35917287 Sayyab Translation Journal Volume 1 2kkk00u8

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Sayyab Translation Journal (STJ) An internationally peer-reviewed journal of

Arabic > < English translation studies

Editor-in-chief - Dinha T. Gorgis, Jadara University, Jordan

Associate Editor - Rifaat Ebied, University of Sydney, Australia

- Alya’ Al-Rubai’i, University of Baghdad, Iraq

Editorial Board - Said Faiq, the American University of Sharjah, UAE

- Abdul Sahib Mehdi Ali, University of Sharjah, UAE

- Daniel L. Newman, Durham University, UK

- Abdulallah Shannq, Yarmouk University, Jordan

- Abdul Wahid Mohammed, University of Baghdad, Iraq

- Zouhair A. Maalej, King Saud University, Riyadh

- Ali Darwish, Queensland University, Australia

- Sameh F. Hanna, University of Salford, UK

- Ali R. Al-Hasnawi, College of Applied Sciences-Ibri, Oman

-Adil Al-Kufaishi, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

- Ramadan Sadkhan, Basra University, Iraq

Founding and Coordinating Editor Review Editor - Ali Al-Manna’, UK -Fred Pragnell, UK

Advisory Board - Salih Altoma, Indiana University, USA

- Basil Hatim, the American University of Sharjah, UAE

- Myriam Salama-Carr, Salford University, UK

- Ronak Husni, Heriot-Watt University, UK

- Saleh Al-Rifai's, Canadian Arabic Open University, Canada

- Majeed A. al-Mashta, Basra University, Iraq

- Murtadha J. Bakir, Qatar University, Qatar

- Mohammad Farghal, Kuwait University, Kuwait

- Mounir Triki, University of the South, Sfax, Tunisia

- Michael F. Hall, University of Westminster, UK

- Hoda Elsadda, University of Manchester, UK

- Kadhim K. Ali, Basra University, Iraq

- Aladdin al-Kharabsheh, The Hashemite University, Jordan

- Hassan Ghazala, Umm Al-Qura University, Saudi Arabia

- Adel Salem Bahameed, Hadhramaut University, Yemen

- Nuri al-Ajeeli, Bahrain University, Bahrain

- Tara Moayad Rashad, Ajman University, UAE

- Mehdi Falih al-Ghazalli, Al-Isra Private University, Jordan

- Maha Tahir, Al-Qadisiyah University, Iraq

- Hashim Lazim, Ajman University, UAE

- Bayda al-Obaidi, Jadara University, Jordan

Sayyab Translation Journal (STJ), Volume 1, 2008

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EXTRINSIC MANAGING: AN EPITAPH TO

TRANSLATORIAL IDEOLOGICAL MOVES

Mohammed Farghal Department of English, Kuwait University

ABSTRACT

This study will discuss the different manifestations of extrinsic managing

(translatorial ideological moves) between English and Arabic. Regardless of how

we view it, the translator‟s ideological intervention will be shown to be necessary in

some cases, in order to have the target text cohere with its natural habitat in the

receiving culture. First, the paper will investigate lexis as a potential target for this

kind of intervention, focusing on variability in expression as an important tool to

achieve ideological ends, e.g. the shift from one framing verb to another or from

one referring expression to another. Second, it will address the employment of

ideologically motivated syntactic maneuvers, e.g. the shift from one modality to

another. Finally, the study will show how the translator‟s ideological intervention

may globally permeate the discourse and/or culture of the target text by offering

drastically diverging atmospheres and/or thought-worlds from those of the source

text.

1. INTRODUCTION Ideology, one may argue, is a cumulative value system that exerts both influence

and control over human behavior, and may vary among communities as well as

individuals. Van Dijk (1996: 7) views ideologies as basic systems of shared social

representations with the potential to control and influence more specific group

beliefs (knowledge and attitudes) through the instantiation in "models of situations

and experiences". Being part of human behavior, translation activity involves a

process of negotiation among different agents: translators, authors, critics,

publishers, editors and readers (Tahir-Gürcğlar 2003) and is guided by ideological

criteria, whether consciously or unconsciously (Nord 2003). Similarly, Tymoczko

(2003) states, "the ideology of translation resides not simply in the text translated,

but in the voicing and stance of the translator, and in its relevance to the receiving

audience" (see also Mason 1994 and Fandi 2005).

Translatorial ideological moves manifest themselves in extrinsic managing, which

constitutes the converse of intrinsic managing (naturalizing or domesticating the

Target Language (TL) text) (for more details, see Farghal 1992). These ideological

moves may involve the translator‟s superimposing certain directionality on the text

This work was supported by Kuwait University, Research Grant No. [AE01/07].

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in order to approximate it to, or even have it meet, his own or some other agent‟s

goals. In this way, it represents the translator's ideological intervention in the SL

text, which clearly shows up in the world views that he intentionally chooses to

present in the TL text. Being a framing process, extrinsic managing provides a

mechanism through which individuals (translators in our case) can ideologically

connect with movement goals and, subsequently, become potential participants in

movement actions (Cunningham and Browning 2004; Baker 2006). In this way,

translation is not only an interpretive frame; it is also a performance frame (Behl

2002; Muhawi 2007), where the translator becomes an active participant in

interlingual communication.

Like intrinsic managing, extrinsic managing is largely conscious and intentional.

However, unlike intrinsic managing, which, apart from ideological intervention, is

meant to facilitate things for the TL reader by offering translations that read

smoothly and naturally, extrinsic managing mainly aims to reorient and/or delude

the TL reader by presenting thought-worlds that are different at varying degrees

from those expounded in the Source Language (SL) text. Other things being equal,

therefore, intrinsic managing may be presented as commendable, whereas extrinsic

managing may be argued to be condemnable. Notably, the relation between the SL

and the TL in translation activity was and still is one of the central concerns among

translation theorists.

Some scholars view the Source Text (ST) as a „sacred original‟, whether in terms of

function, form, or both (Nida 1964; Catford 1965; Newmark 1988, 1982; and de

Waard and Nida 1986, among others). In an extreme position, Newmark (1982:389)

sees the translator's task as an activity "to render the original as objectively as he

can, rigorously suppressing his own natural feelings; a text with which he

passionately agrees must be treated similarly to a text with which he passionately

disagrees". However, the real picture in translation practice is not as clear and

straightforward as Newmark articulates it in this quotation, for, more recently, some

translation theorists regard the translator‟s task as mainly reflecting the skopos

(purpose) of the Target Text (TT) rather than that of the ST (Schäffner, 2003, 1998a

and b; Hönig 1998; and Vermeer 2000, among others). On this latter view, the

translation may be steered by the skopos of the TT prospectively rather than

informed by the skopos of the ST retrospectively. In this spirit, Schäffner

(1998a:238) views the translator as a TT author who is freed from the “limitations

and restrictions imposed by a narrowly defined concept of loyalty to the source text

alone”.

The present paper seeks to explore the scope and nature of the translator‟s

ideological intervention in translating between English and Arabic, apart from

commending or condemning this translatorial action. The fact that translatorial

ideological moves are a noticeable translational practice calls for a close

examination of this phenomenon, in order to disentangle the various intricacies

surrounding it. According to Bassnett (1996:22), the translation, "once considered a

subservient, transparent filter through which a text could pass without adulteration",

"can now be seen as a process in which intervention is crucial".

The scope of extrinsic managing can be as wide-ranging as that of intrinsic

managing. It may manifest itself relatively locally at the levels of lexis and syntax,

or globally at the levels of discourse and/or culture. In both cases, the translator


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manipulates ideology in varying degrees. However, it should be noted that extrinsic

managing, unlike intrinsic managing which can be considerably localized and

categorized at different linguistic levels, can evade strict categorization because it is

ideology- rather than naturalness-oriented, as is the case in its intrinsic counterpart.

