Translating Irony Between English and Arabic

323 Pages·2018·3.19 MB·English

by  Raymond Chakhachiro

Translating Irony
between English
and Arabic

Translating Irony
between English
and Arabic
By
Raymond Chakhachiro
Translating Irony between English and Arabic

By Raymond Chakhachiro

First published by Sayyab Books Limited in 2011

Published 2018 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2018 by Raymond Chakhachiro

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-5275-0632-0
ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-0632-9
To Denise, Matilda and Ibraaheem

CONTENTS
Acknowledgements .................................................................................... ix

List of Tables, Figures and Charts ............................................................... x

Romanisation Conventions ......................................................................... xi

Introduction ................................................................................................ 1
0.1 Approach ......................................................................................... 2
0.2 Plan ................................................................................................. 4

Chapter One ................................................................................................. 7
The Contribution of Literary Theory
1.1 Definition of irony ........................................................................... 7
1.2 Views on irony in English ............................................................. 12
1.3 Examples of rhetorical and stylistic aspects of irony in corrective
English literature ........................................................................... 26
1.4 Views on Irony in Arabic ............................................................... 30
1.5 Examples of rhetorical and stylistic aspects of irony in corrective
Arabic literature ............................................................................. 35
Conclusion ........................................................................................... 41

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 43
The Contribution of Linguistic Theory
2.1 Irony in pragmatic studies ............................................................. 43
2.2 Irony in satiric discourse ............................................................... 45
2.3 Literary criticism and linguistics .................................................... 47
2.4 Modern linguistics and irony ......................................................... 50
2.5 Towards a theory of inference ...................................................... 69
2.6 Ironic devices and text structure .................................................... 78
Conclusion ........................................................................................... 81
viii Contents

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 84
Translation Theory and the Translation of Irony
3.1 Overview ........................................................................................ 84
3.2 Translation theory in the Arab world ............................................. 87
3.3 Translation process and modern linguistics ................................... 88
3.4 Contrastive analysis and comparative stylistics in the theory
of Translation ................................................................................ 92

Chapter Four ............................................................................................ 103
Towards a Model for Translating Corrective Irony in Argumentative Texts
4.1 The structure of argumentative texts ............................................ 103
4.2 Ironic devices ............................................................................... 104
4.3 Discourse model........................................................................... 106
4.4 Functionality of key ironic devices .............................................. 117
4.5 Textual and contextual features of argumentative texts ............... 130

Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 139
Data Analysis
5.1 The data set ................................................................................. 140
5.2 Analysis ...................................................................................... 141
Conclusion ......................................................................................... 247

Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 250
Translating Strategies
6.1 Form, function and translation equivalence ................................. 250
6.2 General translation strategies ....................................................... 275
6.3 Full translation of English texts .................................................. 288
6.4 Concluding remarks ..................................................................... 298

References .............................................................................................. 300

Index ....................................................................................................... 309
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My extreme gratitude goes to Stuart J. Campbell for his constant
encouragement, guidance and support in the process of writing this work. I
would like to also thank George Saunders who made insightful comments
on the initial draft of this book and Douglas Muecke for his constructive
criticism on the literary chapter. I am indebted to Western Sydney
University for the time it has provided me with which made this work
possible.

I warmly thank Denise Cox Chakhachiro who helped me so much at every
stage and patiently read through and commented on every chapter. My
thanks also go to George Zantis and Sephen Morse for their feedback on
the initial draft of this book.

I am heartily thankful to Alya' Al-Rubai'i for her review of the draft and
valuable comments and to the founding director of Sayyab Books, Ali Al-
Manna’, for his constant support throughout the process of completing this
work.

Finally, thank you so much to my daughters Elizabeth and Nadia who
have provided me with the time and quiet space to complete this project.