The Routledge Course in Translation Annotation: Arabic-English-Arabic

255 Pages·2015·1.57 MB·English

by  Ali Almanna

The Routledge Course in
Translation Annotation
The Routledge Course in Translation Annotation: Arabic-English-Arabic is a key
coursebook for students and practitioners of translation studies. Focusing on one
of the most prominent developments in translation studies, annotation for transla-
tion purposes, it provides the reader with the theoretical framework for annotating
their own, or commenting on others’, translations.
The book:
• presents a systematic and thorough explanation of translation strategies,
supported throughout by bidirectional examples from and into English
• features authentic materials taken from a wide range of sources, including
literary, journalistic, religious, legal, technical and commercial texts
• brings the theory and practice of translation annotation together in an
informed and comprehensive way
• includes practical exercises at the end of each chapter to consolidate learning
and allow the reader to put the theory into practice
• culminates with a long annotated literary text, allowing the reader to have
a clear vision of how to apply the theoretical elements in a cohesive way
The Routledge Course in Translation Annotation is an essential text for both
undergraduate and postgraduate students of Arabic-English translation and of
translation studies.
Ali Almanna i s Assistant Professor of Translation in the Department of Foreign
Languages, Translation Section, at the University of Nizwa, the Sultanate of
Oman.
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The Routledge Course in
Translation Annotation
Arabic-English-Arabic
Ali Almanna
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Ali Almanna
The right of Ali Almanna to be identifi ed as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-91307-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-91309-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-66558-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction 1
1 Annotation – defi ning matters 6
Place of annotation and related issues 6
Annotation and related issues 8
Quality from different perspectives 13
2 Annotation and global strategies 37
Strategies and translation brief 37
Skopos 40
Readership 41
Text typology 41
Genre 42
Discussion 43
Evaluating researchers’ strategic decisions 44
3 Annotating translation strategies 54
Local Strategies 55
J. P. Vinay and J. Darbelnet (1958/1995) 56
J. C. Catford (1965) 61
J. L. Malone (1988) 64
M. Baker (1992/2011) 71
4 Annotating grammatical issues 82
Grammatical equivalence 82
Number 84
vi Contents
Active versus passive 86
Tense versus aspect 90
Modality 93
5 Annotating lexical and phraseological choices 103
Lexical choice 103
Multiword units 109
Metaphor 110
Simile 112
Idioms 114
Collocation 117
6 Annotating aspects of cohesion 125
Cohesion versus coherence 126
Reference 127
Substitution 128
Ellipsis 130
Conjunction 133
Lexical cohesion 137
Thematic progression 138
Parallelism and continuity of tenses/aspects 143
7 Annotating register 150
Field of discourse 151
The process 151
Participants 152
Circumstances 153
Tenor of discourse 157
Formality versus informality 157
Personalization versus impersonalization 157
Accessibility versus inaccessibility 157
Politeness: Social distance versus standing 158
Mode of discourse 161
8 Annotating pragmatic, semiotic and stylistic aspects 168
Aspects of pragmatics 169
Aspects of semiotics 175
Aspects of stylistics 180
Contents vii
9 Annotating cultural and ideological issues 190
Culture 190
Ideology 197
10 Annotation into action 210
Introduction 210
Rationale 211
Language role and register 211
Text type and genre 212
Readership 214
Purpose of translation 214
Global strategy 215
Translation 215
Annotation 217
References 224
References 226
Index 239
Acknowledgments
I n addition to my students, both past and present, whose challenges and diffi cul-
ties in annotating their own translation and commenting on others’ I have
attempted to address, I would like to thank my colleagues at the Dept. of Transla-
tion (College of Arts, University of Basra) and at the Foreign Languages Dept.
(College of Arts and Sciences, University of Nizwa) for their meticulous feedback
on the manuscript.
M y special thanks are due to Fred Pragnell and Mike Hall, who offered valuable
insights into and guidance on the many and varied aspects of the linguistic and
analytical challenges of translating Arabic.
F urther, I would like to thank the BA and MA students of Arabic< >English
translation over the years at the University of Durham (UK), the University of
Westminster (UK), the University of Nizwa (the Sultanate of Oman) and the Uni-
versity of Basra (Iraq) whose translation projects with their permission have been
used as a major source of translation examples used in this book.
Finally, the author and publisher would like to thank Sayyab Books Ltd for per-
mission to reproduce material from Muhammed Khudayyir’s story ﻒﺳﻮﯾ تﺎﯾﺎﻜﺣ
Joseph’s Tales, ‘Abdul-Rahmān al-Rubai‘ī’s story ﻦﯿﻧﻷا ﻚﻟذ Groaning, Karīm
‘Abid’s story (ع) ةﺪﯿﺴﻟا ماﺮﻏ The Passion of Lady A, Muhsin Al-Ramlī’s
story ﻲّ ﺣ ﺐﻠﻗ ﻦﻋ ﺚﺤﺒﻟا Search for a Live Heart, Abdul-Sattār Nāsir’s story
ﺮﺸﻨﻠﻟ ﺖﺴﯿﻟ ﺺﺼﻗ ثﻼﺛ Three Stories Not for Publishing and Haifā’ Zangana’s
story ىﻮﺜﻣ Dwelling.
Introduction
The Routledge Course in Translation Annotation: Arabic-English-Arabic is an
academic textbook. The book is initially designed for those whose mother tongue
is either Arabic or English and who have some knowledge in both linguistics and
translation theories. As such, the intended readership for this book is postgraduate
(MA and PhD students) and advanced BA students along with their translation
instructors throughout the world. PhD students in translation and intercultural
studies may also benefi t from this book. Further, students of applied linguistics and
contrastive studies may well benefi t from the book. Nowadays, there are a great
number of universities in the UK, United States, Canada, Australia and the Arab
world that encourage MA students to translate and annotate their own translation
in place of writing theses. The book is aimed at:
• raising awareness of the pitfalls specifi c to Arabic-English translation;
• increasing translators’ competence in both translation practice and translation
annotation; and
• developing and honing translators’ competences (be they linguistic, transla-
tional, contrastive or evaluative).
T he number of translation programmes grows exponentially worldwide at academic
institutions, and teaching translation theories in a direct link with the actual act of
translation (practice) has moved to centre stage in the translator education, particularly
in the UK and the United States, but also worldwide. Despite this, translation students,
in particular those who work on the language pair (Arabic-English), commonly com-
plain about the scarcity of relevant translational data, in view of the fact that the entire
Arab world often use one language pair (English-Arabic) in translation studies and
translation practice. Further, despite the large number of translation programmes
(at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels) worldwide, very few academic pub-
lications take the language pair (Arabic-English) as their focus. Here are some:
• English-Arabic/Arabic-English Translation: A Practical Guide by Basil
Hatim published by Saqi Books in 1997.
• Thinking Arabic Translation by James Dickins et al. published by Routledge
in 2002.