1
IN SEARCH OF TRANSLATIONAL NORMS
THE CASE OF SHIFTS IN LEXICAL REPETITION IN ARABICENGLISH TRANSLATIONS1
… as hard as one might try, it is impossible to reproduce networks of lexical cohesion in a
target text which are identical to those of the source text.
(Baker, 1992:206; italics added)
1. Introduction
The objective of this chapter is twofold: (a) to try to arrive at some
preliminary generalizations concerning the norms which govern the
type and direction of translation shifts in the area of lexical repetition;
and (b) to illustrate the above attempt by analyzing and discussing an
English translation of an Arabic literary text. I shall therefore be
specifically addressing the issue of how lexical chains in Arabic texts
are rendered in English; the basic argument postulated being that every
translation is bound to result in shifts both in the type and size of
lexical repetition.
The high level of tolerance of lexical repetition in the Arabic culture is
reflected in the texture of its texts by the important rhetorical and
textual roles assigned to this phenomenon. By the same token, lexical
repetition seems to be almost always functional in the Arabic literary
polysystem. Conversely, English rhetoric discourages lexical
repetition and tolerates it only when motivated and used as a figure of
speech (cf. Johnstone, 1991: 4 and Hatim, 1997: 32). This textualcultural discrepancy between Arabic and English is expected to have a
1
This paper was first published in babel, volume 52, number 1, 2006, pp. 39 – 65.
2
bearing on both the translation processes and their products whenever
the two languages are involved.
Various studies of texts translated from different source languages
have tentatively revealed that avoiding lexical repetition seems to be a
common translational norm (see, Ben-Ari 1998:2). Besides being
worthwhile in themselves, translation studies like these can contribute
to translation theory by providing a testing-ground which may lead to
the validation, refutation, or –as is mostly the case-, to the
modification of these theories. It would, therefore, be illuminating to
find out if this postulated repetition-avoidance policy, just mentioned
above, applies to Arabic-English translations and, if so, how it is
actually implemented by means of different translation shifts. The
present study would also attempt to arrive at viable explanations of the
norms which determine these shifts
1.1. The nature and role of translational norms
Norms, in general, represent conventional, social standards –or
models- of acceptability of behavior which are shared by the members
of a certain culture. Translational norms, in particular, embody the
general values and expectations of a given community at a given time
regarding the correctness and appropriateness of both the process and
the product of translation (cf. Toury, 1980: 51). Thus, it becomes
evident that it is not only the two language systems involved in
translation that are exclusively, or even- mainly, responsible for
forming and formulating translated texts. Rather, it is the dominant
conventional norms, especially those of the target pole, which
intersubjectively play a pivotal role in moulding a model for regulating
translation phenomena. This can help explain the high level of
regularity of translational phenomena which are observed, described,
and explained in the translated texts in a given TL and culture.
The credit goes to Gideon Toury and Theo Hermans for bringing the
‘concept’ of norms to the forefront in translation studies today. A
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translated text is no longer considered as a product of ‘transcoding
linguistic signs’ but rather as ‘retextualizing’ the SL-text (see Shäffner
1999: 3), so as to make it ‘acceptable’ within the norms framework of
the TT-culture. The teleological nature of translation in the TL and its
culture is hence emphasized. Besides, every translation can be seen as
involving a polar opposition of two sets of norms: those of the source
text and culture and those of the goal. Consequently, translations are
bound to exhibit traces of both poles. Translation scholars therefore
differentiate between two types of basic norms: ‘adequacy’ norms,
those of the source, and ‘acceptability’ norms, those of the target.
Another distinction made is that between ‘preliminary’ norms and
‘operational’ ones. The former refer to the translation ‘policy’ in a
given community whereas the latter govern the translator’s decisionmaking process which operates during translating. The regularity of
prevalence of different translational norms has also been found to vary
in translated texts. Consequently, some translation scholars, like Toury
(1995:67), also distinguish between: ‘basic’ or ‘primary’ norms, viz.
those which are so common as to be almost mandatory for a certain
translation phenomenon; ‘secondary’ norms which are favorable and
common but not mandatory; and ‘tolerated’ or ‘permitted’ which are
not common but operative. More types of norms have been suggested
by other scholars, but what all taxonomies share is that the study of
norms, notwithstanding nomenclature, has almost become an
indispensable prerequisite for the study of translated texts.
Finally, it would also be necessary perhaps to point out that conflicting
and opposing sets of norms may be observed to operate
simultaneously, and side by side, sometimes. Complete coherence in
the application of translational norms is therefore not to be taken for
granted. In fact, instances of deliberate departures from expected
norms can often be detected in translated texts. Such departures are,
however, usually motivated by stylistic considerations and need to be
observed and examined both by translators and translation scholars (cf.
Hatim and Mason, 1997: 54). It is essential also to keep in mind that
4
any departure from the norms, be those of the ST or the TT or others,
is bound to result in translation ‘shifts’; as discussed below.
1.2. Translation ‘Shifts’ or ‘Transpositions’
In a pioneering article entitled “Translation Shifts” published in 1965,
J.C. Catford presents us with one of the earliest systematic discussions
and taxonomies of the linguistic phenomena of shifts in translated
texts. In his article, Catford defines shifts as “departures from formal
correspondence in the process of going from the SL (source language)
to TL (target language)” (Catford 1965, in Venuti ed., 2000: 141). He
then classifies shifts into two main types: (a) level shifts and (b)
category shifts. To the former belong all the shifts which occur in
translation between the two linguistic levels of grammar and lexis,
such as when one language resorts to lexicalize what is
grammaticalized in another; as is done sometimes in Arabic when
rendering the English aspectual components of the present progressive
or perfect verb structures. Four sub-types of category shifts are also
listed; the most common of which is perhaps ‘class shifts’. These
occur when translation equivalents in two languages belong to two
different grammatical classes; such as, for example, when the
‘adjective’ in the English phrase ‘medical student’ is rendered in
Arabic by a ‘noun’.
Vinay and Darbelnet’s book, Sylistique comparee du francais et de
l’anglais, represents yet another, even earlier, attempt than Catford’s
to describe and classify shifts in translation. The book was first
published in French in 1958, but was not translated into English until
1995 when it appeared under the title of Comparative Stylistics of
French and English: A methodology for translation. In their book,
Vinay and Darbelnet use the term ‘transposition’ instead of ‘shift’ and
define it as a translation procedure which “involves replacing one
word class with another without changing the meaning of the
message” (p.36). It thus becomes obvious from this definition that
Vinay and Darbelnet’s concept of ‘transposition’ is not as
5
comprehensive as that of Catford’s ‘shift’, since it is limited to only
one of the latter’s subsystems; viz., that of ‘class shifts’ just mentioned
above.
The broader definition of ‘shift’ above, as well as its limited one,
restricts its scope to ‘formal’ changes due to differences in the
linguistic systems of the two languages involved in the translation
process. Yet, it would be safe to maintain that a translated text does
not only, not even –mainly, exhibit micro-linguistic changes. The
translation process also entails various macro-linguistic shifts; those in
lexical repetition being one example thereof. These latter type of
‘shifts’ are not strictly due to differences between the SL and TL
‘systems’ as such, but rather to the different textual and discoursal
norms of the two cultures which these languages belong to. As a
result, the study of translation shifts has taken on a broader scope
lately so as to incorporate linguistic as well as textual/cultural changes
in translated texts.