Consequently, any act of extrinsic managing, regardless of how small it is, would

involve an ideological move whose weight usually far exceeds its size. A classic

example is the political fuss created over the Arabic translation of the English

original (which was mischievously subjected to managing prior to translation

activity) of the UN resolution 242 in the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

The English version called for the Israeli withdrawal from „Arab lands occupied in

1967‟ (which is syntactically ambiguous between an exhaustive and partitive

reading) rather than 'the Arab lands occupied in 1967‟ (which unambiguously

produces the exhaustive interpretation). Later on, when the resolution had to be

translated into Arabic, a serious problem arose from the rendition of the above

phrase, as monitoring the structure (rather than the pragmatic import) of the said

phrase would deviate from what was genuinely agreed upon, thus generating a row

over a premeditated Israeli interpretation and an uncompromising Arab

interpretation. Consequently, there was a dire need for the Arabic version to

extrinsically manage what was originally managed (by way of creating the

ambiguity) in the English version by rendering the above phrase into al-‟araadi-l-

„arabiyyati-llati-ћtullat 'the Arab lands occupied' rather than ‟araadin „arabiyyatin

‟uћtullat 'Arab lands occupied'.

Reading into ST, therefore, may sometimes create ideological stumbling blocks.

Witness how Khan and Hillali (1999) interpretively read into verse 7 of the opening

sura (fateha) of the Holy Quran. They render it as "The way of those on whom You

have bestowed Your Grace, not (the way) of those who earned Your Anger (such as

the Jews), nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians)". The

exemplification (i.e. the Jews and the Christians) of the general references (i.e. those

who earned God's anger and those who went astray) respectively points to a

premeditated ideological move on the translators' part. The translators have not

confined themselves with the unspecific/general references in the Quranic verse. For

some reason, possibly in an attempt to account for the deeply rooted enmity between

Muslims and Jews for one thing, and the recently renewed friction between Muslims

and the Christian West for another thing, they decided to bring out what they deem

to be suppressed information by way of freely reading into the above verse. By

contrast, other translators of the Holy Quran (Ali 1934, Arberry 1980, Pickthall

1980, and Zidan and Zidan 1996) have just monitored the general references in the

verse without entertaining any ideological moves. Zidan and Zidan, for example,

offer the following: "The way of those on whom you have endowed Your Grace, not

the way of those who earn Your wrath, nor of those who go astray". In the following

pages, we shall examine translatorial ideological moves at different levels by

employing a variety of concocted and authentic examples.

2. LEXIS At the lexical level, extrinsic managing is readily noted in the translator's choice

between competing lexical items that represent different ideologies or thought-

worlds. The choice is inherently motivated by the translator's socio-political

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The master discourse of translation from Arabic Said Faiq American University of Sharjah

Abstract Drawing primarily on textual import from Arabic into mainstream European

languages, the purpose of this article is to examine how a culturally defined master

discourse affects the act of translating. Through the master discourse of

translation, Arabic source texts and their associated peoples are transformed from

certain specific signs into signs whose typifications exist prior to the translation act

itself. In a rapidly globalized world, a master discourse emerges as the all powerful

in its hegemonic discursive norms, leading naturally to desperate and often violent

measures from „other‟ equally self-perceived master discourses.

Key words Translation, representation, master discourse, self, other, culture, intercultural

communication.

Introduction Literature and translation represent prime sites for cultural identity and for

intercultural representations and encounters. Literature represents a body of goods

that a particular culture sees as its heritage for its own members (self) and as an

image for export to members of foreign cultures (other). As representation and as

the act of carrying texts across cultural boundaries, translation assumes a vital role

in communicating the body of literature of a culture to different constituents, local

and global, members of the self and those of the other. Both literature and

translation use a „lethal weapon‟ as their medium, namely language.

Translation demonstrates the complexity inherent in the process of interlingual

communication across cultures. The complexity stems from the carrying-over of

specific cultural products (literary texts) to and be recuperated by receivers that have

at their disposal an established system of representation with its own norms for the

production and consumption of texts. This system ultimately evolves into a master

discourse through which identity, similarity and difference are identified,

negotiated, accepted and/or resisted.

Within this context, the aim of this article is to examine the role of translation in the

deforming of cultures through representations based on a specific master discourse

of translation. Specifically, the article examines the master discourse that underpins

translation from Arabic into mainstream Western languages.

The master discourse of translation


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Translation has overall been practised on the basis that knowing the source and

target languages represents a sufficient premise for rendering, transferring or

translating texts across languages and cultures. Translators have been expected to

achieve the same informational and emotive effects in their translations as those

achieved by the author(s) of the source text (s). To this end, translators and

translation theorists have stressed one method or another in translation and in the

process they have sacrificed certain aspects of the source or target text either on the

content level or the expressive (form) level depending on the guiding principles

espoused. The main guiding principle, which has long loomed over the theory and

practice of translation, has been the notion of equivalence. The search for

equivalence in translation has often led theorists and translators alike to focus on

aspects of either the form or content, ignoring along the way that any text produced

in a given language is the product of a unique union between both form and content

(manner and matter), and, more importantly, that it is embedded in a specific

cultural context.

In the 1980s, translation studies has been extended to consider different and

challenging issues. In particular, the view of culture-modelling through translation

has ushered in questions that cannot be adequately answered by the

conventionalised notions of equivalence, accuracy, fidelity, and faithfulness or

„sourceer vs. targeteer‟ approaches to translation and translating. The focus has

shifted from (un)translatability to the cultural, political and economic ramifications

of translation; away from concerns with translated texts toward treating translation

as social, cultural and political acts taking place within and attached to global and

local relations of power and dominance whereby translation

… becomes a significant site for raising questions of representation, power, and

historicity. The context is one of contested stories attempting to account for, to

recount, the asymmetry and inequality of relations between peoples, races,

languages. (Niranjana, 1992, 1)

This examination of the links between translation, including writings about non-

dominant cultures into dominant and hegemonic ones, has dominated translation

studies since the mid-1980s (Cronin, 2003).

So, the emerging aspects of translation as intercultural communication are bound to

make it the site for the contestation of the spaces between cultures and relationships

of power and knowledge. The reason is simple: Translation involves the

transporting (carrying-over) of languages and their associated cultures to and be

recuperated by specific target reading constituencies. These constituencies have at

their disposal established systems of representation, with norms and conventions for

the production and consumption of meanings vis-à-vis people, objects and events.

These systems ultimately yield a master discourse, which provides the norms that

govern translation as both process and product (Faiq, 2007).

In all this, the two fundamental components of translation are culture and language.

Because it brings the two together, translation is by necessity a multi-faceted, multi-

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problematic process with different manifestations, realizations and ramifications. In

general terms, culture can be defined as shared knowledge: What the members of a

particular community ought to know to act and react in specific, almost


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Some Semantic, Stylistic and Cultural

Problems of Translation

With Special Reference to Translating the Glorious Qur'ân

Saudi Sadiq

English Department, Faculty of Languages (Alsun), El-Minya

University, Egypt

Abstract

This paper deals with some semantic, stylistic and cultural problems of translation

and offers modest solutions to each. Among the semantic problems discussed are

homonymy; polysemy; and little knowledge of semantic change and its types

including semantic generalization, specification, melioration and pejoration. The

stylistic problems offered include: clarity, ellipsis, redundancy and extraposition. As

regards the cultural problems discussed, they cover the problems underlying the

translation of idioms, proverbs and culture-bound words.

1. Introduction Since translation is a process of constant search for the transfer of a message from

the Source Language (SL) into the Target Language (TL), it is often beset by many

problems and difficulties that may be a result of the differences in both languages or

differences in the cultures represented by them. Among the linguistic problems

touched upon in this paper are some of the semantic and stylistic problems that face

any translator of any text. There is also an attempt to shed light on some cultural

problems that may be more likely to be encountered and more dangerous.

