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THE DIFFICULTIES ARISING WHEN
TRANSLATING FROM ARABIC TO
ENGLISH
Hassan S. Aldossary
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Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 2
What is translation? ...................................................................................................................... 2
What is culture? ............................................................................................................................ 3
Cultural Hindrances ...................................................................................................................... 6
1. Culture-Exclusive Expressions .......................................................................................... 6
2. The Translator ..................................................................................................................... 8
3. Emotiveness ...................................................................................................................... 10
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 13
References ................................................................................................................................... 14
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Introduction
Since there are different, variant and multiple definitions of “translation” and what is meant by it, a number
of challenges and hindrances have emerged, requiring translators from one language to another to overcome
them by recognising the root of the problems and providing solutions to them. However translation is
defined, that definition is going to shape and affect how a SL text is going to be dealt with in order to
convey the intended meaning or message into a TL text. These problems range from variable aspect,
whether they are syntactic-based, semantic-based, pragmatic-based or cultural-based. To increase the
concentration of this essay, we are going to narrow it down to two languages: Arabic and English.
What is translation?
Translation is basically the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an
equivalent target-language text (Bhatia 1992). It is subject to different factors that can affect its purpose or
intended message. These factors include fidelity and transparency. Fidelity in terms of translation means to
what extent translators and their translation, i.e. TL texts, are faithful and mirror the SL texts’ message or
intended meaning without any kind of modification, i.e. intensifying, distorting, weakening, adding or
subtracting, to any part of its context. While transparency is pertinent to the degree to which a translation
conforms to native speakers and their target language, following its idioms, syntax, and grammar
conventions while preserving the social, cultural and political contexts. Regardless of how translation is
viewed whether it is a process or a product, this is not the focus of this essay, although it can be of a relation
to it.
For English and Arabic, they are structurally different and they stem from dissimilar language families.
Arabic is categorised as a member of the Semitic family of languages, while English as a member of the
Indo-European language family. Arabic is recognised as the official spoken language in more than 20
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countries in the Middle East and North Africa. English is an Indo-European language and the official
spoken language in a number of countries, including Britain, the United States, and most of the
commonwealth countries.
In terms of syntax, Arabic and English demonstrate variant structures or word orders. Arabic has a feature
of being a synthetic language (Bahameed, 2008). For instance, inflection of nouns is for case (a form of a
noun, pronoun or adjective indicating its grammatical relation to other words in a text) and inflection of
verbs is for mood (a form of a verb to express whether the action or state it denotes is conceived as fact or in
some other manner (as command, possibility, or wish). In terms of prosody, both of the two languages have
their own versification systems and in terms of phonology and phonemic inventories, they are not the same
(Bahameed 2008). Furthermore, when evaluating the actual translation hindrances, the geographical
distance cannot be overlooked between Arabic and English from where they originated, which led to a
cultural distance between Arabic and English. Consequently, a classification for the main translation
hindrances, which influence the translation quality of the outcome, can be made into: 1) lexical hindrances,
2) prosodic hindrances, 3) structural hindrances, and 4) cultural hindrances (Bahameed 2008). Due to high
significance of culture and its influence on language and translation, this essay is going to focus mainly on
the cultural hindrances and cover some of the other classifications.
What is culture?
A number of fundamental issues pertaining to defining culture arise when asking the question: what is
culture? The difficulty here lies in that there is no consent to one definition of culture. In a statement,
Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1963) say that a number of sociologists and anthropologists view ‘culture’ as a
vague term and reject using it in scientific discourse. Nevertheless, in spite of their discretion about the
term, the term ‘culture’ is extensively used in many fields such as the information systems literature,
avoiding the attempt to define it, which may stem from the complexity of the term.
