Discourse in Translation

Discourse in Translation
This book explores the discourse in and of translation within and across
cultures and languages. From the macro aspects of translation as an inter-
cultural project to actual analysis of textual ingredients that contribute to
translation and interpreting as discourse, the ten chapters represent different
explorations of ‘global’ theories of discourse and translation. Offering interro-
gations of theories and practices within different sociocultural environments
and traditions (Eastern and Western), Discourse in Translation considers a
plethora of domains, including historiography, ethics, technical and legal
discourse, subtitling, and the politics of media translation as representation.
This is key reading for all those working on translation and discourse within
translation studies and linguistics.
Said Faiq, FRSA, is Professor of Intercultural Studies and Translation at the

American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, UAE.
Discourse in Translation
Edited by Said Faiq

First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 selection and editorial matter, Said Faiq; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the
authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted 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 identification 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
Names: Faiq, Said, 1962– editor.
Title: Discourse in translation / edited by Said Faiq.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. |
Includes bibliographical references and index. | Includes filmography.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018027269 | ISBN 9781138298163 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781315098791 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Translating and interpreting. | Discourse analysis.
Classification: LCC P306 .D55 2019 | DDC 418/.02–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018027269
ISBN: 978-1-138-29816-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-09879-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Out of House Publishing
T h is vo lu m e is d ed ica t ed t o Ba sil Hatim
A Fe st sc h r i f t
Professor Basil Hatim, a gentleman and an internationally renowned scholar

and teacher. His model/theory of discourse/text and translation has influ-
enced generations of students around the globe in their exploration of the
intricacies of intercultural communication (a quick Google Scholar search
shows his prolific contributions to and standing in academia).
Basil Hatim completed his undergraduate studies at the University of
Baghdad in 1968, then moved to Abha in Saudi Arabia, where he taught
English for the Ministry of Education. In 1971, he headed for the UK,
where he did a postgraduate diploma in teaching English as a second lan-
guage (TESL) at University College of North Wales Bangor. This was fol-
lowed by a move to Lebanon, where he taught English while doing his MA
at the American University of Beirut (AUB). This was interrupted by a one-
year fellowship at the Atlantic College in South Wales, doing research in
applied linguistics and helping to pioneer the now-renowned International
Baccalaureate (IB). Then he returned to Lebanon, where he obtained his MA
in teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) from AUB in 1976, leav-
ing immediately afterwards for Libya, where he helped to found the English
department at the newly established Institute of Petroleum in Tripoli. He left
in 1978 for the UK and Exeter University where, under the supervision of
Reinhard Hartmann, he completed his PhD in applied linguistics. In 1981,
he joined Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, helping to establish both the
MA programme in Translation and Interpreting and the doctoral programme
in Translation and Linguistics. In 1999, he left for the American University
of Sharjah, where he still is and has established and developed a prestigious
master’s programme in English/Arabic Translation and Interpreting.
What the contributors say about Basil Hatim

We came from two different worlds, but when Basil and I first met many years
ago at a translation conference, we established a rather large ‘middle space’ of
agreement based on our common views regarding the nature of ‘translation’
and its practice. We thus established a collegial bond of friendship and mutual
respect that has continued to the present day. I am most pleased, therefore, to
cooperate together with others in paying this well-deserved verbal tribute to
a prolific and groundbreaking scholar who has influenced us all in so many
ways. Ernst Wendland
It is a very difficult task you ask me here! Actually, I do not know Basil very
well. I have always enjoyed our meetings and, if I try to summarize the rea-
sons that lie behind this pleasure, I think that it is because he combines all the
qualities one wishes to find in every colleague (and yet seldom finds!): schol-
arship and scientific rigour, wit and humour, civility and humility, and a won-
derful ability at listening and building up a conversation. Richard Jacquemond
Basil Hatim is one of the pioneers of the study of translation and discourse.
His early publications were an inspiration to me in my own work as a new
researcher in the emerging field of discourse- based interpreting studies.
There are only a few academic authors whose work is consistently insightful,
engaging, and totally logical –Basil is one of them. Sandra Hale
Professor Hatim’s books were significant to me. They led me into the world
of translation in a linguistic perspective by delineating the ways of incorp-
orating, in particular, Systemic Functional Linguistics into translation in a
systematic and in-depth manner. Hui Wang
Honorific titles such as ‘Master’ or ‘First Teacher’ are often reserved for the
scholarly luminaries of the past, and it is rare to find a figure among contem-
poraneous colleagues who deserves such praise. However, in the case of Basil
Hatim, such laudatory epithets would not be out of place, given his field-
defining contributions to the theoretical and methodological frameworks of
translation studies. Indeed, there is no one who currently works in this field
except that they are deeply indebted to him. Gavin Picken
Professor Basil Hatim stands as a true pioneer in the approach that will prove
to be the key to translation studies in years to come: the centrality of language
and linguistics –being texts that translators translate –and the efficiency of
discourse-analysis tools to shed light on how translators construct reality
across cultures. Ovidi Carbonell i Cortés
I first worked with Basil Hatim at Heriot-Watt University in 1986. As well as

being an inspirational teacher, Basil was a pioneer of the textual approach to
translation studies and has for decades been one of the leading figures in the
discipline. James Dickins
Professor Basil Hatim is a well-known scholar who has left indelible marks
in applied linguistics in general and in translation studies in particular. His
contributions have significantly influenced the state of art in these two fields.
His work is a necessary read for every researcher/student in the field. It is
really a source of pride for me to have known Professor Hatim since 1989.
Mohammed Farghal
A scholar and a gentleman whose ideas have been transmitted far and wide,
particularly in the Arabic interpreting translation programmes in Australia.
Muhammad Y Gamal
Well-known in translation studies, discourse analysis, and theories of trans-

lation, Basil Hatim is a scholar who devoted his life to filling a gap in the
translation literature regionally and internationally through his unique con-
tribution by writing vital, accessible, and inviting books in such areas of
research. Rajai Al-Khanji
I have known Basil Hatim for over three decades. A teacher, a mentor, a
friend, a colleague, Basil Hatim is a rare human being. Generations of applied
linguists have been affected by his model of discourse/communication ana-
lysis; even those who do not agree with it have found themselves revising their
‘cherished’ concepts, models, and theories. A towering figure in discourse/text
and translation studies as applied semiotics. Said Faiq
Contents
Acknowledgements xi
Contributors xii
Foreword: Pragmatics on the hoof! Relevance as
effort and reward xvii
Basil Hatim
Introduction: Translation as D-discourse 1

Said Faiq
1 Translating ‘translation’: What do translators ‘translate’? 8

Ernst Wendland
2 Theory and practice in the French discourse of translation 31

Richard Jacquemond
3 Specialist legal interpreters for a fairer justice system 47

Sandra Hale
4 Investigating mediation in translation 67

Hui Wang
5 Translation as the instigator of a new Arabic discourse in

Islamic intellectual history 91
Gavin N. Picken
6 A toolbox for critical translation analysis in specialized

discourse (English/Spanish) 110
Ovidi Carbonell Cortés
x Contents
7 Types of connotative meaning, and their significance for

translation 135
James Dickins
8 A case study of modality in legal translation: The Omani

constitution 163
Mohammed Farghal
9 The translation of film titles in the Egyptian film industry 184

Muhammad Y Gamal
10 Strategic media misrepresentation and the Arab–Israeli

conflict 200
Rajai Al-Khanji
Index 217
Acknowledgements
My most sincere thanks and gratitude to the contributors.

Special thanks go to Ernst Wendland, David Wilmsen, Mohammed
Farghal, Muhammed Ayish, and Michael Springer for their valuable com-
ments and insights.
I am particularly grateful to Louisa Semlyen, Laura Sandford, and Hannah
Rowe of Routledge, for their superb editorial handling of this project.
Contributors
Ernst Wendland has a PhD in African Languages and Literature, University

of Wisconsin-Madison, is an instructor at Lusaka Lutheran Seminary,
and a dissertation examiner in Zambian languages at the University of
Zambia. A former UBS translation consultant, he still serves as Professor
Extraordinary in the Centre for Bible Interpretation and Translation in
Africa, Department of Ancient Studies, Stellenbosch University, South
Africa. He maintains a website of publications at htttps://sun.academia.
edu/EWENDLAND
Gavin N. Picken is a professor in the College of Islamic Studies at Hamad
Bin Khalifa University, Qatar. Previously, he taught at the universities
of London, Edinburgh, and Cambridge, and the American University
of Sharjah. His field of competence and research focus has been clas-
sical Islamic literature in Arabic as it relates to Islamic jurisprudence,
theology, and mysticism, as part of the evolution of Muslim intellec-
tual history. He has authored several articles and chapters on Islamic
law, Sufism, and the translation of Islamic literature. In addition, he is
the author of Spiritual Purification in Islam: The Life and Works of al-
Muhasibi (London and New York: Routledge, 2011) and the editor of a
four-volume compendium of selected articles titled Islamic Law (London
and New York: Routledge, 2010).
Hui Wang is a lecturer and programme director of the MA in Mass Media
Translation programme in the Department of English, Xi’an Jiaotong
Liverpool University (XJTLU), China. She received her PhD from City
University of Hong Kong in 2010. Prior to joining XJTLU in August
2014, she taught in the Department of Translation, the Chinese University
of Hong Kong. She has published extensively in various renowned jour-
nals, including Meta, the Interpreter and Translator Trainer, Translation
Quarterly, Chinese Translator’s Journal, and Foreign Language Teaching
and Research. Her research interests include discourse/text analysis for
translation purposes, translation and web localization, media translation,
as well as translator training.
Notes on contributors xiii
James Dickins is professor of Arabic at the University of Leeds. He has a

BA in Arabic and Turkish from Cambridge (1980) and a PhD in Arabic
Linguistics from Heriot-Watt University (1990). He taught English in
Sudan from 1980 to 1982 and has taught Arabic –and more recently
Arabic>English translation –at the University of Cambridge, Heriot-Watt
University, and the universities of St. Andrews, Durham, Salford and Leeds.
His publications include Standard Arabic: An Advanced Course (1998, with
Janet Watson), Extended Axiomatic Linguistics (1999), Thinking Arabic
Translation (2002; 2nd edition 2016, with Sandor Hervey and Ian Higgins),
and Sudanese Arabic: Phonematics and Syllable Structure (2007).
Mohammed Farghal is professor of linguistics and translation in the
Department of English, University of Kuwait, Kuwait. He is the
author of several books, including Advanced Issues in Arabic- English
Translation Studies (2012) and co-author of Contextualizing Translation
Theories: Aspects of Arabic-English Interlingual Communication (2015). He
also initiated the series Papers in Arabic-English Translation Studies (Vol.
1, 2015, Vol. 2, 2017, and Vol. 3, 2018). Professor Farghal has published
widely in top academic international journals (Journal of Pragmatics,
Anthropological Linguistics, Multilingua, IRAL, Babel, Target, Perspectives,
Meta, and so forth), as well as in several regional university journals. He
has also translated many works between English and Arabic, including The
Road (Cormac McCarthy, 2006) and Maps (Nuruddin Farah, 1986).
Muhammad Y Gamal grew up in Alexandria and is a graduate of the Faculty
of Al Alsun at Ain Shams University in Cairo. He taught translation stud-
ies at several academic institutions in Australia. He is a professional practi-
tioner and holds the highest Australian accreditation in Arabic translation.
He is also a United Nations translator and works as a senior Arabic inter-
preter for the Australian Federal Government in Canberra. He is a leading
scholar on audiovisual translation in the Arab world and has published
widely in international publications, both in print and online. His research
interests include audiovisual translation policy, verbo-visual translation,
visual metaphor in Arabic, translation in the digital age, translation and
Nahda (Arab Renaissance) studies, and the history of Al Alsun. He also
supervises doctoral research on several aspects of Arabic translation and
serves on the editorial board of several journals in Japan, Korea, France,
Greece, and the United States.
Ovidi Carbonell Cortés is full professor of translation studies and director of
the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies at the Translation
and Interpreting Institute, College of Humanities and Social Sciences,
Hamad bin Khalifa University, Qatar. He received his BA in English
studies at the University of Alicante, Spain, his PhD in English studies at
the University of Salamanca, Spain, and his M.Litt. in Oriental Studies,
xiv Notes on contributors
Oxon. For over two decades, he taught translation studies at the University
of Salamanca, where he was director of the Masters in Translation and
Intercultural Mediation (2005–2010) and director of the Spanish–Japanese
Cultural Center (2010–2015). He has also taught at the universities of
Salford (UK), James Madison (USA), and Benito Juárez (Mexico). His
research interests include translation theory, ideology, critical discourse
analysis, cultural translation, intercultural communication, and technical
and scientific translation (English/Spanish/Catalan/Arabic/Japanese). His
publications include Traducir al Otro: traducción, exotismo, poscolonial-
ismo (1997, Arabic translation 2012); Traducción y cultura, de la ideología
al texto (1999); Übersetzen ins Andere (2002, with Myriam Salama-Carr);
Ideology and Cross-Cultural Encounters –Research and Methodology in
Translation and Interpreting (2009); Tresor del Valencià Meridional (2013,
with J. Colomina and J. Tormo); Culguage in/of Translation from Arabic
(2014, with Said Faiq y Ali al-Manna); Presencias japonesas: la interac-
ción con Occidente en la literatura y las otras artes (2014); Intercultural
Translation in a Global World (with Izaskun Elorza, 2015). He is currently
co-editing with Sue-Ann Harding the forthcoming Routledge Handbook
of Cultural Translation. As a professional translator, he has rendered into
Spanish several essays on intercultural communication, political theory,
earth sciences, and social network theory, including essential works by
James S. Coleman, Stanley Wasserman, Katherine Faust, Viviana Zelizer,
and John Lazarsfeld.
Rajai Al-Khanji is a professor in the Department of English, University of
Jordan (UJ), since 1983. He is a recipient of several research and study
grants, including the American International Development Agency
grant for his BA degree at AUB in Lebanon 1970–1974, SUNY Fredonia
College grant for his MA degree, a fellowship for his doctorate from the
University of Delaware, 1980–1983, a senior Fulbright grant on child
language acquisition at SUNY Fredonia in 1993, and other short-term
fellowships in Spain, Delaware, and North Carolina. As an adminis-
trator, Professor Al-Khanji was appointed director of the Language
Center and chairman of the Modern Language Department at UJ (1996–
1998). He was also appointed as dean of the College of Arts (September
2002–September 2006). He teaches a wide variety of courses, from intro-
ductions to linguistics to advanced courses for MA and PhD students,
focusing on translation, discourse analysis, psycholinguistics, interpret-
ation, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics, among others. He received the
Distinguished Research Award in 2005 from the Jordanian Ministry of
Higher Education. His professional activities include supervising and
producing Shakespeare’s play Much Ado about Nothing, performed at
Jerash International Festival by Department of English students in
2005, playing the leading role in an educational film produced by the
Notes on contributors xv
US Information Agency in 1981, working as a senior interpreter for the

American CBS network in 1990–1991, and serving as a senior member
on several committees for updating English textbooks as well as advising
textbook writers for the Jordanian Ministry of Education in 1987–1989.
His last sabbatical was spent in 2015 at the University of Maryland as
a visiting research scholar conducting research on translation quality
assessment for the works of Khalil Gibran.
Richard Jacquemond has since 1999 been teaching modern Arabic language and
literature at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Aix-
Marseille, France, and is currently director of the Institut de Recherches et
d’Etudes sur les mondes arabes et musulmans (IREMAM, CNRS) in France.
After graduating in law and sociology, Professor Jacquemond studied the
Arabic language in both France and Cairo. He was then appointed director
of the Translation Department of the French Cultural Mission in Egypt
(1988–1995). This experience was the foundation for his doctoral thesis,
which he later published as a book (English translation: Conscience of the
Nation. Writers, State and Society in Modern Egypt, by David Tresilian,
Cairo: AUC Press, 2008). He publishes his research in French, English,
and Arabic and is a member of the editorial board of Alif, Journal of
Comparative Poetics (AUC, Cairo), The Translator, and Arabica. One of the
leading French translators of modern Arabic literature, he has had some
twenty translations published, among them eight novels by Egyptian writer
Sonallah Ibrahim. He is currently preparing a book on the politics and poet-
ics of translation from and into Arabic in modern Arab culture.
Said Faiq, FRSA, is professor of intercultural studies and translation at the
American University of Sharjah (UAE). Prior to this, he worked in Africa,
the Middle East, and the UK. He is a teacher and researcher of inter-
cultural studies. His research sits at the interface of intercultural commu-
nication, media and representation, translation/interpreting, English, and
linguistics. He has published extensively on these areas.
Sandra Hale is professor of interpreting and translation at the University
of New South Wales, where she teaches interpreting in community, legal,
and conference settings. She is a National Accreditation Authority for
Translators and Interpreters (NAATI) accredited Spanish<>English
translator and certified conference interpreter and has many years of
experience interpreting in community, legal, and international settings.
Her qualifications include a BA in interpreting and translation, a dip-
loma of education (Spanish and Italian), a master of applied linguistics,
and PhD in court interpreting/forensic linguistics. She was conferred a
Doctorate Honoris Causa in recognition for her contributions to com-
munity interpreting research by the University of Antwerp in April 2014.
Much of her research has been in legal interpreting, and she is currently
xvi Notes on contributors
involved in a number of funded research projects dealing with various

aspects of interpreting in court, police, and medical settings. She is the
author of The Discourse of Court Interpreting (2004/2010) and Community
Interpreting (2007), translated into Spanish and Japanese, and is co-author
of four other books, including Research Methods in Interpreting (2013),
with Jemina Napier. She has also published numerous journal articles and
book chapters. She is a fellow of AUSIT and a fellow of the Australian
Academy of the Humanities. She was recently involved in the development
of National Standards for Interpreting in Australian Courts and Tribunals,
sponsored by the Judicial Council on Cultural Diversity. For more infor-
mation: https://hal.arts.unsw.edu.au/about-us/people/sandra-hale/
Foreword: Pragmatics on the hoof!
Relevance as effort and reward
Basil Hatim
Without revealing the ‘secretive’ nature of publishing this volume in his

honour, I casually asked Basil to give me a ‘short, light-hearted piece on an
issue of interest to start-up students of pragmatics’, for a senior seminar.
Here is what Basil jotted down which, I felt, speaks volumes of how passion-
ate (dare I say, obsessed, driven) the man has always been regarding his text
linguistics. I hope publishing the story here, as the foreword to this volume,
will meet with his approval, but if not, then it would be too late, for what is
done cannot be undone! Said Faiq
Let me at the outset urge you to entertain the assumption that the story I am
about to tell you in this short piece is ‘relevant’. It may actually turn out not
to be, but that is neither here nor there. As textually competent users of lan-
guage, we all tend to entertain the assumption that texts produced or received
are relevant. As I have just pointed out, you might indeed reach the conclu-
sion that the story has not after all been relevant, but you would (as a text
receiver) make such a judgement only after you have given me (the text pro-
ducer) the benefit of the doubt that I would not put you to unnecessary effort.
A corollary to this would be the assumption that any effort exerted would
somehow be commensurately rewarded. Let us call this layer of assumption-
making in our speaker-hearer relationship ‘general relevance’.
This is actually a true story, which I want to use to tell the ‘pragmatic story
of relevance’, in a nutshell. So, let’s get started.
In a café in town some years ago, I met by chance four of my former stu-
dents of translation, who told me that they had now all found good jobs in
translation/public relations. In the course of the conversation, the subject
of how useful their training had been came up, and the point debated was
whether translator training should be ‘practical’ (usually taken to mean non-
theoretical), ‘theoretical’ (i.e., non-practical), or a combination of the two per-
spectives (i.e., basically, the practitioners taking care of the programme on
Monday and Tuesday, and the theoreticians handling the rest of the week!).
Forgive the sarcasm, but I have spent quite a portion of my life arguing against
such spurious distinctions and trying to promote the motto, ‘There is noth-
ing more practical than a good theory’. To demonstrate this to my budding
xviii Foreword
translators there and then in the café, I decided to give them a little quiz. In a
friendly way, I asked them to translate into English a seemingly straightforward
sentence, with an item ‫ لخص‬that I knew would only too readily elicit the word
‘summarized’, and another item, ‫عامة‬, which I also knew would equally readily
elicit ‘general’, neither of which would actually do in the present context:
The sentence was
‫ولخص شولتز المجاالت الخمسة الرئيسية التي يريد فيها عمال مشتركا وقال ان من بين هذه‬
‫…المجاالت دراسة عامة تجريها‬
For the benefit of those who do not read Arabic, this is an unidiomatic back-
translation of the text:
Shultz summarized the five principal areas in which he wanted common
action, including a general study conducted.
Before I proceed with what happened, let me explain what I mean by
‘pragmatic competence’. As a text receiver you should at this point in inter-
acting with my story have made a similar assumption to the one you made
earlier, namely that what you were about to hear must be relevant. The
new assumption that you might now make (and the one that the students
being tested in the café should have made) is simply that the items tested
must be sufficiently challenging to be worth testing. That is, ‫ لخص‬just can-
not be as bland as to yield something like ‘summarized’, nor ‫ عامة‬to be
as bland as to yield something like ‘general’. Instead, an assumption must
be entertained that runs something like this: there is more than meets the
eye in being presented with a seemingly innocuous utterance such as ‫لخص‬
and ‫ عامة‬with these two items conveying far more than the run-of-the-mill
meanings of ‘summarized’ and ‘general’. To put it differently, the students
and any translator of this text should entertain the assumption that had
‫ لخص‬simply meant ‘summarized’, for example, I would not have gone to the
trouble of using it in a test to demonstrate pragmatic competence. Let us
still refer to this second layer of my café interaction as ‘specific relevance’.
Schematically:
Foreword xix
GENERAL RELEVANCE
SPECIFIC RELEVANCE
KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD
To move on to the middle layer, a third assumption to be entertained by any

text receiver/translator (and by my students in the café) should be something
like this: government ministers (e.g., the US secretary of state, no less!) can-
not be reasonably expected to engage in mundane activities such as ‘summar-
izing’ or indeed discussing ‘generalities’ (If secretaries of state were to do that,
what would junior clerks in the office do?). Let us call this, ‘Knowledge of the
World Assumption’.
More subtly, perhaps, you, my students in the café or indeed any trans-
lator, should in the present situation operate on a further, crucial assumption,
namely that there are things that ‘news reports’ simply do or do not report,
and ‘news reporters’ would or would not do. Assuming that the secretary of
state actually did engage in mundane activities such as ‘summarizing’ or ‘talk-
ing generalities’, these would be areas that do not, would not, and should not
make the international page in any reputable newspaper. Reporters would
simply not be interested in people ‘summarizing’, for example. This is not
unrelated to text politeness (the do’s and don’ts of serious journalism). We
will call this ‘Territorial Assumption’.
newgenprepdf
xx Foreword
1. GENERAL RELEVANCE
2. SPECIFIC RELEVANCE
3. KNOWLEDGE OF THE
WORLD
4. TERRITORY
To return to the café scene, my former students reflected on the text and took
longer than I anticipated. This was a good sign. But even better, they refused
to fall into the trap I set them, which was to say that the text was ‘absolutely
no problem’, ‘a piece of cake’; that ‫ لخص‬was ‘summarized’ and that ‫ عامة‬was
‘general’. Much more to the point, and to my immense pleasure and delight,
the students started to give me alternatives in the semantic region of ‘high-
lighted’ and ‘comprehensive’ for the two items in question. Their pragmatic
competence had stood them in good stead, I thought – the various assump-
tions must have been made:
• Would I bother to test items such as ‫ لخص‬or ‫ عامة‬simply to mean what

their surface forms said they did (i.e., ‘summed up’ and ‘general’)?
•• Would secretaries of state do office secretaries’ jobs?
•• Would news reports cover mundane activities such as ‘summarizing’?
• All these plus the crowning assumption that we made at the outset: Would
I put you to the trouble of telling you an ‘irrelevant’ story?
Basil Hatim
American University of Sharjah
Sharjah, UAE
March 2018
Introduction
Translation as D-discourse
Said Faiq
Translation as D-d iscourse

