Discourse and intertextual issues
in translation
The discourse level: the textual variables
considered on the discourse level are those
that distinguish a cohesive and coherent text
from a sequence of unrelated utterances. This
level- the discourse level- is concerned with
intersentential relations(relations between
sentences) and relations between larger units
such as paragraphs, etc.
For our purposes, however, it is sometimes •
useful also to consider relations between
parts of sentences on the discourse level
(particularly clauses).This is particularly
important with respect to Arabic as Arabic
sentences are often extremely long, and the
lack of consistent punctuation often makes it
impossible to determine where one sentence
ends in Arabic and another begins.
Cohesion and coherence : •
It is useful to distinguish between two aspects •
of discourse cohesion and coherence.
Following Halliday and Hasan (1976), cohesion
is the transparent linking of sentences by
explicit discourse connectives such as then, so
however and so on. These act as signposts
pointing out the thread of discourse running
through the text .
Cohesion is also realized by the use of features such
as root repetition and lexical item repetition, in
additions to features such as theme-rheme
elements and main-subordinate elements.
Coherence: Unlike cohesion coherence is not
explicitly marked in a text: it is a thematic or
emotional development running through the
text. Consequently, all cohesive texts are
coherent, but not all coherent texts are cohesive.
We can illustrate the difference with a simple example.
(see p: 30)
As can be seen from the two examples: Text 1 lacks
intersentential connectives. It is still coherent due to
the underlying chronological narrative structure. In text
2 thought is achieved by the use of connectives. Some
of these connectives link sentences by explaining or
commenting on the speaker’s actions: so, I mean, still,
anyway. Others are instances of grammatical anaphorathat is the replacement of previously used words and
phrases by expressions referring back to them; here
the anaphoric elements are “it”(replacing the kitchen )
and “there’ replacing on the ground.
As we mentioned before cohesion is realized by the
use of features such as root repetition and lexical
item repetition. Repetition in Arabic has two
functions:
1. It may allow the writer to talk about closely
related ideas, serving in this case much the same
purpose as lexical variation does in English.
2. It may serve as cohesive text-building function,
in much the same way as connectives do
Look at the following text, a speech by Jamal •
Abed Al Nasser (page 31)
Another area in which Arabic and English differ
is their use of discourse connectives. In many
genres , Arabic sentences are typically longer
than English sentences, and sentences and
clauses in Arabic are typically connected
either by one of the three basic connectives
‫ثم‬،‫ف‬،‫و‬
or by the use of one of the secondary
connectives such as ‫إذ‬،‫حيث‬
A striking feature of the translation of the
passage about Ibn Khaldoun is the concessive
‫و‬use of
which is translated by but. Even in modern
Arabic the ‫ و‬and sometimes ‫ ف‬are best
translated by a concessive. See examples on
pages (34-35)
In some types of modern Arabic writing, the •
system of connectives is rather different from
classical Arabic norm. Consider the following
from a modern Arabic text on housing
economics. (pages 35).
Unlike unplanned narratives (story telling) planned
narratives in English, particularly the narratives of
written fiction, tend to make greater use of
subordination. In Arabic, by contrast,
coordination is a typical feature of written
fictional narratives as well as unplanned
material.
In translating written fictional material, it is
often stylistically appropriate to convert
coordinate structures in Arabic into
subordinate structures in English. See page 36
See the translations of ...‫ف‬... ‫( أما‬Page 37)
Languages also differ in their use of punctuation
as a cohesion marker. It should be
remembered that Arabic traditionally made
no use of punctuation, and that even now
punctuation is often used in Arabic in ways
which seem rather arbitrary. Even the use of
punctuation marks such as full stops can be
highly idiosyncratic, particularly in literary
writing.
Sentence splitting:
Since sentences in Arabic tend to be longer than
sentences in English, it is quite frequently
necessary to split up one Arabic sentence into
a number of English ones.
(See page 38)
Textual restructuring:
It is the reorganizing of chunks of textual material in
the TT in order to make them read more cogently.
Sentence splitting may be regarded as oriented
towards cohesion, in that it concerns the ways in
which texts , in different languages, adopt
different ways of linking material together.
Textual restructuring, by contrast, is more
oriented towards coherence; it concerns the ways
in which languages typically organize their ideas
differently from one another. (See page 39)
Paragraphing: Like punctuation, paragraphing
can pose problems in Arabic/English
translation. There are some generic
considerations involved in paragraphing. For
example, news report tend to have very short
paragraphs, sometimes only a single sentence.
Academic writing, by contrast, often makes
use of extremely long paragraphs.
In Arabic, similar conventions for paragraphing
to those of English are followed by many
writers. However, one may come across
paragraphing in Arabic which clearly does not
follow English-type conventions. Under such
circumstances, the translator will normally
expect to reparagraph the TT according to the
conventions of English.