Besides, shifts –even in their microlinguistic sense- are no longer to be
seen as departures from the SL alone. Rather, translated texts are
assumed to exhibit deviations, viz. non-correspondence, when
compared both to the SL as well as to the TL. The teleological nature
of a translated text can best be appreciated by the fact that the very
existence of such a text is actually realized, first and foremost, in the
target language and culture in which it is now written and by whose
readers it is read (cf. Toury, 1995: 24). Even so, however, neither the
linguistic nor the textual correspondence can be full between the
translated text and the TL language and culture, since each and every
translated text seems to carry along with it some ‘finger-prints’ from
its ST. This binary nature of translated texts is aptly portrayed by
Toury when stating that such texts which are produced in a certain
target language both “occupy a certain position, or fill in a certain slot,
in the culture that uses that language” as well as “constituting a
representation in that language/culture of another, preexisting text in
some other language, belonging to some other culture” (in Schäffner
ed.,1999: 20). Translated texts have consequently come to be widely
6
considered as representatives of a special text-type, among many
others, within the TL polysystem.
Deviations from the TT and those from the ST are still unable, on their
own, to cater for and explain all the linguistic and textual shifts in
translated texts. Descriptive Translation Studies has revealed that
many translated texts, regardless of their STs and TTs, clearly share
some common linguistic and textual features among them (see BlumKulka 1986, for example). Consequently, it would be safe to conclude
from such recurrent observations that such features shared by
‘unrelated’ translated texts are attributable to the translation process
itself, viz. that they reflect some sort of translation ‘universals’. One
such ‘universal’ candidate, for example, is the high level of
explicitness observed in translated texts as a result of the translators’
common strategy of explicating information stated implicitly in the
source text; the phenomenon which has led to postulating the so-called
‘Translation Explicitation Hypothesis’ (see Baker, p.212; Blum-Kulka,
p. 300; and Toury 1980: 60; among others). It would thus be tenable,
based on the above discussion, to maintain that shifts in translated
texts are of three major types: (a) SL-, or adequacy-induced, (b) TL- or
acceptability-induced, and (c) translation process-induced.
Before concluding this section on the various types of translation
shifts, it also seems worthwhile to distinguish between ‘obligatory’
and ‘optional’ shifts. The first are due to some differences between the
linguistic systems of the SL and the TL, as when the translator has no
alternative but to shift from one word-class to another (as was
discussed under ‘class shifts’ above). Such shifts, because of their
regularity, are also considered part and parcel of the study of norms in
translation studies although they are rule-governed. Optional shifts, on
the other hand, are still considered more significant since they indicate
and better reflect the choices translators actually make during the
translation process. Consequently, comparative translation studies, like
the present paper, usually focus on non-obligatory shifts.
7
2. Research corpus and methodology
The research corpus consists of an original Arabic text and its English
translation. The Arabic text, by a Jordanian writer, is a short story of
about five pages which has been translated into English by a reputed
American literary translator. 2 A literary text has been chosen for
analysis since lexical repetition in such texts is usually highly
motivated and has more functional value than in other text-types (see
Lotfipour 1997: 190).
For the sake of analysis, the source text (ST) was thoroughly examined
for all chains of lexical repetition. A lexical repetition chain
(henceforth, LRC) is made up of at least two occurrences of the same 3
word repeated in a given text, regardless of whether the repetitions
occur within the boundary of one sentence or in separate sentences
(see, al-Khafaji 2004). Only open-system ‘lexical’, and not
‘functional’, words can make up such chains. Consequently, every
single lexical word in the analyzed text had to be manually checked
against all other such words in the text so as to detect all instances of
lexical chains. Once this laborious and time-consuming task was over
and all LRCs were sorted out and recorded, a comprehensive reference
table was then worked out. The table, a sample of which is reproduced
below, lists all the constituents of each chain starting with the initial
item, in the order they actually occur in the ST text. The full version of
the following table comprises 97 LRCs as the total number of chains
found in the analyzed Arabic text. The longest 4 LRCs consist of 11
The Arabic short story is entitled ،‫ مائدة‬،‫ ثالثة مائدتان‬by Badr Abdul Haqq. It was first published in
an anthology of Jordanian short stories by the Ministry of Culture in Jordan in 1992. The English
translation, by Nancy Roberts, appeared in A Selection of Jordanian Short Stories, published in
Irbid, Jordan, in 1996, pp. 1 – 9.
3
Members in a lexical chain are considered to belong to the ’same’ word when they are repeated
(a) with no formal change at all; or (b) with only slight ’morphological’ changes like those of the
past-present tenses in verbs or the singular-plural number in nouns; or (c) with ’grammatical’
changes that only affect the word-class, like verb-noun-adjective-etc (see al-Khafaji 2005 for more
details).
2
‫‪8‬‬
‫‪lexical words each while the number of lexical constituents in the‬‬
‫‪other LRCs of the text ranges between 2 to 10 words. LRC in the‬‬
‫‪sample Table below, for example, comprises four constituents only.‬‬
‫‪The following text portion is reproduced in order to show the textual‬‬
‫‪environment in which these four constituents of this particular LRC‬‬
‫‪actually appear in the ST (underlining is mine):‬‬
‫ نعم‪ ،‬حدث شئ رهيب‪ :‬لم تذهب سلوى بعيدا‪ ،‬بل انتقلت الى مائدة مالصقة للمائدة التي كنا‬‫نجلس اليها‪،‬‬
‫وضعت حقيبتها على سطح المائدة‪ ،‬وجلست على المقعد‪ ،‬ومدت يديها الى يدين‪ ،‬لشخص ما‪،‬‬
‫كان يجلس‬
‫وحيدا‪ ،‬منذ البداية‪ ،‬وشرعا في الحديث على الفور‪ ،‬حتى لكأنهما يستأنفان الحديث الذي كان‬
‫يجري بيني‬
‫وبينها‪ ،‬كانت سلوى تقول ذات الكلمات التي اعتادت ان تقولها لي‪ ،‬حتى بريق عينيها‪ ،‬كان‬
‫صوبة نحوي منذ‬
‫ذات البريق‪ ،‬وذات النظرات الحارة الصادقة التي اعرفها‪ ،‬والتي كانت م ّ‬
‫لحظات‪ ،‬وبدا األمر‪ ،‬كما لو انها انتقلت من مائدة اجلس اليها‪ ،‬الى مائدة اخرى‪ ،‬اجلس اليها‬
‫انا ايضا‪ ،‬او شخص آخر‪ ،‬خرج من داخلي للتو‬
‫‪.....................‬‬‫ ياسيدي ومعلمي‪ ،‬ما عالقة مالمح الشخص اآلخر بالمسألة ‪. .‬‬‫‪.....................‬‬‫ نعم‪ ،‬نعم‪ ،‬كانت مالمحه تشبه مالمحي‪ ،‬لوال فارق العمر‪ ،‬لقلت انها كانت تشبه مالمحك‬‫انت ايضا‪ ،‬كان صوته‪ ،‬وكانت ثيابه‪ ،‬وحركات يديه والقلق المرسوم على خطوط وجهه‪،‬‬
‫تشيه صوتي وثيابي‪ ،‬وحركات يدي وقلقي‪ .‬لكنه كان شخصا آخر ‪. .‬‬
‫‪Once the comprehensive table is full and ready, cross-textual‬‬
‫‪alignment is embarked on by thoroughly examining the TT text for the‬‬
‫‪translation counterpart of each and every LRC in the original source‬‬
‫‪text. The objective here is to establish translation relationships‬‬
‫‪between TT-ST text portions which bear on the translation‬‬
9
phenomenon at hand. It might be necessary to point out that the
question of equivalence and tertium comparitionis, often raised in
linguistic comparisons between the LRCs of the ST and their
corresponding translation counterparts in the TT, is considered here to
have been taken for granted and already established by the very fact
that the two stand as translation counterparts to each other; i.e. that
translation correspondence presupposes equivalence (see Toury
1980:115). When the translational counterparts between the source and
target texts LRCs have been established, the TT ‘solutions’, viz. TT
counterparts, are then mapped on their corresponding ST ‘problems’,
viz. origins, so as the translation relationships are carefully examined,
described, and classified. In the present paper, what we are specifically
looking for in this translation comparison are mainly translation shifts,
as represented by departures away from the ST. In other words, our
interest lies in finding out relevant instances of textual reformulation
conducted by the translator which make the translation deviate from
the norms of an ‘adequate’ translation and adopt the standards of an
‘acceptable’ translation.