Summing up the shift in translation studies that started in the 1980s, Hatim
(2012: 83–84) writes:
Under what may be termed ‘the ideology of translation’, translation the-

orists…have become interested in such aspects of the process as:
• the choice of works to be translated (what is valued and what is

excluded)
•• the power structure which controls the production and consump-
tions of translations
•• who has access to translation and who is denied access?
• what is omitted, added or altered in seeking to control the message?
This shift came about because translation examined ‘under the auspices of
traditional dichotomies experienced a crisis when the untenable nature of
value-free and detached point- of-
view and the embeddedness of human
sciences in culture and ideology started to be foregrounded in Translation
Studies’ (Dizdar 2012: 58). As such, the injection of ideas and paradigms
from a basket of disciplines (discourse, cultural, colonial, postcolonial,
gender, conflict studies, and so forth) into the exploration of translation and
translating has contributed a great deal to the enlargement of the discipline
and the areas it is deployed to investigate. In particular, the view of culture-
modelling through translation has raised questions that cannot be adequately
answered by the conventionalized notions of equivalence, accuracy, fidelity,
or ‘sourceer vs targeteer’ approaches to translation and translating.
Examined through the prism of discourse analysis, translation, as both
theory and practice, can bring together a number of analytical tools, lin-
guistic and non-linguistic, to explore language in use and the agenda-setting
or framing involved in such use. As such, translation naturally involves all
that discourse analysis (or critical discourse analysis) entails, including cul-
ture, as Robyns (1994: 406) appropriately argues:
2 Said Faiq
[I]‌n order to study the role that translation plays in the dynamics of self-
definition, the focus of attention has to be shifted from individual texts
or linguistic features in translation (however ‘contextualized’ the analysis
may be) to interference between discourses and discursive structures and
strategies.
However, despite the many shifts, there are still those who see little contribu-
tion to the study of translation through the prism of disciplines such as dis-
course analysis. Pym (1992: 227–228), for example, suggests:
I believe that most existing forms of discourse analysis are fundamen-

tally inadequate to the problems of translation and therefore potentially
misleading for the development of translation theory. My arguments
will take the form of three general points: 1) Contemporary use of the
term discourse is in a mess and probably deserves to be abandoned;
2) The only kind of discourse analysis strictly pertinent to translation
is that which sees translation as discursive work; 3) Far from passively
receiving externally derived analyses, translation itself should become
a discovery procedure for the location and delimitation of discourses.
That is, the limits and frustrations of most forms of discourse analysis
might profitably be overcome through a judicious application of trans-
lation analysis.
It is certainly true that, like any other social science and humanities frame-
work, discourse analysis has gone through a number of redefinitions and
repositioning to investigate old and emerging social phenomena. It has often
been examined under different rubrics, but all share one common denomin-
ator: human interaction through language should be examined at both the
macro and micro strata of communication. Such rubrics include cognitive-
structural models of discourse analysis, frame analysis, and narrative ana-
lysis, for example. Still, most models of discourse analysis consider textual
realizations by users within particular contexts (culture/ideology).
This is the very job the chapters in this volume attempt to do, and what
Basil Hatim has advocated for some five decades: the study of texts (tex-
ture and structure) within contexts (pragmatic, semiotic, and communica-
tive dimensions). As a discourse, translation does not exist! It occurs when
a text is utilized by a user (= translator) to produce another text with all
the likes, dislikes, prejudices, ideology, and so forth of this user. Translation
is thus based on the translator, as user in the dynamics of information–
communication–knowledge base/body. In the case of the source culture, a
text is information communicated with the purpose of being used by receivers
to add to exiting similar works, or to create new ‘files’ in the knowledge body/
base. Axiomatically, the same process and purpose are assumed to apply to
the target text and its receivers.
Translation as D-discourse 3
As noted above, this web of communication is what discourse analysis

explores at two levels of communication: macro and micro. The macro-level,
or what Gee (2004) calls Discourse (with a capital D), investigates aspects of
intentionality, acceptability, situationality, informativity, and intertextuality
(sociocultural practices of discourse analysis). The micro-level, or what Gee
(2004) labels discourse (with a lower-case d) largely investigates aspects of
cohesion and coherence (socio-textual practices of discourse analysis). Gee
(2004: 6) writes:
The distinction between ‘Discourse’ with a ‘big D’ and ‘discourse’ with

a ‘little d’ plays a role throughout this book. This distinction is meant to
do this: we, as ‘applied linguists’ or ‘sociolinguists’, are interested in how
language is used ‘on site’ to enact activities and identities. Such language-
in-use, I will call ‘discourse’ with a ‘little d’. But activities and identities
are rarely ever enacted through language alone.
So, translation as Discourse invokes higher-order levels of analysis (often

pre-existing translation itself as both process and product). Discourse may
be said to encompass culture, understood as what the members of a par-
ticular community ought to know about how to act, interact, and interpret
their experience and texts in distinctive ways. These ways are based on specific
components of culture, including a particular history, social structure, values
and beliefs, religion, and language, where the latter expresses and gives shape
to the other components of culture (Discourse). So, Discourse involves the
totality of attitudes towards the world, towards events, other cultures and
peoples, and the manner in which the attitudes are mediated (Fairclough
1995) or, as van Dijk (1998: 8) succinctly puts it,
the basis of the social representations shared by members of a group.

This means that ideologies allow people, as group members, to organize
the multitude of social beliefs about what is the case, good or bad, right
or wrong, for them, and to act accordingly (emphasis in the original).
Culture is also assumed to cover material elements (material culture), which

generally refers to products and habits such as food, clothes, sleeping norms,
marriage and divorce ceremonies, prayers, modes of transportation, habitat,
flora and fauna, and so forth. The elements of microculture do not usually
represent serious difficulties in translation, and can be remedied through foot-
notes, although this may affect readability. When celebrating cultural differ-
ences, almost all media outlets and both governmental and non-governmental
bodies unfortunately focus on aspects of microculture (programmes, shows,
campaigns, festivals, and so forth, on different dance traditions, cuisines, and
clothes, which are seen as instances of cultural otherness). But, aspects of
microculture may well become signatures (icons) reflecting macroculture, and
4 Said Faiq
as such they trigger underlying perceptions derived from Discourse (turban,

beard, veil, camel, and so forth).
Although language is considered an element of culture (Discourse), it is
rather one side of a coin whose other side is culture in its totality. They are
both so intertwined that it is difficult to conceive of one without the other
(Bassnett 1998). A very basic definition of language is that it is no more than
the combination of a good grammar book and a good monolingual dic-
tionary. But these two do not capture what users actually do with the gram-
mar rules and the words neatly listed in dictionaries; instead, language use
very much depends on users, and language assumes its importance as the mir-
ror of the ways members of a culture perceive reality, identity, self, and other
(Discourse), and so language use is the domain of discourse.
For translation, and in the case of the target culture, the semiotic triad of
producer, text, and receiver of D/discourse is theoretically supposed to be
‘replicated’. But is this always true? Perhaps for certain pragmatic texts, as
Lefevere (1999) labels them, but it is not the case with non-pragmatic text
such as literary, political, and so forth, for which decisions at the Discourse
level influence and guide choices at the discourse level. Within intercultural
encounters and particularly in colonial, post-colonial, post-positivist, gender,
and such contexts, as Niranjana (1992: 1) aptly writes, translation ‘becomes a
significant site for raising questions of representation, power, and historicity.
The context is one of contested stories attempting to account for, to recount,
the asymmetry and inequality of relations between peoples, races, languages’.
In other words, competing Discourses of translation and how they employ
discourses in translation.
This volume
It is within this web of intercultural mediation through translation as D-
discourse that this volume is located. Translation becomes. This becoming is
a multi-layered process of negotiating discourse as communication (source
and target texts) and Discourse of the becoming.
Dedicated to Basil Hatim (a Festschrift), the ten contributors address both
in and of translation as discourse: from the macro aspects of translation as
intercultural project to actual analysis and synthesis of textual ingredients
that contribute to translation as discourse (communication). The interplay
between the ‘in’ and ‘of’ applies to both inter-and intralingual modes of
communication, whereby the centrifugal and centripetal forces are exam-
ined vis-à-vis text in context, agency, power, and patronage as they relate to
all stakeholders and theories involved in the translation industry. The ten
chapters represent different interrogations of ‘global’ theories of discourse
and translation, including interpreting, within different sociocultural envir-
onments: Western (European and North American), African, Arab, and
Chinese.
For the sake of the usual human inclination of generalizing objects,

people, and events, Chapters 1 to 6 explore translation as Discourse and
how it relates to itself as discourse. Chapters 7 to 10 can be said to do
the opposite, exploring translation as discourse and how it relates to its
Discourse.
In Chapter 1, Ernst Wendland explores the nature of what is labelled
translation, particularly given that today the term is so dynamically and flex-
ibly used. Is this flexibility useful in treating translation and translating as
D-discourse? Through a critical review of the major approaches/models in
translation studies, Wendland considers concepts such as frames of reference,
multimodal translation, globalization, and the vital influence of orality in
translation. This chapter can be read as a call for an informed enlargement
of translation studies whereby translators are empowered (Tymoczko 2014).
In Chapter 2, Richard Jacquemond teases out the ideological dimension in
translation Discourse and how as discourse it serves that ideological dimen-
sion. Reflecting on the link between theory and practice and with a focus on
France and the Arab world, Jacquemond considers the dialogical relation-
ship between cultures as they translate (from) each other. Ultimately, the dis-
cussion of translation as Discourse leads to consideration of aspects of the
French orientalist academic field and French–Arab cultural relations.
In Chapter 3, Sandra Hale explores the often sidelined and ignored dimen-
sion of ethics in intercultural communication. With a focus on community
translation and interpreting, Hale considers the double/triple victimization
of groups such as refugees or immigrants at the hands of well-intended, but
poorly equipped translators and interpreters. This ultimately leads to injustice
in the name of translation and interpreting. Not since World War II has
humanity been in as great a need of specialist translators and interpreters to
guarantee that participants exercise their basic human right of understanding
and being understood. Importantly, specialists in translation are here consid-
ered as giving attention to both Discourse and discourse, which ultimately
contributes to a fairer justice system.
Considering the interlingual interface between two superpowers, Chapter 4
by Hui Wang explores how different translations, as discourse, are generated
by the Discourse of translation that precedes actual translations. It is a case
of one source, but many targets. Why? The answer provided by Wang lies in
how intercultural mediation is deployed through translation to produce cer-
tain, often-intended, effects on the audience.
Remaining within the domain of intercultural encounters and the role of
translation as both Discourse and discourse, in Chapter 5, Gavin N. Picken
examines how translation was utilized by medieval Arabs to produce an essen-
tially Arab–Islamic discourse of their own. From almost obscurity, the Arabs
managed through their unique translation movement as a social and political
project to transform their nation, Ummah, into an acknowledged knowledge
society par excellence.
6 Said Faiq
In Chapter 6, Ovidi Carbonell Cortés challenges the notion that the trans-
lation of specialized discourse is as innocent or stable as is widely believed.
Particularly in the current context of globalization, the assumption is that
specialized information is transferred across cultures in a seamless and
unproblematic manner. Carbonell-Cortés argues that this is not the case.
Specialized discourses project certain realties that are loaded with ideology
(Discourse) and as such require a particular tool box to handle them as dis-
courses through translation. Here, translation requires integrated approaches
that are characterized by critical awareness, a focus on social interaction, and
the use of corpora as a key research tool.
Moving on to translation as discourse and how it affects and is affected by
translation as Discourse, Chapter 7 by James Dickins considers connotation
as language use that is very much interrelated with users. Dickins explores
a number of forms of connotative meaning in terms of their relayed mean-
ing as symbolic, indexical (also quasi-indexical) or iconic, fuzzy-meaning
boundaries, and the phenomena involved: reference-focusing, parenthetical,
secondary-referential, or pseudo-referential. These meanings are related to
translation choices and decisions by users, translators.
With a focus on legal discourse, Chapter 8 by Mohammed Farghal explores
the problematic nature of modality in language use, in general, and, in par-
ticular, investigates how Arabic modality markers are employed in the Oman
Basic Statute of the State (issued in 1996 and amended in 2011) and their offi-
cial English translations. Farghal provides an analysis of some 200 examples
to demonstrate the translational strategies deployed to handle this important,
yet challenging, discursive tool.
The way the Discourse of translation employs translation as discourse (lan-
guage use) provides a fertile site for the exploration of how media produ-
cers usually guide audiences toward readings and interpretations that favour
existing norms of representations of their culture (Discourse) and along the
way promote any distortions and misrepresentations of other cultures, all of
which is realized by translation as discourse (language in use). Within this
context, Chapter 9 by Muhammad Y Gamal explores the subtitling of titles
in Egyptian films. By exploring the various historiographical and technical
elements of cinematic production, Gamal teases out the dominant strategies
adopted in this subtitling in Egypt. Findings can easily be applied across the
Arab world and similar communities
Keeping media in focus, Chapter 10 by Rajai Al-Khanji considers a sensi-
tive issue in media discourse and how it produces representations and images
of the other. This is particularly pertinent, as Al-Khanji explores the politics
of such a discourse in the context of a longstanding, persistent and contested
cause, namely the Arab–Israeli conflict. Al-Khanji investigates the discursive
strategies employed by the Hasbara (2009 manual) ‘to frame the position of
Israel vis-à-vis that of the Palestinians with the end-product of a pro-Israel
set of strategies’. This is another example of how Discourse animates dis-

course where translation is framed as representation.
Each in its own fashion, the ten chapters indicate how the norms of pro-
ducing, classifying, interpreting, and circulating texts within the contexts of
one Discourse tend to remain in force when approaching texts transplanted
through translation, as discourse, from other Discourses. As such, the chap-
ters show how explorations of the ways in which D-discourses operate might
contribute to more efficient self-monitoring on the part of users (producers
and receivers) and lead to making translation a true process of intercultural
understanding, including issues of identity (self and other), translation
enterprise (patronage, agencies, translators), and norms of translation as
representation.
References
Bassnett, Susan. 1998. ‘Translating Across Cultures’. In Susan Hunston, ed., Language
at Work (pp. 72–85). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Dizdar, Dilek. 2012. ‘General Translation Theory’. In Yves Gambier and Luc van
Doorslaer, eds, Handbook of Translation Studies, vol. 3 (pp. 52–58). Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Fairclough, Norman. 1995. Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Longman.
Gee, James. 2004. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method (2nd ed.).
London: Routledge.
Hatim, Basil. 2012. Teaching and Researching Translation (2nd ed.). London:
Routledge.
Lefevere, André. 1999. ‘Composing the Other’. In Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi,
eds, Post-Colonial Translation (pp. 75–94). London: Routledge.
Niranjana, Tejaswini. 1992. Siting Translation: History, Poststructuralism and the
Colonial Context. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Pym, Anthony. 1992. ‘Limits and Frustrations of Discourse Analysis in Translation
Theory’. Revisita de Filologia de la Universidad de La Laguna 11: 227–239.
Robyns, Clem. 1994. ‘Translation and Discursive Identity’. Poetics Today 15(3):
405–428.
Tymoczko, Maria. 2014. Enlarging Translation, Empowering Translators. London:
Routledge.
van Dijk, Teun A. 1998. Ideology. A Multidisciplinary Approach. London: Sage.
Chapter 1
Translating ‘translation’
What do translators ‘translate’?
Ernst Wendland
The problem: Will the real ‘translation’ please stand up?

Nowadays, in both contemporary scholarly writings and popular discourse,
the term ‘translation’ (‘translate’) appears to be increasingly employed in a
secondary, rather than its primary dictionary, sense: ‘to render a written or
spoken text from one language to another’ (Agnes 2006: 1521). According to
many theorists, ‘Translation has become a fecund and frequent metaphor for
our contemporary intercultural world…. Translation is poised to become a
powerful epistemological instrument for reading and assessing the transform-
ation and exchange of cultures and identities’ (Arduini and Nergaard 2011: 8,
14). The preceding assertion is typical of a new open-endedness in translation
studies, one that endeavours to metaphorically magnify the traditional, text-
based understanding of ‘Translation Rigidly Conceived’ (Reynolds 2016: 18)
into ‘an epistemological principle applicable to the whole field of humanistic,
social, and natural sciences’ (Arduini and Nergaard 2011: 14). For example,
‘whatever a writer writes is to some extent a kind of translation, because that
work will be the product that has emerged out of readings of other people’s
writing’ (Bassnett 2011: 164; italics added). What is here referred to as ‘trans-
lation’ used to be termed ‘intertextuality’ in literary studies, and this statement
is simply a specification of George Steiner’s equally overgeneralized notion
that ‘human communication equals translation’ (1975, as cited in Reynolds
2016: 23). But how useful is such a flexible, expansible notion of translation
to those of us who are actually engaged in the narrower business of text-based
interlingual communication?
At the very least, the current elasticity of usage leads to a certain degree
of misunderstanding and a lack of clarity with regard to what is being done
when translating and what is consequently offered as an end-product,1 for
example:
Translation is the performative nature of cultural communication. It is

language in actu (enunciation, positionality) rather than language in situ
(énoncé, or propositionality). And the sign of translation continually
What do translators ‘translate’? 9
tells, or ‘tolls’ the different times and spaces between cultural authority
and its performative practices.
(Bhabha 2011: 20)
The preceding quotation seems to reflect a very different understanding or

definition of ‘translation’ than some of us may be familiar with, and yet it
goes back to 1994 –over 20 years ago –so where have we been, or what
have we been reading in the meantime? This is typical of approaches and
proponents of the so-called cultural turn in translation. As part of an initial
overview of such a culture-focused view of translation studies in his popular
textbook, Jeremy Munday observes that its proponents more or less ‘dismiss’
linguistic approaches to translation ‘and focus on the way in which culture
impacts and constrains translation’ (2008: 125; cf. Bassnett 2002: 136). Many
of these theorists seek to promote such a cultural turn, for example, as they
‘move from translation as text to translation as culture and politics’ (125; cf.
Bassnett and Lefevre 1990: 79–86). But one might question whether such a
metaphorical approach represents rather too great of a ‘turn’, for is not trans-
lation most explicitly about texts and the messages being transmitted thereby
from one language (the ‘source language’, SL) and sociocultural setting to
another (the ‘target language’, TL)?
However, that is not how recent theorists are thinking; rather, they seek to
broaden the horizons of ‘translation’ considerably:
We welcome new concepts that speak about translation and hope to

reshape translation discourse within these new terms and ideas. To achieve
this goal, we must go beyond the traditional borders of the discipline,
and even beyond interdisciplinary studies…. In an epistemological sphere
it becomes less important to distinguish and define clearly what translation
is and what it is not, what stands inside the borders of translation and
what stands outside.… Translational processes are fundamental for the
creation of culture(s) and identities, for the ongoing life of culture(s), and
for the creation of social and economic values.
(Arduini and Nergaard 2011: 9–10, 13; italics added)
One begins to wonder, however, within this ‘new paradigm’, sometimes termed
‘translationality’ (Reynolds 2016: 23), does the notion of translation actually
‘mean’ anything specific –other than some sort of general sociocultural trans-
formation as viewed from the perspective of a certain individual’s (or group’s)
‘rhizomatic’ reconceptualization (Arduini and Nergaard 2011: 9)?2 And what
are the reasons for asserting that ‘it becomes less important to distinguish
and define clearly what translation is and what it is not’ (9)? Is its theory and
practice not in danger then of gratuitously entering the purview of disciplines
that are much more experienced and capable of dealing with the varied ethno-
graphic and sociocultural issues being referred to?
10 Ernst Wendland
Perhaps we should turn instead to a philosophical approach for some dir-

ection in the search for a more modern definition and associated application
of ‘translation’:
Good translation…can be defined as that in which the dialectic of

impenetrability and ingress, of intractable alienness and felt ‘at-home-
ness’ remains unresolved, but expressive. Out of the tension of resistance
and affinity, a tension directly proportional to the proximity of the two
languages and historical communities, grows the elucidative strangeness
of the great translation.
(Steiner 1998: 413)
Unfortunately, there is not much enlightenment available in the preceding

opaque observation, which seems to delight in the ‘impenetrable’ interplay
of complicated terminology rather than in any coherent meaning. In the
case of popular ‘deconstruction’ theory then, we reach the limits of com-
prehension (or incomprehension), as we must ‘[suspend] all that we take for
granted about language, experience, and the “normal” possibilities of com-
munication’ (Munday 2008: 170; cf. Norris 1991: xi). ‘Its leading figure is
the French philosopher Jacques Derrida’, who employs terminology that
is ‘complex and shifting, like the meaning it dismantles’ (170) –or seeks to
destabilize. Accordingly, there can be no ‘relevance’ in translation ‘because,
in Derrida’s view, a relevant translation relies on the supposed stability of
the signified–signifier relationship’ (171; cf. Derrida 2004: 425). Such a philo-
sophical perspective promotes an ‘abusive fidelity’ that ‘involves risk-taking
and experimentation with the expressive and rhetorical patterns of language,
supplementing the ST, giving it renewed energy…[tampering] with usage’
(172). The result is inevitably a new text, one that reflects the image of its
creator –and hence cannot be called a ‘translation’ in the usual sense at all,
certainly not where the scriptures are concerned.
As Munday astutely concludes: ‘[S]‌uch a translation strategy demands a
certain “leap of faith” from the reader to accept that the translator’s experi-
mentation is not just facile wordplay’, which may in fact ‘be easier if the text
in question is philosophical’ (177). ‘Facile wordplay’ indeed –so much so that
when attempting to read and comprehend the writings of some modern trans-
lation philosophers, one requires the assistance of an intralingual ‘translator’
to help decipher them. Back to Bhabha (2011: 24) again for another egregious
example:
Translation represents only an extreme instance of the figurative fate of

writing that repeatedly generates a movement of equivalence between
representation and reference but never gets beyond the equivocation of
the sign. The ‘foreignness’ of language is the nucleus of the untranslat-
able that goes beyond the transparency of subject matter.
Indeed, one wonders if it is possible to translate the preceding quote into any
language by any means –except perhaps by a machine that does not know
what it is thinking!
The preceding observations illustrate the warning issued by translation
theorist Andrew Chesterman that ‘translation studies has been importing
concepts and methodologies from other disciplines “at a superficial level”
which tends to lead to “misunderstandings” since translation- oriented
researchers often lack expertise in the other field and may even be bor-
rowing outdated ideas’ (2005: 19). To give one example: ‘Robert Young’s
lecture at the 2013 Nida Research Symposium was devoted to how Freud
can be considered a theoretician of translation and how his psychoanalysis
can be seen as a form of translation’ (translation 2013). To be sure, the
Freudian practice of ‘free association’ would probably not result in a
very ‘faithful’ rendition of any given source text, but on the other hand it
might at least transform ‘translating’ into some manner of beneficial thera-
peutic exercise –self ‘empowerment’, for example, which rather mystic-
ally ‘involves a three-stage procedure that includes the experience of being
translated, then of de-translation, and finally of retranslation of the self’
(ibid., italics added).
In any case, one of the reasons that Bible translation consultants and
practitioners need to keep abreast with the new developments and debates
in translation studies, including a workable definition of the field itself, is to
avoid what Chesterman refers to as superficial or extraneous ‘consilience’ in
their own specialized field (as cited in Munday 2008: 197). How might this
be done? One method for establishing a firmer conceptual frame of refer-
ence would be to revisit our translation ‘roots’ in order to reassess some of
the older standard definitions along with related principles and practices that
some of us may still be familiar with, including a few updates. As Anthony
Pym has recently concluded (2016: 15–16):
Contemporary translation theory has very little time for complex typ-
ologies of what translators do…. Our students are learning about trans-
lation, or about thought on translation, but not in a way that is in close
contact with their actual translation practice…. I am going back to bor-
ing old linguistics; I am returning to a field where no empirical advances
have been made; I am suspicious of over-theorization; I am turning my
back on much that others see as new and exciting in translation studies.
A selective survey of definitions: Where have we

come from?
In his masterful survey, Munday defines the ‘process of translation’ rather
basically as ‘the translator changing an original written text (the source text or
ST) in the original verbal language (the source language or SL) into a written
12 Ernst Wendland
text (the target text or TT) in a different verbal language (the target language
or TL)’ (2008: 5; cf. Reynolds 2016: 18). Although Munday decides ‘to focus
on written translation rather than oral translation’, or ‘interpretation’ (5–6),
the issue of orality and the soundscape of texts is still relevant –for all transla-
tors. In any case, one is led to speculate as to what all is involved in this act
of intertextual ‘changing’. Similarly, translation may be understood as refer-
ring to ‘the process of transferring a written text from SL to TL, conducted
by a translator, or translators, in a specific socio-cultural context’ (Hatim
and Munday 2004: 6), where again we note a certain degree of ambiguity
inherent in the activity of ‘transferring’. Hatim and Mason (1997: 1) view
‘translation’ more specifically as ‘an act of communication which attempts
to relay, across cultural and linguistic boundaries, another act of communi-
cation (which may have been intended for different purposes and different
readers/hearers)’. Compare the preceding with these definitions by two lit-
erary translators: ‘Translation denotes the attempt to render faithfully into
one language (normally, one’s own) the meaning, feeling, and, so far as pos-
sible, the style of the piece written in another language’ (Landers 2001: 10);
‘the most fundamental description of what translators do is that we write –or
perhaps rewrite –in language B a work of literature in language A, hoping
that the readers of the second language…will perceive the text, emotionally
and artistically, in a manner that corresponds to the aesthetic experience of
its first readers’ (Grossman 2010: 7). The important emotive-affective and art-
istic motives of the latter two perspectives are obvious.
Bible translation theorists tend to pay much more attention to the semantic
notion of ‘meaning’ in their definitions; for example: ‘Translating consists
in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the
source-language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of
style’, that is, formal features of note (Nida and Taber 1969: 12). According
to Beekman and Callow, ‘the translation process involves (1) at least two lan-
guages and (2) a message –these two essential components of a translation
may be called, respectively, (1) form and (2) meaning…[the] formal linguistic
elements of a language are what is meant by form – the meaning is the message
which is communicated by these features of form’ (1974: 19–20, original ital-
ics). De Waard and Nida (1986: 14, 36, 25) describe the translation operation
in some detail as follows:
The task of a Bible translator as a secondary source is always a diffi-

cult one, since he is called upon to faithfully reproduce the meaning of
the text in a form that will effectively meet the needs and expectations
of receptors whose background and experience are very different from
those who were the original receptors of the biblical documents. The
translator must strive to identify intellectually and emotionally with the
intent and purpose of the original source, but he must also identify with
the concerns of his potential receptors.… The translator, however, wants
the receptor-language audience to appreciate fully the relevance and

significance of such a culturally and historically ‘displaced message’.…
An expression in any language consists of a set of forms which serve to
signal meaning on various levels: lexical, grammatical, and rhetorical.
The translator must seek to employ a functionally equivalent set of forms
which in so far as possible will match the meaning of the original source-
language text.… Those communicative functions which are especially
relevant for the understanding of principles of translation are: expres-
sive, cognitive, interpersonal, informative, imperative, performative, emo-
tive, and aesthetic.
A mixed-b ag of definitions: Why the diversity?