First, the problem is decided upon, many examples from different texts in general

and the Holy Bible and the Glorious Qur'ân in particular are given, and the solution

is finally suggested. The Glorious Qur'ân examples necessitate offering different

translations of their meanings. The translations utilized are those attempted by

Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, „Abdullâh Yûsuf „Alî, Arthur John Arberry and

Muhammad Mahmûd Ghâlî.

2. Semantic Problems: 2.1. Polysemy

Polysemy refers to "a lexical item which has a range of different meanings" (Crystal

1991: 267). For instance, plain means level, undecorated, pure, unobstructed,

obvious, clear, common and ordinary (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

[MWOD] 2008). The numerous meanings a word acquires may be a result of the

metaphoric or abstract context in which it is used, thus giving it a metaphoric or

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abstract sense in addition to its original (literal) meaning. Moreover, the different

meanings contained in polysemic words have the same etymological origins and are

related to one another. For instance, the Arabic word „ayn is polysemic; it

means: (1) „ayn 4 (eye); (2) „aynu al-mâ‟i (spring); (3) „aynu al-

‟ibraati (the eye of a needle); (4) jâsûs (spy) (Hijâzî 1999: 140-141); (5)

jawhar (essence) as in Hâţha huwa „aynu al-mawdû„i (This is the

essences of the subject); (6) al-„aqâr (apartment) as in al-

„aynu mawdû„u an-nizâ„i (the apartment at issue); (7) „aynu aş-şawâbi

(completely right); and (8) „aynu al-makâni (the very place). All of these

meanings are derived from the same etymological origin, the stem . The first

meaning is the literal meaning, and the rest are figurative.

Many Arabic words are polysemic; that is, they are of multiple meanings. In

particular, the Glorious Qur'ân contains tens of polysemic words. For example, the

verb da„a occurs in many verses with slightly different, though related,

meanings. It occurs in these verses:

)(

Hunâlika da„a Zakariyyâ Rabbahu qâla Rabbi habli min ladunka

ţhurriyyatan ţayyibatan ‟innaka Samee„u ad-du„âi /

There and then Zachariah prayed to his Lord, saying, 'Lord, from Your grace

grant me virtuous offspring: You hear every prayer.' 5 (3:38) 6;

Yâ ‟ayyuhâ allaţheena ‟âmanû ‟istajeebû liLâhi walir-Rrasûli iţhâ da„âkum

lima yuhyeekum /

Believers, respond to God and His Messenger when he calls you to that

which gives you life. (8:24) and

Yâ ‟ayyuhâ allaţheena ‟âmanû lâ tadkhulû buyûta An-Nabiyyi illâ ‟an

yu‟ţhana lakum ilâ ţa„âmin ghayra nâthireena inâhu walâkin iţha du„eetum

fa-idkhulû/ Believers, do not enter the Prophet's apartment for a meal unless

4 See the transliteration guide above. Arabic words in isolation are not inflected, while words in phrases

and sentences are inflected and transliterated accordingly. 5 For more clarification, the translations of the Qur'ânic verses are cited from Muhammad A. S. Abdel Haleem's The Qur'an. However, this does not mean that the author totally agrees with them. 6 The bold number refers to the Qur'ânic Sûrah (Chapter) and the regular number refers to the verse.

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you are given permission to do so; do not linger until [a meal] is ready.

When you are invited, go in; (33:53).

The Arabic verb da„a in these three verses is polysemic; it has near related

meanings, but not only one meaning. In the first verse (3:38), it means invoke; in

the second (8:24), it means call; and in the third, (33:53) it means invite.

The various meanings of a given word may drag the inexperienced translator into

troubles. He/she gets so confused that he/she is unable to choose the appropriate

meaning, especially when the meanings are so close to one another and the context

is literary or religious. To solve this problem, a translator should not imagine that all

meanings are identical and, if in doubt, consult a monolingual dictionary know the

precise difference in meaning. In addition, he/she should look closely at the words

before and after the polysemic word to decide on the nature of the context precisely.

This will be of much help in choosing the meaning that is in harmony with the

context. Only then will the translator be able to choose the most precise and suitable

meaning and translate it accurately.

2.2. Homonymy

Homonymy is a semantic phenomenon referring to "lexical items which have the

same form but differ in meaning"


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Translating metaphor between unrelated

cultures: A cognitive-pragmatic perspective

Zouhair A. Maalej College of European Languages & Translation

King Saud University, Riyadh,

Abstracti

The paper offers a cognitive model of metaphor translating between the Arabic and

English cultures. To do so, it strives to conciliate metaphor's culture-specificity and

its transportability into another culture, combining three frameworks: the

“Cognitive Translation Hypothesis” (Mandelblit 1995), the concept of

“comparative cultures” (Hiraga 1991), and "cultural variation" (Kövecses 2005).

The working hypothesis is that metaphoric expressions tend to be kept under the

same conceptual metaphors if the two cultures in contact share the same conceptual

mappings and the same linguistic expressions. If, however, the two cultures do not

share the same conceptual mappings, the task of the translator is even harder in

striving to search for a linguistic expression that best expresses a metaphor in the

target language pragmatically equivalent to the of the source language.

Introduction Traditional views of language hold speech to be imprecise, with metaphor and other

figurations as the instrument of its imprecision and corruption. Thus, getting rid of

metaphor would purify language from this imperfection. Such a view was held by

Locke, who argued that metaphor was an instrument of deception.ii This illusion of

metaphor-free speech goes counter the huge evidence that metaphor is ubiquitous in

language and thought (Lakoff and Johnson 1980,1999; Lakoff and Turner 1989;

Lakoff 1987,1993; Johnson 1987; Gibbs 1994; Turner 1991).

In spite of this pervasiveness of metaphor, it transpires from the index of some

important translation studies books published in the 1990s that, apart from Snell-

Hornby (1988-1995) and Campbell (1998), the topic of metaphor translation is

given a short shrift and even neglected in these important publications (e.g. Bell

1991; Baker 1992; Hervey and Higgins 1992; Lefevere 1992a-b; Neubert and

Shreve 1992; Gentzler 1993; Hatim 1997a-b; Hatim and Mason 1997). The reason

for this strategy of avoidance may lie in “the obstacles to reach some kind of theory

of metaphor translation” (Alvarez 1993:479). Indeed, very few translation theorists

have visited the topic of English-Arabic translation with the intention to contribute a

theory-based model of metaphor translating. For instance, Fareh and Bin Moussa

(2007) pointed out the inadequacy of some English-Arabic dictionaries in handling

metaphor translating and offered recommendations to dictionary makers to resolve

these shortcomings, but fell short of offering even guidelines toward a theory of

metaphor translating. On the other hand, Dickins (2005) offered a Simplified Model

vs. Full Model of metaphor translating, which is a reworking of Newmark's scheme

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in terms of lexicalized and non-lexicalized metaphors, where Arabic-English

translation of metaphor is reduced to exuberance and congruence. However, some

others (e.g. Van Besien and Pelsmaekers 1988; Crofts 1988; Arduini 1998) have

visited the topic, but contributed little to it.

It has been customary to think that the aim of every translation enterprise is “the

replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual material

in another language (TL)” (Catford 1965:20). However, it takes more than pairing

two linguistic systems to translate from one language to another. It is now a truism

of translation in general that “to preserve the content of the message the form must

be changed” (Nida and Taber 1974:5). Cluysenaar (1976:41) claims that “anyone

who doubts the inseparability of form and meaning cannot do better than attempt the

translation even of quite ordinary utterances.” Cognitive linguistically, this cross-

linguistic replacement or change of form across languages takes place by reference

to the conceptual systems of two given languages. In particular, translating

metaphor is best done through a correlation of conceptual metaphor and metaphoric

expressions in both languages.

The paper offers a translation model for metaphor, combining Mandelblit‟s (1995)

“Cognitive Translation Hypothesis,” Hiraga's (1991) “comparative cultures,”

Kövecses‟s (2000,2003) “cultural variation,” monitoring the whole through Lakoff

and Johnson‟s cognitive metaphor framework. Although Mason (1982:149) claimed

that there is no need for “a theory of the translation of metaphor” as “there can only

be a theory of translation,” I believe that metaphor needs a special model for its

translation. As Thelen (1995:507) claims, metaphor “requires a number of special

skills next to the usual skills needed for the translation of nonfigurative language.”