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However, despite the lack of one agreed-upon definition of culture, it serves the purpose of this essay to
look at some definitions in order to have an idea about what culture is and relate it to translation. One
definition is that which Newmark (1988) presents culture as “a particular society’s way of life and all that it
produces.” Bloch (1991) defines culture as what a society must and need to know to function efficiently in a
particular environment. In more extensive detailing than Newmark and Bloch and in a non-behaviourist
approach, Rohner (1984) defines culture as a symbolic-meaning organisation or system that determines how
individuals’ mind-set functions. Rohner emphasises how people comprehend and perceive their actions or
behaviours in light of two elements: 1) Systematicity of culture, in that it is categorically structured. 2)
Culture as an expressive means of individuals’ thoughts about the world. Additionally, Sapir (1949: 79)
notes that "ethnologists and culture historians use culture technically to exemplify any component or people
acquired socially in life, material and spiritual." In Lado’s definition (1957: 111), culture is "systems
structured for arranged and repeated behaviour". In addition, Bennett (1968: 10) views culture as “the mirror
for a particular society’s collective behaviour.”
In other words, culture is an accumulation of experience, which consists of belief, morals, traditions, arts,
knowledge, and any set of habits that people of a society attain. It also encompasses one language’s whole
behaviour and habits system, being a vital subset of that culture (Bahameed 2008). In general, culture
should be monolingual, although it is possible in a number of cases for a single language to traverse many
cultural boundaries and limits. For instance, several multi-cultural societies have adopted English as their
official and dominating language (Bahameed 2008).
Due to the complexity of the term and the numerous ways of approaching it, it has resulted in broad ranges
of disagreements among humanities scholars. While these opposing or different views do not have to be
considered as inadequate (Van de Vijver & Hutschemaekers, 1990), they may complement various aims by
dealing with different aspects or elements of culture. To demonstrate such differences, take two opposing
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extremes of schools of thought. On one hand, the first school views culture as a "superordinate organizer",
where it emphasises the behaviour, while the other school adopts a different angle and considers culture as a
regulating element, which includes education, economics and politics (Van de Vijver & Hutschemaekers,
1990: 5). The standpoints of both these schools should complement one another and be viewed as such, as
different takes on the matter at hand.
Culture can be, as some researchers suggest, most notably Hofstede (1980), measured statistically when
regarded as a collection of variables. Hofstede (1980) states that culture is not inherited but learned. In other
words, it is derived from individuals’ social environment, but not from their genes. He proposes that culture
is a paradigm administered by "human mental programming" (Hofstede, 1980: 15-16) that consists of three
levels. These levels are: (a) the universal level, which is inherited by and linked to the shared physical
nature of all humans; (b) the collective level, denoting to the culture, which is acquired from different
members of a group and is common within a group; and (c) the individual level, which is particular to the
member and can be both acquired and inherited. The human nature is compromised of the rudimentary units
of `mental programming,' e.g. being able to feel love, joy, sadness, anger, the environment observation, and
being able to make these feelings and observations reach others. Thus, culture modifies how individuals
express such abilities, influencing human actions and reactions in the process (Bahameed 2008).
Communicative interactions’ levels are subject to cultural elements (Ito & Nakakoji, 1996). A particular
society’s customs, ideas, interests and further cultural features are mirrored by language. In this process, the
cultural importance of a particular group of people’s qualities, such as religion, aesthetics, environment,
society…etc., is evident and can be seen in a language’s vocabulary of such a society (Bahameed 2008). For
example, Arabic demonstrates this linguistic feature to represent that cultural element by a variety of names
for winds, rain, dates, camels, horses, swords...etc. On the other hand, English shows a range of linguistic
marks accompanying the sea, as English native speakers are constantly accustomed to it in their
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environment. Another example, in the Muslim Arab societies, it is lawful for a man to marry up to four
wives if he can treat them equally and fairly, whereas in the Christian West, polygamy is prohibited"
(Makhlouf, 1996: 4). Polygamy, thus, is strange and unacceptable to the people of the West because
normally it never happens in their society and it is by no means part of their culture (Bahameed 2008).