Obviously, one’s definition of ‘translation’, whether more or less general/spe-
cific (as noted above), will be guided and shaped by a number of factors, not
all of which a person may be immediately aware of. One’s theory of commu-
nication, and within that of translation, is naturally paramount, for it influ-
ences not only one’s conceptualization of the discipline of translation, but
more importantly, also its actual practice. Several illustrative examples follow:
Gideon Toury, the pioneer of so- called descriptive translation studies
(DTS), developed the abstract polysystem model of Evan-Zohar into a more
practical, text-oriented, and comparative approach (1995; cf. Even-Zohar
2004). The aim is to ‘build up a descriptive profile of translations accord-
ing to genre, period, author, and so forth. In this way, the norms pertain-
ing to each kind of genre can be identified with the ultimate aim…of stating
laws of behaviour for translation in general’ (Munday 2008: 111). As far as
the translation of literature is concerned, one seeks to ‘identify the decision-
making processes of the translator’ on the basis of ‘norm-governed activity’
that is identified in ‘the examination of texts’ or those norms that are expli-
citly stated by translators and others in works about translation (112). Toury’s
definition of ‘norms’ is crucial in understanding his goal. This involves ‘the
translation [i.e. transformation] of general values or ideas shared by a commu-
nity – as to what is right or wrong, adequate or inadequate –into performance
instructions appropriate for and applicable to particular situations’ (1995: 55,
italics added). We note that the preceding citation certainly sounds more ‘pre-
scriptive’ than ‘descriptive’ in nature; indeed, such ‘performance instructions’
would seem to be most appropriately used in settings of translator training
and pedagogical instruction.
The ambivalence of the DTS approach becomes evident with respect to
the fundamental issue of defining ‘what is meant by the term “translation” ’
(Pym 2010: 76). On the one hand, this task is seemingly left to the TL users
themselves; in other words, ‘a translation is a translation only for as long
as someone assumes it is one’ (76). As Pym observes, ‘that solution remains
fraught with logical difficulties’ (76) –and many practical ones, too, I might
14 Ernst Wendland
add, such as in cases of misrepresentation, misunderstanding, and gross

incompetence in actual performance. On the other hand, Toury (1995: 33–35)
himself proposes three well-formulated ‘postulates’ that should help people
to define what a ‘translation’ is: namely, principles that pertain to the ‘source
text’, the ‘transfer’ process, and the linguistic ‘relationship’ between the SL
and TL texts. Interestingly, these bear a rather close resemblance in terms of
reference to the ‘three stages’ of dynamic-equivalence theory, namely, ‘ana-
lysis’, ‘transfer’, and ‘restructuring’ (Nida and Taber 1969: 33). Furthermore,
it is rather surprising to see, for example, the ‘source text postulate’ expressed
in terms that would please any ‘equivalence’ theorist: ‘There is another text,
in another culture/language, which has both chronological and logical priority
over [the translation] and is presumed to have served as the departure point
and basis for it’ (Toury 1995: 33–34; italics added).
A rather different notion of what ‘translation’ is, or should be, arises from
Lawrence Venuti’s sociopolitical agenda under the theme ‘domestication and
foreignization’. For Venuti, the problem of overly ‘fluent’ translations (into
English) is due to a policy of gratuitous domesticating, which occasions
‘an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to [Anglo-American] target-
language cultural values’ by means of an ‘invisible style in order to minimize
the foreignness of the TT’ (Munday 2008: 144). A ‘foreignizing’ approach,
on the other hand, which is Venuti’s ideal, adopts the deliberate strategy of
‘resistancy’, that is, ‘a non-fluent or estranging translation style designed to
make visible the presence of the translator by highlighting the identity of the
ST and protecting it from the ideological dominance of the target culture’
(145). However, one might seriously question whether a ‘foreignized’ version
is able to accomplish all that Venuti hopes for it, especially in a non-Western
setting. A far more likely outcome is that the translator would simply be
judged to be technically poor or even incompetent due to the grossly ‘foreign-
sounding’ text that she or he has put forward for publication. As far as scrip-
ture translation is concerned, on the other hand, the situation is rather more
complicated, and the ‘acceptability’ of a translation depends on other signifi-
cant factors, such as the history of translations in the language concerned,
the number of different versions available and their relative popularity, the
theological evaluation of certain translations (i.e., being too ‘free’) by critical
conservative church denominations, the nature and purpose of the version
involved, and so forth (Wilt and Wendland 2008: 107–128).
For a more specific example, Antoine Berman, an enthusiastic supporter of
‘the foreign in translation’, promoted what he termed ‘the “negative analytic”
of translation’, which embraces any technique that opposes the ‘strategy of
“naturalization” ’ (Munday 2008: 147). Within the latter activity, he identi-
fies 12 ‘deforming tendencies’, including ‘rationalization’ (of syntactic struc-
tures), ‘clarification’ (e.g., explicitation), ‘expansion’ (again, for the sake of
clarity in the TT), and ‘the destruction of rhythms…underlying networks of
signification…linguistic patternings…idioms’ (147–148). Berman praised the
‘literal translation’, which in his opinion ‘restores the particular signifying

process of [SL literary] works…and, on the other hand, transforms the trans-
lating language’ (Berman 2004: 288–289; cf. Wright 2016: 37–38). While such
a procedure might work successfully in English and other languages with a
long literary history (where experienced readers may be used to such stylistic
infelicities), it certainly fails in the Bantu languages of Africa, where such
a literalistic policy only ‘deforms’ the translating language into the often-
unintelligible dialect of ‘translationese’. On the contrary, the attainment of
‘fluency’ in the target text, especially an audio version, is a most desirable
quality, but one that can be achieved only through the perceptive and com-
petent use of the full linguistic and stylistic resources of the host language
(Wendland 2004, ch. 8).
A third example of the influence of theory on definition, and in this
instance also practice, takes into consideration the fact that a specific transla-
tion type will also depend on ‘for whom’ the version is being prepared as well
as ‘by whom’. From this perspective, functionalist approaches take pride of
place. Thus, ‘skopos’ (communicative ‘purpose’) theory ‘focuses above all on
the purpose of the translation, which determines the translation methods and
strategies that are to be employed in order to produce a functionally adequate
result’ (Munday 2008: 79). Note the term ‘adequate’ instead of ‘equivalent’,
for the assessment process now is to be carried out from the standpoint of
the intended TL readership: ‘The function of a [TT] in its target culture is
not necessarily the same as in the source culture’ (80). However, ‘this down-
playing (or “dethroning”, as [Hans] Vermeer terms it) of the status of the ST’
(80) has caused quite a bit of controversy in translation circles, certainly in the
case of ‘high-value’, authoritative texts such as any religious group’s sacred
scriptures. A related criticism is that ‘skopos theory does not pay sufficient
attention to the linguistic nature of the ST nor to the reproduction of micro-
level features in the TT’ (81). In short, one can seemingly recreate an ST in the
TL, depending on the wishes or whims of the project organizer or commis-
sioner, a problem that Christiane Nord specifically addresses.
The ‘text analysis’ methodology of Christiane Nord (e.g., 1997; 2005), ‘pays
more attention to [linguistic and literary] features of the ST’ and this involves
‘analyzing a complex series of interlinked extratextual factors and intratextual
features in the ST’ (Munday 2008: 82). Nord also respects the communicative
intentions of the original author under the concept of ‘loyalty’, which ‘means
that the target-text purpose should be compatible with the original author’s
intentions’ (1997: 125). A literary concern is reflected in a project’s transla-
tion commission (or ‘brief’), which necessitates a comparative study of the
respective ST and TT communication settings (‘profiles’), e.g., intended text
functions, the communicators (sender and recipient), medium, and motive,
for example, ‘why the ST was written and why it is being translated’ (83). Of
course, where a scripture translation is concerned, such a general comparison
will be much less detailed with respect to the ST context. The ‘role of the ST
16 Ernst Wendland
analysis’ (e.g., content, including connotation and cohesion, presuppositions,

sentence structure, lexis, suprasegmental features, text organization) then, is
to enable the project management committee ‘to decide on functional prior-
ities of the translation strategy’ (83). This leads, in turn, to the positing of ‘the
functional hierarchy of translation problems’, including above all whether a
‘documentary’ (relatively literal) or an ‘instrumental’ (freer, more liberal) type
of translation should be undertaken (82–83).
Finally, when we arrive at ‘relevance theory’ (RT) there is no doubt about
the extent to which theory influences one’s definition of ‘translation’ and
how to carry it out. The definition is comparatively simple: Ernst-August
‘Gutt defines translation as “inter-lingual quotation” ’ (Goodwin 2013: 52).
The ‘basic demand’ is ‘to produce a stimulus in the target language that will
communicate to the target audience the full interpretation of the original,
that is, that it will share with the original all implications the original author
intended to communicate’ (Gutt 1992: 65; italics original). In other words,
‘If a communicator uses a stimulus that manifestly requires more processing
effort than some other stimulus equally available, the hearer can expect the
benefits of this stimulus to outweigh the increase in processing cost…’ (Hatim
2013: 117). This leads to ‘a possible absolute definition of translation’, in fact,
a ‘direct translation’: ‘A receptor-language utterance is a direct translation
of a source-language utterance if, and only if, it presumes to interpretively
resemble the original completely (in the context envisaged for the original)’
(Hatim 2013: 66). This definition is presumed to be ‘independent of the
receptor-language context’ –that is, to hold true ‘no matter who the target
audience might be’ (66).
The problem that one faces here is immediate: as soon as translators com-
pose their ‘receptor-language utterance’, it is automatically dependent upon
‘the receptor-language context’ for its interpretation, to a greater or lesser
degree depending on a number of situational factors –such as whether para-
textual supplementary helps are provided that elucidate critical aspects of the
original text and its sociocultural setting, how ‘biblically literate’ the target
group is, how much time and effort they are prepared to put into the act of
interpreting the translated text, and so forth. Therefore, I find RT’s notion of
‘direct translation’ in which ‘the translator attempts to “directly” quote the
original communicator’ rather misleading: ‘Gutt, in fact, defines translation
as “inter-lingual quotation”, and in what he calls “direct quotation”, the sec-
ondary communicator attempts “the preservation of all linguistic qualities” ’
(Goodwin 2013: 189). Though the terminology is superficially simple, the
laborious argument supporting it (Goodwin 2013: 53) is too obscure in terms
of conceptual and/or procedural application to be usable in practice, espe-
cially by inexperienced translators. To claim that a direct translation is ‘simply
a specialized echoic use of language across linguistic boundaries’ (53) is disin-
genuous, since such a viewpoint is contradicted by current cognitive linguistic
studies (e.g., King 2012: 360–363). Thus, both theoretically and in practice, all
verbal reconstitution across linguistic-conceptual boundaries can only be an

inferential, variously ‘indirect’ process (cf. Goodwin 2013: 55–56) involving,
according to the project skopos, a greater or lesser degree of formal, semantic,
and pragmatic approximation during textual recomposition. In addition, an
apparent overemphasis of desired ‘relevance’ in the target-language setting is
evidenced by statements such as the following: ‘The requirement for a faithful
translation is twofold: produce a target text that “should resemble the ori-
ginal – only in those respects that can be expected to make it optimally rele-
vant to the receptor language audience” and one that is “clear and natural in
expression”…’ (53; italics added). From this perspective, the general criterion
of ‘resemblance’ is far too broad and subjective to be viable. Terms such as
‘resemble’ and ‘similar to’ allow far too much leeway in interpretation to be
serviceable when describing the practice of Scripture translation. Thus, to say
that ‘this translation is similar to what is stated in the biblical text’ would be
unacceptable to many lay respondents and scholarly critics as well.
In his survey of some of the main theories and developments in transla-
tion studies ‘since the 1970s’, Jeremy Munday correctly draws attention to
‘the interdisciplinarity of recent research’ and writing (2008: 14). However, he
cites with apparent approval an assertion that I would take issue with: There
has been ‘a movement away from a prescriptive approach to translation to
studying what translation actually looks like. Within this framework the
choice of theory and methodology becomes important’ (15, citing Aijmer
and Alvstad 2005: 1). This quote seems to imply, quite mistakenly, that the
proponents of so-called ‘prescriptive’ approaches (one might also term these,
less pejoratively, as being ‘pedagogical’) either do not know ‘what translation
actually looks like’, or their methodology does not take alternative approaches
into adequate consideration. There is also the erroneous implication that ‘the
choice of theory and methodology’ was/is not ‘important’ within the prescrip-
tive perspective –or that such a methodology is irrelevant in the modern age.
However, many translation consultants, advisers, and guides who work in
educationally disadvantaged areas of the world may still need to depend on
this type of practical pedagogy to make progress during training exercises, or
to get results in actual text production.
Restatement: A satisfactory interdisciplinary synthesis?

What is ‘translation’? –we could ask once again, to recycle the discussion
along with some further elaboration. A short answer might be: ‘Translation is
the transfer of a text from language A to language B’. This is similar to the def-
inition provided by the Oxford English Dictionary: To translate is ‘to express
the sense of words or text in another language’. But is that good enough?
How can such general definitions help you? It depends on why you need them.
For some purposes they may be sufficient –for example, if someone asks you
about such work in a casual conversation. However, ‘what you mean when
18 Ernst Wendland
you call a text a “translation” will depend on several factors…your historical

moment and political situation, the genre of the text you are talking about,
its content and purpose, the features of it that seem to you most important’
(Reynolds 2016: 18). Thus, for most serious discussions (e.g., negotiations
aimed at establishing a specific translation project), a more detailed defin-
ition, with or without added explanation and exemplification, is needed.
But before we can actually define a translation, let alone deliver one, we
need to be very clear about the object of this creative, yet controlled, compos-
itional activity, especially where a document of considerable social (including
spiritual) significance is involved. As actual practitioners already know from
work that they have done, meaningful translation, as opposed to mechanical
translation, is a very specialized, complex, and varied type of verbal com-
munication. It involves an interpersonal, transformative sharing of the same
text –plus the thought-world that it presupposes –between two different sys-
tems of language, cognition, and culture. In other words, translation neces-
sitates a total reconceptualization and re-signification of a text that comes
from one linguistic and sociocultural setting so that it is intelligible (hopefully
also actionable) in a completely different communication environment. Now
the process has become considerably more complex in nature, and a further
definition of terms and procedures is necessary.
Translation, as a multilingual, inter-semiotic, cross-cultural exercise of
textual, as well as cognitive, reconstitution, can be defined or described and
evaluated (as noted above) in different ways, depending on a number of
important factors. Among these considerations are, from the perspective of
scripture translating:
the model of translation that one adopts with respect to theory and prac-
tice, e.g., whether source-text oriented or target-text oriented, con-
cordant, SMR-code, generative text-linguistic, cognitive-poetic, or
relevance based;
the motive, or goal (skopos), of the translation in relation to one’s opinion
of the original text’s ‘authority’, a designated target (consumer) audi-
ence, for a particular communicative purpose, and in one or more
preferred settings of use;
the manner in which the recomposition procedure is carried out (e.g.,
formal correspondence versus functional equivalence), including
such methodological variables as individual or team-oriented pro-
duction, contract-or commitment-based, and so forth.
Translation may then be briefly defined as the practice of intercultural and

interlingual communication. It is an intricate, at times artful, process of semi-
otic textual exchange, or verbal ‘transubstantiation’ (trans-FORM-ation),
involving two basic operations:
1. The intercultural re-ideation or cognitive reframing of a given SL text,

which is a meaningful and purposeful selection, arrangement, and dif-
ferentiation of signs, whether oral or written, as it is conceptually trans-
ferred from one worldview domain and value system to another;
2. The semantically accurate, formally appropriate, and pragmatically
acceptable interlingual re-signification of the original text in a specific TL
setting, along with any important paratextual or extratextual bridge and
background material needed to facilitate greater comprehension, in keep-
ing with the agreed project skopos.
The first operation requires the mental comprehension and interpret-

ation of all the salient as well as ‘encyclopaedic’ semantic and pragmatic
features of the original text in terms of the target language and cultural
context, whereas the second, which follows from the first, deals with the
more overt surface-level semantic, structural, and stylistic aspects of verbal
composition. These procedures are both informed (learned) and intuitive
(instinctive) in nature –that is, they are the product of rigorous systematic
training as well as innate ability. At any rate, mistakes that occur during
the first step of the translation sequence, reconceptualization, are always
reflected in, and hence distort, the second stage, recomposition. Conversely,
once translators can accomplish the first step in relation to a given SL
text and its cognitive/emotive setting, the second, creating a linguistic re-
presentation in the TL, is usually not as difficult, although determining
the relevant level of appropriateness (accuracy, acceptability, and so forth)
always presents somewhat of a challenge.
So, do we translate texts or do we translate meanings? The simple answer
is ‘Yes!’ More seriously: ‘Is there a difference?’ Consider the following points
with reference to some specific work setting and a typical translation task:
1. We translate ‘texts’, which represent ‘meanings’.3 This process considers

everything: the form, content, and intent, implicatures along with expli-
catures (Pym 2010: 35–36), as well as the situational and interpretive set-
tings –of both the source text and the target text. In other words, we
always translate complete ‘texts-in-cotexts-within-contexts’.
2. We translate the source text (and its represented meaning) to the extent
possible –in keeping with the project’s primary objectives and with the
realization that any translation can be only a partial, hence imperfect,
and selective representation of the full communicative value of the
original text.
3. The term ‘text’ further implies the importance of linguistic and styl-
istic form, based on a phonological foundation (as pointed out by the
proponents of cognitive grammar), even in the case of written texts (cf.
Stockwell 2002).
20 Ernst Wendland
4. A careful analysis of the compositional macro- and micro-structure is

necessary in order to determine the (real or implied) author-intended
content and goals of the source text within its likely, but ultimately hypo-
thetical, initial contextual setting.
5. To a greater or lesser degree, the SL form itself has meaning, that is,
communicative significance, with respect to emotive expressiveness, aes-
thetic appeal, rhetorical impact, and textual organization. Thus, the well-
worn Italian proverb traduttore – traditore (‘the translator [is] a traitor!’)
applies also, perhaps primarily, to form –from literary structures to syn-
tactic constructions.
6. A literary-structural (oratorical) approach pays special attention to the
non-referential, connotative, and evocative features of discourse associ-
ated with all SL forms, from the individual word to the complete discourse
level, including their language-specific phonic ‘sound effects’ (Wendland
2013: 385–392).
7. Finally, context is critical –both conceptual and situational. One’s meth-
odology and interpretation will always be influenced, to a greater or
lesser extent, by the culture (world view and way of life) of the TL com-
munity in relation to that of the original SL text author(s) as well as one’s
own hermeneutical position (Hatim 1997). Operational procedures must
also reflect the principal goal(s) of the translation project within its pri-
mary envisaged social setting of use. If these pragmatic aims include, for
example, the desire to achieve naturalness in terms of textual impact and
appeal, then TL literary form (including poetic) is vitally important and
needs to be carefully researched and applied consistently and appropri-
ately in the practice of translation.
The manifold, cognitive-based communicative activity of translating (cf.

the essays in Rojo and Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2013) may be defined more pre-
cisely, should the need arise, by factoring into it a number of key components:
Translation is (a) the conceptually mediated verbal re-composition of

(b) one contextually framed, inferentially interpreted text (c) within
a different cognitive and communicative setting (d) in the most rele-
vant, (e) functionally equivalent manner possible, (f) that is, stylistically
marked, more or less, (g) in keeping with the designated job commission
(h) that has been communally agreed upon for the TL project concerned.
The sequence of these core constituents may be described as follows