Table 1. The first ten LRCs of the ST
Serial No.
Initial Item
Other components in the Lexical Chain
‫؛ غمامة‬
1
‫الغمامة‬
2.
‫؛ حزن‬
‫حزين؛ الحزن؛حزينا؛للحزن؛حزنا؛حزينا؛الحزن؛حزينا‬
3.
‫؛ سوداء‬
‫السوداء؛ السوداء‬
4.
‫؛ أدري‬
‫أدري؛ أدري‬
5.
‫؛ أدركت‬
‫أدركت‬
6.
‫؛ وجودها‬
‫موجود ؛ تجد‬
7.
‫؛ صورة‬
‫صورة؛ تصور؛ صور‬
10
8.
‫؛ الذاكرة‬
‫أذكره؛ تتذكر؛ التذكر؛ ذكرياتنا‬
9.
‫؛ تدور‬
‫أدارت‬
‫؛ الشخص‬
‫شخص؛ الشخص؛ شخصا‬
10.
Section 3 of the paper presents categorized samples of translation
pairings which illustrate various translation relationships, as far as
lexical repetition is concerned. Each corresponding TT-ST pair of text
fragments is also followed by a brief description of the translation
shifts implemented by the translator. At the end, an attempt is made
towards the interpretation of these shifts in light of the different norms
which are believed to have triggered them. Thus a paradigm of shifts
together with their possible causes is set up. More general conclusions
are later drawn from this paradigm. It is important to keep in mind that
throughout the stages of TT-ST mapping as well as the description and
classification of shifts, it is the non-obligatory shifts which have been
focused upon; since it is this type of shifts which is postulated to be
the true representative of norms.
Two other things may be noteworthy before concluding this section:
(1) Although distributional statistical considerations are usually
essential for the study of norms in general, and although frequency
figures have been worked out and reported in the study for the various
types of shifts in lexical repetition detected in the data, no use of
statistical formulas is deemed to be truly informative here since the
study corpus is rather small in size. (2) No normative evaluation has
been attempted throughout the discussion of different translation
relationships either since the present study is not concerned with
translation assessment; rather, it is an empirical descriptive study.
11
3. Results of data analysis
The process of mapping TT text portions on their corresponding ST
fragments which contain LRCs has revealed the following types of
shifts as having been implemented by the translator during the
translation process. These shifts are presented below in accordance
with their frequency of occurrence as found in the analyzed corpus. A
brief description and some representative examples are given for each.
The cited examples are extracted from the corpus and reproduced
below with the minimum accompanying co-text required. The relative
frequency of each shift in the analyzed data as a whole is also
reported.
3.1. Synonymy Shifts
As the rubric indicates, this type of shift entails changing a TT
synonym, which has already been used in rendering an ST repetition,
to another. It has been found from the results of data analysis that this
is the commonest sort of shift: constituting 36 instances out of a total
of 98 shifts, viz. 37%. The shift from one synonym to another in the
rendering of the members of a ST lexical chain can be understood as
part of the translator’s search for cutting down the level of lexical
repetition in the TT by resorting to an alternative means of lexical
reiteration, other than repetition. It is perhaps worth noting here that
lexical reiteration in text can be realized in a variety of means; the
most important thereof are lexical repetition, synonymy or nearsynonymy, a superordinate, or a general word (see Halliday and
Hasan: 278). Thus, in the following ST-TT pair of text portions
extracted from the corpus:
(1) a.
... ‫ أو شخص آخر خرج‬... ‫وكذلك أخرج أنا‬
12
b.
I’m exiting too … or to another person
who has just now emerged from …
one can see that the translator has chosen to translate the second
constituent in the above Arabic lexical chain (henceforth; ALC)
fragment, i.e. ‫خرج‬, by the lexical synonym ‘emerged’ rather than by a
form of its other synonym ‘exit’, which has already been used. It is
also worth pointing out that this is not an obligatory shift since the
synonymous English verbs are interchangeable in this context and no
obligatory rules of the TL seem to have motivated the shift.
As already mentioned above, this kind of shift has been abundantly
executed in the study corpus. Sometimes, the translator has been found
to shift more than four instances of lexical repetitions to alternative
synonyms throughout the translation of a single ALC. The following
example is illustrative of one such multiple shifting:
(2) a.
... ‫ أنت حزين والحزن ال بد أن يكون له سبب‬... ‫غمامة حزن سوداء تطبق على صدري‬
‫ ال‬... ً‫ منذ أجيال وأنا أعيش حزنا ً متصال‬... ‫ما الذي حدث ليجعلني حزينا ً الى هذا الحد؟‬
.‫ لو كنت أعرف لما كنت حزينا ً الى هذا الحد‬،‫ أنا ال أعرف‬.‫تسألني لماذا‬
b.
…
…there’s been a black cloud of sorrow weighing heavily on
my chest
You’re sad. And sadness has to have some sort of cause … What
happened to make me feel such anguish? … For generations now
I’ve been experiencing a grief that seems never to come to an end…
Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. If I did, I wouldn’t be in such a distress.
13
The lexical repetition chain which consists of the total recurrence of
the Arabic noun ‫‘ حزن‬sadness’ and the partial recurrence of its derived
adjective ‫‘ حزين‬sad’ has been rendered in English by five formally
different, viz. morphologically unrelated, lexical items which are
synonyms or near-synonyms to the Arabic ST words. Notice also that
while the Arabic ST above exhibits lexical variation in its lexical
chain, by using the noun form and its morphologically-related
adjective form of the same lexical root, the English TT resorts to a
more drastic variety by using five different synonymous words. One
can conclude from examining the translation product in 2b above that
the translator must have sensed and appreciated the important textual
function in the ALC of the word ‫‘ حزن‬sadness’ and its derivatives.
The recurrent use of this lexical item depicts and reflects the dominant
climate of depression and dejection prevailing in the short story; which
the above extract comes from. As a result, the translator must have felt
bound to preserve this literary atmosphere in the translation. She must
have, nevertheless, also equally been under the pressure against
rendering such an excessive use of lexical repetition at such a close
distance in the TT. The result has consequently been a compromise
between the two opposing poles of retention or deletion; this is
achieved by the use of multiple synonymy, as shown above.
3.2. Deletion Shifts
The second most common shift detected in the translation of ALCs has
been found to be the deletion in the TT of an ALC-constituent found in
the ST. A total of 19 instances of this sort of translation shifts were
found in the TT. In the translation of the following ALC portion, for
example:
(3) a.
.‫الذي حدث؟ نعم سأروي ما حدث‬
14
the translator has opted to delete the second occurrence of the verb
‫‘ حدث‬happened; took place’ and thus rendered the above ST text
portion as:
b.
