Sentential issues in translation
The sentential level
Different grammatical arrangements create different assumptions in the listener or
reader as regards the communicative purpose of an utterance.
For example
Go>>>> Command
No Way>>>> an expression of refusal or disbelief
Textual Variables on The sentential level:
From the point of view of Arabic/ English translation, there are three major nonsyntactic features of the sentence:
1. Prosodic features such as intonation and stress
2. Theme and rheme
3. foregrounding and backgrounding
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 words
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
Arabic, though it uses stress in Arabic in the same way, it does not exhibit the
same freedom to shift stress within the sentence as English. Arabic can shift
word order fairly freely.
‫أكل الرجل السمك‬
A lot of the features of the spoken sentential level disappear in written texts because
the sentential level in written language is relatively improvised. Written English, of
course, has punctuation marks.
My cousin who lives in Bristol visited us last week.
My cousin, who lives in Bristol, visited us last week.
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.
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.
Theme and rheme
Ayatollah Khomeini was the son of a cleric. He was born in 1903 I 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.
was born in 1903 I 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 illustrate 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.
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.
Example,
What happened to you?
1. I got a stung by a bee.
2. A bee stung me.
Where rheme receded theme in English, as in A bee stung me the sentence tends
to carry a certain emotional charge.
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'
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.
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
WO SV, the subject may be emphatic.
Basic theme-rheme translation issues
In terms of Arabic-English translation