A Socio-Pragmatic Analysis of Arabic Formulaic Expressions in Literary Texts with Reference to the Difficulties in Translating them into English
Wafaa Dahham Mohammed
University of Tikrit/ College of Arts / Translation Dept
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25130/Lang.8.8.10
Keywords: Formulaic expressions, socio-pragmatics, translation
Abstract
Formulaic expressions are strings of words commonly co-occur in natural discourse, they are typically characterized by their high expressivity in holding out intents and their highlighted effects in verbalizing targets. Most formulaic expressions in Arabic have variance interpretations that deliberately assume the intents of the text or the context in which they are accompanied, this is because, they are utilized in combinations with other texts which put them into practice. This, however, constitutes a problem pertaining to their interpretations as the same language formula can be relatedly vitalized and verbalized in terms of the interchangeable accompanied texts which are stemmed in a context. This problem also arguably raises a debatable issue: what would happen in the interpretation when two opposite texts; namely formulaic text and non–formulaic text are met together successively in one textual framework/ setting? Another problem majorly encounters Arabic translators who are non–native to the English language as formulaic expressions are conventionalized sequences of words that belong to a specific language community; whereof achieving a formulaic knowledge via translation would be unattainable for those who belong to another discourse community. Therefore, this study is an attempt to: 1) identify the intent of the formulaic structure in relation to the accompanied text and the role of the formulaic structure in constructing both of the texts' significations. 2) outlining the role of pragma-societal factors in shaping the designation of the texts under the analysis .3) Explicating the challenges faced by Arabic translators in their renditions of formulaic expressions into English; how they deal with these socio-cultural words; and to what extent, they succeed in achieving socio-pragmatic equivalency in replicating these formulaic statuses into English. 4) proposing appropriate pragma-translational neutral procedures for neutralizing these formulas preserving their formulaic statuses into English. Procedurally (6) texts from Arabic drama (قابل للقتل) are chosen to be the data of the study. Participants of this study are (4) Arabic translators who are non–natives to English live in the U.S.A. The study sums up that most of the Arabic formulaic expressions realized inaccurate renditions by socio-pragmatic breakdown, deviation, formulaic loss, nonsenses in English due to socio-pragmatic and cultural incompetency of the translators.
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