In Maalej (2003:145), I suggested detection and syntactic-cum-semantic

disambiguation as two important pre-translation activities required for the

translation of compound nouns into Arabic. These two activities are, however, not

found very useful in translating metaphor owing to metaphor‟s syntactic

unwieldiness and cultural complexity, which require different activities. Moreover,

Snell-Hornby (1988-95:58) rightly argues that “the essential problem posed by

metaphor in translation is that different cultures, hence different languages,

conceptualize and create symbols in varying ways, and therefore the sense of the

metaphor is frequently culture-specific.” However culture specific, metaphor is not

a case of untranslatability, but a challenging phenomenon in terms of unpacking its

complexity in a source language (SL) and culture (SC) and re-packing it in a target

language (TL) and culture (TC). For all these, a separate model of translating is

required for metaphor.

The current paper is divided into four sections. The first one offers an overview of

classical theories of metaphor translating. The second section addresses

translatability in the cognitive linguistic paradigm. The third section is devoted to a

proposal for a cognitive view of metaphor translating, combining Mandelblit‟s

(1995,1997) “Cognitive Translation Hypothesis,” Hiraga‟s (1991) "comparative

cultures," and Kövecses‟s (2002,2005) "cultural variation." The last section is the

practical part, applying the framework in question to the translation of metaphor

from a play written in TA into English.


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5. Applying the Model of Metaphor Translating The corpus drawn upon in this paper is a play titled klaam l-liil (literally, Night‟s

Talk) written by Taoufik Jebali, a Tunisian dramatist. The play is written as popular

literature, but it is so close to TA as spoken by real people. However, the data

studied in this paper should not be taken as representative of TA. It is only for lack

of naturally occurring language corpora that such a play is adopted as a sort of

compromise between popular literature and the vernacular.

In a play like the one dealt with here, translating for performance is different from

translating for the play to be read as a text. If the effect of the translation on the

target audience is not the same on source and target audience, it is because

“experiential and cognitive models are often used differently in the different

linguistic and cultural communities with respect to area, scope, and time of

operation, and most importantly, choice of the domain for comparison” (Alexieva

1993:107). Translating metaphors literally when mapping domains are never used in

a source language might turn off the audience since the translation might be

unintelligible to them. However, for a cognitive linguist, translating literally might

be of utmost importance since it reveals how different languages conceptualize

experience.

Four metaphoric clusters have been identified in the play under study: NON-COMMERCIAL ENTITIES ARE COMMODITIES

THINKING IS A ISEASE AND AN ILLEGAL ACTIVITY

INEDIBLE ENTITIES ARE FOOD

In the translated discourses below, the literal procedure will be adopted as a

strategy. If they make sense literally, it means that English and TA conceptualize

experience in a similar fashion. In this case, the SMC applies. However, if literal

translation sounds odd, shocking, or unintelligible to English speakers, DMC

applies.

5.1. NON-COMMERCIAL ENTITIES ARE COMMODITIES

Structural metaphors like NON-COMMERCIAL ENTITIES ARE COMMODITIES

are not infrequent in economically-minded communities across the world. Let us

consider the following excerpt from the play and its literal translation:iii

.. .. .

(deuxième main) .

.. .. .

.

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“”

.. ..

.

..

.. ..

Isn‟t it better than tradesmen becoming full up (by feeding on us) and selling

and buying us?

One wouldn‟t like to have on one‟s shoulders a population with non-standard

specifications.

You should be lucky if they don‟t impose on you second-hand unsold

merchandise, i.e. one that was used before, and comes to you rinsed from

some communist regime…

So one has to be careful and ask for at least a one-year warranty certificate

together with certified signature. Furthermore, one has to be careful not to

open it oneself just in case it turns out to be broken down… It is preferable to

take it back to the house where you bought it from… Mind you, if a

population is not opened in the house, the owner‟s warranty will be lost.

If you want the truth, there is nothing better than having it done in a tailor-

made fashion… Damned be life, one could buy a fresh population still in its

wrappings… Evidently, tailor-made objects are costly indeed. But how many

times does one live (pp. 96-97)

This discourse is organized as an extended economic mapping, with most linguistic

metaphors as entailments of the conceptual metaphor, NON-COMMERCIAL

ENTITIES ARE COMMODITIES. In TA, PEOPLE ARE A COMMODITY may

have originated in the socio-political situation, where the existence of tremendously

wealthy few and needy people has given rise to social practices akin to corruption

on the part of the haves, whereby they may bribe the needy into acceptance and

silence. Such a situation must have been at the origin of the ME, šraawah (they

bought him). Accordingly, a population can be sold and bought, and what applies to

commodities will apply to it. Thus, like any commodity, a population should exhibit

quality requirements. Buyers should not be duped by being sold a second-hand

population. In order for their rights to be preserved, buyers should require a

warranty certificate from the seller. As a commodity, a population comes wrapped

up as a parcel, and if it should prove defective consumers should not take the risk of

opening it in the absence of the manufacturer just in case the latter denies their right

to claiming for refund or replacement. A related CM to NON-COMMERCIAL

ENTITIES ARE COMMODITIES is A POPULATION IS AN OBJECT as in

tailor-made objects are costly indeed…, with object as a metaphor for population.

As tailoring is still a common profession in Tunisia, the best way of getting a

“fresh” population in its wrappings is by having it ordered tailor-made even though

tailoring is costly. Thus, although English people do not conceptualize population in


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market terms, anyone can make sense of this mapping between people and

economic issues owing to the familiarity of economics metaphors.

As a structural metaphor, NON-COMMERCIAL ENTITIES ARE COMMODITIES

in TA may be easy to follow, but as a CM structuring human beings it is quite

uncommon for an English audience. This structural metaphor is not commonly used

to structure people in TA, either. It is a creative CM made for the purposes of the

play. This creativity, however, is nothing extraordinary as “people naturally think in

poetic ways to make sense of their ordinary experiences” (Gibbs, 1994: 15).

Although the area of commerce as a mapping domain for people might seem

unfamiliar to English people, the metaphor is still intelligible. As a result of this

creativity, what will leak out to processors from such a conceptualization of people

is human degradation, de-personalization, and even slavery.

The rest of the text develops as three metaphoric moves: (i) the current economic

situation; (ii) a counterstrategy; and (iii) a proposal for a better alternative. The

playwright urges politicians not to opt for a population with non-standard

specifications and not to accept second-hand unsold merchandise as it comes to you

rinsed. As the text is about social structure, it criticizes the economic policy as

allowing into the country a mediocre quality of commodities as signaled through

non-standard specifications and second-hand unsold merchandise. In connection

with a population coming rinsed, “rinsed” alludes to brainwashing as attested by

“from some communist regime.” Applied to a population, this situation is pretty

unusual because people are not sold and bought, and therefore they must not

conform to some standards of economic acceptability. As an allusion to fighting

commercial fraud, it is urged that politicians acquire a warranty certificate for any

commodity they buy, and never to open it oneself in case it turns out to be broken

down lest the warranty be lost. In the third move, politicians are advised to be on the

safest side, and order a tailor-made “fresh” population in its wrappings. It seems that

translating MEs constructed around a structural metaphor literally is insightful as it

tells the audience about the way basic-level categories are conceptualized in a given

culture. However, the literal translation, even if intelligible, does not exhaust the

cultural allusions that necessarily get into the construction of meaning. As Snell-

Hornby (1988-1995:56) rightly stressed, “the sense of the metaphor is frequently

culture-specific.”

5.2. THINKING IS A DISEASE AND AN ILLEGAL ACTIVITY

Translating MEs literally in the previous text has been dominated by DMC.

