Sentential issues in translation - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Sentential issues in translationSlide2

The sentential level

Different grammatical arrangements create different assumptions in the listener or reader as regards the communicative purpose of an utterance

.Slide3

For example

Go>>>> Command

No Way>>>> an expression of refusal or disbeliefSlide4

Textual Variables on The sentential level:

From

the point of view of Arabic/ English translation, there are three major non-syntactic features of the sentence:

1. Prosodic features such as intonation and stress

2. Theme and

rheme

3. foregrounding and

backgroundingSlide5

1. Prosodic features.

In spoken texts , a number of different sentences, marked for different purposes, can be created purely through intonation and stress—even though they comprise the same wordsSlide6

Stress can similarly be used in English to express different shades of meaning. English is able to stress words fairly freely in speech

Examples:

I

know that man…. The neutral or the unmarked

I

know that man

I

know

that man

I know

that

man

I know that

man

Slide7

Arabic, though it uses

stress

in the same way, does not exhibit the same freedom to shift stress within the sentence as English. Arabic can shift word order fairly freely.

أكل الرجل السمكSlide8

A lot of the features of the spoken sentential level disappear in written texts because the sentential level in written language is relatively impoverished.  

Written English, of course, has punctuation marks.

a. My cousin

who lives in Bristol

visited us last week.

b. My cousin,

who lives in Bristol

, visited us last week.Slide9

In (a) the relative clause

who lives in Bristol

identifies which out of a number of possible cousins is intended. This is known as a

“defining

or restrictive

clause”.

In the second sentence, by contrast, the relative clause

who lives in Bristol

merely provides further information about a cousin who is already assumed to be identified. This is known as a

“describing

or non restrictive relative

clause”.Slide10

Punctuation in Arabic is even less systematic than punctuation in English. Traditionally, Arabic had no punctuation whatsoever, and one still occasionally comes across modern books without punctuation. However, modern books of classical Arabic texts often have punctuation added. Slide11

Arabic sentences are often much longer than typical English ones, forcing the Arabic /English translator to find appropriate ways of adding sentences breaks in the TT.Slide12

2. Theme and

rheme

Ayatollah Khomeini was the son of a cleric.

He

was born in 1903 in the small town of

Khomein

in Isfahan province

.

The information given by 'he' in the second sentence is predictable. It refers to some one already mentioned before in the context (Given information) so its is

the theme

.Slide13

was born in 1903 in the small town of

Khomein

in Isfahan province

, by contrast, is unpredictable;

the information here is New

, so it is the

rheme

.

The above example

illustrates

a general tendency, which is of Arabic as well as English, for theme to precede

rheme

. This can be regarded as a 'natural

order'in

that it mirrors the order of things in the real world; when we are trying to work out something new, we start with what is known and proceed from there to what is not known

.Slide14

Sentence stress

The general tendency in both Arabic and English is for stress to fall on a word in the

rheme

.

This correlation between

rheme

and sentence stress can also be seen on the relatively rare occasions in English where

rheme

comes first in the sentence.Slide15

Example,

What happened to you?

1. I got a stung by a

bee

.

2. A

bee

stung me

.

Where

rheme

preceded theme in English, as in

A bee stung me

the sentence tends to carry a certain emotional charge

.Slide16

Emphatic preposing

:

It is important to distinguish between initial

rhemes

, which involves sentence stress, and

preposed

emphatic elements

.

In the early sixties,

Ayatollah Khomeini led the movement against the Shah of Iran's 'White

Revolution

'Slide17

Revolution

: carries the main sentence stress: the end of the

rheme

Sixties

: carries a secondary stress (a rising pitch). This is called phrasal stress or clausal stress in the case of a clause.Slide18

Arabic, Like English, makes use of

preposed

emphatic themes. In Arabic, however, anything which comes before the verb in a sentence which contains a verb may be a

preposed

emphatic

theme.

Thus in sentences which have the

word order

SV, the subject may be emphatic.Slide19

Theme-rheme

translation issues

In terms of Arabic-English translation the distinction between thematic and

rhematic

information is most problematic where it proves difficult or impossible to reproduce roughly the same word order in English as in

the

original ArabicSlide20

If the word order of the original Arabic can be roughly maintained in the English, this will often reproduce the original theme-

rheme

structure, because English and Arabic both have a tendency to start with the most thematic element and end with the most

rhematic

element . Slide21

This general principle is illustrated by the following:

و بنى هذا الجسر مهندسون مصريون

.

This bridge was built by Egyptian engineers

.

Here, the Arabic and English structures seem rather different; the Arabic is

active

and the English

passive

. However, the

same basic order of ideas is maintained

in both—'bridge' first and 'engineers' next. The only difference here is that Arabic has the verb right at the beginning, whereas English 'was built' comes after the

subject.

بنى