What happened you ask? Alright, I’ll tell you.
The translator could have of course retained the lexical repetition in
the second ST sentence above, and produced instead: What happened
you ask? Alright, I’ll tell you what happened. But she opted otherwise
and deleted the repetition in the translation.4
In two other ALCs, the translator has performed this translation
strategy three times in each. The following is the relevant text-portion
extracted from one on these ALCs:
(4) a.
... ‫ بل انتقلت الى مائدة مالصقة للمائدة التي كنا نجلس اليها‬،ً‫لم تذهب سلوى بعيدا‬
.‫ انها على األرجح مائدة واحدة‬،‫ ال يتسع اال لمائدتين أو مائدة واحدة‬... ‫انه مقهى صغير‬
The ALC portion quoted above contains 5 repetitions of the Arabic
lexical item ‫‘ مائدة‬table’, out of 11 such repetitions in the whole lexical
chain used in the full ST text. In the TT translation equivalent of the
above ALC, however, the translator has opted to delete 3 of the five
lexical repetitions while leaving the others intact. Consequently, the
translation of 4a appears as follows in the English TT:
4
As a textual phenomenon, cohesive linkage by ellipsis in text has been aptly discussed and
demonstrated by Halliday and Hasan (1976, 1992: 143).
15
(4) b. Salwa didn’t go far away. All she did was move over to the table
right next to ours … It’s a small coffeeshop … there’s only room
for two tables…or just one. Yes... it probably won’t accommodate
more than just one.
It may be worth pointing out again that the deletion of the 3 lexical
repetitions of ‘table’ is not dictated by the grammatical rules of
English, i.e. it is not obligatory. It remains, however, to try to detect
what factors, other than grammar, could have motivated the translator
to opt for the deletion shifts above.
In an attempt to shed some light on this type of shift, viz. deletion of
repetition, it is probably necessary to point out that in all of the
instances cited above the deleted lexical items remain easily
retrievable. In other words, what the translator has actually done does
not obliterate all traces of the ST’s deleted words but, rather, to make
implicit in the TT some explicit instances of lexical repetition of the
ST. Consequently, in her attempt to minimize the level of recurrent
repetition in the TT, the translator has used another alternative
linguistic means available to her to achieve this. Shifts discussed in
both Section 3.1 and in this section can be, therefore, considered as
two different, yet complementary, means towards attaining the same
goal; viz. that of reducing lexical repetition in the TT.
3.3. Paraphrasal Shifts
This translation shift consists of opting for rendering one or more ST
lexical repetitions by a paraphrase translation counterpart in the TT. A
total of 13 such instances were detected in the analyzed data. Two STTT text-portions are reproduced below to illustrate this.
16
(5) a.
‫ لقد كنا أنا وسلوى نجلس في المقهى الصغير الذي اعتدنا الجلوس فيه‬... ً ‫حسنا‬
‫ لشخص ما كان يجلس‬،‫ وجلست على المقعد ومدت يديها الى يدين‬... ‫منذ سنوات‬
.‫وحيدا‬
b. You see .. Salwa and I were sitting in the little coffeeshop
which for years had been a favorable haunt of ours … and
took a seat. Then she reached out and placed her hands in
those of someone who, … had been sitting there alone.
The above ALC-portion contains four instances of lexical repetition of
the verb ‫‘ يجلس‬sit down’ and its derivatives. The translator, however,
has only translated two of these occurrences, viz. the first and the last
above, by a corresponding form of the verb ‘sit’. For the second and
third occurrences in the ALC, the translator’s decision was not to
repeat the lexical item ‘sit’ but rather to use a synonymous paraphrase
for each instead. In order to do so in the second occurrence, ‫الجلوس‬,
she resorted to paraphrasing the whole adjectival clause in which the
lexical item occurs. This is an example where shifting lexical
repetition can eventually involve larger syntactic units in text. As for
the third instance of lexical repetition in the ALC above, the verb ‫جلست‬
was paraphrased by the phrase ‘took a seat’, instead of the use of the
equally possible alternative, ‘sat’.
Two other instances of such shift can be seen in the translation of the
following ALC-portion:
(6)
a.
ً ‫ لشخص ما كان يجلس وحيدا‬... ‫ لكني أحذرك منذ البداية‬... ‫سأبدأ بمحاولة التذكر‬
.‫منذ البداية‬
17
b.
I’d start trying to remember … However, I warn you ahead of
time … of someone who, from the time we’d come in, had been
sitting alone.
In the TT text-portion, the translator could have preserved the lexical
repetition of the second and third occurrences of the Arabic verb ‫يبدأ‬
“start’ by opting for ‘from the start’ for both. She has chosen instead to
render each of them by a translation counterpart which involves no
lexical repetition of the verb ‘start’.
Before concluding discussion of this type of shift, one last point seems
in order here. The similarity between translation shifts by using
synonymous paraphrases, discussed in this section, and those of
shifting by the use of single synonyms, discussed earlier in Section 3.1,
should not pass unnoticed. Both types of shifts make use of synonymy
as a translation strategy for not repeating an item in a lexical chain.
From a statistical perspective, these two similar types together
constitute 49 shifts, out of a total of 98 found in the analyzed ST text.
Shifting by synonymy thus makes up 50% of all renderings of ST
repetitions in the TT. This is undoubtedly a markedly high percentage
that is worthy of special attention later in the study.
3.4. Partial Lexical Repetition (Variation)
Many cases have been detected in the TT corpus where the translator
has chosen to retain and repeat some or all instances of the ST lexical
chains. This must be due to the translator’s appreciation for the
significant rhetorical role this lexical repetition plays in the text.
Consequently, she decides to acknowledge lexical repetition in such
instances and announce it in the TT. Even in these cases, however, a
marked tendency has been observed to introduce some minor changes
in the form of the various occurrences in a given lexical repetition
18
chain. Such formal changes, subsumed here under the rubric of
‘partial repetition’ or ‘variation’, would include adding to a word in a
lexical chain, or deleting from it, one or more inflectional or
derivational morphemes like changing its tense or number or part of
speech, for example. Thus, while the lexical repetitions of a given LC
are full repetitions of each other in the ST, that LC, or parts of it, is
retained in the TT by formal variants like the ones mentioned above.
Some examples from the corpus are cited below. They are followed by
some relevant translation notes.
(7) a.
... ‫أحتاج أن أرى على وجهه انني كنت أرى في وجهه مالمح خاصة وغامضة‬
.‫ حادة واضحة‬،‫ذلك الصدق الحارق كانت مالمح وجهها تشبه مالمح وجهك انت‬
b.
I’d detected certain extraordinary, mysterious features in his face
… I need to look into his face and see that burning honesty. Her
facial features -- like yours-- were vibrant and intense.
In the example above, the repetition of the lexical word ‫‘ وجه‬face’ in
7a is highly functional in the ST text since it depicts psychological
disturbances resulting from the exaggerated and distorted significance
that the protagonist in the analyzed short story attaches to the facial
expressions of people around him. The translator must have realized
this, consciously or subconsciously, and hence comes her decision to
retain and announce the repetition so as to be able to convey its textual
function and rhetorical impact to the TT readership. Having said that,
the translation ‘universal’ of aversion to excessive lexical repetition in
general, as discussed in the Introduction, can still be seen to operate
even in cases like these. Consequently, and instead of repeating
verbatim the four instances of ‘face’ in the TT, the translator has
converted the word-class of one of them from a noun to the adjective
19
‘facial’. Moreover, she has deleted the fourth instance by producing
the elliptical phrase ‘like yours’ instead of ‘like your face’.
