Ilyas, 1989). This has to do with the language features such as lexical anomalies, syntactic closeness, prosodic approximation, socio-cultural environment of its use area etc (Faiq, 2007a). English and Arabic English and Arabic are not the most compatible of languages either culturally or linguistically. The two languages not only belong to different language families, but they also spring from different social settings and from environments that are politically, economically and culturally distinct (Faiq, 2007b). Arabic belongs to the Semitic language family, while English belongs to the Indo-European family of languages (Faiq, 2007a). Arabic is the official language in about 15 countries all of which are within the Middle East (Faiq, 2007a). English on its part, is the official language in one third of all nations in the world, with countries such as Britain, the US and Australia being native communities of the English language. Significantly, English is spoken in all commonwealth countries most of which are Christianity-oriented, while Arabic is spoken in largely Muslim contexts. In prosodic features are concerned, each of these two languages incorporates a unique versification style and phonological realisations such that Arabic and English have very different if not contrasting phonemic inventories. Syntactically, English and Arabic feature different word order sentence formation rules. Indeed, Arabic is mostly regarded as a synthetic language where nouns for example, are case inflected and verbs inflected for mood (Faiq, 2007a) although some linguist belief that it is indeed an analytic language. The controversy arises out of the fact that the loss of certain declensional endings from Old Arabic and the resultant increased emphasis on word order in modern spoken Arabic does, in fact, make the syntactical structure of contemporary Arabic somewhat more similar to that of English (Faiq, 2007a). English being an analytic language has a low direct morpheme to word ratio such that morpheme-word correspondence is almost that of one-to-one. English sentences are composed each from independent root morphemes. Most grammatical relations holding between words in English as in other analytic languages are expressed using separate words instead of using affixes as in many agglutinating and synthetic languages. Unlike Arabic therefore, English has little or mostly no morphological change of word forms since they are not inflected for mood or case. That means that English grammatical categories are in most cases indicated by the word order such as inversion of the verb and subject order to transform declaratives to interrogative structures, or by adding other words. Arabic as a synthetic language, something many linguists argue against, forms most words by affixing dependent morphemes to the root morphemes (Faiq, 2006). This is where Arabic becomes controversial in that most of its affixes are non-distinguishable from their roots such that they are fused into the word forms to carry multiple grammatical information values (Faiq, 2006). Synthetic languages like Arabic place less important in word order as does English, since grammatical relations are carried by the words themselves and not by their order (syntax). Arabic also features a high degree of agreement in sentence parts or cross-reference from one part of the sentence to the other, what grammarians call concordance. While English places more importance on syntax, Arabic as all synthetic languages places more importance on morphology than on syntax (Faiq, 2007b). As noted earlier however, the loss of declensional endings from Old Arabic and an increased emphasis on word order in modern spoken Arabic makes the syntactical structure of contemporary Arabic closely similar to that of English (Faiq, 2007a). In translation between the two languages, the above mentioned differences comprise the linguistic influences on the translation processes; they are compounded by the geographical separation between the English and Arabic settings, by cultural dissimilarities and by other sociolinguistic parameters used to describe a language (Ito & Nakakoji, 1996). In this essay, as already noted, the focus is on two elements of linguistic factors that are described in detail in the following sections. Linguistic Factors Influencing Translation from English to Arabic a) Lexical Malfunctions Two issues are of concern here namely, lexical abundance and lexical limitations. Ito and Nakakoji (1996) have shown that the communicative interaction of a text is influenced greatly by the cultural factors surrounding it. Language always reflects the ideas, interests and customs of the community that speaks it. One way in which languages differ is in vocabulary availability, referred to as the lexical inventory of a language or simply as the lexical abundance. A language will always have as many words as its society of use needs, and as many as the religious, social, aesthetic and environmental features require (Faiq, 2007a). Arabic has a variety, sometimes a host of distinct names for camels, dates, swords, winds, horses etc, most of which is lacking in English (Makhlouf, 1996). On the other hand, English includes many lexical items for the sea and sea fairing as an example, an environment majority of the English-speaking societies are continuously exposed to (Ilyas, 1989). While translating from English to Arabic, the problem will be there will be some words unavailable in Arabic to express some English concepts while some English concept will be expressible by a variety of Arabic lexical items (Faiq, 2006). This means as Ilyas points out, “English-Arabic translation of texts is problematic since some lexical such items have different connotations for either language where what is favourable in Arabic is almost always pejorative in English, such that their lexical don’t match in meaning” (1989: 128). In other times, lexical items when translated directly loose the original meaning completely i.e. for an Arabic proverb like صاحب صنعتين كذاب SaaHib Sin?atein kaththaab, has the literal meaning being "a man of two professions is a liar" and yet the sufficient sense for an English reader is equivalent to " Jack of all trades is always a master of none." b) Semantic Approximation/Equivalence During English- Arabic translation, rarely will be the meanings be equivalent and translators will have to settle for approximations (Faiq, 2007a). Ilyas (1989: 124) points out that translator will be hindered in their work by finding concepts in English that have no semantic equivalence in Arabic and some which cannot even be approximated. This is the concept developed and expounded by de Waard and Nida (1986) as quoted in (García, 1996) and today called functional semantic equivalence. This concept must be employed highly in English-Arabic translations especially when it comes to proverbs i.e. Proverbial expressions in Arabic reflect humour, a basic philosophy, and character of the Arabs that is foreign to the English. Theodory (1959: 26) quoted in (García, 