(Wendland 2004: 85):
a) The conceptually mediated, inferentially guided recomposition: The trans-

lator (or team) acts as a mental ‘mediator’, or verbal ‘foreign-exchange
broker’, who must fairly represent all his (her) ‘clients’, that is, the original
author and his (her) communicative intentions within a specific setting,

as well as the needs and desires of the target audience.
b) One contextually framed, inferentially interpreted text: ‘Context’ is the
total cognitive- emotive-volitional frame of reference, or ‘cognitive
environment’, that influences and inferentially guides the perception,
interpretation, and application of a given text.
c) Within a different cognitive and communicative setting: The translator
carefully negotiates a re-formulation, that is, a verbal re-signification,
of the original text within a new language, mind-set, sociocultural
environment, and perhaps medium of communication as well.4
d) The most relevant: The aim is to achieve the greatest number of bene-
ficial conceptual, emotional, and volitional effects for readers without
their expending excessive or extraneous processing effort.
e) The most functionally equivalent manner possible (House 2018: 32,
181): The target text, supplemented by its paratext (e.g., expository
notes, sectional headings, cross- references, etc.), where necessary,
should manifest a sufficiently acceptable degree of similarity, or corres-
pondence to the original in terms of the meaning variables of semantic
content, pragmatic intent, connotative resonance, emotive impact, art-
istic appeal, auditory effect, and/or rhetorical power in accord with its
literary genre.5
f) Stylistically marked, more or less: The degree of stylistic domestication
applied (i.e., reflecting the genius of the TL) versus the degree of for-
eignness allowed (reflecting the ‘otherness’ of the SL text) must always
be assessed with respect to the linguistic and literary norms, conven-
tions, and expectations of the TL audience (cf. Wright 2016: 37–53).
g) In keeping with the designated job commission: A TL text’s level of
accuracy and acceptability is defined with respect to the translation
project’s brief, which includes its general terms of reference, primary
communication goal(s), or skopos, staff experience and training, avail-
able resources,6 quality- control measures, community wishes and
requirements, administrative and management procedures, timeline,
and desired completion schedule.
h) Agreed upon by the TL community for the project: The communica-
tive framework of the TL social and religious setting is determinative
for establishing the job commission, which needs first to be carefully
researched, then agreed upon by all major sponsors and supporters, and,
finally, closely monitored, evaluated, and, if necessary, revised on a sys-
tematic, ongoing basis until the task has been successfully completed
(including the text’s prepublication audience-readership testing).
It is important to note that translation, in the narrow sense,7 is different

from monolingual communication in that it involves not only two languages,
but also at least two different external settings and interpersonal situations,
22 Ernst Wendland
and often three –for example, that occasioned by some medial translation
in another language, like English, if the translators cannot access the ori-
ginal text. The formal and conceptual distance between these two or three
contexts is variable, depending on the languages and cultures concerned.
Generally speaking, the greater this distance (for example, from the Ancient
Near Eastern environment in the case of Bible translation), the more difficult
the translation task becomes and the more active, form-oriented mediation
is required on the part of the translator if a meaningful, let alone a literary,
version is to be prepared.
We might add the following observations to elaborate on the eight basic
components of the translating process, as stated above, from the perspective
of a Scripture rendition:
1. Bible translators do not, ideally, work in isolation, but rather as part of

a team of mutually supportive co-translators, editors, reviewers, technical
specialists (exegetes, annotators, literary artists, computer keyboard-
ers, text-formatters) –along with various consultants, coaches, advisers,
guides, and at times mentors (factors [g-h] above).
2. Each communication setting incorporates interacting levels of extratex-
tual influence that together affect all aspects of text representation –its
paratextual annotation and publication, that is, text processing for a
particular medium of transmission (factor [b]‌). Thus, there are diverse
cultural, institutional (including ecclesiastical), religious (traditional
and modern), environmental, interpersonal, as well as personal (psycho-
logical and experiential) factors that affect the overall communication
context either directly or indirectly. These varied and variable ‘frames of
reference’ all merge to form the respective collective cognitive framework
of the SL or TL communities –and the individual viewpoint of each
member of these groups.8
3. The perspective, opinion, and requirements of the current ‘consumer’
audience, which needs to be clearly specified at the outset, are the deter-
minative features (factor [h]‌) in drawing up an organizational brief, or job
commission. This is the defining and guiding document that outlines the
primary purpose (skopos), principles, procedures, and provisions for a
given translation endeavour.
4. The translation of a literary version, for example, a ‘literary functional
equivalence’ (LiFE) translation (Wendland 2011), is one that utilizes the
full stylistic (artistic-rhetorical-oratorical) resources and structural (text-
linguistic) forms of the target language. It too is implemented with respect
to the general principle of psychological relevance (factor [d]‌above, focus
on the TL text), which governs the project-specific practice of functional
equivalence (factor [e], focus on the SL text), as particularized or delim-
ited by the agreed-upon skopos.
5. The specific LiFE method is applied with respect to the content and
intent of the original text, but also in view of, and guided by the genre-
determined stylistic features of the host language (factors [f-g]), which
range from the target text’s significant phonological and lexical forms
to its primary discourse arrangements (cf. Ibarretxe- Antuñano and
Filipovic 2013; Tabakowska 2013). Another type of translation –for
example, a formal-correspondence version for liturgical, or public wor-
ship purposes –may be defined in much the same way, except for speci-
fying a different qualifier for the term ‘relevant’ (i.e., factor [e]‌).
6. To some degree, stylistic domestication (factor [f]‌) is always called for.
Even a relatively literal translation needs to be stylistically marked in a
discernible and appreciable manner, at least phonologically, with regard
to naturalness, for this is perhaps where a translated text’s style is most
immediately perceptible. How the text reads aloud, how it actually sounds
in the vernacular, is a criterion of utmost importance for ‘literariness’.
7. Finally, it is important to remember that every translation, no matter
what kind, will always occasion a certain degree of communicative loss,
or mismatch, with respect to content, intent, connotation, or some other
type of significance (e.g., marking ‘topic’ and ‘focus’ reference or promin-
ence). This fact, which is supported by the principles of cognitive gram-
mar, argues against both an overly free, dynamic-equivalence approach
(DE) and also an overly rigid, formal-correspondence approach (FC).
With regard to DE, it is not possible to change linguistic forms, even
phonological forms, without altering the original meaning in some way.
With regard to FC, if the SL forms are not changed in the transfer pro-
cess, the meaning in the TL text is inevitably altered. In other words, a
literal rendering changes the intended sense and significance of the mes-
sage as much as a dynamic-equivalence rendering –in fact, more so. In
either case, as mentioned, certain types of lost or distorted information
may (indeed, must!) be supplied para-textually by devices such as foot-
notes, introductions, section headings, illustrations, cross-references, or
a glossary. Such descriptive or explanatory information may also be sup-
plied extra-textually by means of supplementary, context-enriching pub-
lications that complement the translation.
Wright (2016: 58) discusses this semiotic balancing act in terms of

Christiane Nord’s (1997) distinction between a ‘documentary’ translation
and one that is ‘instrumental’ in nature. In the former case, the translator
orients the text ‘towards documenting a source in metatextual fashion’, thus
‘giving the target-language reader an indication of the nature of the (poten-
tially) inaccessible foreign-language text’ (58). An ‘instrumental’ version, on
the other hand, aims to fulfil ‘a function of its own in the target context’,
thereby manifesting the source text’s ‘characteristics and effects on the reader
24 Ernst Wendland
so central to the way literature works’ (58). In the end, insightful, innova-
tive ‘translators hover between these two positions, remaining faithful to the
source text in the sense of fulfilling a documentary function on the one hand,
while acknowledging the translator as a subject, and thus claiming more
status and visibility for themselves on the other’ (67), presumably by means of
a creative and sustained use of the available linguistic and literary resources
of the TL in their work.
Conclusion: On metaphoric ‘translation’ or the

translation of ‘metaphor’?
The title above presents something of a false antithesis,9 but the point takes
us back to the introduction of the present study and proposals for broad-
ening the scope of the definition and associated practice of ‘translating’.
Should the theory and practice of translation be figuratively extended to
include all types of intra-and intercultural transformational activities, or
is it advisable to restrict this notion to the bilingual communication of texts
and their stylistic techniques, such as ‘metaphor’ along with a host of related
literary features that may or may not ‘transfer’ easily from one language to
another?
Readers are welcome to come to their own conclusions, but my prefer-
ence for a traditional perspective has undoubtedly become evident during the
course of the preceding discussion (supported recently in Watt 2015, ch. 4).
For translators of sacred texts, it is advisable to preserve a firmer interdiscip-
linary semantic boundary by restricting the intralingual translation (or defin-
ition) of ‘translation’ as primarily a reference to the interlingual conversion
process that creates an oral or written TT from an ST within the parameters
of a clearly stated and implemented job commission (brief) and communi-
cative aim (skopos). In any case, it is clear that theorists and practitioners,
sacred and secular alike, will continue to define and implement ‘translation’
in keeping with their own understanding, aims, and work setting, as suggested
in the preceding survey of diverse attitudes and approaches. The best that we
can hope for is, perhaps, that every study or text that uses the terms ‘translate/
translation’ will begin with the author’s clear explanation of what she or he
means by it. Thus, in the end, it seems that definition does make a difference. It
matters because of what we are trying to accomplish (complex, cross-cultural
communication), how (the proposed methodology), for whom (involving both
commissioner and consumer), and where (in which specific sociocultural
setting). With reference to Bible translation, then, the task consists in the
carefully integrated interaction of several critical components that are pos-
ited as operating during the inferential (inductive and deductive) activity of
translating a high-value scriptural (this qualification is important) ST into a
given TL in order to create an audience-acceptable TT. This endeavour may
or may not be coupled with a notion of the importance of (implied/inferred)
‘authorial intention’ and its possible influence on the text interpretation as

well as transmission, including the process of translation itself.10
In any event, we begin with the viewpoint that gives prominence to a sacred
biblical source text, which motivates, directs, and ultimately authorizes the
multifaceted communication enterprise. The entire exercise is further carried
out within a twofold cognitive frame of reference model that takes into consid-
eration the mutually interacting influence from the sociocultural, communica-
tive, organizational, and textual domains that impact on the ST as well as the
emergent TT. This progressive and cumulative text-transformational effort is
oriented in terms of the principle of relevance (cognitive text-processing cost
versus gain in conceptual effects) as well as the predetermined (and commu-
nally agreed-upon!) project job description (brief) and primary interpersonal
goal (skopos) in view of its intended target constituency. The mediating, meth-
odological principle of functional equivalence, or ‘interpretive resemblance’ for
Relevance Theorists (Hatim, 2013: 111–119), based on the identification of
‘communicative clues’ in the ST, serves to guide translators in their collabora-
tive decision-making procedures. It does so on the basis of a form-functional
profile that identifies the most ‘significant’ (sense-bearing) formal linguistic as
well as meaningful features of the ST that need to be re-presented, either text-
ually or para-textually, in the TT and/or within their immediately accessible
environment –for example, via some handy extratextual, perhaps electronic
biblical studies resource (cf. Rojo and Valenzuela 2013). It is hoped that the
present investigation might encourage others to carry out similar reflective,
critical-comparative research into the multifaceted subject of ‘translation’
with respect to process, product and, as this definitional study has also sug-
gested, purpose as well: What difference does it make?
Notes
1 Not all modern translation theorists adopt this new vision for translation (for
example, Hatim and Munday 2004: 48; Pym 2010: 1). From the perspective of ‘lit-
erary translation’, Chantal Wright defines this practice as ‘the movement/transfer
of a written…text from one language into another, this transfer being carried out by
a human agent or agent, that is, the translator(s)’ (2016: 171–172, italics added).
2 ‘Probably the best known use of “translation” to mean something other than trans-
lation between languages happens in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
where Bottom the weaver is partially transformed into an ass. His friend Quince
exclaims: “Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee! Thou art translated” (Act 3, Scene 1, 118–
119). Here, “translated” mainly means “physically metamorphosed”. … Bottom is
translated into an ass because the word “bottom” can be translated [intralingually]
into “arse” ’ (Reynolds 2016: 14–15).
3 As the linguist J. C. Catford reminds us, ‘When we translate, we don’t transfer some-
thing called meaning out of one language and into another. Rather, we find words
that are “interchangeable in a given situation” ’ (Reynolds 2016: 32, citing Catford).
The broad concept of ‘meaning’ thus includes distinct components with different
26 Ernst Wendland
designations, such as, ‘propositional’, ‘prototypical’, ‘encyclopaedic’, ‘connota-

tional’, ‘contextual’, ‘functional’, ‘sociological’, and so forth (ibid.: 27–38).
4 This broaches the contemporary field of ‘multimodal’ or ‘intersemiotic’ transla-
tions that feature ‘hypertextual environments’ that ‘enable multiple textual arrange-
ments’ through embedded texts and diverse intertextual connections, for example
in oral ‘performative’ translations (Dickie 2016). Some suggest that ‘when medi-
ating hypertextual contents, translation “can therefore no longer be conceived of
as the reproduction of an original, but has become subject to reconceptualisation
as the re-writing of an already pluralised ‘original’ ” ’ (Pérez-González 2014: 125,
citing Littau). However, in these instances, too, the distinction between ‘source
text’ and ‘paratext’ becomes problematic and increasingly difficult to define. Thus,
whether such broadly conceived avant-garde theory and practice will fit readily into
the framework of ‘Translation Rigidly Conceived’ (Reynolds 2016: 18) remains to
be seen.
5 I recognize that ‘the concept of equivalence is one of the most controversial issues
discussed in translation studies, where scholars disagree on its validity and useful-
ness’ (Munday 2008: 185). Wright draws attention to the multifaceted nature of this
concept: ‘Equivalence describes the nature of the relationship between source and
target text and can be defined in many different ways, from equivalence at the level
of lexical units or grammatical categories to equivalence at the textual level or at
the level of a text’s message, function, or effects’ (2016: 168). From one perspective,
translation always involves a certain similarity, or ‘equivalence’ in difference; in other
words, ‘For the message to be “equivalent” in the ST [source text] and TT [target
text], the code-units will be different since they belong to two different sign sys-
tems (languages) which partition reality differently. …’ (Munday 2008: 37). A recent
review of a book on translation by a professional (secular) translator unashamedly
retains the notion of equivalence: ‘It will always be possible in a translation to find
new relationships between sound and sense that are equivalently interesting, if not
phonetically identical. Style, like a joke, just needs the talented discovery of equiv-
alents. … In a translation, as any art form, the search is for an equivalent sign’
(Thirlwell 2011: 22; cf. Bellos 2011). Or, to put it more bluntly: ‘Once its moorings to
equivalence have been severed, “translation” risks becoming a drunken boat’ (Pym
2010: 159). So, until a substitute for this idealistic, but convenient frame of refer-
ence can be found, we may be stuck with the illusory criterion of ‘equivalence’ for a
while longer. In the end, it may simply be true that ‘equivalence is essential to trans-
lation because it is the unique intertextual relation that only translations, among
all conceivable text types, are expected to show’ (Kenny 1998: 80; in particular, see
Krein-Kühle 2014).
6 Bible translation agencies have also been heavily involved in developing some
increasingly sophisticated tools of electronic text processing. Thus, computers
have moved from being simple word processors to being resource providers, text
manipulators and checkers, and translation environments (using platforms such as
Logos, Paratext, and Translator’s Workplace), and such progress has been univer-
sally welcomed and celebrated. But the degree to which machines can, or should,
be used to actually do translation has been more controversial, e.g., the practical
utility of such Internet features as ‘Google Translate’ (cf. Crisp and Harmelink
2011; Reynolds 2016: 96–97).
7 This narrow perspective would also exclude various types of ‘re-wording’ within
the same language (e.g., dialect adjustment) as well as substantial semantic adap-
tations (‘re-writing’) of the ST in the TL (cf. Reynolds 2016: 16–26).
8 See Wilt and Wendland 2008. To avoid terminological confusion, one might dis-
tinguish between the notions of ‘context’ as a specific, external, perceivable reality,
and of ‘frame’ as one individual or collective cognitive organization, or mental
representation. The sum total of frames of reference that are relevant to the inter-
pretation of a given text constitutes its overall conceptual framework.
9 I am not referring here to the fascinating study of various metaphoric expressions
for ‘translate/translation’ in different languages in order to gain a more multifa-
ceted perspective on this discipline and its practice, such as that presented in St.
André (2014).
10 With regard to the thorny issue of authorial ‘intended meaning’ in relation to
the ancient texts of scripture, I have elsewhere stated and defended my position
in favour of this more optimistic hermeneutical position (cf. 2004: 242–243, 262–
264, 298). Other theorists working within a cognitive-based framework of com-
munication would support such a source-oriented hermeneutical stance: ‘The
idea that one needs to understand the underlying intention of a writer to translate
effectively has become a cornerstone of translation theory…. Intention, whether
conscious or not can be extracted from the text…. To do this, a translator must
be able to create a full linguistic representation of the text’ (Katan 2004: 172).
‘Communication works inferentially: The communicator produces a [verbal and/
or non-verbal] stimulus from which the audience infers the thoughts she intends
to communicate’ (Gutt 1992: 21); ‘When is an act of communication successful?
When the audience succeeds in inferring the informative intention of the commu-
nicator’ (ibid.: 14).
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Chapter 2
Theory and practice in the

French discourse of translation
Richard Jacquemond
Translation theory has always been intimately connected to practice. For

centuries, it was mostly elaborated by translators and was always prescrip-
tive, that is, aiming at defining the conditions for ‘good’ translating. Actually,
while it would be tempting to take the emergence of ‘descriptive translation
studies’ –to mention Gideon Toury’s (1995) most celebrated contribution to
the field –as the origin of the study of translation as an autonomous dis-
cipline, one could argue that translation studies has until now remained
dependent on prescription in many ways, as Lawrence Venuti (2000: 4) points
out. We find within the field of translation studies a much larger proportion
of active translators than, say, the proportion of creative writers within the
field of literary studies. All this points to the dependent, subaltern status of
the translated text, and –without delving further into the philosophical and
ethical implications of this question –provides me with a good starting point.
This contribution is intended to be a reflection on the link between theory
and practice in translation, based on my own, long experience as a translator,
a translation editor, and a scholar in translation studies. It has been a very
particular experience, because it relies on translation to and from Arabic and
has often led me to elaborate a discourse on translation contrary to the main-
stream one, whether in France (or, more generally, in the ‘global North’) or
in the Arab world.
In order to explain this, I shall have to dwell on my personal trajectory in
some detail. I do so not out of self-indulgence, but rather as a way of under-
standing, through an auto-socio-analysis of sorts, the objective conditions
that made this trajectory possible. While doing so, I hope that I will provide
the reader with some useful insights into the recent history of the French
orientalist academic field and, also, French–Arab cultural relations.
Beginnings
I was born in St-Etienne, an industrial town that owed its prosperity to the
surrounding coal mines that shut down one after the other in the 1950s and
1960s –that is, in the period of my birth (1958). My father, a former miner,
32 Richard Jacquemond
benefitted from the conversion plan set up by the mining company and became
a successful auto mechanic. I grew up in a monolingual, monocultural envir-
onment, reading world literature in French translation without ever think-
ing that I was not reading the writer’s original words. I watched American
cartoons, TV series and Westerns dubbed into French, without it ever occur-
ring to me that Mickey Mouse, Steve McQueen (Josh Randall in Au nom
de la loi –the series’ French title was, typically, quite different from the ori-
ginal Wanted: Dead or Alive) or John Wayne actually did not speak French.
I feel it important to mention this because, while this kind of monolingual
upbringing was and remains the rule for millions of people in France, as in
many other European countries and in the United States, it is not so common
among professional translators (or within the academic field of translation
studies), where many come from multilingual families, social backgrounds, or
countries. Perhaps it is necessary, in order to fully grasp the meaning of the
title of Lawrence Venuti’s famous book, The Translator’s Invisibility (1995),
to have experienced this kind of monolingual education. Later, I learned and
practised other languages, went to live abroad and eventually became a trans-
lator, but I never forgot my initial innocence, and I have always looked with
a pang of envy at my colleagues and friends who have lived in two or more
languages since their childhood.
Nothing thus destined me to become a translator and a scholar in modern
Arabic literature, except a taste for travel quite common among young
Europeans. This led me, when already in my mid-twenties, to register for the
introductory course in Arabic language at Aix-en-Provence University. I was
planning a trip around the Mediterranean, and I naively thought that I could
learn enough in a first-year course in modern standard Arabic to get along
with the natives from Aleppo to Casablanca. However, I soon heard from
one of my teachers about his colleague, Claude Audebert, who had just left
Aix-en-Provence’s Near Eastern Studies department to launch a centre for the
intensive study of Arabic in Cairo, where students would spend nine months
training in written and spoken Arabic with a scholarship from the French
government. This was an exciting prospect and I decided to postpone my
Mediterranean trip and instead concentrate on my first-year Arabic classes to
make sure I would be selected for that grant.
That is how I landed in Cairo on 1 October 1983 –my first time ever in
an Arab country. One of my Aix teachers, noticing my eagerness to pro-
gress, had recommended that I try my hand at translation from Arabic into
French and offer my help at the CEDEJ, which then published a Revue de
la presse égyptienne, that is, two to three hundred pages translated from the
Egyptian press on a quarterly basis. I followed his advice and thus started
to translate into French from Arabic at a very early stage as a means to
speed up the language-acquisition process. Translating material from the
Egyptian press was a tremendous education. With the help of only my Hans
Wehr-Milton Cowan Arabic–English dictionary (back then, there was no
Theory and practice in French discourse 33
reliable modern Arabic–French dictionary, let alone online resources!) and

of the occasional Egyptian friend visiting our flat, I could spend hours on
a paragraph or even a sentence of Al-Ahram’s or Al-Musawwar’s waffle
without ever complaining.
A few months later, Claude Audebert introduced me to a friend of hers, the
Egyptian writer Maguid Toubia, who had just been contacted by the Institut
du Monde Arabe for the translation of a collection of his short stories into
French. Toubia had wanted to give the job to Audebert, a seasoned Arabist as
fluent in fus’ha as in the Cairene dialect, but she declined the offer and instead
suggested my name. I sent a trial sample to Selma Fakhry-Fourcassié, the
series director. She found it convincing enough to entrust me with the project,
and that was it. I spent a good part of my last months in Cairo translating
Maguid Toubia’s short stories, including long working sessions –and quite
a few Stella beers –with him at the Cap d’Or bar on Abdel Khaliq Tharwat
Street. Back in France, now in my third year as undergraduate student in
Arabic, I worked on the translation, first with Selma Fakhry-Fourcassié, then
with Odile Cail, senior literary editor at the Éditions Jean-Claude Lattès.
These two gave me my first lessons in translation editing and rewriting at
a time when I was still practising Arabic–French translation as a scholastic
exercise with my fellow students in Aix. By the time the book was printed in
December 1985 (Toubia 1986), I was back in Cairo with another grant, work-
ing on my MA thesis project.
I have gone into some detail in the previous lines because these begin-
nings are highly illustrative of the state of Arabic–French literary trans-
lation in the mid-1980s. Jean-Claude Lattès’ ‘Lettres arabes’ was the first
series dedicated to modern Arabic literature to be published by a main-
stream French publisher, and that was made possible thanks to generous
funding by the Institut du Monde Arabe, then a recently created institu-
tion that embodied France’s cultural diplomacy towards the Arab world.1
Eleven titles were published in this series between 1985 and 1990, among
them the first complete foreign language translation of Naguib Mahfouz’s
Trilogy (1985; 1987; 1989). Six beginners in their late twenties or early thir-
ties, with no previous published translation, achieved ten of these eleven
translations –a fact that indicates the dearth of translators from Arabic at
that time. Only one of those beginners did not publish any further trans-
lation, while in the following decades four others (France Meyer Douvier,
Yves Gonzalez-Quijano, Philippe Vigreux, and myself) would become some
of the most active Arabic–French literary translators, each with fifteen to
twenty translated titles to date. This indicates that the series editors’ choices
were rather successful, but also that the time was ripe; actually, the launch-
ing of the ‘Lettres arabes’ series in 1985 coincided with the beginning of a
small boom for modern Arabic literature in French translation. Starting
from this year, ‘at least ten new titles appeared yearly in France in the field
of modern Arabic literature. … Between 1990 and 1994 the average rose
to over 17 titles each year, to reach 25 between 1995 and 2000’ (Leonhardt
Santini 2006: 166–167).
More broadly, this movement coincided with the coming of age of a new
generation of French Arabists –a generation that had experienced neither
the colonial times, nor the struggle for independence of the former French
colonies in the MENA region. Rather, this young generation was in tune with
its Arab peers who, like us, came of age in the post-1968 context, that is, a
context of contestation of authority, liberation of morals and solidarity with
oppressed minorities, from women to Palestinians. How does this relate to
translation, one may ask? It seems to me that beyond our different political
or aesthetical leanings, we as young translators from Arabic shared a com-
mon ideal or goal –thirty years later, it has not changed, since it seems yet to
be attained. Farouk Mardam-Bey, the leading editor of Arabic literature in
French translation since 1995, summarized this goal: ‘to make Arabic litera-
ture commonplace, that is, to get it out of its exoticism, to have it read neither
as a sociological or political document, nor as an ethnological account, but
as a literary creation in its own right’ (Mardam-Bey 2000: 85; my transla-
tion). Until it would, or will, be commonplace, Arabic literature would (will)
remain a minor literature, the literature of an oppressed minority. It was an
‘embargoed literature’, as Edward Said (1990) put it in an essay every Arabist
sympathetic with the cause of Arabic literature in translation has been quot-
ing ever since. But before delving further into these questions, let us turn back
to the late 1980s.
During the 1986–1987 academic year, I had passed the agrégation d’arabe, a
competitive exam much more prestigious than its official purpose, which is to
recruit highly qualified teachers for the French public high schools. I did teach
the Arabic language at that level during the following year –in my hometown,
Saint-Etienne, an assignment I did not ask for, and a position I never expected
to find myself in when I left the place some eight years before! But I had not
undergone the agrégation ordeal –ten months of full-time cramming –to
become a high school teacher. It made of me a lifetime French civil servant, a
highly appreciated move after almost ten years living on seasonal or part-time
jobs, scholarships and unemployment benefits. Even more decisively, it made
me eligible for the position that took me back to Cairo in September 1988 and
subsequently determined most of my future career.
In the mid-1980s, at a time when France’s cultural diplomacy still enjoyed
generous funding from the state budget –another legacy from the colonial
times the subsequent governments would severely trim in the following dec-
ades –the French cultural mission in Cairo had launched an ambitious trans-
lation programme and was looking for a young agrégé d’arabe with some
experience in translation (in the form of at least one published translation) to
manage it. I was the perfect match, and the job suited me perfectly. I managed
this programme for seven years, from 1988 to 1995 and, alongside my experi-
ence as a literary translator, it shaped my thinking on translation.
From Arabic into French

