scholarly journals The English Translation of the Quranic Text: The Structural Asymmetries

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yahya Dkhissi
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Source Text ◽  
English Version ◽  
Structural Patterns ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Selectional Restrictions ◽  
Grammatical Categories ◽  
Grammatical Functions ◽  
Principles And Parameters

The structural patterns that results from the translation of the Quran are some of the issues that have been widely studied (El-imam, 2013; Al-Amri, 2015). The current study, however, illustrates the pervasive syntactic asymmetries in the syntactic output of the translated Quranic text into English. Most translators shift from the word order in Arabic to word order in English to establish a grammatical equivalence between the source text (ST) and the target text (TT) with little consideration of the syntactic typological significance of Arabic as a source language and English as a target one. This study aims to determine the mismatch of the grammatical functions and the syntactic typology of TL vis-à-vis ST. Word order, tense shift, case asymmetry, Ellipsis, passive structures, selectional restrictions and cross formations are some of the grammatical issues that illustrate the syntactic asymmetries in the English translation adopted in this paper. The findings show that different grammatical categories exhibit syntactic asymmetries that would distort the implications or exegesis of the original ST. The findings also suggest that the English version of the translation adopted in this paper needs to be structured according to Chomsky’s (1981) principles and parameters demonstrated by the Arabic structure before the translation task is carried out.

scholarly journals A Historical-Liturgical Critique of וזרקתי מים טהורים “I will sprinkle clean water” in Ezek 36.25-27 and Its Translation Options in English

2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-18
Author(s):  
Olugbemiro O. Berekiah
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Clean Water ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Technical Term ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Rhetorical Force

The key themes of sanctification and regeneration in Ezek 36.25-27 make it an important and well-known passage among theologians and exegetes. However, the translation of מים טהורים in v. 25 as “clean water” in most English versions obscures the rhetorical force of the allusion to certain liturgical practices within the religious context of the source language. This paper considers the semantic connotations of מים טהורים by trying to understand the author’s rhetorical intentions. Historical-liturgical criticism is used to examine the religious context of the source text with a view to suggesting the most accurate English translation of this technical term which would convey its closest range of meanings to a contemporary English-speaking audience.

scholarly journals Cultural Translation: Comments of Translators in the English Version of the Yakut Epic Olonkho

2019 ◽  
pp. 2241-2257
Author(s):  
Alina A. Nakhodkina
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Cultural Translation ◽  
Source Text ◽  
English Version ◽  
Heroic Epic ◽  
Specific Concept

The paper outlines questions of functions, typology and origin of the comments of translators as integral part of cultural translation. This study is based on the English translation of the Yakut heroic epic olonkho “Nurgun Botur the Swift” written by P.A. Oyunsky. The author considers the terms ‘culture-specific concept’, ‘lacuna’, ‘ethnic colour’, and ‘non-equivalent vocabulary’ to be the principal sources of translation comments. The translation comment is a method to transfer and save information, ethnic identity and emotional and expressive functions of the form. Translator not only gives his version of the source text, but also often reconstructs its specific cultural identity. The paper overviews previous publications of the Yakut epic and its translations into Russian and English. The material’s singularity and lack of a Yakut-English translation tradition make this study relevant. The case of olonkho can teach us something about the remit of cultural translation. In my research, I defined various practical methods from the English translation of olonkho, including intratextual comments, footnotes, endnotes, and graphical tools of exoticism highlighting

scholarly journals Figurative Language in Malay to English Translation: An Analysis of the 2015 UniMAP VC's Keynote Speech

2018 ◽  
Vol 150 ◽  
pp. 05028
Author(s):  
A. Sharmini ◽  
Muhammad Bazli Mahmood ◽  
Khairul Hisham Jamalludin ◽  
Ahmad Hifzurrahaman Ridzuan ◽  
Mohamad Zaki Abdul Halim ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Figurative Language ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Connotative Meaning ◽  
Translation Strategies ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Vice Chancellor ◽  
Keynote Speech