1996) gives an example, ) اذا حضر الماء بطل التيمم212 'itha HaDara al-maa baTala at-tayyammum which loosely translates to the nonsensical English structure, ‘If the water is now present for ablution, then the use of earth should be discontinued’. When التيمم at-tayyammum is rendered to mean ‘the earth use’ meaning is completely lost. Further التيمم being a religious term has no English equivalent and yet it means washing oneself with clean sand for ablution when water is unavailable (a foreign happening to English speakers but one Arabic speakers are familiar with). With all these differences, that proverb however is the only Arabic semantically equivalent, or the best approximation of the English proverb, ‘Each day has its own tools’ (Theodory, 1959, 26 in García, 1996). Shunnaq (1993) says when such proverbs are translated, they lose their emotive value since the culture of use has been stripped off. García sums it up by saying "When languages involved in the translation are very distant culturally, translation can only achieve partially successful transfers, where compensation (approximation) is always resorted to"(1996: 64). This is the concept referred to in the field of Second Language Acquisition as known as "conceptual fluency (CF)", or "metaphorical competence". It is also known as "contrastive rhetoric" in the field of Applied Linguistics. The research done by Lakoff and Johnson (1994) in Danesi, M. (1994) today represents the most important research in metaphoric competence. Their conclusion is that a translator (or a second language learner as the case may be) must have a conceptual fluency in both the source and the target language in order to be effective (Danesi, 1994). Cultural Differences Impact on Semantic Realizations in English-Arabic Translations Available literature comparing English to Arabic almost always falls back to the differences between the religious contexts of the two languages (Faiq, 2004; Faiq, 2006)). Their conclusions are therefore limited to the languages they can be applied on if the enquiry was about French and English for instance (Faiq, 2006). This paper avoids that same perspective so as to arrive at generalisations that can be applied between any two other languages, even those within the same religious contexts. Culturally emotive English discourse when translated into Arabic in most cases loses most or all of its connotative meanings (Makhlouf, 1996). As emphasized earlier, intercultural Arabic-English differences will affect translation as exemplified extensively by Ilyas (1989: 124). For instance, owl when included in an English discourse refers to the universal bird creature and a positive connotation of wisdom and grace. The same word in Arabic is great an idiom of pessimism with negative associations mainly implied by cultural beliefs (Makhlouf, 1996; Faiq, 2004)). Arabic belongs largely to hot and dry climates while English belongs to cold and wet climates. This, as Ilyas (1989) notes means that many Arabic expressions associate cold weather to favourable and positive and connotations of joy. Wetness is delightful to Arabic speakers. A good example being خَبَرٌ يثلج الصدر khabarun yuthlij aS-Sadir (these are good news that freezes the chest). Here the word freeze means delights (very happy news). The same if expressed in English would have to use warmth since warmth is what has connotations of joy among English speakers i.e. 'She was given a very warm welcome today' or 'She is a very warm-hearted girl (meaning received happily and a kind person respectfully). Conclusion This research paper has successfully contextualized the linguistic factors that influence the efficiency with which a native Arabic speaker or one who is fluent in written Arabic can translate English discourse into Arabic texts. The paper has especially considered two specific linguistic factors that affect English-Arabic translation namely, lexical malfunctions/limitations and semantic approximation/equivalence. To weave through these two factors, cultural differences have emerged to have great impact on semantic achievement of such a translation venture. These two linguistic factors have the most influence to the success of a translation exercise from English to Arabic mainly because of the pronounced cultural difference between Arabic peaking communities and those speaking English. Deductively therefore, when one is translating from English to Arabic, he or she must be well aware of the problems arising out of the linguistic and cultural differences between the two languages. In areas where the meaning will be hard to realize using direct English translations, it will call upon the creativity of the translator to understand the concept and then phrase it in Arabic using words and semantic units of meaning that agree with both the linguistic and cultural aspects of Arabic. These will in most cases be approximations that most nearly express what was originally expressed by the English discourse (Faiq, 2004). For this reason, any translator will necessarily qualify for the task of an English-Arabic translator if he or she is familiar if not fully conversant with both languages and the cultural settings in which either language thrives in. References Al-Najjar, M.F. (1984). Translation as A Correlative of Meaning: Cultural and Linguistic Transfer between Arabic and English. PhD Thesis. Indiana University. Beeston, A.F.L. (1970). The Arabic Language Today.  London: Hutchinson University Library. Danesi, M. (1994). Recent Research on Metaphor and the Teaching of Italian. Italica. Vol. 71 (4). pp. 453-464 Faiq, S. (2007a). Trans-lated: Translation and Cultural Manipulation. Oxford: Rowan & Littlefield Faiq, S. (2007b). Thou Shall be translated this way: The master discourse of translation. In S. Kelly & D. Johnson (Eds.). Betwixt and Between: Place and cultural translation. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press. Faiq, S. (ed). (2006). Identity and Representation in Intercultural Communication. San Antonio: Trinity University. Faiq, S. (ed). (2004). Cultural Encounters in Arabic Translation. New York: Multilingual Matters. García, F.A. (1996). On Translating Figurative Language from English into Spanish: A Perceptual Problem. BABEL. Vol. 42 (3), pp. 158-164. Hatim, B. (1997). Communication Across Cultures: Translation Theory and Contrastive Text Linguistics. Exeter: Exeter University Press. Ilyas, A. (1989). Theories of Translation: Theoretical Issues and Practical Implications. Mowsil: University of Mowsil. Ito, M. & Nakakoji, K. (1996). Impact of Culture on User Interface Design. In: M. Elisa and J. Nielsen, Editors, International User Interfaces. New York: Wiley, pp.105-126. Sapir, E. (1949). Culture, Language and Personality. California: University of California. Shunnaq, A. (1993). Lexical Incongruence in Arabic-English Translation due to Emotiveness in Arabic. Turjuman. Vol. 2 (2), pp. 37-63. Makhlouf, M. (1996). Libyan Proverbial Expressions: A Translation Perspective of Arab Subculture. Thesis. Irbid: Yarmouk University. Read More