The main goal of this programme was, in accordance with the general aim
of the French cultural diplomacy, to ‘contribute to France’s cultural influ-
ence’ by promoting the translation of French books with Egyptian publishers.
Typically, I would either suggest a title for translation to one of my Egyptian
partners or listen to his or her proposals, then act as a liaison with the ori-
ginal French publisher until we would secure a contract, entrust a local trans-
lator with the Arabic translation, and follow up on this translation to varying
extents, depending on the translator’s abilities and on the difficulty of the
book, until the book was published. Following the local publishers’ requests,
we put the stress on social sciences rather than on literature and, within the
social sciences, primarily on matters especially relevant to the Egyptian audi-
ence, such as Egyptology and Orientalism in a broad sense. However, this
did not prevent us from also promoting the translation of modern classics of
French social sciences (Braudel, Bourdieu) and literature (Proust) that were
yet not sufficiently available in Arabic. However, this kind of one-way, ‘mis-
sionary’ policy hurt my egalitarian vision of Franco–Egyptian relations, and
I was eager to work also the other way round.
The moment was favourable: it came with the announcement of Naguib
Mahfouz’s Nobel prize in October 1988, a few weeks after my start, and with
it an unprecedented opportunity to boost Egyptian and Arabic literature in
translation –or at least that is what the small milieu of Western translators
from Arabic hoped, somewhat naively, would happen. In any case, Mahfouz’s
Nobel certainly fuelled my desire to re-engage actively in literary translation
on a personal level. At the same time, the small translation unit I headed
embarked on a joint translation project of a series of political essays by
Egyptian liberal intellectuals that were co-published by one of our Cairene
partners (Dar al-Fikr), La Découverte in Paris, and Bouchène in Algiers as
well. This latter experience was especially instructive for me.
The first two essays to appear in this series (Al-Ashmawy 1989; Zakariya
1991) had several characteristics in common: they were very recent,2 they
called for a radical separation between religion and politics and, for this
reason, had raised quite a lot of debate in Egypt, where mainstream pol-
itics as well as the various Islamicist opposition movements stemming from
the Muslim Brotherhood practised or advocated their mixing in different
ways (things have not changed much since!). However, they differed in their
methods: Al- Ashmawy, an Egyptian magistrate, based his arguments on
Islamic law and theology, in a way not much different from his predecessor
‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq (1888–1866) in al-Islam wa-usul al-hukm (1925), whose
French translation appeared later in the same series (Abderraziq 1994). In
contrast, Zakariya, a professor of philosophy, wrote from a modern, liberal
perspective familiar to Western readers. This led to two quite different ways
of writing: one (Al-Ashmawy’s) very much based on classical Arabic rhetoric,
and the other (Zakariya’s) using the tools and argumentation techniques of
modern critical thought.
However, this radical difference between their respective styles was largely
lost in my French translations, and for reasons I did not hesitate to present
candidly in the introductions I wrote for these French versions. I had also writ-
ten an introduction to my translation of Maguid Toubia’s short stories –on
the publisher’s request, I suppose. I am retrospectively struck by this custom
of asking the translator to present the author to a new audience through a
preface or introduction, notwithstanding the translators’ credentials –or lack
of thereof, as was my case at the time of Toubia’s translation at least. I sus-
pect this had to do with the fact that these were translations from the Arabic,
that is, from a distant, different world that needed (in the publishers’ view, at
least) to be explained to the reader. Whatever the case, I used my prefaces to
Al-Ashmawy and Zakariya to set out my translation strategies. I wrote at the
end of my introduction to Al-Ashmawy:
Against an ‘orientalising’ translation, that is to say, an integral transpos-

ition of the Arabic text into French that was bound to be indigestible, we
have made the choice of a substantial rewriting, for this alone allows for
the author’s thought to find a new life in the target language and culture
and thus to be received beyond the small circle of specialists.
(Jacquemond, in Al-Ashmawy 1989: 8; my translation)
What I did not mention was that this substantial rewriting also involved
a massive compression of the Arabic original. Typically, ten lines in Arabic
would become five in French, meaning that the original was reduced by more
than half (the French translation of an Arabic text is usually twenty-five to
thirty per cent longer than the original). The rewriting job was much lighter
in the translation of Zakariya’s work, because of the much smaller distance
between his style of writing, much informed by the Western thought he’d been
teaching for decades, and its French equivalent. However, reading back over
my translation today in comparison to the original, I can see that my priority
was clearly to deliver the author’s message in the smallest number of signs!
I had probably developed this kind of strategy while translating Egyptian
pundits’ columns for the CEDEJ’s Revue de la presse égyptienne during my
years as a student in Cairo. I also kept it up by teaching this strategy in the
translation classes I was asked to give to young Egyptian French-language
teachers and academics as part of my assignment. Against my students’ basic
idea of translation as consisting in replacing Arabic words with French ones
or vice versa, my mantra was: We don’t translate words, we translate mean-
ings. I had made up my own version of the first translation theory I had
discovered, namely, the ‘interpretative theory of translation’ elaborated by
Marianne Lederer and Danica Seleskovitch (1984), conference interpret-
ers and professors at the École Supérieure d’Interprètes et de Traducteurs
(ESIT), now part of the University of Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle, France’s
foremost training school for interpreters and translators. Teaching transla-
tion students to understand a given text before starting to translate it, and
having them produce compressed versions of it in the original language and
in the target one, are actually excellent training methods that I still use in my
MA translation classes at Aix-Marseille University. In addition, I now ask
my students to do comparative analyses of French translations of reports or
columns, originally published in Arab newspapers, as they appear in Courrier
international, a French weekly magazine that consists mainly of a selection
of articles translated from the international press. While these translations
usually convey the originals’ meaning in a quite accurate way, they resort to
rewriting, summarizing or clarifying techniques to various extents, and thus
provide my students with an eloquent example of the liberty one can take in
the translation process. Of course, this rewriting and summarizing process is
not innocent. As Lynne Franjié (2009) has shown in her study of Courrier
international’s coverage of the 2006 Israeli–Lebanese war, these translations
tend to suppress or attenuate what may seem either too ‘politically incorrect’
or irrelevant to the French reader.
I ended my introduction to Fouad Zakariya’s translation with a warning
of sorts:
Because this translation calls the North as witness to the ideological strug-
gles currently taking place within the South, it runs the risk of allowing
these struggles to be used as a weapon by the North. And because it
seems to offer to a West haunted by the ‘return of Islam’ the backing of
the ‘good Arab’, it runs the risk of giving arguments to those who, on the
southern side of the Mediterranean, accuse Fouad Zakariya of being an
‘enemy from within’.
(Jacquemond, in Zakariya 1991: 12; my translation)
Thus, it seems that I was very conscious of the effects on the book’s reception
of my translation choices –from the very selection of the texts we chose to
translate to the kind of translation I practised –and that I was desperately
trying to pre-empt them. It was a desperate attempt, indeed, since the book
was released on 24 January 1991, in the midst of the First Gulf War, in a con-
text obviously prone to aggravate misrepresentations. I have lost the abundant
press book the publisher had compiled (the book was relatively successful,
and La Découverte reprinted it in 2002 –in the wake of 9/11), but I remember
well that what hit me most back then was the fact that there was not a single
comment on my translation. In the transparent, domesticating translation
strategy prevailing in France, this was the best proof of my success. I was an
invisible translator, ergo I was a good translator.
This was a deliberate choice, one that was going against what was already
becoming the dominant trend among self-conscious, ‘politically correct’
translators in France, that is, the critique of ‘ethnocentric’ translation,

as the late Antoine Berman (1942–1991) put it in a seminal essay (1985).
Almost at the same time, Lawrence Venuti published his first important
contribution to the critique of invisible translation (1986). Together with
Meschonnic, Spivak, and others, Berman and Venuti would become con-
nected with the ‘ethical turn’ in translation, that is, with a theory and prac-
tice of translation aiming at recognizing the Other’s alterity and giving it a
place within the target language and culture through ‘foreignizing’ trans-
lation strategies. How, then, was it that while my own ethics and politics
should have led me to identify with the Berman and Venuti ethics of trans-
lation that were gaining ground in the 1980s and 1990s, I was going in the
other direction?
To find an answer to this question, let us go back to the first pages of this
essay and my description of the context of the 1980s as it pertains to Arabic
literature in translation. We had read Edward Said, we had celebrated Naguib
Mahfouz’s Nobel price, we were fighting to bring Arabic literature ‘out of
the ghetto’, to ‘make it commonplace’, as I said, so that it could be read
in French or English just like other foreign literatures –and, of course, the
model everybody in the Arab literary milieus had in mind was the success
story of South American literature and the ‘magical realism’ in Europe and
North America, which was at its height in the 1980s. For me, and for many of
my colleagues I suppose, these goals meant the need first to adopt translation
strategies intended to help this ‘normalization’. That meant we had to get
rid of certain orientalist traditions which, in both their scholarly and more
popular manifestations, had contributed to the longstanding ghettoization
and exoticization of Arabic literary heritage in the West and were now influ-
encing the reception of modern Arabic literature in translation in order to
replace them with mainstream domesticating translation strategies. Indeed,
this is what I was doing, quite consciously, in my published translations at the
turn of the 1990s.
This would turn out to be, it seems to me, one of my major contributions
to translation theory. In an essay I was lucky enough to publish in a collected
volume edited by Lawrence Venuti (Jacquemond 1992); I proposed that the
history of translation from Arabic into French (or English for that matter
[see Shamma 2009]) teaches us that foreignizing translation strategies are not
necessarily more ‘ethical’, that is, better suited to make a place for the Other
in the target culture. On the contrary, such strategies can further confirm the
Other’s alterity, as long as this specific other is kept by the target culture in
a radical alterity. Actually, Berman had himself realized this, as is shown
by his criticism of Mardrus’ ‘exoticizing’ translation of the Arabian Nights
(1985: 79).
Robyn Creswell (2017) has recently provided us with a very eloquent reflec-
tion on this dilemma. He asserts that
[a]‌central task for translators from the Arabic is to assert the bare trans-
latability of the language into English. By translatability, I mean its inter-
pretability, its potential for making sense –including, of course, aesthetic
sense. … This isn’t an argument for ‘domesticating’ translations, that
is, for neutered English versions that privilege ease of reading over lin-
guistic estrangement. Instead, the argument is that at a moment when the
estrangement of English and Arabic is a brute historical fact, eloquent
translations from the Arabic can provide exactly the experience of shock
and defamiliarization that any powerful reading experience, including
those of translations, must involve. That lucid and legible English ver-
sions might indeed provoke these experiences suggests to me that the cat-
egories of ‘domesticating’ and ‘foreignizing’ translations are essentially
meaningless, or at least highly contingent.
(Creswell 2016: 452–453)
However, in the example Creswell gives further, selected verses from a poem
by a female ISIS militant he translated with his colleague Bernard Haykel
(2015), the two appear also to have resorted to domesticating strategies, such
as selecting the verses (ten out of the sixteen comprising the original [al-Nasr
2014: 43]) that best suit their point (that is, showing that the poem ‘combines
the politics of jihad with a visionary cosmopolitanism’ [Creswell and Haykel
2015]), explaining al-Nasr’s ‘Qahtan wa-‘Adnan’ as ‘the Arab of the South
[and] the Arab of the North’, and so forth. While their translation is indeed
an ‘eloquent’ one, as Creswell claims, I would argue that it does not escape
the domestication/ foreignization polarity and its effects. It does produce
an ‘experience of shock and defamiliarization’, as he expected, but rather,
I would say, through the unlikely mix of the message’s strangeness and its
rhetoric’s familiarity. Actually, such a mix is already noticeable in the Arabic
original, with its pan-Islamist message expressed in the classical form (one
rhyme throughout and one of the canonical metres), yet in a very modern
style devoid of the archaisms and flourishes that usually come with this kind
of poetry. As a matter of fact, the familiar aspect of this style, whether in the
Arabic original or in the English translation, stems from the fact that it resem-
bles the rhetoric common of the patriotic songs of many modern nations
(and, as in this case, supranational imagined communities).
In this way, Robyn Creswell’s plea for the translatability of Arabic –by
which he means the moral and political necessity to translate from this lan-
guage, including poetry of the Islamic State –closely echoes my own plea
for the normalization of Arabic literature in translation, which has always
prevented me from adopting the ‘resistant translation’ strategies Venuti would
call for. As appears clearly from Creswell’s recent essay (and one could quote
dozens of others to the same end), the material and symbolic status of the
Arabic language in the centres of the Western world has not improved since
the 1980s. I would even contend, on the basis of my experience of three dec-
ades, that it has deteriorated, in France at least. Looking back to my numerous
contributions to both theory and practice of Arabic translation since 1992
(more than fifteen articles and book chapters and as many translated books),
it seems to me that I have been mostly developing variations on the same
theme. In summary, as regards both theory and practice, I have consistently
tipped the scales in favour of domesticating choices rather than foreignizing
ones –to varying degrees, depending on the text and the context, but the gen-
eral trend has remained clear.
From French into Arabic

Let us now turn back to what was my main occupation between 1988 and
1995, when I was in charge of the Translation Department of the French cul-
tural bureau in Cairo, that is, translation into Arabic. During the 1980s, the
Egyptian publishing sector was gradually recovering from the erratic policies
implemented under the Nasser and Sadat regimes (see Gonzalez-Quijano
1998). I was soon convinced that working in the public sector would probably
be risky in many ways, especially given that the private sector was recovering
some vigour at the hands of small entrepreneurs, often with a militant, leftist
background, who entered the publishing market with both political and com-
mercial ambitions. These would become my favourite partners. I would also
find out later that some of my best and most effective translators had a similar
profile –that is to say, they had a militant background and that translation
was for them both a livelihood and a political or ideological project.
But what fascinated me most was soon discovering that, while we –my
Egyptian colleagues, French–Arabic translators, and myself, Arabic–French
translator –apparently did the same job, we actually worked in very differ-
ent ways and, more broadly, we occupied radically different positions in our
respective societies. Mine was an extremely peripheral one (as a literary trans-
lator, that is, one of the least recognized occupations within the cultural field
and, furthermore, a translator from the Arabic, a very marginal language in
the translated book market in France). While they did not fare any better
than I did in terms of material reward, their social status and esteem were
certainly more favourable than mine. Of course, they remained second-hand
writers, and thus not as highly regarded as first-hand authors. Yet, because
of the Egyptian (and more broadly Arab) cultural (or: literary, academic,
publishing, etc.) field’s subordinate position in the global economy of sym-
bolic exchanges, their social role, or mission, was much more recognized than
mine. As translators, they were seen as indispensable actors of the ‘transfer
of knowledge’ from more developed cultures or societies –and especially
as translators from French, a language that was still at the forefront of crit-
ical thinking in several domains, as was attested by the popularity of French
theory on American campuses in the 1980s.
There was, thus, a fundamental inequality between Arabic–French and

French–Arabic translation. But prior to this inequality was another one, one
that had to do with the production of knowledge and representations related
to Egypt (or the Arab world at large). In France (and this can be extended
to the West in general), this knowledge and these representations, instead of
being imported from the place, were mostly produced by the group of indi-
viduals and institutions that together form the orientalist field. One of the
main consequences of this state of affairs was that one of the first requests
I received from my Egyptian partners was to fund translations of books deal-
ing with Egypt and the Arab region, from Egyptology to current economic
and political issues. The case of Egyptology, which turned out to be one of our
most successful series in Arabic translation, is especially interesting because
it epitomizes this issue of translation as reclaiming a knowledge related to
the Self, as opposed to translation as a pure import of foreign knowledge.
From Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign (1798–1801) and Champollion’s deci-
phering of the Rosetta Stone (1822–1824) until far into the twentieth century,
Egyptology (the study of ancient Egyptian history), remained largely monop-
olized by European scholars and archaeologists who ignored or patronized
their native counterparts (Reid 2015). The latter did not recover their full
independence until the 1950s and, yet, until now, the field of Egyptology
remains dominated by foreign scholars, and Egyptian Egyptologists have to
publish in English, French, or German if they want their foreign peers to rec-
ognize their contribution.
Egyptology is but an extreme example of the marginalization of the Arabic
language as a vector of knowledge production, an issue of growing import-
ance in many fields –and one that concerns most national languages, given
the rapidly growing use of English as the lingua franca of scientific communi-
cation. Nevertheless, this issue of course takes on specific importance in post-
colonial contexts such as the Arab-speaking areas. But however important
this ‘translation as reclamation’ part of our programme was, the latter’s core
remained the ‘transfer of knowledge’, especially in the social sciences and
humanities, from literary criticism to sociology, history, and political sci-
ence. On the whole, there was much less interest for French literature than for
French social sciences. At least, this was the case until 1993, when I started
to work with a newly founded publishing house, Sharqiyyat, which would
become closely connected with the young literary avant-garde known as gil
al-tis‘inat, the Nineties generation.
Back then, when I made these choices, I did not realize that they actually
corresponded with general trends in Arabic translation, which I would docu-
ment and analyse in later research (2008), and that these general trends did
not differ much from those one can observe in other comparable linguistic
areas (Heilbron 1999). Actually, what struck me most at that time were the
multiple differences between my own practice as a translator from Arabic
into French and my Egyptian peers’ practice as translators from French into
Arabic, and among them, especially, their tendency to favour foreignizing

translation strategies. Although I was working with translators with very dif-
ferent backgrounds and from different generations, it seemed that they were
all trained in the same school, where a good translation was not, as we would
consider it in France (or in the UK or the United States), an invisible one
but, quite the opposite, a very visible one. In the worst case, it was a result of
laziness and a lack of professionalism that would lead them to deliver word-
for-word versions without taking the necessary time either to fully understand
what they were translating or to reformulate it in a clear, eloquent Arabic ver-
sion. However, I soon became convinced that, for many of my Egyptian peers,
this was rather a deliberate choice, and one consistent with the mainstream
trend of Arabic translation, whether in Egypt or in the region at large.
As part of my job, and in order to check the market trends, I had been
surveying the translated Arabic book market, especially translations from
French, published all over the Arab world, which I used to search for and buy
at the Cairo book fair every year. Although I never read them thoroughly,
I would make a go at it, and it was often a rather unsettling experience: sud-
denly I was confronted with an Arabic language I was not familiar with. Part
of my unease had to do with my lack of intimacy with the specific Arabic
jargon of this or that subject, but I was soon convinced that the main reason
for my malaise was, instead, that translated Arabic often ‘sounded’ differ-
ent from original Arabic. The level of foreignness, so to speak, in translated
Arabic was variable, depending on many factors, but on the whole, it seemed
clear that, most of the time, translated Arabic had a distinctive smell –exactly
the opposite of the French ‘invisible’ translator’s golden rule: the translated
text ought not to smell.
Being born and raised in a metropolitan culture where translation was
made invisible, it was not easy for me to accept these foreignizing aes-
thetics, and I spent hours editing translations too literal for my taste or
trying to convince their authors to write a more idiomatic Arabic. These
biases leaked out in my first essays on French/Arabic translation, where
I would equate these aesthetics with the subordinate position of Arabic
language and culture, and thus call for their liberation from this domin-
ation (see, e.g., Jacquemond 1992). Later, when I got back to Arabic trans-
lation as a scholarly object, almost ten years after I ended my term as
director of this translation programme, it seems to me that I developed a
more nuanced approach. For instance, studying Bourdieu’s Arabic transla-
tions (Jacquemond 2015) in the light of, amongst others, Moroccan trans-
lator and philosopher Abdessalam Benabdelali’s reflections on translation
(2006), led me to reconsider the Arab translator’s position. I would situate
it in a broader perspective where, on the one hand, it does not differ radic-
ally from that of translators working in other languages and, on the other
hand, I would identify and discuss the specific problems of Arabic transla-
tion, which are related to the specificities of the Arab linguistic area. This
is an area consisting of more than twenty countries where there are many
political and economic obstacles to book circulation, where the publish-
ing industry is still dominated by poorly professionalized actors, an area
populated by more than 300 million but where the translated book market
is ridiculously small for many reasons, the main one being that a signifi-
cant part of the local elites continue to privilege the use of English (or
French) over Arabic in many fields, as a means to perpetuate their social
domination. Add to this that Arabic, a Semitic language, has no common
roots with the major European languages, that it only reluctantly accepts
loanwords and prefers to coin new terms by drawing on its extremely rich
and fertile triliteral word root system and enriching it, and the result is that
Arabic neology –which largely relies, here as elsewhere, on the translators’
creativity –is always fragile, uncertain and hectic. Therefore, it can take a
very long time for a new word or an old word’s new meaning to reach the
critical mass that will impose it on the language users, whether at the level
of the whole Arabic speaking region or at that of part of this region.
In conclusion
This brief survey reveals the causes of the deep difference between translation
conditions and practices in French and in Arabic. This difference struck me
forcefully when I started to work in both directions at the turn of the 1990s,
and I tried to reduce it in my practice and in my theorizing as well. It is prob-
ably a good thing that I was not able to succeed: I imagine with a chill the kind
of Arabic translation that could have been produced by an Egyptian trans-
lator who applied to a French political essay the same naturalizing techniques
I used in my French translation of Al-Ashmawy’s al-Islam al-siyasi. Or am
I wrong, and should I not admit rather that this kind of Arabization (ta‘rib)
has always existed and still exists, under forms different from my francization,
and that it is actually a good thing?
Trying to assess how my practice of Arabic–French translation, and my
analysis of the reverse activity, has evolved since the late 1980s and early
1990s, it seems to me that I have become more attached to respectfulness or
less prone to rewriting, as regards my practice and, on the other side, better
able to understand the need for literal, word-for-word translation into Arabic.
This has not prevented me from sometimes engaging in various forms of edit-
ing, but this is another subject altogether. True, it is not always easy to draw
the line between rewriting (as part of the translating job) and editing (that is,
taking advantage of the translation to make corrections in the original work),
but it is a rather common practice, and one that benefits the author at the
end of the day. I remember that, while I was exchanging letters with Pierre
Bourdieu regarding the Arabic translation of Les règles de l’art (1992), he sent
me a list of two or three dozen minor corrections to the published version,
which had been suggested to him by his Dutch translator, asking me to make
sure they were inserted in the future Arabic translation. I have also practised
this kind of intervention in many of my translations, yet quite marginally.
On the other hand, I can see more clearly now the reasons behind the per-
vasiveness of the word-for-word approach in Arabic translation, a phenom-
enon I have referred to as the ‘deferential translational norm’ (2015: 201).
This deferential pattern is the clearest manifestation of the deep inequality
between the two languages and cultures at the present point of their encounter.
However, it varies a great deal from one translator to another and from one
translated book to another, and this probably follows a general pattern one
can observe in incoming translations into any language. Deference has to do
with the value the target language’s specific cultural field accords the source
text it decides to import. The more the target cultural field values a source
text, the more deferential its translation will be. At a given time and place,
the different subsectors of a society’s cultural (literary, academic) field can
have different kinds of relationships with their foreign counterparts, from an
equal, peer-to-peer relationship, to a very unequal one in which the import-
ing field considers itself in a position of inferiority and in need of its foreign
counterpart in order to move forward or go beyond a situation of crisis. At a
more micro level, a deferential, foreignizing translation strategy will be used
by avant-garde or dissident actors within a given subfield who will use the
importation of a foreign text or author in order to further their own agen-
das and add legitimacy to them (see Casanova 2002 for a full description of
these dynamics). The history of modern translation in the main European
languages is full of examples of such translation strategies, which empha-
sizes the necessity of always contextualizing the study and analysis of transla-
tions. Unfortunately, we are in serious need of such studies on modern Arabic
translations. ‘The construction of a history of translation is the first task of
a modern theory of translation’, Antoine Berman aptly wrote (1992: 1), and
this is an especially urgent one for Arabic translation. Although tremendous
progress has been made in this field during the last two decades, it has focused
mostly on the Nahda period, that is, the nineteenth century and the first dec-
ades of the twentieth century.3 There is yet much to be done as regards Arabic
translation since the end of World War II, a period less favoured by research-
ers but nevertheless extremely rich, and whose impact on Arab language and
culture is as decisive, if not more so, as that of the Nahda. This is indeed a vast
research programme awaiting the coming generation of scholars working on
translation into Arabic, and for translators as well.
Notes
1 Launched in the wake of the oil booms of the 1970s, the Institut du Monde Arabe
(IMA) was supposed to be funded on an equal basis by the French and Arab states.
However, many of the latter either failed to fulfil their pledges or did so with consid-
erable delay, which led French authorities to take control over the institute’s finances
in 1996, and caused chronic deficit –also due to the high maintenance costs of the
building and the generous recruitment policy followed during its first years.
2 Muhammad Saïd Al-Ashmawy’s [1932–2013] al-Islam al-siyasi had been published
in 1987; the essays gathered in Fouad Zakariya’s [1927–2010] translation in various
fora between 1986 and 1989.
3 I refer the reader to the references provided in the introduction to the recent issue of
The Translator, on translation in the Arab world (Jacquemond and Selim 2015), for
a full bibliography of these works.
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Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha.
Reid, Donald Malcolm. 2015. Contesting Antiquity in Egypt: Archaeologies, Museums
and the Struggle for Identities from World War I to Nasser. Cairo: American
University in Cairo Press.
Said, Edward. 1990. ‘Embargoed Literature’. The Nation, 17 September: 34–41.
Shamma, Tarek. 2009. Translation and the Manipulation of Difference. Manchester: St.
Jerome.
Toubia, Maguid. 1986. Combat contre la lune. Translated and Introduction by Richard
Jacquemond. Paris: Jean-Claude Lattès.
Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Venuti, Lawrence. 1986. ‘The Translator’s Invisibility’. Criticism 28(2): 179–212.
———. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London:
Routledge.
———. 2000. ‘Introduction’. In Lawrence Venuti, ed., The Translation Studies Reader
(pp. 4–8). London: Routledge.
Zakariya, Fouad. 1991. Islamisme ou laïcité. Les Arabes à l’heure du choix. Translated
and introduced by Richard Jacquemond. Paris: La Découverte; Cairo: Dar al-Fikr;
Algiers, Laphomic-Bouchène.
Chapter 3
Specialist legal interpreters for a