After looking at translation and culture with their attempted definitions, the relation between them is strong
and they cannot be separable from one another. Cultural differences between languages can prove to be
challenging and may, to some extent, make the translation of such anomalies impossible (Durdureanu
2011). When translating between two languages, there is a kind of transferring or exchanging of some
cultural and linguistic features. Such an activity results in intercultural translation. In the next section, we
are going to highlight some of the difficulties that arise when translation between English and Arabic, in
light of their different settings and cultures.
Cultural Hindrances
1. Culture-Exclusive Expressions
When translating between from Arabic to English, the issue of culture-exclusive expressions is on the
horizon. Translators have to handle texts including sayings, Qur’anic verses, events occurred in the distant
past, proverbs, legendary personages , names of places and objects, plants animals…etc. that only exist in a
specific culture exclusively. Additionally, considering the expected challenges is of paramount importance
when dealing with interpretation of cultural contexts of worlds with entirely dissimilar traditions and
conventions, namely the Arabic-speaking world to the English-speaking world in this case. For this reason,
it is necessary to comprehending the text’s message or meaning before translating, but not just for the sake
of words. This necessitates that translators ought to familiarize themselves with the two cultures, i.e. Source
culture and Target culture, and be aware of the differences between them (Bahameed 2008).
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As it is influential to culture, translators have to take into account the environmental conditions and natural
settings of the two cultures; Arabic belongs to a desert area, entailing hot and dry climate conditions, while
English belongs to an area of cold and wet climate conditions. In consequence, a number of Arabic
expressions are associated with cold weather to show positivity and preferable inferences of happiness and
gladness to Arabs (Ilyas, 1989). Here is an example:
Source خبر يثلج الصدر
Transliteration khabarun yuthlij aS-Sadir
Back translation [News] [freezes] [the chest].
Target What great news!
Fig. 1
This relation between cold and happiness in the Arab culture is conceivable. However, coldness and
happiness does not exist in the English-speaking culture, which may result in failure to understand it, or
even to misunderstand it negatively (bad news) when mistranslated. This can be seen in this example: The
scream sent chills through them. Whereas the environmental counterpart in English expressions that entail
positive inferences are usually associated with warmth rather than cold, for example 'They have been given a
warm welcome' and ‘She is a warm-hearted (kind) person.' For this reason, when translating from English
text to Arabic texts, some problematic ecological expressions and idioms will pose challenges to translators.
These expressions are relative to the languages they belong to and do not necessarily have the same value in
different languages. In other words, these problematic expressions are not interchangeable between English
and Arabic; what is acceptable in English could be unacceptable in Arabic and vice versa (Ilyas, 1989).
Subsequently, proverb translations is not going to be an exception to this type of hindrances. Due to the lack
of equivalents or the counterparts between the two languages, ecology-based or culture-exclusive
expressions and concepts may prove to be perplexing. Yet, translating a number of proverbs becomes
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achievable if the translators take into consideration the fact that they should convey messages and not just
simply words. Look at the following Arabic proverb as an example:
Fig. 2
When it is rendered literally, it becomes "a companion of two professions is a liar ". This rendition presents
inadequate meaning to the English audience. On the other hand, there is a correspondent in English
(functional equivalence), and that is "A Jack-Of-All-Trades is a master of none."
As can be seen from the previous examples, translating culture-exclusive expressions and idioms can raise a
number of controversies. Bahameed (2008) states that the extent to which such problematic idioms and
expressions can be translated between two languages of two different cultures is greatly subject to the
translator: who the translator is, what their background is, and how they decode and re-encode the source
text and target text. He regards the translator as the decisive factor. The next section is going to discuss the
role translators play.
2. The Translator
Translators shoulder a great amount of responsibility to make the translation process either a success or
just a failure. In order to produce a sound translation of a text, the translators should act as the author’s
reflection in the Target Language and culture, representing the author’s feeling, thoughts and ideas when
translating. In other words, they think and feel as if they were the author when translating the texts, viewing
the world in the author’s eyes (Al-Najjar, 1984, cited in Bahameed, 2008).
However, this makes Rose’s argument of identifying with the author controversial by asking the questions,
‘Is it practical? And if so, how to achieve such identity with the author? It appears that Rose's condition for
Source صاحب صنعتين كذاب.