However, the DMC does not seem to have fully precluded understanding. Structural

metaphors seem to lend themselves more readily to literal translation, therefore

yielding quite intelligible translations, even though in this process loss of meaning is

made inevitable by the culture specificity of metaphoric meanings. The following

text structures “thinking” in terms of disease and illegal activities:

.. : …

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.. .

.

.....…

“ ”

“ ”

.

The doctor examined me and told me: there is nothing wrong with you; don‟t

play with your health.

Listen to me… Get rid of thinking.

As to gossip, you can rely on me.

The first thing I did was get rid of thinking on an empty stomach.

....…

What are they waiting for to organize a preventive campaign from thinking

accidents.

And vaccinating children will be made compulsory.

And on TV they organize a campaign called “Thinking is dangerous for your

health.”

In administrative buildings they forbid thinking without having permission from

the porter.

In the corners of the Arab neighborhoods “it is forbidden to think here.”

It is forbidden to use thinking for political purposes.

On buses it is forbidden to think with the driver.

In pubs it is forbidden to think after eight.

In the holy month of Ramadaniv it is forbidden to voice thinking.

At the airport, it is forbidden to import thinking from abroad.

It is forbidden to hold thinking without a permit.


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Thinking without deposit is forbidden.

And anti-thinking squad is active till this calamity of thinking is thoroughly

eradicated (pp. 108-109).

The first half of this text is dominated by the CM, THINKING IS A DISEASE, and

the other half by THINKING IS AN ILLEGAL ACTIVITY. Metaphor and allusion

are used to evade political censorship. It may not be grasped by the target audience

what thinking on an empty stomach means; doing things on an empty stomach in

TA evokes disease and related disagreeable things such as ulcer. The suggestion that

thinking is a disease is confirmed by the ME, preventive campaign from thinking

accidents, where thinking is mapped as a contagious disease for which preventive

campaigns should be organized. The contagious dimension is suggested through the

vaccination of children against thinking. Even though this mapping of disease on

thinking may be alien to modern Westerners, politics-as-disease is quite known to

Hobbes‟s Leviathan‟s readers (Maalej 1990). The conceptualization of thinking in

TA and English is a case of DMC. However, the MEs governed by the CM,

THINKING IS A DISEASE, may be left as literal. It seems that structural

metaphors yield intelligible translations. It may be argued that these intelligible

translations might not very often be acceptable culturally.

The second half of the text maps legal language on thinking, yielding the CM,

THINKING IS AN ILLEGAL ACTIVITY. The illegal status of thinking is

enhanced in two ways, only one of which is available to the TR in the literal

translation. First, by issuing the impersonal directive that has the force of an

interdiction, slightly softened by the use of the passive construction: “it is forbidden

to think here.” The various interdictions are based on the same syntactic pattern,

building evocative allusions into the culture. It is forbidden to think here is modeled

on messages written on street walls in some Arab countries, urging people not to

urinate in street corners and throw rubbish on the ground (“it is forbidden to urinate

here”/ “it is forbidden to throw rubbish here.” The construction in question evokes

street urinating and other asocial behaviors, which by analogy has the effect of

assimilating thinking to a form of street urinating. It is forbidden to use thinking for

political purposes is an allusion to the interdiction of political opposition in the

country in the 1960s and 70s. It is forbidden to think with the driver points to a

poster posted above the driver‟s head in public transport buses to the public to urge

them not to speak with the driver in order not to distract his attention, and points to

the interdiction of the right to meet and talk to people. It is forbidden to think after

eight is reference to drunkards, who seem to have been encouraged to get drunk as a

way of precluding them from interfering with the political situation up to eight in

the evening. Obviously, by the time it is eight o'clock a drunkard cannot think

anymore under the effect of alcohol. It is forbidden to voice thinking in Ramadan

refers to meetings of religious fundamentalists in mosques made illegal. Such socio-

political knowledge through literal translation is unavailable to the TR unacquainted

with the Tunisian culture.

The same kind of syntactic echoing reverberates through it is forbidden to hold

thinking without a permit (made after “it is forbidden to own a weapon without a

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permit”), where thinking is conceptualized as a weapon for which a permit is

needed. Further, thinking without a deposit is forbidden hijacks deposit into thinking

to point to the precariousness of the financial situation. It is particularly an allusion

to, “Issuing checks without deposit is forbidden.” The CM, THINKING IS A

WEAPON, is confirmed by it is forbidden to use thinking for political purposes.

Another confirmation that thinking is a threat to the political establishment is

echoed through anti-thinking squad is active till this calamity of thinking is

thoroughly eradicated. “Anti-thinking squad” is reminiscent of “anti-crime squads”

which were used in the 1960s and 70s to persecute political opponents, which

suggests the CM, THINKING IS A CRIME. The increasing negative status

suggested through CMs to dealing with thinking culminates in this calamity of

thinking is thoroughly eradicated, which suggests the CM, THINKING IS A

CALAMITY.

Clearly, the MEs constituting the first half of the text are quite intelligible even

though the mapping domain does not satisfy the SMC between the two conceptual

systems of English and TA. However, the second part of the text is not acceptable to

the TR not just because the legal mapping domain for thinking does not satisfy the

SMC, but also because many of the syntactic and semantic allusions do not survive

literal translation.

5.3. INEDIBLE ENTITIES ARE FOOD and NON-COMMERCIAL

ENTITIES ARE MARKETABLE COMMODITIES

So far, the CMs that have been studied show DMC with two options: intelligible

despite the DMC and unintelligible because literal translation does not give justice

to the SL. The following text capitalizes on colors, food, and economy, and offers

two levels of reading, which are exploited to make political allusions:

..

....…

..

.

....…

.. .

.. ..

…

…


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Tunisians have black hearts.

Hearts thus small and black.

Have you ever in your lifetime heard of small and black hearts? Well,

Tunisians have small and black hearts.

....…

And what is more amazing is that the more they are black the more they are

not the least tough owing to their having been so frequently seasoned over

embers, which made them careless… and anything would make them fall into

crumbs and woe unto whoever happens to be under their molar.

....…

What a pity, white hearts are becoming so thin on the ground .. Even in this

we have been marrow. One has come to have appetite for a white “heartlet”v

… if only for a change of tastes… Nothing … There is penury of white

hearts… We have them imported from abroad and they are very costly… If

the rogues were to listen to me now, they would monopolize the market of

white hearts… (pp. 71-72)

In TA, the collocation to have a black heart stands for the concept of spite while

white heart stands for tolerance (Maalej, 2008). In English, black very often

connotes negatively, too, except that it is not used in connection with hearts.

Instead, English uses harden/steel one‟s heart. However, white may connote either

with “purity” as in white as snow or fright as in white as a sheet/ghost.vi Therefore,

translating colors as in white hearts and black hearts literally into English may be

self-defeating as color is a fuzzy category. A more intelligible translation like

spiteful and tolerant may be advisable. The reason why color categories are bad

candidates for literal translation can be grasped in Lakoff‟s (1987: 29) comment that

“color categories result from the world plus human biology plus a cognitive

mechanism that has some of the characteristics of fuzzy set theory plus a culture-

specific choice of which basic color categories there are.”

In cognitive linguistics, “expressions do not mean; they are prompts for us to

construct meanings by working with processes we already know… When we

understand an utterance, we in no sense are understanding „just what the words say‟;

the words themselves say nothing independent of the richly detailed knowledge and

powerful cognitive processes we bring to bear” (Turner 1991:206). The collocation

hearts thus small and black is packaged with culture-specific meaning having to do

with lack of courage. Therefore, the translation hearts thus small and black, is not

illuminating for an English audience because it gives less information and

knowledge about small and black, whose rendering should be, people lacking in

courage and unforgiving. The translation offered above does not do justice to the

meaning of the SLT not only because spite and small are not conceptualized in color

terms in English, but also because the way the two language varieties package

meaning in lexical items is different. Small is capable of metaphoric packaging in

TA but not in English. This construction is, thus, not intelligible in English, and is a

case of DMC.