fairer justice system
Sandra Hale
Introduction
Recognition and remuneration has [sic] come more slowly for community
interpreters than for conference interpreters, and in fact some community
interpreters are not paid at all for their work. Even today, many com-
munity interpreters who work in legal, health, social service, and other
community-oriented settings, as well as in war zones, are not considered
professionals.
(Moody 2011: 38)
The insight quoted above reflects a reality well known to many: conference
interpreters have gained recognition as professionals and consequently receive
adequate levels of remuneration, while community interpreters, including
legal interpreters, are often not considered to be professional, with pay rates
reflecting that perception. One reason for the above may be the end users;
conference interpreters tend to work for the private sector, whereas commu-
nity interpreters mostly work for the public sector, with generally fewer finan-
cial resources than the private sector. Similarly, one can argue that conference
interpreters tend to interpret for interlocutors with the same status and levels
of education, while community interpreters tend to interpret for a professional
service provider and a client who is normally a powerless member of society,
such as a migrant, refugee, indigenous, or deaf person. Lack of resources can
be a crucial factor in offering the lowest pay rates, failing to attract the best to
the profession, or to stop the attrition rate of the best-qualified interpreters.
This leads to the situation where investing in high-level education and train-
ing is not compensated by any employment benefits.
On the other side of the equation, end users’ bad experiences of some
incompetent and unethical interpreters can lead them to argue that they are
in fact spending too much money on interpreters who do not deserve to be
paid very much at all. A survey of police users of interpreting services elicited
the following negative responses: ‘I think the [police service] is overcharged
for interpreter services’; ‘police are deterred from getting an interpreter due
48 Sandra Hale
to the large cost involved’; ‘there is an idea in the [police service] that inter-
preters cost too much money and should only be used in exceptional circum-
stances with defendants. I was harshly criticized for using an interpreter for
this victim’; and ‘I believe the cost of using an interpreter is a huge impost for
investigators’ (Wakefield et al. 2015: 64).
The above situation has also contributed to the misconception that any
bilingual can be a community interpreter. While formal education and
training are common for conference interpreters in most parts of the world,
not as many community interpreters can claim the same educational back-
ground. Interpreters themselves can also sometimes be held responsible for
the above misconception. Many who have not received education or train-
ing argue that they do not need it and resent any attempt from any higher
authority to set minimum education requirements. An example of the above
has been the negative reactions of some to the latest National Accreditation
Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI) changes in Australia,
which will require continuous professional development for practitioners to
maintain their certification.1 Such attitudes portray a lack of recognition of
the complexities of community interpreting, which contributes to its low
professional status. The lack of awareness of the damage an incompetent
or unethical interpreter can cause, especially in legal settings, is alarming
(Lee 2015).
The above can be seen as a vicious circle: untrained interpreters do not
deserve to be paid like trained professionals, but there is no financial incentive
for them to be trained. Untrained interpreters will perform poorly, leading to
complaints and negative outcomes, reinforcing the argument that they do not
deserve higher remuneration. Nevertheless, untrained interpreters keep being
employed because there is a demand for interpreting services, but the supply
of qualified interpreters is limited, once again perpetuating the above. Such a
vicious cycle needs to be broken if any progress is to be made. The first step to
breaking the chain is to raise the competence of interpreters, after which the
profession will be in a much better position to fight for a higher status, better
remuneration, and working conditions.
This chapter outlines the many competences needed to adequately perform
as a legal interpreter. It will draw on some examples, show some evidence
of the difference specialist training makes in acquiring those competencies,
and describe the latest developments in Australia to achieve progress in this
field. In this chapter I use the term legal interpreting to refer to all settings
within the legal system, including lawyer–client interviews, police, tribunals,
and court settings.
Legal interpreter competences

Many academics and researchers have argued for the need for legal interpret-
ers to be adequately trained (see, for example, Moeketsi and Wallmach 2005;
Legal interpreters for fairer justice 49
Moeketsi and Mollema 2006; Morris 2008; Roberts-Smith 2009; Lee 2008;
Torstensson and Sullivan 2011). Benmaman (1999: 109) states that it
takes more than bilingualism to make a legal interpreter. The legal inter-
preter must also be able to manipulate dialect and geographic variation in
his/her working languages, possess wide general knowledge, understand
both the legal process and the related terminology, and also understand
the various discourse styles used in the courtroom.
Benmaman’s quote above illustrates the complexity of legal interpreting. In

a previous publication (Hale 2010), I outlined similar skills required of court
interpreters in order to perform adequately, which include, in addition to
bilingualism and interpreting competence, a clear understanding of the inter-
preting process and the theories that underpin it, an understanding of the
discourse strategies of the setting, and an understanding of the interpreter’s
role and professional ethical requirements in legal settings.
In this chapter, I divide the interpreter’s competence into four major
areas: (1) Linguistic and discursive, (2) Contextual, (3) Interpreting (theoret-
ical, technical and professional), and (4) Interactional. I argue that any assess-
ment of legal interpreter competence needs to include all of the above to
ensure its validity and reliability.
In outlining these, it is not my intention to claim that interpreters must
carry the full responsibility for achieving effective communication, or even
adequate interpreting. In previous publications (Ozolins and Hale 2009; Hale
2011b), I have argued for the need for all participants to share this respon-
sibility. Kinnunen (2011) also calls for shared expertise and collaboration
between interpreters and lawyers, where professionals work together to help
each other achieve their goals. Ahmad (2007) also points out that lawyers
need to adapt their practices to accommodate interpreters. Adequate working
conditions are also essential, such as preparation materials, relevant briefing,
breaks, and comfortable facilities (Hale and Stern 2011; Stern and Hale 2015),
since the most competent interpreter will not be able to perform adequately
if the conditions are not conducive to good practice. However, interpreters
without the required competence and knowledge will not be able to per-
form adequately even with the best working conditions or the best goodwill
from other parties. The focus of this chapter is therefore on the interpreter’s
requirements.
Linguistic and discursive competence

A high level of bilingualism is undoubtedly the first requirement for any
interpreter, which is by itself very difficult to attain. For legal interpreters,
the next obvious requirement is knowledge of specialist legal terminology,
with accompanying knowledge of the legal system in which they occur. A less
50 Sandra Hale
obvious requirement is the interpreter’s bilingual discourse competence.

Hatim (2001) emphasizes the importance of discursive competence in any
type of translation. In legal interpreting, the knowledge of the discourse of
legal settings is crucial. Whereas legal language refers to specialist termin-
ology, phrases, and structures, legal discourse refers to the way language is
used to achieve specific purposes. In the adversarial system, interpreters need
to understand the strategic use of questions both in examination-in-chief2
and cross-examination in order to accurately render the questions into the
target language to achieve the same intended effect. Studies have found that
untrained interpreters disregard the way questions are asked and concentrate
only on the content, thus affecting and changing the elicited responses (Berk-
Seligson 1990/2002; Hale 1999, 2004/2010). Similarly, the manner in which
witnesses present their answers is as important as their content (O’Barr 1982).
When interpreters are unaware of this, they tend to follow a trend that can
be adequate in other settings, such as conference interpreting, and attempt
to improve on the original delivery to make the utterance more coherent or
responsive to the questions (Hale 2007a). Such changes in court interpreting
can have concrete unwanted consequences.
Below is an example of a typical cross-examination question that illustrates
the discursive intricacy of courtroom discourse.
(1) You see, Mrs Smith, I put it to you that you didn’t, as you say, forget
that you’d placed the items in your bag, that in fact you put them there to
conceal them and to steal them, didn’t you?
(Hale 2016)
The above question does not contain any specialist legal terminology.
However, its discourse is complex and needs to be understood by interpreters
in order to accurately render the question into the target language to suc-
cessfully achieve the same purpose as the original. There are many factors
that make this question difficult to interpret, including: the question type,
the examination type, the purpose of the examination, the activity type and
tenor of the interaction between the participants, the use of specific discourse
markers, the use of a tag and a particular intonation, the connotations of
the terms, the legal assumptions and the level of politeness and register used.
I will analyse each of these factors below.
Firstly, it is important for the interpreter to know in which type of exam-
ination the question is being asked, so as to understand the purpose of the
question and the strategies used to achieve such a purpose. The question in
example (1) is a cross-examination question because it is a leading question.
Leading questions are not permissible in examination-in-chief, but they are
encouraged in cross-examination (Lilly 1978). There is a reason behind this.
The purpose of cross-examination is to challenge the version of the story
as presented by the other side, by presenting a different version (Hale 2004/
2010). The purpose of the examination will therefore determine the types of
questions used. When interpreters are unaware of these subtleties, they can
inadvertently change the question types, to the point of using questions that
would be regarded as inadmissible in court.
In example (1), the use of the discourse marker ‘you see’, reinforces the fact
that the cross-examiner is indicating that she/he knows what really happened,
which is different from what the witness is claiming. This discourse marker
indicates ‘presumed knowledge’ (McCarthy 1994). It has been found to be
used only in cross-examination, and normally to preface the most confronta-
tional types of questions such as the one above, containing the ‘I put it to you
that’ phrase. In a study of 631 cross-examination questions interpreted into
Spanish, the discourse markers ‘see’ or ‘you see’ were omitted by interpreters
81 per cent of the time, significantly reducing the illocutionary force of the
question and removing the claim of presumed knowledge reinforced by the
discourse marker ‘you see’, which of course does not necessarily mean it is
true (Hale 2004/2010).
The ‘I put it to you that’ phrase is also only used in cross-examination,
for the same reasons that were explained above. The phrase has both legal
and pragmatic functions. The legal function is to present the witness with
a different proposition that they can respond to. The pragmatic function,
intended for the fact-finders (either the judicial officer or the jury), is to
insinuate that the cross-examiner is presenting the version that needs to
be believed, and the witness has little choice but to agree (McElhaney
1997). It is difficult to respond to such a statement. It does not present
a question to be answered, and it is delivered in a confrontational tone.
The phrase always prefaces a disagreement and appears at the end of the
cross-examination sequence, which carries the most confrontational con-
tent (Hale 2004/2010). In example (1) we can see that the cross-examiner
restates what the witness has said and reinforces the opposite: ‘You didn’t,
as you say’, insinuating that the witness is lying.
Another marker used is ‘in fact’, which also reinforces the claim that the
cross-examiner is presenting the truth, which contrasts the lies uttered by
the witness, thus attacking the witness’s credibility. The connotations of the
words ‘conceal’ and ‘steal’ are also negative. The statement is followed by a
tag question, in a downward intonation: ‘didn’t you?’ These tags are also con-
frontational and not used as genuine questions, but rather to accuse (Quirk
et al. 1985). The last aspect of the discourse strategies used in example (1) that
has not yet been discussed is the form of address at the start of the ques-
tion: Mrs Smith. Here the lawyer is putting distance between him/her and the
witness, by using the formal form of address. It may also be used to insinuate
that the witness is a married lady who should know better than to shoplift.
Previous research has shown that interpreters tend to omit the use of formal
or informal forms of address when interpreting (Hale and Gibbons 1999),
thus altering the tenor of the discourse.
52 Sandra Hale
Example (1) illustrates a typical unfriendly question from a cross-examiner

to a witness from the other side. In the adversarial system, there is also always
a friendly side that is responsible for examining its own witnesses. This is done
in examination-in-chief. Questions in examination-in-chief are characterized
by being less coercive, more polite and open-ended, with question types that
match those purposes. The following would be a typical examination-in-chief
question:
(2) Mrs Smith, could you please tell the court what happened to you on
the day just prior to the incident just described?
The above question aims to elicit an open narrative from the witness by
using a modal open question. The tone is polite and formal to show respect
to the witness. There is no accusation or insinuation that the witness is lying.
The question is open because leading questions are not permitted during
examination-in-chief, as the evidence needs to be freely given by the witness.
In order for interpreters to interpret adequately, they must have knowledge
of the purposes for which linguistic devices are used in court. If they are
not aware of such strategic discourse, it is easy to inadvertently change the
question type, omit important rhetorical devices, and change the tone and
intonation of the question, leading to pragmatic changes in the question,
especially in terms of its illocutionary force, which in turn can generate poten-
tial changes in the answer (Rigney 1999; Liu and Hale 2017).
On the other side of the equation, witness answers can also be difficult to
interpret for reasons other than legal terminology. Answers can be classified
as being powerful or powerless (Conley and O’Barr 1990). Powerful answers
have been shown to elicit better evaluations of the witness, whereas power-
less answers have been shown to have the opposite effect. Below is a typical
powerless answer:
(3) ‘Uh, well, I sort of, like didn’t know what I was, what I was uh (…)
doing? [Y]‌ou know?’
What makes the above powerless is the presence of hesitations, repetitions,

discourse markers such as ‘well’, fillers such as ‘sort of’, ‘like’, and ‘you
know’, and an upward intonation. A powerful version of the above answer
could be:
(4) ‘I didn’t know what I was doing’.
In a court situation, it would not be accurate for an interpreter to change a

powerless answer into a powerful answer or vice versa, as that would impact
on the assessment of the answer and the witness credibility (Hale 2004/2010).
Legal professionals have often lamented that the
evidence given through an interpreter loses much of its impact… The

jury does not really hear the witness, nor are they fully able to appreciate,
for instance, the degree of conviction or uncertainty with which his evi-
dence is given; they cannot wholly follow the nuances, inflections, quick-
ness or hesitancy of the witness; all they have is the dispassionate and
unexpressive tone of the interpreter.
(Filios v Morland [1963] S. R. (NSW) 331, per Bereton J
at 332–333, in Roberts-Smith 2009)
The above quotation reflects the concrete influence interpreters can have
when they are not trained to master the level of pragmatic accuracy required
in court settings. The same trend can be found in lawyer–client interviews
and police interviews, where questions are used strategically to achieve cer-
tain ends, in particular the building of rapport (Dieckmann and Rojas-Lizana
2016; Wakefield et al. 2015). As Wakefield et al. (2015: 56) state,
[p]‌olice may feel they are also less able to focus on verbal cues such as
utterances and voice quality that they perceive can be used to detect
deception. It can be hypothesised the addition of an interpreter can
affect the strategies employed by officers when conducting investigative
interviews.
Interpreters can either improve on the original style, by changing a powerless

answer to a powerful one, or they can have the opposite effect and change a
powerful answer into a powerless one. Ahmad (2007) comments on the way
an untrained interpreter made a university academic sound like an unedu-
cated person through the interpreted rendition, which was full of gram-
matical errors, basic vocabulary and simple sentence structures. Hatim and
Mason (1990) comment on the tendency of liaison interpreters to neutralize
the register of vastly different interlocutors, such as lawyers and defendants.
An experimental study found that when interpreters omitted the powerless
features from the witnesses’ speech, the witnesses’ evaluations of credibility
improved, but when interpreters added powerless features such as hesitations,
fillers and hedges, the witnesses’ evaluations were more negative, even when
the propositional content was the same (Hale 2004/2010). Often, it is the illo-
cutionary force that can be altered by interpreters, even if the level of power
remains the same (Liu and Hale 2018). Hatim argues that accuracy cannot
be based on ‘linguistic criteria alone, but rather the variety of functions that
texts are intended to fulfil in real contexts’ (Hatim 2001: 65).
Research has found that when interpreters are trained and are compe-
tent, they can achieve a high level of interpreting fidelity that includes all
the important legal discourse features (Hale, Goodman- Delahunty and
Martschuk 2017; Liu and Hale 2018). Achieving a high level of interpreting
fidelity must not be confused with a ‘literal or verbatim’ translation, which
54 Sandra Hale
for the most part would elicit inaccurate or nonsensical renditions (see Hale
and Liddicoat 2015; Lee 2015). Achieving the same effect in the listener as the
original would have if they understood the language requires interpreters to
interpret at the discourse/pragmatic level, not at the lexical or semantic levels.
As Fowler states,
our training of interpreters must include an understanding of pragmatic

equivalence in interpreting. That is, students must understand the mean-
ing intended by a speaker in an utterance, and how that meaning will be
perceived and understood by the listener. They must then transfer the
meaning to the target language, keeping it as close as possible to that of
the original. It is not the literal meaning with which we are concerned
here, but with the meaning in the context of the utterance.
(Fowler 1997: 198–199)
Contextual competence
Contextual competence and discursive competence are inextricably linked.
In order to understand the discourse practices of a speech event, interpret-
ers need to be familiar with the context and its practices so as to be able to
make the right interpreting choices. The discussion in the prior subsection
specifically refers to the legal context, and it will not be applicable to other
contexts. Interpreters working in medical, welfare or conference contexts will
make different decisions about how to best interpret what is being said in
those settings, where different discourse strategies may apply or where the
content of what is said is more important than the discourse used. Specialist
legal interpreters, therefore, need to learn about the setting in which they will
be working to facilitate their ability to interpret accurately.
Related to contextual competence is the interpreters’ ability to prepare for
specific assignments. Conference interpreters are trained in how to adequately
prepare for assignments, and it is standard practice for them to receive prep-
aration materials and briefings before their assignment. Court interpreters
in international settings are also accustomed to receiving all relevant docu-
ments to prepare in advance (Hale and Stern 2011). Legal interpreters work-
ing in domestic settings, however, have not followed the same practice, mostly
because those who hire them are unwilling to provide any such information.
Research has shown that accuracy of interpreting increases the more inter-
preters know about the topic at hand (Díaz Galaz 2011; Díaz-Galaz, Padilla
and Bajo 2015). There are also interpreting policies that state that interpret-
ers should be provided with as much information as possible about their
assignments (Hale 2011a). Nevertheless, in reality only a small minority of
legal interpreters are provided with any briefing or preparation material. In
a national survey in Australia (Hale 2013) only 15 per cent of interpreters
reported ever receiving any background materials, and 29 per cent of judicial
officers reported the same. This indicates that it is possible for interpreters to
receive such materials, even if this does not happen on a regular basis. It may
be that if interpreters requested such information and justified the reason
why they needed it, citing research to indicate that their performance would
improve as a result, they may have a better chance of being provided with
such information. This is related to interpreters’ theoretical and professional
competence, which will be discussed below. If interpreters are aware of the
research and have the confidence to demand what they need in order to per-
form adequately, they will contribute to improving not only their own work-
ing conditions but also the status of the profession at large.
In a study of briefings and preparation of sign- language interpreters,
Russell (2008) found that interpreters mostly used their briefing time to edu-
cate the lawyers on how to work with interpreters, with not much time or
effort devoted to seeking information about the case or telling them about
their own professional needs. Russell argues that their performance could
have improved, and fewer interruptions from interpreters for clarifications
would have been needed if the interpreters had asked for more detailed infor-
mation during the briefing.
It is a fact, nevertheless, that even if interpreters ask for preparation mate-
rials, they often will not receive them. In such situations, having a thorough
knowledge of the setting can help to compensate for lack of briefing. When
interpreters are familiar with their environment and know what the proce-
dures are, including the structure of interviews, hearings or trials and the roles
of all participants, it will be easier to concentrate all their efforts on interpret-
ing rather than on trying to figure out the context or the requirements of the
setting. This type of contextual knowledge needs to be part of any specialist
legal interpreting course (see Hale and Gonzalez 2017).
Interpreting competence
Interpreting competence is by far the most important dimension. However,
the previously discussed competences will impinge on the interpreter’s ability
to interpret adequately and, as such, are inextricably linked. Interpreting
competence can be divided into three major areas: theoretical, professional,
and technical.
Theoretical competence
Like any other professional practice, interpreting practice also needs to be
informed by underlying theories and research. Interpreters need to be able to
make informed decisions about their interpreting choices. Having a knowledge
of the theories and research that back up their practice will give them meta-
linguistic competence. If questioned about their performance, a practice that
is increasing in court settings, interpreters should possess the metalanguage
56 Sandra Hale
to explain and justify their choices. For example, there may be the expectation
in legal settings that interpreters interpret what has been said ‘word-for-word’
(see Hale 2011a, for a discussion on this). If an interpreter is questioned for
not interpreting literally at the word level, they need to be able to explain that
in order to be accurate to the intention and effect of the utterance, they must
interpret at the discourse level rather than the word level. Obvious examples
of the above are idiomatic expressions, offensive remarks, or ways of express-
ing politeness (Hale and Liddicoat 2015; Liu and Hale 2017).
Technical competence
Technical competence comprises interpreters’ ability to interpret in the dif-
ferent modes (dialogue, consecutive, simultaneous, and sight translation)
and to know when each should be used. It also includes the use of the direct
approach by interpreting in the first and second grammatical persons, rather
than using reported speech.
MODE OF INTERPRETING
Different modes of interpreting require different skill sets, which can only be
acquired by training and developed in the practice (see Pöchhacker 2011a, b,
for descriptions of simultaneous and consecutive interpreting). Legal inter-
preters in domestic settings are mostly required to work in the short con-
secutive mode, as well as in the whispering simultaneous mode (Stern 2011).
Although short segments used in dialogue interpreting rely almost exclu-
sively on working memory, note-taking skills are also an important asset.
However, the types of notes taken in the legal setting will be very differ-
ent from the notes taken in a monologic conference setting. In conference
settings, the speaker speaks at length, and the interpreter takes long notes
that are mostly concerned with the propositional content of the speech. In
legal interactions, where one turn will prompt the next, interpreters need
to take different types of notes. In addition to information that cannot be
committed to memory such as figures and names, legal interpreters may
want to annotate the tone and intonation or stylistic features of an utter-
ance: whether the style is powerful or powerless, whether the speaker sounds
sarcastic, angry, happy, assertive, hesitant, polite, impolite, or whatever other
aspect of delivery may be of relevance in this setting (see Hale and Gonzalez
2017). Such notes will assist the interpreter in producing a faithful target-
language rendition that maintains not only the content but also the manner
of the message, as discussed above.
Competent interpreters also need to decide when to use the consecutive and
when to use the simultaneous mode. Russell and Takeda (2015: 101) state that
contextual and linguistic schemas should be applied for interpreters to decide
on the best mode of interpreting: the interpreter ‘determines whether to use
consecutive or simultaneous interpreting for the message in order to support
genuine communication for all participants and to maintain strategies that

support successful interpretation’.
An experimental study of the effect of mode of interpreting in the court-
room (Hale et al. 2017) showed the simultaneous mode to be less intrusive
and disruptive than the consecutive mode. The study compared the two inter-
preting modes with a control monolingual condition, where the same accused
spoke in English and then in Spanish via the interpreter. The evaluations of
447 mock jurors showed that they were more distracted and remembered
fewer of the case’s details when they heard the evidence via the consecutive
interpretation than when they heard it via the simultaneous interpretation
or directly from the witness in English. Similarly, the jurors found the pros-
ecution to be less convincing when they heard it through the interpreter in
the consecutive mode. Overall, there were no significant differences found
between the jurors’ assessment when they heard the evidence via the simul-
taneous mode and in the monolingual condition. The only significant differ-
ences were found between the evidence when interpreted in the consecutive
mode and the monolingual evidence. The interpreter was the same and the
interpretation was the same for both modes. As part of the methodology, the
interpreted segments were translated accurately by trained interpreters before-
hand, maintaining a high level of propositional and pragmatic accuracy and
performed by an actor so as not to introduce further variables. What this
study suggests is that the simultaneous mode lends itself more favourably to
successfully fulfilling the court interpreter role of placing the non-English
speaker in the same position as the English speaker (Hale et al. 2017).
In another experimental study in a police setting, it was found that trained
interpreters were more able to switch from consecutive to simultaneous mode
at strategic points of the interaction, in particular when interlocutors became
agitated and did not stop to allow the interpreter to interpret consecutively.
Below is one such example.
(5) S –¿cómo así, cómo así drogas?