Two more illustrative examples from the study corpus are reproduced
and briefly discussed below:
(8)
a.
b.
.‫ هناك من يطاردني ويريد قتلي‬... ‫ تدور حول اشخاص يريدون قتلي‬...
… of people wanting to murder me … There’s someone
hot on my heels who wants to take my life.
(9)
a.
،‫ نعم‬،‫ نعم‬.‫كانت مالمح وجهها تشبه مالمح وجهك انت حادة واضحة‬
... ‫كانت مالمحه تشبه مالمحي‬
b.
Her facial features – like yours—were vibrant and intense.
Yes, yes … he did look like me.
In 8b above, the translator has also introduced variation in the TT by
choosing two different verb forms of ‘want’ for the ST’s literal
repetition of the verb ‫ يريد‬. By the same token, we can understand the
translator’s motive for the variation between the TT’s ‘like’ and the
phrasal verb ‘look like’ in 9b.
20
3.5. Expanding ST Repeated Word(s)
Another means utilized by the translator in order to alleviate excessive
lexical repetition is both to simultaneously retain and expand the
repeated words. By performing this type of expansion shift, the
translator would both try to preserve the textual function of the
repeated word while still avoiding the ‘undesirable’ consequences of
literally repeating the same word in the translated text. A shift like this
would thus represent a happy marriage between the need to maintain
the ST functional units of text (i.e. textemes) and the requirements of
TT norms in translation, both as a process in itself and as a product in
the TL and its culture. The following three ST-TT text fragments can
serve, from among many others in the corpus, as representative of this
type of translation shifts.
(10) a.
‫ أال يكفي ذلك لكي تعرف سلوى؟‬،‫ حبيبتي أنا‬..‫ انها حبيبتي‬... ‫انت ال تعرف سلوى‬
.‫ حتى بريق عينيها كان ذات البريق وذات النظرات الحارة الصادقة التي أعرفها‬-
b.
You don’t know Salwa … Isn’t it enough for Salwa to be my sweetheart
for you to know who she is? … Even the twinkle in her eyes was the same,
with the same passionate, earnest glances that I’d come to know so well.
The high textemic value of the repetition of the word ‫‘ يعرف‬know’, as a
token for the great importance which ‘knowing’ Salwa means to the
protagonist in the story, exercises heavy pressure on the translator in
the direction of retaining the three repetitions of this ST verb. Yet, the
translator has given vent to her feelings of uneasiness with the frequent
literal repetition by expanding the third repetition of the ST verb
‘know’; thus rendering the one-word verb ‫ أعرفها‬by the less-repetitive
21
word-group, ‘I’d come to know so well’. It is to be noted, however,
that this expansion yields no extra meaning since the meaning of the
added words is in fact implicitly embedded in the original source text.
It is also worth noting that this explication of what is stated implicitly
in the text is the other side of the coin of the strategy of making
implicit what is explicit in the text, as already discussed under
‘Deletion Shift’ in 3.2.
This same strategy which serves the purpose of avoiding literal
repetition by explicating what is implicit in the ST can also be seen in
the following short extract of the corpus:
(11)
a.
‫كان مدرسا ً للرياضيات‬....
b.
…, my school mathematics teacher
In the above example, the translator has expanded the ST’s ‫ مدرس‬to
TT’s ‘school teacher’ instead of ‘teacher’ only. In Arabic, the mutual
reference of ‫‘ مدرس‬teacher’ and ‫‘ مدرسة‬school’ is taken for granted by
the common root, viz. ‫س‬-‫ر‬-‫‘ د‬DRS’ (teach/learn). No such explicit
morphological relatedness exists in English between the two words
‘teacher’ and ‘school’, however. In light of this, the translator’s
decision to add the word ‘school’ to ‘teacher’ can be understood as yet
another example of a translation strategy of evading literal repetition
by explicating in the TT some information which is implicit in the ST.
In the same vein, the translator in the third example below invests on
this translation strategy of expansion so as to avoid literal repetition:
(12)
a.
...‫أحتاج أن أرى على وجهه ذلك الصدق الحارق‬
‫ انني أراه كل يوم‬،ً‫وأنا أعيش حزنا ً متصال‬
22
b.
I need to look into his face and see that burning
honesty … I’ve been experiencing a grief that
seems never to come to an end. I’ve seen it everyday.
In this case, the translator has opted to translate the first Arabic verb
‫ أرى‬by ‘look …and see’, rather than by ‘see’ alone. The difference
between ‘look’ and ‘see’ in English can be explained by the degree of
personal involvement reflected by each of them. Similar to the
difference between ‘hear’ and ‘listen’, the verb ‘see’ is less purposeful
and less pre-determined than ‘look’ in ‘look and see’. The choice of
the latter by the translator is thus a reflection of her understanding of
the degree of the personal involvement between the speaker in the text
and the teacher in the story. The expansion shift thus serves, in
addition to avoiding literal repetition, to explicate what is understood
by a careful reading of the ST text, at least from the translator’s own
perspective. This translation strategy of explicitation has been found to
be a common denominator in translated texts in general, as already
mentioned in 1.2 earlier, and is considered by many translation
scholars as a tentative translation universal (see Blum-Kulka).
3.6. Shifting by Pronominalization
In cases like these, the translator uses a pronoun in the TT to replace a
noun which enters into a lexical chain in the ST. A total of 5 such
instances have been detected in the 98 shifts. The following are sample
examples:
(13)
a.
‫ كانت مالمح وجهها تشبه‬... ‫ نجلس في المقهى الصغير‬،‫ أنا وسلوى‬- ‫لقد كنا‬
‫ خطفت سلوى حقيبتها السوداء الصغيرة وشبت‬.. ‫ وفجأة‬.. ‫مالمح وجهك أنت‬
‫… على قدميها‬
23
b.
Salwa and I were sitting in the little coffeeshop … Her facial
features –like yours- were … Then all of a sudden … she
grabbed her little black handbag and jumped to her feet…
Despite the fact that the TT text-fragment above contains 3 possessive
pronouns for the 3 ST pronouns which refer to Salwa, the translator
has chosen to replace the second occurrence of the proper noun
‘Salwa’ by yet another pronoun. This case of pronominalization must
have been prompted by the translator’s own conviction that this shift
would lead to no functional loss. In other words, the textual function
of the repetition of ‘Salwa’ in the above ST fragment would not,
according to the translator, be impaired by the pronominilization
process. This assessment by the translator may have been enhanced
by the predominance of pronouns referring to Salwa even in the ST
itself. Thus, the translator’s decision to minimize lexical repetition,
without compromising its textual function, can be understood.
Another example of this type of shift can be found in the following
ST-TT extracts:
(14) a.
b.
... ‫ ما عالقة الشخص اآلخر بالمسألة‬.‫ خرج من داخلي للتو‬،‫ أو شخص آخر‬...
… or to another person who had just now emerged from
in-side me … what does his face have to do with it?
Here we have another example of replacing a noun by a pronoun. This
time, however, the replaced noun is not a proper noun, as in 13 above,
but a common noun. As a result, the translator’s tacit argument, for not
having caused any damage to the textual function of the lexical
repetition by this shift, may even be more convincing in this case.
Thus, resorting to the above shifting, among others, provides the
24
translator with another means yet in her incessant pursuit to avoid or
alleviate lexical repetition, especially that of the literal and closedistance type. Although such shifts might lead to reduced textual
explicitness, the translator seems to be convinced that they do not
jeopardize the overall textual function.