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As noted earlier, the text under discussion offers two levels of meaning: one literal

and another metaphoric both active together, which the native audience of the play

or readers of the text cannot fail to notice. The literal level here has to do with a

distinction made between sunflower (black) and marrow seeds (white). Roasting

sunflower seeds for consumption blackens them whereas roasting marrow seeds

with limestone whitens them. These seeds are roasted by being seasoned over

embers, which makes them fall into crumbs easier, i.e. they become crispier and

easily crushable. It is a fact that sunflower (black) are more consumed than marrow

seeds because they are cheaper and more available.

In the metaphoric layer, Tunisians are said to have black hearts because their hearts

have been so frequently seasoned over embers, which caused them to fall into

crumbs. Food metaphors are so pervasive in most cultures that using them in

structural metaphors seems to pose no particular problem for making sense of them

(Emanatian 1995:164). The proposed translation is, therefore, quite reasonable and

intelligible. However, the relation between the fact that Tunisians have black hearts

and the fact they are not tough derives logically from the entailment of the food

metaphor used. Experientially, we know that if meat is tough, it needs long

seasoning to soften it. So, frequently seasoned over embers is an allusion to torture

during the imprisonment of political opponents back in the early 1960s. Such an

allusion to what the metaphors evoke in the mind of Tunisians is lost in the

translation. It is at appetite for a white „heartlet‟ that the literal and the metaphoric

seem to go hand in hand: literally (a marrow seed) and metaphorically (a kind

person). What makes this possible is the fact that in TA qalb (heart) and qalb (seed)

are homonyms, hence the playwright‟s play on words. Such a literal-metaphoric

duality created through homonyms is lost in the translation. The metaphoric reading

uses a food SD to conceptualize kindness (white „heartlet) in TA. The host of food

jargon such as tough, seasoned, crumbs, molar, appetite, taste is evocative of the

conceptual metaphor, A PART OF THE BODY IS FOOD.

The second part of the text offers the same possibility for a duality of meaning,

where penury can be understood both literally and metaphorically. The use of

metaphor in economics is common (Mc Closkey 1985; Henderson 1986; Maalej

1990). The use of economics as a SD to structure knowledge is also common.

Literally, penury is occasioned by strong demand and scarcity of a given

commodity. The use of penury is not gratuitous here; again it is an allusion to a

prevailing socio-economic situation characterized by monopoly, scarcity of some

commodities, and rising prices in Tunisia. The solution for penury is very often

importing. But importing has the side effect of having to pay higher prices in hard

currency, which drains the country‟s hard currency and resources. The metaphoric

level, however, is penury of white hearts, which is a metonymic metaphor for

kindness (WHOLE FOR PART, where tolerant and kind people are conceptualized

as rare). Penury makes import imminent and commodities costly especially when

monopolies dominate the market. Another set of homonyms is present in this text in

qallaab. In one of its meanings, qallaab simply means vendor of sunflower seeds

(qlub); in the other it means rogue, i.e. someone whose profession is to dupe other


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people. Such a duality is lost in the translation as these two concepts are not

homonyms in English.

Apart from the impossibility of recovering the metaphoric associations in black and

white in TA, the conceptualization of kindness in food and market terms should be

tangible to an English audience. However, even when the overall structural

metaphors are grasped, loss of meaning seems to be associated with metaphoric

meanings in the studied texts for cultural reasons. Thus, a literal translation of

metaphor may be feasible both when the SMC and DMC obtain with structural

metaphors, except that loss of meaning is also part of the agenda of the translation

of metaphor between unrelated cultures.

Conclusion I hope to have succeeded in showing where cognitive linguistics can provide the

(professional) translator with assistance in his job, but at the same time point to the

pitfalls to be avoided or resolved in translating metaphor.

Translating is, thus, not pairing one linguistic system with another but mapping the

conceptual system of a TL onto that of the SL. But what can we do with the fact that

languages conceptualize experience differently? Lakoff (1987:312) argues that

“differences in conceptual systems do not necessarily entail that understanding and

learning are impossible” because “each language comes with an enormously wide

range of such concepts and their corresponding expressions.” Emphasizing the place

of culture in translation, Lefevere and Bassnett (1990:8) argue that “„faithfulness,‟

then, does not enter into translation in the guise of „equivalence‟ between words or

texts but, if at all, in the guise of an attempt to make the target text function in the

target culture the way the source text functioned in the source culture.” In more

cognitive terms, the translator‟s faithfulness is to find “equivalence in the

experience of the participants” (the participants being the Sender or originator of the

ST, the Translator, and Addressee or the translation‟s reader), and that “translators

must convey the same kind of experience with the same kind of language material,

and to expand, reduce, or modify textual components only as far as necessary to

minimize a divergence of experience” (Beaugrande and Dressler 1981:216-17). This

equivalence in the experience of participants makes translating a form of “mapping

from one language to another language” (Lakoff 1987:312).

The translator-as-reader must be aware of the meaning of the scene that the SL

concept evokes in his/her own mind, but the translator-as-writer cannot invent a new

concept in the TL to capture what is associated with the concept in the SL, neither

can s/he do anything to change what is in the mind of English people. Consequently,

the translator‟s job is to re-produce/re-pack in the TL the scene(s) associated with

the SL if they exist in the TL culture. Similar re-production/re-packing is, thus,

possible if the two languages in question offer similar conceptual structures, which

is what has been called SMC. Different re-production/re-packing takes place when

the two languages in question offer different conceptual structures, which is what

has been called DMC.

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Notes:

i The present paper is a reworking of a talk under the title “Translating metaphor

between unrelated cultures: A cognitive view,” read to the Third International

Conference on Researching and Applying Metaphor (RAAM III): Metaphor across

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Languages: Translation and Intercultural Communication, Including Literature.

Tilbürg, The Netherlands, 30 June/2 July 1999. ii An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 3, Chapter 10, 105-106

(Quoted by Paul de Man, “The Epistemology of Metaphor,” in S. Sacks, ed., On

Metaphor. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1979, 13). iii

Metaphoric expressions are italicized in the translated discourse. iv Ramadan is the holy fasting month for Muslims.

v Knowing that “heart” does not have a diminutive form in English, “heartlet” is coined after

“booklet” to show the diminutive form in TA. vi

Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Idioms (1995: 419-20).


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English and Arabic conceptual metaphors of

anger: Implications for translation Dinha T. Gorgis Jadara University, Jordan

Abstract

Based on data from Classical, Modern Standard and Iraqi varieties of Arabic, this

study suggests a (shared) pan-Arab prototypical cultural model for the concept of

anger. As such, the analysis lends support to the Dichrony Hypothesis, one of the

principal tenets of the Cognitive Theory of Metaphor (cf. Jäkel 2002). This model,

which is juxtaposed to the standard English cognitive prototype (cf. Lakoff and

Kövecses 1987; Kövecses 2000b), is best understood through a system of structured

conceptual metaphors/metonyms via mapping a source domain onto a target

domain. A close examination of English and Arabic data shows that ANGER IS

HEAT, whose two sub-versions are FLUID IN A HOT CONTAINER and FIRE, is so

pervasive across the three Arabic varieties and across the two cultures in question

that one is tempted to declare its universality. Yet despite the obvious one-to-one

conceptual correspondences found in the data, the paper seeks refuge in 'neutrality',

mainly because anger is a highly complex and multi-faceted emotion (cf. Tavris

1989) , not to mention the cross-linguistic findings that have recently been obtained

and the current challenges to the Lakoffian paradigm.