I - [What do you mean drugs?
S - [yo no tengo nada que ver con drogas, yo no, de qué está hablando?
yo no entiendo lo que está pasando.
I - [I don’t know what you’re talking about, what is this? What
is happening?
S - [estoy completamente seguro que ud tiene la persona equivocada.
I - [I’m absolutely sure you have the wrong person.
S - [no quiero nada con drogas.
I - [I don’t want to anything to do with drugs.
S - [yo ni siquiera fumo, no tomo alcohol.
I - [I don’t even smoke, I don’t drink alcohol.
S - [yo no hago nada de eso, por favor.
I - [I don’t do any of that, please.
(Hale, Goodman-Delahunty and Martschuk 2017)
58 Sandra Hale
Example (5) shows a situation where the interpreter switches to simultaneous

interpreting to keep up with the suspect, whose speech is fast and agitated.
The square brackets indicate when the speakers’ speech overlap. By using
the simultaneous mode, the interpreter is able to maintain the same tone as
well as the content, and to provide an instant interpretation of what is being
said, thus allowing the interaction to flow more naturally. This corroborates
Russell and Takeda’s (2015) statement, quoted above. Untrained interpreters,
on the other hand, were found to get lost when the suspect did not stop to
allow them to interpret. As a consequence, they simply provided a summary
of the utterance in the third person.
INTERPRETING APPROACH
The interpreting approach relates to whether interpreters see their roles as

rendering what is said faithfully or as a mediator who summarizes the main
points of the utterances. The first approach has been identified as the direct
approach, interpreting the turns as they are uttered by the original speaker,
whereas the second is identified as the indirect approach, which adopts
reported speech style (Hale 2007b). Kinnunen (2011) states that the use
of reported speech is a sign of unprofessional behaviour and provides the
example below of a conversation between a judge and an interpreter, where
the witness, about whom they are speaking, is excluded from the conversation:
(6) J: She’s jumping from one subject to another, could she be more
logical, it’s difficult to follow this…
I: Okay so she explained this that in the beginning there were these two
incidents that she already told about…
(Kinnunen 2011: 102)
The above can hardly be considered testimony from a witness. It is only a

summary, by the interpreter, of what the witness said. A study of the differ-
ences in performance between trained and untrained interpreters found that
untrained interpreters tended to use the indirect approach and summarize
each utterance, while trained interpreters tended to use the direct approach
and attempted to interpret as faithfully as possible (Hale, Goodman-
Delahunty and Martschuk in press).
Professional competence
Professional competence comprises knowledge and application of profes-
sional ethics and role.
Professional interpreters abide by a professional code of ethics that above
all requires them to be impartial and accurate. Lee (2015: 194) states that
‘violations of the professional code of ethics could endanger due process,

affecting the outcomes of cases, life and liberty, and properties of the parties
concerned’. This is particularly important in adversarial legal settings. Lack
of impartiality will lead to deliberate inaccuracies to benefit one side or the
other. Being impartial, however, does not mean that interpreters will not form
judgements about any of the parties, or will always agree with what is being
said. Being impartial as an interpreter means attempting to interpret what is
being said regardless of personal opinions or judgements.
Moody (2011: 46) speaks of interpreters ideally being allies to both parties,
and in so doing, being neutral:
The interpreter is faithful to the goals of each speaker; hence, the inter-
preter is an ally of both participants alternately and, in a very real sense,
neutral. The partnership between an interpreter and a participant begins
with a time of preparation, which may be brief or extensive depending on
the situation. The interpreter who knows the participants and their back-
grounds and relationship, has been introduced to the jargon, acronyms,
and the spelling of proper names which may be discussed, and is aware
of previous encounters or discussions between the participants, will have
more contextual information to ensure that the information is conveyed
accurately and faithfully.
Rather than using the word ‘ally’, which implies lack of impartiality, I prefer
to use the word ‘actor’. If interpreters take on the role of linguistic actor,
being the voice of different parties, taking one side over another will not come
into the equation. As Moody states, the more the interpreter knows about the
individuals, the case, the context and the situation, the better able she or he
will be to interpret accurately and impartially.
Interpreting accurately, as explained in the introduction, requires more
than the interpreter’s ability or willingness to do so. There are times when
accurate interpreting may not be achievable, despite the interpreter’s best
efforts. It would not be unethical, for example, if interpreters are inaccurate
due to factors that are beyond their control, such as poor working conditions,
no briefing, incoherent or overlapping speech. What would be unethical, how-
ever, is if interpreters deliberately change the contents of utterances to suit
one side or another or the interpreter’s own goals or opinions. Similarly, the
meaning of accuracy changes according to the setting and goals of the inter-
action. What will be considered accurate interpreting in a conference setting
will most probably not be considered accurate in a legal setting.
The interpreter’s ethical requirements are linked to the role that they play
in any given setting. In a legal setting, their role is to remove the language
barrier in order for the justice process to take place (Judicial Council on
Cultural Diversity 2017). It is not to become an advocate or provide sup-
port for either side. At times, interpreters will be pressured from both sides
60 Sandra Hale
to perform tasks that go beyond their role or indeed their training as inter-
preter. Research has found that trained interpreters are better equipped than
untrained interpreters to withstand the pressure to omit to interpret contro-
versial information that can be placed on them from one side or the other.
The study by Hale, Goodman-Delahunty and Martschuk (in press) showed
that trained interpreters did not favour either the police or the suspect and
continued to interpret faithfully even when the police asked them not to inter-
pret a side comment addressed to another police officer, or when the sus-
pect told them not to interpret a side comment addressed to the interpreter.
Example (7) below shows one such instance, when the interpreter continues to
interpret despite the police request not to.
(7) P: (to P2) How many times did we hear that?

I: ¿Cuántas veces hemos escuchado esto? (How many times have we
heard this?)
P: (to Interpreter) Please, don’t translate that.
I: Por favor, no interprete esto. (Please don’t interpret that.)
S: ¿Cómo así? No, no, no espere un momento ¿Por qué está allí diciendo
que no traduzca las cosas, señor? [I: Why are you saying the interpreter
shouldn´t interpret?], ¿Por qué le está diciendo a la señora que no traduzca
esto? yo no estoy diciendo mentiras!! [I: Why are you telling the interpreter
not to interpret this, I’m not telling lies!!]
(Hale, Goodman-Delahunty, and Martschuk in press)
In example (7) the suspect had stated that he thought the drugs he was accused
of possessing, found in his own house, must have been put there by someone
else to frame him. To that comment, the interrogating policeman makes a
sarcastic side comment to the other police officer present: ‘How many times
have we heard that?’ The interpreter continued to interpret so as to put the
non-English speaker in the same position as an English speaker who would
have heard the side comment. This way, the suspect was able to respond to
such a comment. In contrast, untrained interpreters simply omitted the com-
ment and when questioned by the suspect they either ignored the question or
simply said that it was not to be translated.
Interactional management
The last competence I will highlight is interactional management. This is
closely connected to interpreters’ ability to introduce, explain and assert their
role and ethical obligations to the other participants in the interaction. It also
includes their ability to adequately ask for repetitions or clarifications when
needed, and explain a translation difficulty or a translation choice that may
impact on the case with the right metalanguage and the confidence to do so.
This is what Wadensjö (1998/2014) calls ‘explicit coordination’.
It also includes interpreters’ decisions to switch mode, as discussed above,

as well as the body language they may use to assign turns or to request others
to relinquish their turn to allow them to interpret. These are the situations
when interpreters speak for themselves, rather than interpret for others. It is
an important skill that allows professional interpreters to perform their role
adequately.
Hale, Goodman-Delahunty and Martschuk’s (in press) study of interpret-
ers’ interactional management showed that trained interpreters established
their ‘contract’ (Tebble 2012) at the commencement of the police interview
by introducing themselves, their role and ethical obligations to both parties.
They also used this introduction to ask the parties to speak in short chunks,
one at a time, to allow them to interpret and to not say anything they do not
want the other party to hear, because they are ethically bound to interpret
everything. They also told them they would interpret everything in the first
person, and asked the participants to address each other directly, advising
them that at times interpreters may need to ask for clarifications or repeti-
tions. The study found that those interpreters who established their contract
had no dilemma in interpreting the challenging sections of the interview,
whereas those who did not, routinely omitted the compromising segments in
their interpretation, as seen in example (7).
Legal interpreting education and training

The specialist knowledge and skills outlined above can only be acquired
through adequate specialist legal interpreting education and training and
developed and maintained through practice. Although there are only very
few specialist legal interpreting courses (see Hale and Gonzalez 2017; Liu and
Stern forthcoming), recent research has demonstrated the difference specialist
training can make.
A recent study of the effect of training on student interpreters’ ability to
achieve pragmatic accuracy when interpreting cross-examination questions
from English into Chinese found that the more specialized the training and
the more hours they received, the better the students performed in terms of
pragmatic accuracy (Liu and Hale 2018).
A study of Spanish interpreters in a police setting found that trained inter-
preters performed significantly better than untrained interpreters in all the
areas of competence outlined in this chapter, except for their level of bilin-
gualism, which was the same (Hale, Goodman-Delahunty and Martschuk
in press). This corroborates Benmaman’s (1999) claim that there is more to
interpreting than a good level of bilingualism. In the above cited study, the
measures the interpreters were assessed on were accuracy of propositional
content, accuracy of style, maintenance of rapport features, use of correct
interpreting protocols, correct legal discourse and terminology, management
and coordination skills, and bilingualism. In addition to these measures of
62 Sandra Hale
competence, trained interpreters were significantly more likely to also main-

tain the participants’ body language and facial expressions, which indi-
cates that they saw their role as acting out the different participant parts.
The study also found that there was a positive correlation between the level
and specialization of training and the interpreters’ performance. The higher
and more specialized the training they received, the better interpreters per-
formed. Those in the sample who had graduated with a master’s degree in
interpreting with a legal specialization were the top performers.
Working together to achieve results

Australia is taking steps to rectify the competence gaps that exist in many
practising interpreters. It is also taking steps to educate the legal profession-
als and to improve legal interpreters’ working conditions and remuneration
levels.
NAATI underwent a review of its entire accreditation system in 2011 (Hale
et al. 2012). After five years of consultation, a new system of certification has
been implemented in 2018. Under the new system, there will be specialist certi-
fications for legal interpreters who will only be eligible to sit for the certification
examination after having completed legal interpreting specialist training (see all
details of the new system on the NAATI website at www.naati.com.au).
The judiciary are also taking responsibility for long- overdue improve-
ments in this field. The Council of Chief Justices has recently approved the
Recommended National Standards for Working with Interpreters in Courts
and Tribunals (Judicial Council on Cultural Diversity 2017), developed by
a committee convened by the Judicial Council on Cultural Diversity, com-
prising legal and interpreting experts. The Standards document includes
recommended standards for courts, judicial officers, interpreters and legal
practitioners. Each of the standards is annotated with background and edu-
cational material on interpreting and the law. It also contains model rules and
a practice note for the judiciary to give effect to the standards. The annexures
provide additional useful resources.
In its preamble, it states:
Implementation of these Standards is not only vital to promoting and

ensuring compliance with the rules of procedural fairness. It is intended
that they will promote a better working relationship between courts, the
legal profession and the interpreting profession, and will assist in ensuring
that the interpreting profession in Australia can develop and thrive to the
benefit of the administration of justice.
(Judicial Council on Cultural Diversity 2017: ii)
This is an important recognition of the need for the justice system, legal
professionals, and interpreting professionals to work together to achieve a
common goal.
Conclusion
In this chapter I have outlined the most important competences interpreters
need to possess in order to adequately work in legal settings. By so doing,
I hoped to highlight the complexity of legal interpreting and the high level of
skill required of those who practice it. Such high levels of expertise can only
be acquired by specialist education and training, developed by professional
practice and maintained by continuous professional development. It is only
when the legal profession, the legal system, and interpreters themselves rec-
ognize and accept this fact that the status of the profession will be elevated,
working conditions and remuneration will improve, and the levels of compe-
tence will rise to provide services of an adequate quality that will lead to a
fairer justice system, regardless of language and culture.
Notes
1 This has been evident in recent discussions on the electronic bulletin of the
Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators (AUSIT), the national profes-
sional association.
2 Examination-in-chief is called Direct Examination in the United States.
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Chapter 4
Investigating mediation
in translation
Hui Wang
Introduction
The past decades have witnessed mutual suspicion between the United
States and China, as frequently manifested in official documents and policy
statements. A case in point is a claim about Chinese anti-satellite develop-
ment, translated from a Chinese source, quoted in the 2005 report of the US
National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC): ‘China will monitor
closely foreign developments in advanced satellite technology, paying close
attention to progress made in military use of space while actively develop-
ing ASAT systems’ (Kulacki 2006). The phrasing here (‘monitor closely’,
‘actively developing’) portrays China as an aggressive military power.
Indeed, such an assessment made the report more than shocking, owing to
the particular position of NASIC (2005) ‘in shaping national security and
defense policies’ in the United States, and the ‘China threat’ theory then
rampant in the West.
However, after referring to the Chinese source of the quote, the article
by Zhang, Zhang and Wang (2004) published in Winged Missiles Journal,
Kulacki (2006) found that the American translation ‘significantly alter[ed the
statement’s] meaning’. A comparative reading of the parallel texts, with spe-
cial attention given to the underlined expressions, shows their difference:
The Chinese source:

在正确地跟踪国外卫星先进技术的同时，还应积极发展反卫星武器，
并密切注意国际空间军备控制的进展情况，以便及时地确定对策。
(Zhang et al. 2004: 30)
NASIC’s translation:
China will monitor closely foreign developments in advanced satellite
technology, paying close attention to progress made in military use of
space while actively developing ASAT systems.
(As quoted in Kulacki 2006: 39)
68 Hui Wang
Kulacki’s translation:
While properly following foreign satellite advanced technology, [China]
also should actively develop anti-satellite weapons and pay close atten-
tion to the progress of international space arms control, in order to facili-
tate the timely determination of a response.
(Ibid.)
In NASIC’s translation, translating the original phrase 军备控制 (‘arms con-

trol’) into military use of space rather than arms control immediately conjures
up an image of an aggressive military power. The omission of the phrase
以便及时地确定对策 (‘in order to facilitate the timely determination of a
response’) conceals the real intention of the Chinese authors in making such
a statement: China has not yet made a decision about whether to respond
by developing anti-satellite weapons or not; and China’s policy toward anti-
satellite weapons should be based on the state of international arms-control
negotiations; it is then advised that China should have anti-satellite weapons
ready when necessary. Consequently, NASIC’s translation creates an utterly
different image of China: a country actively developing space weapons.
The questions that seem most clearly to arise from this consideration are
these : What leads to these errors? Is it, as Kulacki suggests, due to misin-
terpretation or misrepresentation? A point to emphasize here is that, as the
United States’ primary intelligence centre, NASIC has plenty of experts for
whom the Chinese sentence quoted in the report would presumably not be
a hard nut to crack. Kulacki’s translation sets a good example for us. In this
connection, the issue is not as simple as making technical ‘errors’.
The story is, indeed, a telling example of how the source text is manipulated
for certain purposes that differ from what the author has in mind. Mediation
as such is by no means a new phenomenon in the field of translation, as ‘every
step in the translation process –from the selection of foreign texts to the
implementation of translation strategies to the editing, reviewing, and reading
of translations –is mediated by the diverse cultural values that circulate in
the target language, always in some hierarchical order’ (Venuti 1995: 308).
For quite a long time, however, the mediation phenomenon has rarely been
a study focus in the translation field. Rather, it was often briefly touched on
in connection with other topics, such as power, ideology, or manipulation
(see Mason 1992; Hatim and Mason 1997; Hermans 1985). It was not until
recently that the topic began to draw attention from translation scholars (e.g.,
Sun 2007; Munday 2007; Pöchhacker 2008; Wang and Zhu 2009; Katan 2004,
2013; Liddicoat 2016). Nonetheless, much emphasis has been placed on the
way the practice of translation is regulated by the broad contexts and, to
date, little has been done on how such ‘regulation’ operates. More specifically,
this can be considered in respect of how mediation operates in the transla-
tion process so as to achieve desired effects, which foregrounds the translation
Investigating mediation in translation 69
process as a continuous compromise among various translating parties and

is hence more effective in revealing power struggles underlying a translation
act. To address this issue, the present research aims to develop a model for
investigating mediation in translation. My approach to mediation in transla-
tion is based on the assumption that texts are irreducible parts of the transla-
tion activity, and all mediation activities in the translation process, from the
very beginning of the selection of the subject for translation to the end point
of distribution of translation, are embodied in the production of the target
text. From this it follows that placing emphasis on the operation of medi-
ation at the text level is likely to be the most productive way of investigating
mediation.
Mediation in translation redefined

In the existing research, the notion of mediation in translation has been
decoded as two-dimensional: cognitive and intercultural/interlingual. By cog-
nitive, I mean the notion is highlighted as a heavily intention-based activity,
whereas the intercultural/interlingual dimension results from the nature of
translation. De Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) is perhaps the most cited
work in mediation conceptualization from the cognitive perspective in which
the authors define it as inculcating ‘one’s own beliefs and goals into one’s
MODEL of the current communicative situation’ (163). Hatim and Mason
(1997) draw insights from de Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) in defining the
cognitive sense of mediation in translation as ‘the extent to which translators
intervene in the transfer process, feeding their own knowledge and beliefs into
their processing of a text’ (Hatim and Mason 1997: 122). In the definition, the
significance of ‘beliefs and goals/knowledge’ in reshaping the real world in the
text stands out. The intercultural/interlingual dimension of mediation is due
to the bicultural and bilingual nature of translation, in which translation is
considered as ‘(inter)cultural mediation’ (Liddicoat 2016) and translators are
called ‘cultural mediators’ (Katan 1999, 2004).
In addition to this, I contend that mediation is also contractual. The con-
tractual or interpersonal dimension of mediation has been discussed in
Pöchacker (2008) in association with interpretation. The author opines that
the contractual dimension of mediation is more relevant and revealing for
real-time interaction, that is, interpretation. Mediation, in this sense, turns
out to be an interpersonal interaction for which the interpreter is required to
facilitate cross-cultural understanding, and the position of the mediator shifts
from between two languages and cultures to between two (or more) parties.
Consequently, no discussion of mediation can proceed ‘without reference to
such features of human interaction as intentions, objectives, attitudes, status,
power or conflicts’ (13). This social and dynamic dimension therefore brings
to the fore the social relations in the act of mediation. The contractual dimen-
sion as such also applies to written translation. Although more covert and
70 Hui Wang
invisible than that in an interpretation context, the relationship between the

translating parties is, instead, even more complex and has more significant
influence, as it involves more parties (e.g., the publisher and the editor) and
therefore brings more interests and powers into play. This leads me to the fol-
lowing definition of mediation in translation to facilitate the rest of the study:
A translator mediates when he/she feeds his/her ideology into the trans-
lation process to fill in perceived linguistic, cultural and ideological gaps
between the source and the target societies and to facilitate a mode of
communication between the author and the end receiver as desired by
the translator.
As mediation is manifested primarily in the translated text, which is at the

core of a translational action and also seen as its end result, identifying medi-
ation at the text level seems to be the key in mediation studies, as it allows
for the operation of mediation to be traced unmistakably. For ease of iden-
tification of mediation, a parameterized definition of the notion is provided
in the following. The definition is based on the premise that since translation
is constrained by the situational model presented in the source text, any dis-
cursive (as opposed to grammatical) deviation from the source-text situation
model in a translation can be construed as a sign of mediation that indicates
a certain ‘ideological act of interpretation’ (Fowler 1991: 19).
As a discursive practice, mediation in translation takes place when the

situation projected in the source text has been altered because of changes
made to its situation configuration and/or its modes of information pres-
entation. If such textual deviations between the source and the target
texts cannot be explained on the grounds of grammatical obligations,
they are viewed as signs of mediation.
By ‘grammatical obligations’, I mean instances in which, owing to grammat-

ical reasons, the translator has to replace the source expressions with ones
complying with the norm of the target language. For instance, in English,
attributive clauses are often put after the head; whereas in Chinese grammar,
attributive modifiers/qualifiers are generally put before the head. Hence, in
English–Chinese translation, more often than not, changes have to be made
with regard to the position of the attributive clause. In my definition, devia-
tions as such are excluded from the scope of mediation, since they are obliga-
tory in the process of language transfer. Apart from these language-specific
alterations, if changes are made to convey different information and guide the
reader in a manner favourable to the translator, mediation occurs.
The notion of mediation is taken as the topic of the present research rather
than manipulation, although it is the latter that first attracted considerable
attention in the field of translation (Hermans 1985). The relationship between
manipulation and mediation in the bilingual context of translation is con-

sidered that of a part-and-whole type. Manipulation only refers to actions
and tactics employed to guide the text development in favour of the manipu-
lator in the translation process, as well as in the desired effect of the manipu-
lated text on the target reader; whereas mediation tends to be much more
inclusive. Besides certain manipulating strategies, it also consists of tactics
for facilitating communication and solving problems. Manipulation, in this
connection, is only one negative extreme of the mediation process, whereas
mediation indicates a neutral practice, catering for various needs and wishes
of translating parties, instead of only those of the mediator, and striving to
facilitate their communication, which, in Katan’s (2004: 191) view, better suits
the purpose of translation.
From CDA to mediation investigation: a discursive

