Field of Research: Translation Studies
Name of author (s): Thawabteh Mohammad
Title of published work: “Text Autopsy: A Sine Qua Non for Emotiveness in Arabic-English Translation”
Name of Journal: Communication and culture Online: Linguistics, Communication and Culture E-Journal
Year: 2014
Volume: 5
Pages: 240-251
Publisher’s name and address: Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade.
Abstract:
Text is deemed as a minimal unit of communication in intercultural transaction, and should be fully borne in mind in any translation activity as translation is first and foremost thought to be a project for maintaining communicative thrust between the Source Language (SL) and the Target Language (TL). This can be achieved by observing minimal denotative meanings and relaying maximal connotative meanings of the SL text so that emotiveness can be secured. This paper borrows a criminological term ‘autopsy’ for detailed componential analysis of emotiveness, based on the assumption in discourse analysis that text is an animated entity replete with myriads of positive and negative overtones. Autopsy is applied to a translation from Arabic into English by Ma’an News Agency (MNA) in 2013. The paper argues that the lexical choice opted for by MNA does not occur in a vacuum, but on the periphery of an ideology born of a long-standing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. In the end, the paper shows a lack of emotiveness in the translation because of linguistic and cultural differences between the two languages, and two major strategies are employed thereof: addition and omission.
Key words: emotiveness, Arabic, English, text autopsy, translation strategies
Contact info of the contact author:
Name: Mohammad Ahmad Thawabteh, PhD.
Address: Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Al-Quds University.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