On the basis of linguistic evidence from many languages, anger is largely embodied,

but the parts of the body associated with anger in Classical Arabic, though not in

other Arabic varieties, are far more than even in Chinese (cf. Yu 1995). This

difference is not that important as long as many classical expressions have become

obsolete. What matters more is the matching of underlying thought structures in the

pan-Arab culture, not the linguistic instantiations, that would grant translators a

freedom of maneuver and selection among preferences. Still, English linguistic

instantiations occurring in the form of idioms may cause a problem for the Arab

translator despite similar conceptualisation between English and Arabic because of

the degree of anger intensity associated with each expression. To circumvent the

problem, this paper proposes two options. First, when the source domain is similar,

but an exact equivalent is lacking in both Classical Arabic and Modern Standard

Arabic, the translator is advised to attempt to standardise their colloquial forms. In

case it is not available in the colloquial, a search for the nearest equivalent in either

the Classical or Modern variety is recommended, but it should be compatible with

the context in which it occurs. Second, when the source domain is different, the

translator ought to ignore cultural connotations and avoid paraphrases, unless

targeted for some purpose. Arabic data have shown that cultural conceptual

metaphors/metonyms are no more than violations of the overall Arabic conceptual

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prototype which is similar to English, especially the part that covers embodiment,

and hence the relative ease of translating anger when based on cognitive principles.

Key words Conceptual metaphor, anger, metonymy, entailment, emotions, embodiment,

universals, culture, prototype, variation, (un)translatability.

0. Introduction Abundant research, both empirical and non-empirical, has been carried out on the

verbal and/or non-verbal aspects of human emotions in many languages, their

respective cultures and across cultures from different perspectives. Particularly

revealing is the contemporary theory of metaphor which is claimed to be

revolutionary in many respects (cf. Lakoff 1993). Rather than reviewing the

available literature on conceptual metaphors extensively, which is highly

controversial (see, e.g. Barsalou 1999; Goschler 2005; Glenberg & Lindeman. 2007

[2005]), one might come to the conclusion that researchers have been waging a

never-ceasing intellectual war on delimiting emotions in particular and whether

feelings are the same as emotions. The issue of whether they are different, same or

overlapping, categories is not less serious than whether the number of basic

emotions is five, eight, or five times eight. Wierzbicka (1986, p.584), for example,

expresses her anxiety about the strict labeling and neat categorization of human

emotions in world languages and respective cultures into ten fundamental ones as

claimed by Izard & Buechler (1980, p. 186). In a later work, Wierzbicka (1998)

explicitly makes the claim that emotions are "noncountable". What is more is the yet

unanswered and challenging question of 'universality', i.e. whether emotions are the

product of nature, following Darwin's biological theory and the innateness

hypothesis, or nurture, advocating some form of the Sapir-Whorf linguistic relativity

hypothesis (cf. Wierzbicka 1999; Gellatly 1995). Human beings have attempted to

divide the world into categories for over two thousand years, a highly complex issue

which Russell (1991), for instance, reviews nicely. In fact, assumptions and denials

concerning the nature and classification of emotions (and/or feelings) have always

been uneasy bedfellows in scientific thinking, which is a healthy enterprise.

This paper, however, is not expected to settle the conflict, nor is it intended to

resolve the question of whether anger, our major concern here, no matter how it is

experienced across cultures, has a metaphoric basis or not (cf. Barsalou 1999; Gibbs

1999). At the time we admit that anger does have an undeniable physiological

grounding, it follows that research on embodiment (cf. Johnson 1987) is a

worthwhile research paradigm. Many scholars would perhaps agree with Lakoff and

Johnson (1999, p. 6) who argue that our mind "is not merely embodied, but

embodied in such a way that our conceptual systems draw largely upon the

commonalities of our bodies and of the environments we live in. The result is that

much of a person‟s conceptual system is either universal or widespread across

languages and cultures". At this point, however, we choose to be neutral, a view

widely held by many scholars today, including those who are still sympathetic with


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universalism, e.g. Kövecses (2000 b; 2005). Neutrality may help us answer the

question of translatability of figurative language, especially when emotions (and/or

feelings) are said to be verbalized metaphorically. The present work will, therefore,

attempt to circumvent the problem of translatability through accounting for the

possibility of translating English anger expressions, including idioms, into Arabic

by appealing to research carried out within cognitive linguistics, viz. conceptual

metaphor theory, since the publication of Lakoff and Johnson's (1980) seminal work

Metaphors We Live By.

Following, e.g. Lakoff (1986; 1987; 1993), a distinction must, first, be made

between metaphor (as a figure of speech) in language, i.e. poetic or literary, as used

in classical theories confined mostly to rhetoric, and metaphor (as a figure of

thought) in the conceptual system, i.e. cognitive structure, as used in contemporary

metaphor research. Although both traditions utilize the notions of source and target

in search of a metaphoric interpretation, the former, which is mere comparison

between two entities, refers to (linguistic) metaphorical expression, i.e. surface

realization, whereas the latter, which involves mapping of one conceptual domain

onto another, refers to an abstract (or underlying) structure in our cognition. One

may take the former, which has been the subject of intensive research since perhaps

Aristotle, as colourful linguistic output and the latter, which has become the central

concern of cognitive science only over the last three decades, as colourless input

based on perceptions (cf. Yu 1995, pp. 59-60 for a similar distinction). Accordingly,

the paper will deal with the translation of English anger expressions into Arabic

from a metaphorical cognitive perspective, i.e. assuming that these expressions are

yielded essentially by cognitive metaphors and/or metonymies which have

experiential basis, often inferred from linguistic data. But before proceeding any

further, I would like to make a second, but tentative, distinction relevant to cognition

and culture, viz. between emotion and feeling as applicable to the concept anger in

Arabic.

Primarily, I would like to stress the fact that all three English notions, viz. emotion,

feeling and anger, have their Arabic equivalents, both as lexical items and concepts,

viz. respectively. This one-to-one correspondence entails that the

concept of anger in Arabic is, like English, an emotion. We are told that English

emotions have their abode mainly in the heart. If the Arabs' lexicon and

encyclopedic knowledge reveal that anger has its seat, like love, in the heart, then we

are justified to say that Arabic pan-culture conceives of anger as an emotion

. But the word 'anger' (not the concept) mainly collocates with the word

'feelings' as evidenced in the media at least. Take the following as an example:

Lit. The crowd took to the street filled with feelings of anger

But not:

Lit. filled with the emotion of anger

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Stylistics and Translation: Tracing the Style of

the Holy Quran and its implications in Islamic

and Non-Islamic Translations

Hasan Ghazala Umm Al-Qura University,

Makkah Al-Mukarramah, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

The relationship between translation and stylistics has now become established. Yet

translation studies and practice have not attended to the importance of style and its

implications in translation in specific terms satisfactorily.

This paper is two parts: theoretical and practical. The theoretical part accounts for

defending the discipline of stylistics, the strong links between stylistics and

translation at the different levels of language on the basis that style is a matter of

choice made by the writer from the inventory of language, especially grammar, lexis

and sounds. It has direct relevance to meaning and is claimed to be a part and

parcel of it. Not only this, style can be sometimes more important than meaning for-

and as argued later in the second part, if style is misplaced or being inept in certain

texts and contexts, readers may not be concerned with the message in the first place.

Therefore, this part includes discussing points like: Style and stylistics; the

significance of style in translation studies; the relevance of style to meaning and

message; stylistic analysis and translation analysis; etc.

The second practical part provides examples for the theoretical argument of the

first part, shifting focus onto the style of the Holy Quran in Islamic and Non-Islamic

translations. The style of the language of the Holy Quran is exceptionally significant

and vital to meaning at all levels. Therefore, it should not be bypassed. The

translations of the Holy Quran by both Moslem and Non-Moslem translators have

failed to reflect all the features of its style, with variations, though. The points of

argument here cover the grammatical, lexical and sound features of style. They

include: the style of emphasis, the style of passive vs. active, the style of repetition,

and redundancy, rhetorical style; the style of figurative language and cultural-

based expressions, the style of the style of sound features, parallelisms, harmony,

and stylistic universals among translations.

