Article published In:
BabelVol. 62:1 (2016) ► pp.21–38
Pragmatic failure in translating Arabic implicatures into English
The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it attempts to demonstrate that Arabic utterances involving euphemisms, tautologies and ironies (henceforth Arabic implicatures) lend themselves readily to a Gricean interpretation and, second, it shows how Arabic implicatures in their immediate, social context of use exhibit pragmatic failures when rendered into English. The study examines and analyzes ten Arabic utterances involving implicatures in their original contexts of situation taken from Mahfouz’s (1947) Ziqāq
al-Midaq which was translated by LeGassick (1966) into ‘Midaq Alley’, and Ṭayib Ṣaleḥ’s (1966) Mawsimu al-Hijra ila ashShamāl, which was rendered by Davies (1969) into ‘the Season of Migration to the North’. The study argues that to avoid pragmatic failure when translating Arabic implicatures into English, emphasis should be placed on conveying the pragmatic import of these utterances by the employment of various translation strategies ranging from those capturing the form and/or function to those capturing the communicative sense independently.
References (27)
Allan, Keith, and Kate Burridge. 1991. Euphemism and Dysphemism: Language used as Shield and Weapon. New York: Oxford University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Baker, Mona. 1992. In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation. London: Routledge. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Barbe, Katharina. 1993. “Isn’t it Ironic that… Explicit Irony Markers”. Journal of Pragmatics 201: 579–590. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Brown, Penelope, and Levinson Steven. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Farghal, Mohammad. 1992. “Colloquial Jordanian Arabic tautologies”. Journal of Pragmatics 171: 223–240. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Farghal, Mohammad. 1994. “Ideational Equivalence in Translation”. In Language, Discourse and Translation in the West and Middle East, ed. by R. de Beaugrande, A. Shunnaq and M. Heliel, 55–63. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Farghal, Mohammad. 1995b. “Euphemism in Arabic: A Gricean Interpretation”. Anthropological Linguistics 37 (3): 336–378.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Farghal, Mohammed, and Ahmad Borini. 1997. “Pragmareligious Failure in Translating Arabic Politeness Formulas into English: Evidence from Maḥfouz’s Awlad Haritna”. Multilingua 16 (1): 77–99. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Gibbs, Raymond, and Jennifer O’Brien. 1991. “Psychological Aspects of Irony Understanding”. Journal of Pragmatics 161: 523–530. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Grice, H. Paul. 1975. “Logic and Conversation”. In Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, ed. by Peter Cole and Jerry Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Horn, L.R. 2007. “Neo-Gricean Pragmatics: A Manichaean Manifesto”. In Pragmatics, ed. by N. Burton-Roberts, 158–183. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Leech, Geoffrey. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Levinson, Steven. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Levinson, Steven. 2000. Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics, Vol. 21. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Mahfouz, Najib. 1947. Ziqaq Al-Midaq. Cairo: The Library of Egypt, (Translated by Trevor Le Gassick, 1966, as Midaq Alley, London: Heinemann).![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Mateo, Marta. 1995. “The Translation of Irony”. Meta 40 (1): 171–177. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Miki, Etsuzo. 1996. “Evocation and Tautologies”. Journal of Pragmatics 251: 635–648. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Nida, E. 1964. Toward a Science of Translation. Leiden: E.J. Brill.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Okamoto, Shigeko. 1993. “Nominal Repetitive Constructions in Japanese: The Tautology Controversy Revisited”. Journal of Pragmatics 201: 433–466. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Pitts, A. 2005. “Assessing the Evidence for Intuitions about What is Said”. Unpublished manuscript. University of Cambridge.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Pratt, Mary. 1977. Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse. Bloomington: Indiana University.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Ṣaliḥ, Ṭayeb. 1966. Mawsimu Al-Hijra ila As-Shamal. Beirut: Dar Al-Awda. (Translated by Denys Johnson Davies, 1969, as The Season of Migration to the North, New York: Review Books Classics).![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Searle, John. 1979. Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Sysoeva, A., and Jaszczolt, K. 2007. “Composing Utterance Meaning: An Interface between Pragmatics and Psychology”. Paper presented at the
10th International Pragmatics Conference
, Göteborg, July 2007.
Thawabteh, Mohammad. 2012. “The Translatability of Euphemism and Dysphemism in Arabic-English Subtitling”. Lexis 71: 145–156.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1987. “Boys will be Boys: Radical Semantics vs. Radical Pragmatics”. Language 63 (1): 95–114. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 june 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.