Translating figurative language involves more than just replacing the figurative language with its equivalent in the target language. Therefore, it is not surprising for the translation of figurative language to have its own set of challenges. Problems the translator faces in translating the Malay Figurative Language into English include complexities in understanding, interpreting and recreating the Figurative language that are unique in the Source Language (SL) culture; which have to be explained and described in Target Language (TL) where such practices and customs are non - existent. Secondly, the Source Text (ST) figurative language may appear in a variety of types and have a distinct denotative and connotative meaning and reference; most often, it is difficult to find an equivalent which totally matches the original meaning or concept. This particular paper analyses the translation of figurative language extracted from UniMAP's Vice Chancellor Keynote Speech in 2015. Findings reveal that the three categories of figurative language identified were namely idioms, metaphors and similes. Translation strategies used are either not translated, paraphrased or translated with a similar meaning but in different form.

scholarly journals Application of Eugene Nida’s theory of translation to the English translation of surah Ash-Shams

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-18
Author(s):  
OMAR Osman JABAK
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Source Text

The present study aimed to test the applicability of Nida’s theory of translation to an English translation of surah Ash-Shams of the Holy Qur’an. Towards that general aim, the study provided an overview of Nida’s theory of translation and the aspects whose applicability to the English translation of surah Ash-Shams would be tested. In addition, the study examined the Editor’s Preface to the English translation of the Holy Qur’an from which surah Ash-Shams was selected. A contrastive analysis was also devised and provided to help match the source text with the target text and measure the applicability of Nida’s theory of translation to both texts. The study revealed that, in general, Nida’s theory was applicable with the exception of one aspect related to word order. It is, therefore, recommended that large-scale research be conducted on the applicability of Nida’s theory to an English translation of the whole Holy Qur’an to either confirm the findings of this study or challenge them.

scholarly journals Documentary Subtitle Chinese-English Translation from the Perspective of Functional Equivalence: A Study on the Documentary China’s Fight against Covid-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 36-48
Author(s):  
Yeheng Yang ◽  
Yi Li
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Practical Implication ◽  
Sentence Length ◽  
Functional Equivalence ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Translation Strategies ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Equivalence Theory ◽  
Present Particle ◽  
Shed Light

This paper adopts Nida's Functional Equivalence theory and studies the Chinese-English subtitle translation of the documentary China’s Fight against Covid-19, which was filmed and broadcast throughout China amid the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in the year 2020, and it received positive responses in the country. The research objective is to find out the translation strategies, methods and skills involved in achieving the “most natural” and the “most closest” English expressions to the Chinese source text. In the study, investigations on the equivalence of Lexical level, Syntactical level, Contextual level and Textual level in the subtitle are conducted respectively, and the aforementioned translation aspects are discussed under the guidance of Nida’s functional equivalence. The key findings are that the translated texts adopt literal and liberal translation to deal with the Culture-loaded words and four-character idioms on a lexical level. While sentence restructuring, conversion of voice, and conjunction and present particle are used on the syntactic level to make source language and translated subtitle more coherent and authentic. On the contextual and textual level, the target text distinguishes the formal and informal languages through the sentence length and the complexity of the structure. This study offers a practical implication for translating Chinese pandemic discourses into English, and it can also shed light on the study of Chinese narratives during the COVID outbreak and the publicity of the Chinese countermeasures.  

scholarly journals Style Translation in an English Version of Tunisian Mustapha Tlili’s novel The Lion Mountain: A Cognitive Basis to Assessment

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Khalid Majhad ◽  
Chakib Bnini ◽  
Mohammed Kandoussi
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Attitudes And Beliefs ◽  
Source Text ◽  
English Version ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Stage Analysis

<em>Style is every literary author’s identity marker. No translation can ever claim success if it does not reflect the marked stylistic features of the original. This paper assesses the English translation of Tunisian Mustapha Tlili’s novel Lion Mountain in terms of its reproduction of the spirit of the source text, that is the totality of effects generated by the author’s stylistic manners. A cognitive basis to assessment means that the author’s style is a direct expression of his state of mind, his attitudes and beliefs. This model, inspired by the work of Chinese translator and theorist Jin Di (2003),  uses a hermeneutic four-stage analysis of literary texts (i.e. penetration, acquisition, transition and presentation), that makes it possible to deal in a rather systematic manner with every aspect of the literary text, namely its spirit, substance, overtone, flavor and imagery. The assessment will demonstrate how translating successes or failures result directly from successes or failures in applying one or more of these hermeneutics-inspired four stages. </em>

scholarly journals A Linguistic Analysis of Cultural Content in French-English Translation of a Yoghurt Commercial