3.7. Adding Extra Repetition(s)
A shift like this appears to be an anomaly at first sight. Contrary to the
usual translation practice seen so far, which is generally unfavorable to
lexical repetition, the translator herself adds one or more repetitions in
the TT this time. Examples of such translation shifts are considered
‘marked’ in the unmarked/marked dichotomy and cannot, therefore, go
unnoticed; an attempt needs to be made to reconstruct the translator’s
decision-making process.
In the following example:
(15)
a.
‫ انها حبيبتي‬... ‫ حبيبتي التي ال توصف‬،‫…وهناك سلوى حبيبتي الوحيدة‬.
‫ أال يكفي ذلك لكي تعرف سلوى؟‬.. ‫حبيبتي أنا‬
b.
… and there’s Salwa, my one and only beloved, my
marvelous, indescribable beloved. She’s my sweetheart,
my sweetheart. Isn’t it enough for Salwa to be my
sweetheart for you to know who she is?
The word ‫‘ حبيبتي‬beloved, sweetheart’ is used 4 times in the ALC. In
the translation, however, there are 5 occurrences synonymous to this
lexical item. Although the translator has rendered the Arabic item by
25
two different lexical synonyms, she has nevertheless added one more
repetition to the corresponding translation counterpart in the TT.
Two relevant observations can be made about the ST-TT text-portions
above. First, the ST has an LC of 4 lexical words whereas the TT
translation counterpart contains 2 occurrences of the word ‘beloved’
and 3 of ‘sweetheart’. In other words, and as a result of the translator’s
use of a second shift which has led to the use of two different lexical
synonyms to the ST’s ‫حبيبتي‬, no one single LC in the TT is actually
longer than that of the TT. The second observation is that the extra
repetition of ‘sweetheart’ comes as part of an added phrase, viz. ‘for
Salwa to be my sweetheart’. This whole TT phrase, it can be noticed,
is the translation counterpart of the ST’s deictic word ‫‘ ذلك‬that’. In
other words, the extra repetition shift has come as a by-product of the
translator’s attempt to explicate the reference of the deixis in the ST. A
shift like this, it is to be pointed out once more, is bound to increase
the explicitness level in the TT, as was mentioned earlier in the
Introduction in relation with the Explicitation Hypothesis and as will
further be discussed later in Section 4.
Another example of this type of extra-repetition shift can also be found
in the following ST-TT text portions:
(16)
a.
.‫ وفي ذيل الذاكرة صورة من بقايا كوابيس تدور حول أشخاص يريدون قتلي‬،...
... ‫…وأن ثمة صورة قديمة‬.
b. … and the back of my mind was haunted by nightmares’ lingering
images - - images of people wanting to murder me, . . . and that in
one of his pictures, . . .
26
Notice again that the translator has performed two types of shifts in the
TT-portion above: (1) the extra-repetition shift, by adding the second
occurrence ‘images’, and (2) the synonymy shift, by rendering the
ST’s ‫ صورة‬into two different lexical synonyms: ‘image’ and ‘picture’.
The extra use of ‘images’ above seems to have been motivated by the
significant textual function that the repetition texteme of the lexical
word ‫ صورة‬plays in the ST. This functional value seems to result from
the protagonist’s highly-confused psychological world, as depicted in
the story; a world full of imaginary ‘pictures’ and ‘images’. The
repetition of ‘images’ above also seems to embellish the above text
and add to its rhetorical force.
3.8. Shifting by Substitute Words
Another type of shift found to be operative is that of using a substitute
word in the TT to stand for a repeated word in an ST lexical chain.
This translation strategy would serve two ends: (1) It cuts down the
level of explicit lexical repetition; and (2) It preserves the cohesive
function of lexical reiteration. Examples of the use of both verbal and
nominal substitute words have been detected in the corpus.5 Three of
such examples are reproduced and briefly discussed below.
(17)
a.
‫ لو كنت أعرف‬،‫ لو كنت أعرف لما كنت حزينا ً الى هذا الحد‬،‫أنا ال أعرف‬
.‫كنت أعدت المسألة الى عواملها األولية‬
b.
I don’t know. If I did, I wouldn’t be in such distress. If I knew,
I would have reduced the problem to its basic elements.
See Halliday and Hasan: 92, for more details on the cohesive role of ‘substitution’ in text and
types of substitute words.
5
27
Text cohesiveness in the above TT lexical chains is still maintained
through substituting ‫ كنت أعرف‬by ‘did’, although the lexical repetition
of ‘knew’ is not retained.
(18)
a.
‫ أو بكلمات كتلك التي يتحدث بها المعلمون والطلبة الكبار‬،‫…يخاطبني بهدوء‬
‫…ولم أكن أفهم كل الكلمات التي كان ينطق بها‬
b.
…but address me in a calm tone of voice, and with the kind
of words that teachers use with students who are older … I
didn’t understand all the things he used to say …
In this case, the general word ‘things’ is used in the text fragment
above to stand for ‫‘ الكلمات‬words’ in the ST. This is another common
means of the substitution shift, which the translator has utilized.
(19)
a.
‫ انه فيما أظن ال يتسع‬،‫انه مقهى صغير وهو ال يتسع لكثير من الموائد‬
‫ فالمقهى صغير‬... ‫…اال لمائدتين‬.
b.
It’s a small coffee shop and it isn’t big enough to
accommodate many tables. If I’m not mistaken, there’s only room
for two tables … After all, it’s a tiny place.
Another general word yet, viz. ‘place’, is used by the translator as a
substitute word to replace ‘coffee shop’ in the above TT text-portion.
In all the three examples above, the translator has managed to lessen
the level of lexical repetition in the TT. This, as mentioned earlier,
28
goes in line with the dominant trend that translated texts in general
tend to exhibit. This substitution shift does not seem, however, to
seriously impair the textual function of repetition since the replaced
items are still easily retrievable. Neither is the textual cohesiveness
compromised by this shift of substitution; as can be seen from the
above discussion..
3.9. Nominalization Shifts
In this type of shift, a personal pronoun in the ST is replaced by the
proper noun of its referent. Only one instance of this type of shift has
been detected in the study corpus. It is useful to keep in mind that this
type of shift is just the opposite of that of the pronominalization shift,
discussed earlier in 3.6.
The single available example found in the study corpus is reproduced
below, followed by a brief discussion:
(20)
a.
.‫ وكنت أكره الرياضيات وأحبه هو‬... ‫يقفز الى رأسي إسم األستاذ شريف‬
b.
Then suddenly there leaps to my mind the name of
Mr. Sharif … I used to hate math, yet I loved Mr. Sharif.
In the TT above, the translator has added yet another lexical repetition
to the already long lexical chain found in the full version of the ST.
She has replaced the ST’s personal pronoun ‫‘ هو‬he’ by ‘Mr. Sharif’ in
the TT, although this particular case cannot be taken to be motivated
by a process of disambiguation. However, and despite its rarity in the
corpus of the present study, such translation shift is not uncommon
though and goes in line with the Explicitation Hypothesis.
In a study of lexical cohesion in the translated novel The Thief and the
Dogs of Naguib Mahfouz, Abdel-Hafiz points out that the “presence of
29
ambiguous referents in the ST can motivate translators to shift from
pronouns to common/proper nouns in the TT”. He then gives the
following, among many others, as an example of this explication
translation strategy:
(21)
a.