Transliteration SaaHib Sen’atein kaththaab
Back translation [A companion of] [two professions] [is a liar].
Target A Jack-Of-All-Trades is a master of none.
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achieving such identity with the author of the SL message does not seem to be practical for the reason that
the same SL text can have many different TL renditions even if the same translator processes it (Bahameed,
2008). This entails there are other significant factors that can influence the produced translation’s quality,
such as the background of the translator, the psychological state of the translator…etc. In this regard, Wilss
(1996) substantiated that the success of translators to deal with their translation is dependent on numerous
factors such as their experience, temperament, the pleasantness (or unpleasantness) of the textual content,
the correlation (or non-correlation) of the difficulty degree of the relevant text to be translated and the level
of the translator's competency.
It should be also intuitive to see the translator as a reader. Translators, first, analyse the author’s text in the
Source Language, decode it and then re-encode it in the Target Language. It is widely thought that the
translator’s task might seem simpler than that of the author because the author is the one who provides and
writes new information, whereas the translator simply reiterates what the author has provided or written
(Bahameed, 2008). However, the translator's task is easier said than done, as Shunnaq (1998) states:
“It is axiomatic to say, therefore, that the translator's task is more difficult than the writer's because the
former is confined to the ideas of the latter. Moreover, he is obliged to convey the ideas of the SLT into the
TLT giving utmost care to the linguistic and cultural norms of the TL, as well as its naturalness. In other
words, the translator is expected to produce a TLT, which should be equivalent, creative, and genuine, and
has the SL-cultural flavour.” (Shunnaq, 1998: 33).
This statement upon which this claim is made shows that the task of the translator is more challenging than
what it seems to be, because translation constantly copes with hindrances arising from the conveyance of the
message from the Source Language to the Target Language. Providing complete equivalence when
translating particular Arabic texts into English poses daunting challenges for Arab translators. Such
hindrances influence may extend to the translation of proverbial idioms and expressions. Which means
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translating with full equivalence seems to be out of reach for this type of text we are dealing with, namely
culture-exclusive expressions). This stems from 1) the constant pressure placed on the translator by their
desire to attain fidelity to both the semantics and syntax of the Source Language texts, and 2) their objective
to provide translations that meet varieties of tastes and cultural anticipations of the Target Language
audience (Bahameed, 2008).
This brings us to ask ‘who is the translator?’ The significance of this question is evident when we consider
the result of the translation process, counting in the variety of factors that can influence it, one of which is of
paramount importance, the translator. If one translator can produce many different versions of a specific
text, it is only natural to think that translators with different cultural backgrounds and languages will not
produce identical versions. For that reason, it is important that translators have to be mindful of and familiar
with the cultural extents of the environment from which the SL text is a part of, and a crucial prerequisite
for the successful rendition of the text (Bahameed, 2008).
3. Emotiveness
Another cultural hindrance is emotiveness. It is associated to the emotional intention of the speaker encoded
in the text. To comprehend a text, it requires more than just understanding words and their representations
of the world. There are further inherent factors, such as thoughts and feelings, in the texts to take into
account. Some varieties of text function as expressive or a stimulant for emotional reactions to a distinct
theme, while other types of text function as denotative only. In other words, some writers use a
neutral/objective language, whereas others use emotive/subjective language (Bahameed, 2008). Shunnaq
(1993) provided an example demonstrating this function in the following lexical item:
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Source Transliteration Back translation Target Function
.abyaD/ - white adj/ أبيض .1
qamiisun abyaD/ shirt white white shirt denotative/ قميص ابيض .2
thauratun bayDa/ revolution white white revolution connotative/ ثورة بيضاء .3
thauratun bayDa/ revolution white/ ثورة بيضاء .4peaceful, bloodless
revolution emotive
Fig. 3
qamiisun abyaD/ (white/ قميص ابيض abyaD/ (white, adj.) is descriptively or denotatively used as in/ أبيض
shirt) while emotively or connotatively as in ثورة بيضاء /thauratun bayDa/ (white revolution), which
metaphorically or connotatively means (peaceful, bloodless revolution). Consequently, emotiveness is
significantly associated with the notions of denotativeness and connotativeness. In a broad sense, that means
the denotative meaning is tantamount to the dictionary or referential meaning, while the connotative
meaning is tantamount to the emotive or expressive meaning. Subsequently, native speakers of a language
are more appreciative of the emotive meanings of words than the referential or denotative meaning. This is
why the emotive meaning analysis is by no means as easy as that of a referential meaning.