2019 ◽  
pp. 75-83
Author(s):  
Arkadiusz Janczyło
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Extra Dimensions ◽  
Cultural Awareness ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Linguistic Competence ◽  
English Speaker ◽  
Source Text ◽  
English Version ◽  
Tv Commercial

Advertising translation is a multifaceted practice which poses specific challenges for translators that extend beyond sheer linguistic competence of the professionals involved in the process. Cross-cultural awareness and sensitivity are called for when dealing with translating commercial matter internationally and interculturally. This paper presents a comparative analysis of a TV commercial of natural yoghurt and its representation in two languages. The advert was originally created in French, subsequently translated and dubbed in English by a French-accent English speaker. The English version deviates slightly linguistically and culturally from its French counterpart. The notions of explicitation, equivalence, adaptation and localisation applied in this paper provide grounds for analysis of a range of translation decisions and strategies which allow to achieve similar advertising pragmatic effects as well as add extra dimensions that are absent in the source text.

scholarly journals „Ogumienie mózgu” w „słabym świetle postępu”

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2 (52)) ◽  
pp. 35-61
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Franczak
Keyword(s):  
Full Range ◽  
Source Text ◽  
English Version ◽  
Italian Version ◽  
Italian Translation ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Original Language ◽  
Word Translation ◽  
Translation Errors ◽  
Lexical Errors

The “Brain’s Tyre” in a “Faint Light of Progress”: The Pitfalls of Syntagmatic and Indirect Translation on the Example of the Italian Version of Bieguni (Flights) by Olga Tokarczuk This paper is devoted to the Italian translation of Bieguni by Olga Tokarczuk, entitled I Vagabondi. As the author argues, it is a kind of patchwork translation, partly translated from the original language, partly from the novel’s English version (Flights). The Italian translation of both source texts, Polish and English, contains a full range of typical syntagmatic translation errors, consisting in mechanically reproducing the structures of the source language (word-for-word translation) without delving into the meaning of the translated text. The author analyses at first, on selected examples, translation errors from the Polish source text, distinguishing between lexical errors and dictionary equivalents, including those impeding the fluidity of the target text, false friends, calques, misinterpretation errors as well as omissions and additions. He focuses next on analogous errors produced in the indirect translation from English, sorting separately the lexical and interpretative errors resulting already in the English intermediate text and reproduced in the Italian translation.

The Four Branches of the Mabinogi, ed. and trans. by Matthieu Boyd, with the modernization assistance of Stacie Lents. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2017, 119 pp., 5 b/w ill, 1 map.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 401-401
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
English Translation ◽  
English Version ◽  
Personal Names ◽  
University Teachers ◽  
Link Type ◽  
Welsh Literature

Welsh medievalists have long recognized the canonical quality of The Four Branches of the Mabinogi (late eleventh or early twelfth century), resulting in a long series of editions and translations. William Owen Pughe was the first to offer a modern English translation in 1795. The <?page nr="402"?>recent translation by Will Parker (2005) is available now online at: <ext-link ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://www.mabinogi.net/translations.htm">http://www.mabinogi.net/translations.htm</ext-link>, and I suspect that many university teachers happily rely on this one because of its easy accessibility and clarity of the English version. Now, Matthieu Boyd, who teaches at Fairleigh Dickinson University (Florham Campus, Madison, MD), offers a new rendering, which is specifically targeting undergraduate students. This explains his strategy to modernize the medieval Welsh as much as possible, and to turn this marvelous text into an enjoyable read even for contemporary students, without moving too far away from the original. This modernization was carried out with the assistance of his colleague, the playwright Stacie Lents. This entails, for instance, that even some of the medieval names are adapted. Many times the conservative reader might feel uncomfortable when words and phrases such as “to shit,” “to egg on,” “to nip at the heels,” or “Manawydan & Co” (60–61) appear. The adaptation of personal names is not carried out systematically, but the overall impression of this translation is certainly positive, making the study of this masterpiece of medieval Welsh literature to a real pleasure.

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