‫وانتزع عينيه من الجريدة فرأى الشيخ علي الجنيدي ينظر الى السماء‬
.‫ ولسبب ما أخافته ابتسامته‬.‫من خالل الكوة ويبتسم‬
b.
He tore his eyes from the paper and found the Sheikh
staring through the window at the sky, smiling. The
smile for some reason or other, frightened Said.
The translator’s decision to replace the underlined Arabic pronominal
above by its explicit proper noun in English seems to be motivated by
the desire to ward off any possible ambiguity due to the presence of
more than one antecedent in the ST.
Such translation shift, albeit uncommon in our data, also points to
the incoherence of translators’ decisions in general, and those
regarding translation shifts of lexical repetition, in particular, since the
general tendency is to reduce rather than expand the repetition, as
shown earlier. I am not postulating, however, that such discrepancy in
translation strategies is totally unmotivated. In fact, as was just pointed
out above, translators usually have their textual and/or cultural
motives. Thus, efficient translators may be tempted to execute
seemingly ‘aberrant’ translation shifts. In doing so, they may
themselves belong to certain societal subgroups or are exposed to a
fledgling set of norms that seem to lurk in the periphery of mainstream
norms or lie in the centre of subsystem ones. Such norms may be
considered centrifugal in their directionality according to today’s
30
prevailing standards, but they do exist and they do leave their
unmistakable traces both on the translation process and the translation
product, no matter how limited or nebulous. This multiplicity of norms
should not, however, be mistaken for the absence of norms or for
anarchy. The translator’s ability to manoeuvre between alternative
modes of behavior is, as Toury puts it, “just another norm-governed
activity, necessarily involving risks of its own” (in Schäffner ed.,
1999: 27). This issue, however, will be taken up again in Section 4
below.
4. Discussion
After having surveyed the different types of shifts detected in the
translated text, it is now imperative to try to speculate on what lies
behind them. The question being asked, therefore, is what could have
motivated the translator to decide to perform these in the TT?
Translated texts are known to exhibit tension between two poles: that
of ‘adequacy’ in relation to the ST, on the one hand, and the pole of
‘acceptability’ by the TL and its culture, on the other; each with its
characteristic text norms. Thus, every translated text lies somewhere
between these two extremes and the translator’s decision-making
process is, consciously or subconsciously, influenced by the pressures
exercised on him/her by these two poles. The following discussion is,
hence, an attempt to understand the effects of the above-mentioned
tension on the translator’s decisions with respect to the different types
of shifts listed and discussed in Section 3.
As was already mentioned in the Introduction, lexical repetition is a
textual phenomenon found in both Arabic and English, as well as in
other languages. Rhetorical norms in Arabic are, however, known to
allow texts to exhibit a higher degree of this phenomenon than in
English. In English rhetoric, as was mentioned in the Introduction,
lexical repetition is tolerated and made use of as a figure of speech; its
use must still be motivated though. Contrariwise, lexical repetition in
31
Arabic does not have to be used as a figure of speech that requires
justification, but is rather regarded as the default state of affairs.
Keeping this distinction between Arabic and English in mind would
help us understand and explain most the above-mentioned shifts found
in the translated text. A bird’s eye view at the different types of shifts
surveyed in the previous section of the paper would reveal that they
actually fall into three major categories of shifts, as far as lexical
repetition is concerned. These are:
(a) Avoiding/minimizing lexical repetition;
(b) Retaining it, but with some modification/alteration;
(c) Emphasizing it by extension/expansion
The following discussion of each of the three groups of the translation
shifts stated above aims at discovering and interpreting the translator’s
motives which lie behind opting for one or the other of these shiftgroups.
4.1. Avoidance of Lexical Repetition
In general, one of the most important of any translator’s tasks is to
reformulate the ST in a way that makes it ‘acceptable’ to the textual
standards and expectations of the target language and its culture. In
our case, this would mean cutting down on the frequent occurrences of
lexical repetition from Arabic texts translated into English since the
translator is expected to be aware of the textual norms of both the ST
and TT. Consequently, the translator’s attempt to produce a text which
would identify with and abide by the textual norms of the TT/TL can
help explain instances in the translated text where lexical repetition
has been purposefully avoided by one means or another.
32
The first category of shifts above, viz. that of avoiding one or more
instances of repetition in a ALC, has been found to be the most
common type of shift utilized by the translator. In her attempt to adapt
the translated text to the textual norms of English, the translator has
basically worked towards minimizing lexical repetition by opting not
to repeat one or more certain lexical item(s) within an ALC. To
perform the decision as a translational ‘solution’ for such ST
‘problem’, the translator has adopted a number of strategies. By
referring to Section 3, one can find out that this policy of deliberate
avoidance has been actually implemented by one or more of the
following translation strategies, in the order of their frequency of
occurrence:
4.1.1. Replacement of instance(s) of lexical repetition in the translated
text by (i) a synonym different from others, as in Shift 3.1.; or by (ii) a
paraphrase of the replaced lexical item, as in Shift 3.3. This policy of
using lexical/phrasal synonymy has been used to minimize lexical
repetition in 49 instances out of the total number of shifts in the
analyzed TT, which is 98. This repetition-avoidance policy thus
represents 50% of all the shifts detected in the translated text.
4.1.2. Replacement by zero, viz. deleting one lexical repetition or more
in a ST text-portion from its translation counterpart in the TT, as in
Shift 3.2. A percentage of 19% of such shift has been found in the
corpus.
4.1.3. Replacement of a repeated word by a personal pronoun or a
substitute word. Nine such instances, i.e. 9%, have been detected, as in
shifts 3.6 and 3.8.
33
Reducing the density of lexical repetition in the TT through the above
different means of replacement counts for more than 75% of all the
translation shifts performed in the translated text. As I argued above,
the abundance of this translation policy of avoiding lexical repetition
reflects the translator’s incessant attempts to approximate the textual
norms of English, which stipulate that lexical repetition must be
rhetorically motivated so as to be tolerated. In her attempt to produce
an acceptable translation, the translator has thus abided by the standard
norms of textuality in English.
However, the above discussion may seem to run counter to the
findings of many contrastive analyses of original texts in Arabic and
English which have discovered that the phenomenon of lexical
repetition as a text cohesive device is no less frequent in English texts
than in Arabic (see, Fareh 1988 and al-Khafaji 2004; among others).
Even simple lexical repetition, viz. repeating the same word with no or
minimum formal change, has been found to be similarly frequent in
general in the lexical chains of texts in the two languages. Yet, and
despite this similarity in the overall frequency of lexical repetition, it
has also been found out that there exist some significant differences
between the LCs in the two languages, as far as the distribution of this
linguistic phenomenon (see, al-Khafaji 2004). The most important of
these are that:
(a) Arabic tends to have longer6 LCs in its texts; and
(b) Long LCs in Arabic exhibit a significantly much higher frequency
of simple lexical repetition, i.e. with no or very little formal
variations,than long LCs in English texts.
The above findings point to some distinctive norms of textuality in the
two languages. Can these distinctions explain the translator’s decision6
The length of an LC is counted by the number of those lexical words which enter into the
relationship of lexical repetition and thus make up that LC.
34
making process of avoiding excessive lexical repetition by
replacement, as demonstrated and discussed above?