It is argued that an emotive meaning has a responsive function to words, i.e. particular words are wont to
provide emotive meaning to accomplish their function of triggering certain emotive responses by language
speakers (Shunnaq, 1993: 39). What determines this function is for what purpose the text is written or
spoken. Shunnaq concurs with Stevenson’s definition of emotiveness. Stevenson (1963) defines the emotive
meaning of a word or phrase as an intense and constant tendency, accumulated throughout the course of
linguistic history, enabling speakers to directly express their emotions, attitudes, or feelings; and it is also a
tendency aiming to evoke feelings, emotions or attitudes of the addressees whom the speakers’ remarks are
directed to.
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Occasionally translators are obliged to prioritise the elements of emotion and affection in the Source
Language over the informative elements if the context demands that, as Newmark (1981) suggested. In that
regard, Shunnaq (1993) shares Newmark’s suggestion because an Arab translator who copes with lexical
items of emotive nature into English should be attentive to this emotiveness priority as well as to the
context, the cultural context in particular, which can also extensively assist in the proper rendition and
analysis of the emotive meaning in the Target Language. Shunnaq continues to say that there are abundant
examples of lexical items or expressions in Arabic, which are challenging and incongruous when translating
into English in spite of the translators’ efforts and that translators may fail to convey their emotive and
connotative meanings, while only achieving to convey the denotative meanings.
That is also applicable to proverbial expressions and idioms, in that they are linguistically structured with
embedded and rooted emotions of a specific culture from which they are selected. When translating from
Arabic into English, proverbial expressions should have greater attention not only because of the amount of
wisdom they hold but also because they also splendidly mirror the modest beliefs, humour, and character of
Arabs (Bahameed, 2008). Theodory (1959) demonstrates this point using the following proverb:
Source الماء بطل التيمم ،إذا حضر.
Transliteration itha HaDara al-maa, baTala at-tayyammum.
Back translation [If] [present] [the water] [discontinued] [the use of earth].
Target If water is present for ablution, the use of earth is discontinued
Fig. 4
The rendition of التيمم at-tayyammum as "the use of earth" sounds odd and does not hold much emotiveness
in the English version. At-tayyammum (Arabic: تيمم ) refers to the dry ablution in Islam using sand or dust,
which may be performed in place of ablution “wudu” (Arabic: وضوء ), only if there is not sufficient clean
water or there is not readily available amount of it (Dweik & Suleiman 2013). This lexical item has emotive
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associations that are derived from and connote the dry conditions of Arabia. The aforementioned example
demonstrates how such linguistic expressions and idioms would evoke the emotions and feelings of the
Arabs (because it is mostly associated with the desert nature of Arabia). However, when translating such
expressions, they will not convey the same feeling to the Target Language audience due to the cultural
differences and the emotiveness level. This is why responses can greatly vary between SL audience and TL
audience, and it justify this proverb for being more emotive to Arabs than its English translation on English-
speakers (Shunnaq, 1993).
Conclusion
After discussing the previous hindrances or difficulties, it is safe to assume that applying one translation
theory, in this case the equivalence theory, to overcome cultural challenges when translating texts in Arabic
to English may not be the wisest decision. The cultural element must be considered in order to achieve
accurate translation with more emotive influence on the TL audience. One text is subject to variable factors
that affect the translation outcome, thus we need to incorporate different strategies to preserve the fidelity
and meaning of the text, syntactically and semantically.
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References
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