The paper's ultimate objectives are: to confirm the pivotal links between stylistics

and translation; the strong interconnection of style and meaning, and the

importance of style and its implications to the message in translation, especially in

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the Language of the Holy Quran; and the failure of translators, Moslems and Non-

Moslems, to match its style, with few exceptions only, for it has special, unique

characteristics that make it stand out among all other types of text. Yet some

stylistic universals have been achieved by these translations throughout.

1. In Defence of the Discipline of Stylistics: Stylistics (the study of style) is a new branch of linguistics. It is a language-based

activity applied to the study of different varieties of language, but mainly to the

analysis and interpretation of literary texts in particular. In the past fifteen years, and

to some critics'(like Jean-Jaques Lecercle) disappointment and frustration of

expectations –who predicted that stylistics is on the wane- it has flourished

unexpectedly the world over in Universities and Colleges where it has become an

established, regular subject on the syllabus of English and other languages

departments, mainly as a modern subject with new outlook at language, exploring its

cursorily attended to stylistic features and functions at different levels. Also, it has

become a distinguished and established school of modern literary criticism (See also

Simpson, 2004: 2).

The discipline of stylistics, one must admit, has been, and to some extent is still

under attack by some critics who claim that it is enveloped by some mysteries

concerning its tools of analysis, boundaries, claims for objectivity of analysis and

objectives. This is to some extent true, for a general, unanimously agreed upon

framework of stylistic analysis is not provided by many analysts and stylisticians;

only fractions of some insightful analyses of passages, short passages, that is, have

been provisionally provided here and there, now and then, upon which elephantine

conclusions have been drawn with limited power of persuasion in practical terms.

Besides, there are no solid, clearly definable criteria for how to discern stylistic

features or how to extract stylistic functions(or effects?). On the other hand, stylistic

functions are what? meanings: extra, essential, direct, indirect? implications?

Connotations? Reflections? Effects? Repercussions? Insinuations? What are the

mechanisms of relating structure to meaning? What is the logic behind that? How to

draw hard evidence for stylistic functions? By drawing on context? Local or major?

Or seeking help from outside the text? Or, may be by consulting cultural, social

and/or pragmatic connotations? Or, perhaps, by resorting to common sense and

intuition? Is the text and its context sufficient for drawing hard evidence? Are there

borderlines between stylistics on the one hand, and pragmatics, text linguistics,

discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics, and sociolinguistics, on the other? Or, it is a

kaleidoscopic mixture of all? All these are valid questions and objections to be

attended to carefully in the remainder of this subsection.

In defence of the discipline of stylistics I would say plainly and decisively that

stylistics is no longer vulnerable or vague. Stylistics is a discipline of linguistics that

has language as its material it works on right from the very beginning to the very

end. Language, then is its basis, general framework and borderlines. Stylistic


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analysis has well-defined framework and stages. It starts with recording the analyst's

intuitive response to the text analysed, having read it several times. It is a response

to the style of the language of the text(i.e. its stylistic features)in terms of abstract

concept(s) that would highlight what the text wants to say, i.e. its message. That is,

the text perhaps aims at sending a message of optimism, pessimism, passivity,

activity, determination, frustration, despair, hope, happiness, dejectedness,

banishment, glorifying/ demolishing certain values, etc. These intuitions have to be

confirmed by the stylistic features and functions of the language of the text, which

are the hard evidence drawn, and tangibly extracted from it and its context solely

and exclusively, or else such intuitions are dismissed as fake. Hard evidence is the

stylistic feature(s) which would support the line of argument claimed by the analyst

in his stylistic analysis. If, for instance, he claims that the text's message is one of

corruption of a certain society, he has to point out in clear terms the stylistic features

of all types(structural, lexical and maybe phonological)used in the text to confirm

that. It is one-way process only, going from stylistic features to functions,

implications and intuitions. It does not go the opposite direction from functions to

features, for the assumption is to emanate the former from the latter, not presuppose

the former and then confirm them by the latter, for stylistics is not prescriptive.

There are definable criteria for distinguishing stylistic features to draw hard

evidence, which include: Understanding style as a matter of choice; knowing a good

deal of language inventory, especially, words, grammar and sounds; distinguishing

the norms and conventions of language; having sharp insight; having developed

language skills to be sensitized to language use; accumulating cognizance of

frequent and recurrent stylistic features like formality, informality,

fronting/foregrounding, ambiguity, parallelism, backgrounding/end focus, rhetorical

figures, sound features, disruption of sentence/clause order, ungrammatical use of

language, unusual/special use of lexis, etc.; accumulating experience of text and

stylistic analyses; enjoying shared knowledge of the world around us; attending to

collocability of language for its significance to word company; committing oneself

to text and textual analysis, not to evaluation of writers.

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Book Review

Contemporary Iraqi Fiction: An Anthology. Edited and

Translated from the Arabic by Shakir Mustafa. Syracuse,

NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008.202p.ISBN-13; 978-

0-8156-0902-7.

Salih J. Altoma Indiana University

Professor Shakir Mustafa‟s anthology is a most welcome, timely and pioneering

attempt to bring Iraqi fiction into focus. To provide some perspective, two years ago

the New York Times correspondent, Robert F Worth, reviewed The Anchor Book of

Modern Arabic Fiction (2006)(edited by Denys Johnson-Davies). Mr. Worth was

surprised to note that the anthology included only a few stories for Iraq, a country,

to use his words, “which has produced some of the Arab world‟s best-known poets.”

Recalling that many Iraqis have been forced to flee the country, Mr. Worth

expressed the hope that “a storyteller will emerge who can help make some sense of

the vast, incomprehensible tragedy that is continuing there to this day.”(NYT, 26

November, 2006).

Worth‟s comment is valid to a large extent, in view of two facts. One, Iraqi fiction

in translation has been marginally represented or noted in the West. Two, Iraqi

poetry does predominate in terms of both the numerous translations that have made

it widely accessible and the attention which Iraqi poets have received and continue

to receive in Western media. Yet, one should not ignore the fact that there has been

a notable increase during the past few years in the availability of Iraqi short stories

and novels in English translation. This is evident in the growing number of novels

that have been published recently, and in the numerous short stories, whether

published in journals or in anthologies covering modern Arabic fiction as indicated

in this reviewer‟s 2004 survey “Iraq‟s Modern Arabic Literature in English

Translation:1950-2003).

Since 2004 more translations of novels* and short stories have become available in

the West. Consider, for instance, two of the latest anthologies. First, Salma Khadra

Jayyusi‟s extensive anthology of about 150 selected texts written by Arab authors

includes works by 18 Iraqi novelists and short story writers born between 1908 and

1944. Second, Johnson-Davies‟s anthology provides selections from the works of

six Iraqi writers born between 1927 and 1965. In selecting Iraqi works, both

anthologies have sought to represent both the older and newer generations of Iraqi

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writers. This diverse representation/range of ages is more obvious in Jayyusi‟s

work.


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Content

Articles

1- Extrinsic Managing: An Epitaph to Translationial Ideological Moves

Mohammad Farghal ----------------------------------------------------------------1

2- The master discourse of translation from Arabic

Said Faiq----------------------------------------------------------------------------28

3- Some Semantic, Stylistic and CulturalProblems of Translation

With Special Reference to Translating the Glorious Qur'ân

Saudi Sadiq----------------------------------------------------------------------------38

4- Translating metaphor between unrelated cultures: A cognitive-pragmatic

perspective

Zouhair A. Maalej--------------------------------------------------------------------61

5- English and Arabic conceptual metaphors of anger: Implications for

translation

Dinha Gorgis-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 83

6- Stylistics and Translation: Tracing the Style of the Holy Quran and its

implications in Islamic and Non-Islamic Translations

Hasan Ghazala------------------------------------------------------------------------ 113

Book Reviews - Contemporary Iraqi Fiction: An Anthology. Edited and Translated from the

Arabic by Shakir Mustafa

Slaih J. Altoma------------------------------------------------------------------------ 151

Documents

35917287 Sayyab Translation Journal Volume 1 2kkk00u8