To test the tenability of the above hypothesis, the length of ‘long’ LCs
in the ST needs to be examined and measured. Before proceeding to
do so, however, it must be pointed out that the distinction between
‘long’ and ‘short’ LCs is a relative question and that there is no
absolute cutting-point between the two; viz., a long LC in one text
may be considered relatively short in another and vice versa. It all
depends on counting the average length of all LCs in a given text; LCs
above the average are then considered as being longer than those
below it. Based on this criterion, the average length was consequently
counted for all lexical chains found in the analyzed Arabic text. 7 This
was found to be almost 4.9 words. However, when the average length
was calculated just for those ALCs in which the translator has chosen
to replace their repetition(s) in the TT by shifts of synonymy,
paraphrase, or deletion, it was found to be 5.5 words. It thus becomes
safe to postulate that the overwhelming majority, if not all, of the TT’s
lexical chains in which the avoidance-by-replacement translation
policy was exercised are translation counterparts of long LCs in the
source text. In light of this, the translator’s decision against retaining
lexical repetition of one or more instances of the translation
counterparts of such ST lexical chains can be understood to have been
well-motivated since it is in such long LCs that English texts exhibit
different distributional norms, as was argued above. The translator’s
decision to render the replaced LC constituents by synonymy or
paraphrase, as was shown above, can also be understood on the
grounds that these textual cohesive devices of lexical reiteration have
been found to be the most frequent next to lexical repetition in English
texts (Fareh 1988). So, in text portions where the high level of lexical
repetition becomes intolerable, according to the textual norms of
English, Arabic-English translators are expected both to reduce the
7
Only LCs which comprise 3 repeated words or more were actually taken into consideration since
2-word LCs are disregarded for being too frequent in text to be of much significance.
35
level, as well as to do so by resorting to the alternative means of
synonymy, paraphrase or deletion.
4.2. Retention with alteration(s)
A limited number of shifts was found to lie somewhere between the
two ends of the TT-pole and the ST-pole. In such shifts, the translator
has neither wholly retained lexical repetition nor has she replaced it.
Instead, she has chosen to retain the nucleus of the repeated word but
added inflectional and/or derivational morphemes to it so as to
introduce variation into lexical repetition, as in Shift 3.4. Or,
alternatively, she has retained the repetition but within a newlyintroduced word group, as in Shift 3.5. Together, the instances of these
two shifts in the corpus make up to 15%.
A translated text in general is subject as an inter-text to ambivalent
pressures from two poles: the TT’s and the ST’s. As a result, the
translator’s decisions and the norms s/he abides by may sometimes
oscillate between the two opposing ends of acceptability and
adequacy, though the norms of the former usually seem to have the
upper hand. Shifts may thus, in principle, occur in either direction (cf.
Toury 1980:59). The aim to simplify and explicate some information
in the ST text to the TT readership may thus justify to the translator
the modified retention of lexical repetition, as is the case with
performing Shift 3.5. As was also already pointed out, the
phenomenon of increased simplification and explicitness has in fact
been observed to be a common characteristic of translated texts in
general, according to the Explicitation Hypothesis. In the same vein,
variations introduced on the form of repeated words, as is realized by
Shift 3.4, seem to help the translator alleviate lexical repetition and
render it more acceptable to the norms of English.
36
4.3. Addition of repetition(s)
A few instances, about 10%, have also been detected in the translated
text where the translator has, rather unexpectedly, opted for a set of
norms which seemingly runs counter to what has been practiced so far.
In such cases, the translator has not only retained and announced ST
repetition but has actually added to it and extended it in the TT, as
performed by Shift 3.7 as well as Shift 3.9. This phenomenon can be
understood in light of the moving scale of the norm-system which
translators seem to apply at different junctures during the formation
and reformulation of the TT. One feels especially justified in
postulating this argument since no linguistic rules of English could
have made the lexical addition obligatory, or even preferable, in these
cases.8 Other normative considerations, however, must have motivated
the translator not to heed to the general rules of the acceptability
norms in this case. Yet although on the face of it the adequacy norms
of favoring abundant and frequent lexical repetition in Arabic appear
to be the driving force behind the above two shifts, the fact of the
matter remains that such shifts have also actually been implemented
under pressure from the textual and cultural requirements of the TL. In
both Shift 3.7 and Shift 3.9, it is to be remembered, the objective of
lexical addition was to explicate some implicit information in the ST
text for the benefit of the TT readership. In both shifts, therefore, it is
the textual and cultural considerations of the target language which
were at play; somewhat from behind the scene, however.
I mean, for example, such rules in Arabic which favour adding an ’absolute object’ derived from
the same finite verb when rendering into Arabic such sentence in English as ‘They hit him hard, by
‫( ضربوه ضربا مبرحا‬They hit him a hard hitting).
8
37
5. Conclusion and suggestion
5.1.
It can be concluded from all the above that in any translation process,
the translator is exposed to different, sometimes contradictory, forces
which compete with each other. In the case of handling lexical
repetition within the context of Arabic-English translation, we have
seen two seemingly opposing sets of norms at work: (a) a powerful set,
realized by a variety of translation shifts, whose objective is to avoid
and cut down ST instances of frequent lexical repetition in the retextualization process of the TT; and (b) a less dominant set of norms
which motivates the translator to retain, and sometimes even extend,
ST’s lexical repetitions. In between these two sets of polar norms, we
have also detected a number of reconciliatory measures. Despite the
apparent ambivalence of translation norms, the above discussion has
revealed, however, that this contradiction is more superficial than real.
Textual and cultural norms of the target language and culture seem to
play the decisive role in the operation of all types of translation shifts
detected and discussed in the present paper. In fact, it seems safe to
conclude thus that it is ‘acceptability’ norms which have been actively
instrumental in selecting TT translation ‘solutions’ for the ‘problems’
in the ST, as far as the shifts in lexical repetition are concerned.
5.2.
It has been concluded above that acceptability norms are almost
exclusively behind the types and frequency of the translations shifts of
lexical repetition detected and analyzed in the analyzed text of the
present paper. Is this the default situation in all translated texts? Or, is
this conclusion –partly at least- attributable to the direction of the
translation process being from an ‘underprivileged’ language into a
‘privileged’ one? In other words, are the shifts the result of the
38
‘hegemony’ that English and its norms impose on languages like
Arabic? These are moot questions that await further empirical
research. To ascertain that avoidance of lexical repetition, for example,
is a tentative translation ‘universal’, as claimed by many translation
scholars, translated texts both into and from various languages need to
be examined and the results of the analyzed texts be compared.
5.3.
Since contrastive Arabic-English research within the framework of
Descriptive Translation Studies is still rather scarce, it would be
illuminating if the central role which norms and shifts play in
translation is further pursued by different, yet complementary, studies
like the following:
5.3.1. A comparison of translated and original texts, both within
Arabic, can yield much needed information about acceptability norms
in Arabic translated texts. Besides, such studies can shed light on some
interesting hidden features of the original Arabic texts themselves;
which may have evolved as a result of translations into Arabic,
especially those from ‘prestigious’ languages like English.
5.3.2. The relationship between translation norms and text-types is
another issue worthy of further research. In translating distinguished
literary works, as well as canonized texts in general, norms of the
original ST are expected, due to their high prestige in the source
culture, to exercise more pressure on the translator than in semi- or
non-canonized texts. Hence, it would be revealing to study the effects
which changing the type of text has on translation shifts and norms.
39
5.3.3. As norms represent socially-determined phenomena, they are
bound to be ‘historical’, rather than a-historical, in nature. It would be
worthwhile, hence, to find out how norms change over time. It would
be highly informative, for example, to investigate some specific
translation phenomena such as shifts in lexical repetition in texts
translated into Arabic from English at different points of time.
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