perspective
Mediation as a discursive practice has long been a topic of interest in CDA.
Fairclough (1992) views discourse as three-dimensional: text, discursive prac-
tice, and social practice. The three are related dialectically ‘in the sense of being
different but not “discrete”, i.e. not fully separate’ (Fairclough 2009: 163). The
text dimension is essential in the notion of discourse, in which formal fea-
tures at various text levels (e.g., lexical, grammatical, etc.) are significant in
indexing or reproducing social realities. From the text, one can find a set of
‘traces’ of the production process or ‘cues’ for the interpretation process –the
main concern of discursive practice, which stands in the middle between texts
and social practice. Discursive practice involves the production, distribution
and consumption of texts. Some texts lead to wars, whilst others bring peace
to the world or change people’s attitudes. All these different outcomes are
constrained by conventions and norms for the production, distribution, and
consumption of texts or the specific nature of the social practice of which
they are a part. In the social-practice dimension, there is a dialectic relation-
ship between discourse and social structure: discourse not only reflects social
realities, but also maintains or changes the existing social structure, the essen-
tial part of social reality. Conversely, social structure bears upon the produc-
tion, interpretation, and consumption of discourse despite the fact that it is
a product of discourse itself. In this relationship, the author reminds us, we
should avoid overemphasizing one and neglecting the other. In other words,
we should exaggerate neither the constitutive effect of discourse on social
realities nor the social determination of discourse, as the former ‘idealistically
represents discourse as the source of the soil’, and the latter ‘turns discourse
into a mere reflection of a deeper social reality’ (Fairclough 1992: 65).
The dynamic conceptualization of discourse and the dialectic approach,
as suggested by Fairclough, are particularly useful to mediation studies, con-
sidering the close relationship between text, ideology, and power involved in
72 Hui Wang
the mediation activity. The three dimensions of discourse firmly situate dis-
course, and thus mediation in discourse, in a broad context of social relations
and struggles, and systematically link detailed properties of texts to social
properties of discursive events. The textual manifestations of mediation are
not only the expression of power relations but also the extension, as well as
the outcome, of social struggles. Furthermore, my attention is directed not
only to the static manifestations of mediation in the text but also to how
mediation is actualized in the translating process. The dialectical relationship
between discourse and society alerts us to the fact that mediation is executed
in the translation process under the influence of social structure whilst affect-
ing social structure at the same time. The suggested dialectical relationship
between discourse and social structure, with mediation standing in the mid-
dle, is especially good for the present research in that it gets rid of a one-sided
view and takes into consideration the interactive roles of discourse and social
structure. This enables us to observe the effects of social structure on dis-
cursive mediation as well as the reciprocal role of discursive mediation on
social structure. Specifically, it allows us to enquire into how mediation in
translation is activated by social structure in a given society; how mediation
is adopted in the translation process to balance interests among relevant par-
ties, groups, and institutions; what the mediated result is, and, perhaps most
importantly, how discursive mediation bears upon social structure. These
‘how’ and ‘what’ questions are particularly useful in revealing the mediation
process and hence the underlying ideological and power struggles. A dynamic
relationship between discourse, discursive mediation, and social structure is
thus established, as shown in Figure 4.1. In the figure, the interactive roles of
social structure and discourse (with text as its core part), which are shown
as being linked vertically with bi-directional arrows, are seen to be actuated
through the mediation action.
Constructing an integrated theoretical model for

mediation investigation
It should be emphasized that, inspiring as it is, the focus of CDA is on ana-
lysing monolingual texts. In the bilingual context of translation, the proposed
relationship between discourse, mediation, and social structure on the basis of
CDA needs to be adjusted. Figure 4.2 explicates how mediation works in the
discourse of translation, central to which is the translated text. Considering
that text (i.e., the source/target text) is not only the essential part of discourse
and translation, but also the final product of mediation in the translation pro-
cess, it takes the place of discourse in the figure; and, for the sake of clarity and
simplicity, the production, consumption, and distribution of texts is, in the
present research, integrated into the sociological analysis (i.e., the analysis of
social context, the main body of which is social structure). The dotted arrows
indicate that mediation therein is beyond the scope of the present research.
Social Structure
Mediation
Discourse
Text
Figure 4.1. Social structure, mediation and discourse (adapted from Fairclough 1989: 38).
The Source Social Structure The Target Social Structure
Mediation Mediation
Mediation
The Source Text The Target Text
Figure 4.2. Mediation in translation.

74 Hui Wang
From Figure 4.2, it is clear that mediation in translation involves four par-
ties, that is, the source text, the target text, the source social structure and the
target social structure. On the one hand, the target social structure, the source
text, and the source social structure influence the content and the presentation
of the target text by means of mediation. The target social structure, in which
the target text is situated, has a final say in the production, distribution, and
consumption of the target text. In other words, the more the target text con-
forms to the criteria set by the target social structure, the more acceptability
and popularity it is likely to enjoy in the target society. Specifically, the target
social structure determines, to some extent, what can be included as a part of
the target text and to what extent mediation can be carried out, and at the
same time orientates the general mediation tendency. The relationship of ‘inter-
textual coherence’ (Nord 2001: 32) between the source and the target texts (i.e.,
that the target text should be coherent with the source text) also weighs heavily
in the mediation process. Due to the nature of translation, the source text as an
‘offer of information’ (31–32) is constantly referred to in the mediation process.
The source social structure is represented by the source text producer and pub-
lisher, whose roles in the mediation action depend on how powerful the source
text producer and publisher and the source society are in the translation prac-
tice. At the other end, the translated text functions as mediation in the target
society by means of sustaining or changing the target social structure. A telling
example is provided in Chang (1998), where the author claims that his manipu-
lation in translating Yes, Prime Minister is intended to challenge both the trans-
lation poetics and the ideology that are dominant in Chinese culture.
In light of this, I propose an integrated approach in my research into medi-
ation in translation: a micro-model focusing on mediation at the text level
and a macro-model zooming in on the relationship between mediation and
social structure. The former is a linguistic approach, designed to explicate
how mediation is actualized in the translation process and how it functions
in guiding the text development. This textual exploration is the focus of the
present research and is intended to provide a set of ‘cues’, in Fairclough’s
(1992: 80) words, for the ensuing discussion of the relationship between dis-
cursive mediation and social structure. The macro-model places mediation in
a wider social context and discusses the dialectical relationship between texts,
mediation and social structure. In discussing social structure as a condition
for, as well as an effect of, mediation, I emphasize power, power relations,
ideology, and norms, which have either a direct or an indirect bearing on the
practice of meditation in translation.
The micro-m odel: a linguistic approach to textual mediation in

translation
In the bilingual context of translation, the translated text, as the result and
the site of mediation, is pivotal to the mediation process. Text analysis of
mediation, thus, provides linguistic evidence for the interactive relationship

between mediation and social structure. Without a close look at the text, there
will be, as Fairclough (2003: 3) puts it, ‘no real understanding of the social
effects of discourse’, or of mediation in discourse at all. In view of this, a
linguistic approach is adopted in the present research to address the phenom-
enon of mediation in translation.
To start with, the notion of the translation process will be revisited to distin-
guish different stages at which mediation works. On this basis, I shall develop
a linguistic approach to investigating the discursive operation of mediation
by drawing on notions from de Beaugrande’s typology of network links and
Halliday’s functional grammar.
The translation process revisited

Similar to Fawcett (1995) and Wodak and Meyer (2001), Robinson (2001) dis-
cards the traditional thinking of the translator as the only person involved in
translation in his book. Instead, the author (2001: 18) informs us, on the basis
of his own experience as a freelancer, that it is ‘disjointed collections of eco-
nomic agents (freelance translators, editors, proofreaders, project managers,
etc.) who somehow collectively manage…to produce competent professional-
quality translations’. Likewise, when elaborating on the term ‘literary trans-
lation practices’ in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, Bush
(2004: 129) identifies the editing process as one the translation manuscript
undergoes before being submitted for publication. The necessity of editing
and revising a text before making it available to the reader is further elabo-
rated in Mossop (2001). Translation thus extends from textual composition
as the translator’s personal concern to text publication as a social enterprise
in which other parties such as editors are more actively involved. In the same
vein, the conception of the translation process1 is extended to cover both pro-
cesses of translating and editing.
The translating process consists of analysis of the source text and synthesis
of the target text (Bell 1991: 45), with the latter starting on the basis of the
former. In other words, it is with information gained from the source text that
the translator starts to write the target text. But the source information as
such already involves the translator’s mediation, that is, the translator’s use of
his or her previous knowledge in understanding the source text. Hence, from
the very beginning of the process, the production of the target text bears the
imprint of mediation occurring in the reading process. I thus assume that
the operation of mediation in the translation process can be mapped out by
narrowing down how mediation operates in the process of the target-text
production.
The synthesis of the target text is first of all a writing process, the five
phases of which (planning, ideation, development, expression, and pars-
ing) fall into two stages: cognitive creation and linguistic selection. Cognitive
76 Hui Wang
creation involves the selection, evaluation, and organization of ideas, with the
last involving the relation of these ideas to each other. Linguistic expression
refers to the linguistic encoding of the selected pieces of information and their
conceptual relations (de Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 39–42). But trans-
lating, as the interlingual rewriting of an existing text in another language
for another culture, presents a more complicated picture than monolingual
writing. In generating a written text, the writer can presumably exercise a free
hand in forming a goal, creating ideas, selecting any entity for presentation,
and deciding on its discursive configuration and its linguistic presentation.2
For translators, however, more often than not their translation act begins
with the client ‘placing the order, providing the source-language material,
presenting the contract with information on the intended target text and its
proposed use’, and other relevant delimitations of the task, as is emphasized
in skopos theory (Snell-Hornby 2006: 59). Based on source-text analysis and
background information and guided by the contract, the translator needs at
the very beginning to make decisions on what to translate, and what not to
(for details, see Bell 1991: 68). In other words, translators select concepts and
ideas from the storyline set in the source text for the configuration of the
target text-world, decide on the style of the target text and put their selected
ideas on paper to form a surface text. In light of this, translation can be con-
strued as a constrained writing activity on the basis of parameters set in the
source text. Like the writing process, the translating process consists of two
similar phases, but with limited content, especially at the first one. I shall refer
to them, to keep them distinct, as:
• Information selection and configuration, which includes two sub-processes

of (1) selection and evaluation of ideas from the source information, and
(2) configuration of these ideas in accordance with goals, instructions, the
addressee, types of text, and so forth;
• Information presentation, which covers the linguistic encoding of the
selected conceptual ideas and their conceptual relationships, sequential
ordering of the information on the basis of the source text, modifying
the text and evaluating its adequacy to the assignments (the addressee,
goal, and so forth).
Note that these two stages are not sequential. Revision, back-tracking, and
cancellation of previous decisions are all possible.
As the product of the translating process, the rendered manuscript should
before final publication undergo editing to bring it into conformity with par-
ticular needs of the target reader. Following Mossop (2001: 11), four types of
work need to be done in the editing process to fulfil the task of textual amend-
ment, namely, copyediting, stylistic editing, structural editing, and content
editing. It is, however, interesting to note that these jobs also fall into two
general categories: macro-level and micro-level editing. Macro-level editing,
in principle, consists of content editing. That is, the editor decides on what
subjects can or cannot be translated. Moreover, additions or subtractions
may be requested in order to make the text suitable for the intended audience.
The selecting function of the editor, as Mossop (2001: 63) reminds us, is either
to conceal the truth or to improve the translation quality. Micro-level editing,
on the other hand, deals with content (factual, logical, and mathematical),
and stylistic and structural errors in the rendering, which occur at the stage
of information presentation. In this sense, the editing process and the trans-
lating process follow similar stages (the stage of information selection and
configuration and that of information presentation), although with differing
working priorities. This, therefore, for the sake of simplicity allows us to view
the translation process as one containing two stages.
The text production process is also the creation of a textual world which,
according to de Beaugrande (1980: 24), is ‘the cognitive correlate of the
knowledge conveyed and activated by a text in use’. The target textual world
bears the translation producers’ perception of the source textual world, which
‘may or may not agree with’ the one activated by the source text and their
‘beliefs and goals’. To make this conceptual textual world observable, de
Beaugrande suggests a text-world model, which is composed of ‘CONCEPTS
and RELATIONS in a knowledge space’ (1980: 24; emphasis original). The
model is the external representation of the textual world and exists as a tan-
gible object for description and explanation.
A linguistic approach to mediation in translation

Mediation in translation can be traced by investigating how mediation oper-
ates at the two stages of the translating process to create a textual world model
that bears distinct ideologies from what was presented in the source text. As
noted above, these two stages are not sequential: revision, back-tracking,
and cancellation of previous decisions are all possible. Figure 4.3 shows how
mediation operates in the process of transferring the source textual world
from the source language to the target language. It can be read in the follow-
ing way: the source text projects a world model that is composed of topics,
control centres, and their conceptual relations (for their definitions, see the
section Mediation at the stage of information selection and configuration). At
the first stage of the translation process, that is, the stage of information selec-
tion and configuration, control centres and topics presented in the source text
are either included or excluded when configuring the target textual world.
Concepts from outside the source text can also be added as components of
the new world. At the information-presentation stage, the included concep-
tual relations are adjusted at different semantic levels to achieve a certain pur-
pose of manipulation; the excluded conceptual relations are expected to be
compensated in order that the textual coherence can be repaired. The medi-
ated target textual world is thus created.
78 Hui Wang
The Source Text-World Model

Topics
Control Centres
Conceptual Relations
Discursive Mediation
The Stage of Information
and Configuration
Inclusion
Exclusion
The Stage of Information Presentation
Linguistic Encoding
Adjusting Conceptual Relations
The Target Text-World Model

Included Topics
Included Control Centres
Adjusted Conceptual
Relations
Figure 4.3. The linguistic analytical approach for investigation of mediation.
Mediation at the stage of information selection and configuration

This is the stage at which the source ideas are selected. The included ideas, along
with the added information from the background knowledge for clarifying the
underlying semantic meaning of the source textual world or from outside the
ST, lay the basis for the target-text configuration. In de Beaugrande’s typology,
these ideas are termed primary concepts,3 and they include
1. OBJECTS: conceptual entities with a stable identity and constitution;

2. SITUATIONS: configurations of mutually present objects in their cur-
rent states;
3. EVENTS: occurrences that change a situation or a state within a situ-
ation. (1980: 79; emphasis original)
They are the most likely candidates for control centres, that is ‘the primary
concepts from which the processor can work outwards to identify the other
nodes’ (de Beaugrande 1980: 90). When these control centres are frequently
used and reactivated during text processing, they become topics, dominant
nodes that should be connected to build up a complete textual world. For a
simple example of these, briefly consider the Chinese source of the sentence
quoted in NASIC’s report. From the passage where the Chinese sentence is
extracted, as seen below, it is clear that anti-satellite weapons (objects) is a pri-
mary concept, and satellite is the control centre/topic, considering its frequent
occurrence in the text and its connections with other nodes, for example, sat-
ellite defences, space confrontation.
卫星将是21 世纪夺取制天权的主要空间系统，攻击敌方卫星和保护己
方卫星是空间对抗的首要任务。为了争夺空间优势，保证国家安全，
反卫星武器和卫星防御的竞赛将愈演愈烈。在正确地跟踪国外卫星先
进技术的同时，还应积极发展反卫星武器，并密切注意国际空间军备
控制的进展情况，以便及时地确定对策。
(Zhang et al. 2004: 30)
Satellites will be a main space programme for seizing aerospace domin-

ance in the 21st century, of which the primary task for space confrontation
is to attack enemy satellites while protecting one’s own. Consequently,
there will be increasingly intense development and deployment of anti-
satellite weapons and satellite defences throughout the world, with a view
to seizing the high ground in outer space and ensuring national security.4
While properly following foreign satellite advanced technology, [China]
also should actively develop anti-satellite weapons and pay close atten-
tion to the progress of international space arms control, in order to facili-
tate the timely determination of a response.
Our focus at this stage is on the selection of control centres and topics to
structure the target textual world. For one thing, these selected control centres
and topics are essential in organizing concepts and establishing links with
other concepts in the textual world model. Hence, how they are configured
and to what extent their configuration is preserved or broken have a direct
impact on the completeness and organization of the target textual world; for
another, selection is by its very nature, in Fowler’s words (1991: 19), ‘an ideo-
logical act of interpretation’, as an item ‘can only be selected if it can be seen
80 Hui Wang
in a certain light of representation’. Emphasis is also given to the excluded

information, the analysis of which can provide valuable insights into what
is taken as a given, or as common sense, and what is deliberately avoided.
Similarly, central are additions that may be required to explicate the implica-
tions carried in the source text or, according to Ben-Ari (2000: 45), to fill the
narrative gaps created by missing parts. They are particularly valued in that
they may indicate the translation producer’s ideological orientation in guiding
the reader in the translation process.
Mediation at the stage of information presentation

At the information-presentation stage, the included control centres, topics,
and their relations are adjusted at different semantic levels to realize a certain
purpose of manipulation; and the excluded conceptual relations are recuper-
ated so that the target textual coherence can be maintained.
In his seminal book, de Beaugrande (1980: 77) gives a meticulous account
of concepts and relations when describing the text-world model, which are
general enough to subsume relations among various concepts. However, this
level of generality and abstractness may not be readily applicable to com-
parative text analysis. Furthermore, as the author (1980: 78, 91) repeatedly
reminds us, the typology is intended to label connections between concepts,
rather than explicating the meaning of individual concepts. But without tak-
ing into account the lexical meaning in labelling conceptual relations, the
typology does not explain to any great extent how and to what degree the con-
cepts are connected, to say nothing of how these connections differ from each
other –considerations that are vital to comparative text analysis in transla-
tion studies. To illustrate the point, consider the following pair of sentences.
The ad distorted the truth. (Clinton 2003a: 520)

广告改变了事实真相。(‘The ad altered the truth’.)
The conceptual relationship that the English sentence and the Chinese
translation share is actor (the ad/广告 ‘the ad’) –motion (distorted/改变
了‘altered’) –affected entity (the truth/事实真相 ‘the truth’). Obviously,
labelling as such masks the fact that the two sentences differ from each other
in terms of polarity: the English sentence is negative, whereas the Chinese
one is neutral. In this light, we need to include the semantic meanings of
these two verbs (e.g., distort means to give a false or misleading account of;
whilst alter is to change) so as to specify the conceptual relations for the sake
of comparison.
To address these phenomena, Halliday’s functional grammar is, accord-
ing to Fowler (1991: 68–70), the best linguistic tool, as it not only provides
a more elaborate account of semantic relations in human experience, events
and actions, but takes semantic meaning into account when analysing con-
ceptual relations. In the grammar, each part of the clause is labelled function-
ally to indicate its relation to the whole and to the world of experience. The
three interconnected strands of meaning (called metafunctions) involved in
the grammar of the clause are ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunc-
tions. Of these, the ideational and interpersonal metafunctions that language
performs are ‘especially valuable’ for analysis of ‘mediation of social relation-
ships and values’ (ibid.). The textual component is distinct from the other two
owing to its ‘enabling’ function; this component gives prominence to relations
beyond clauses and focuses on how connections are actually set up among
communicative occurrences (texts). The creation of a text can thus be seen
as, in Zhu’s words (1996: 340), ‘inspired primarily for a transactional pur-
pose of conveying ideational information about the world, or…occasioned
by an interactional need to establish or maintain certain interpersonal (social)
relationships’. Of the main linguistic realizations of the three metafunctions,
lexis centres on the semantic content of the word, representing patterns
of extralinguistic experience; the transitivity system categorizes the world
of experience (both inner and outer, i.e., mental experience and experience of
the external world) into six process types (material, mental, relational, behav-
ioural, verbal, and existential). Each process type is composed of the process
realized by the verb, participants in the process, and circumstances associ-
ated with the process, analysis of which indicates varied logical conceptual
relations (Halliday 1994); and modality, realized by finite modal operators
(e.g., must, will, and should) and/or modal adjuncts (e.g., usually, probably,
and always), is ‘an expression of the speaker’s opinion’ (Halliday 1994: 89)
and therefore contributes to the relationship between the addresser and the
addressee.
In the case of NASIC’s report, the Chinese clause quoted contains three
material processes: processes of doing, realized by three verbs –following,
develop and facilitate –and a mental process, realized by pay attention to. In
the material processes, the participants are the obligatory actors (the one that
operated and attended: China) and the optional goal (the one that undergoes
the process: foreign satellite advanced technology, anti-satellite weapons and
ASAT systems). The model operator should indicates that China is advised to
develop ASAT systems while scrutinizing foreign development in advanced
satellite technology; whereas in NASIC’s translation, the omission of should,
along with the circumstance actively, denoting an aggressive posture of China
in developing ASAT systems. The added model operator will, the material
process monitor, as well as the replacement of the circumstance properly with
closely are combined to demonstrate China’s determination and keen interest
in observing the development of foreign satellite technology.
In comparing the ways in which the conceptual relations in the source text
and the target text are constructed and reconstructed to form a textual world,
I shall concentrate on investigating discursive deviations that function as
82 Hui Wang
adjustments to the source links or as repairs to the relational network necessi-

tated by the exclusion of concepts and conceptual relations. Examining these
overt signs of mediation and the resultant text-world will allow me to char-
acterize the operation of mediation. It will also give us a strong hint about
how social and ideological factors bear upon mediation and will pave the
way for us to probe into the effects of mediation on existing social realities.
In doing so, it is hoped to remedy the deficiency of the functional grammar
in, as van Dijk remarks (2008: 37), ‘totally disregard[ing] the problem of the
mediation between society and language use, and even disregard[ing] the fun-
damental role of knowledge in text and talk’. It should be emphasized that
not all discrepancies are the concern of the present research, as in Toury’s
(1995: 28) view, it is a tendency for translations to deviate from their source
text in one way or another. My attention is drawn to discrepancies that are
there not purely out of grammatical consideration, but are there to contribute
to creating a textual world, which differs, in the sense of the ideologies they
subscribe to, from what is presented in the source text.
The macro-a nalytical model: a sociocultural approach to

mediation and social structure
As discussed above, mediation in translation, as a social practice, affects and
is affected by social structure. However, Fairclough did not provide us with a
clear definition of social structure. To facilitate the following study, I follow
Turner (1994: 51) in defining social structure as ‘composed of networks of
interrelated status positions as well as the cultural systems and roles associ-
ated with the positions in this network’. At the centre of this definition are
status positions that are connected to one another to constitute social struc-
ture. People’s positions in society endow them with rights and obligations and
enable people/groups/institutions to realize their will or to control or main-
tain certain social orders. The capacity to realize one’s will, even in the face of
resistance from other groups, is what Turner (1994) calls ‘power’. Power (or
‘social power’ in opposition to ‘natural power’3) is, according to Giddens (as
quoted in Turner 2004: 478), integral to the very existence of social structure.
It is crucial in determining how people behave and how people/groups/institu-
tions relate to each other in society. In modern society, as Fairclough observes
(1989: 2), power functions primarily through ideology, and ‘more particularly
through the ideological workings of language’.
The close link between power and ideology is created via conventions and
norms: ideologies are embedded in conventions and norms, which are the out-
come of power relations and power struggles and a primary means through
which power relations are produced, sustained, or changed. The way people
exercise mediation in the translation process, therefore, depends upon what
power they have, what ideology they represent, and what conventions and
norms they are seen to hold in the target society. Conversely, the mediated
product per se acts as mediation in the target society by maintaining or sub-

verting the existing norms, ideologies, and power relations. This leads me to
concentrate on the dialectic relationship between mediation and the three
sociological categories, independent yet closely connected in the sociocultural
approach: power, ideology, and conventions and norms.
Mediation, power and power relations

Technically speaking, when we refer to individuals/groups/institutions with
power, we mean that they themselves are free from coercion while being in
a position to coerce others. Following Poggi (2001), power has three basic
forms: ideological/ normative, economic, and political, of which political
power is central. Such a categorization is more conducive to explaining how
power functions in the mediation process and how mediation works when
there is a conflict among different forms of power, especially in the translation
of politically sensitive texts.
The exercise of power in the translation process inevitably brings into the
picture individuals/groups/institutions with and without power in the transla-
tion process (e.g., the commissioner, the initiator, the translator, the publisher,
the text recipient). Power relations involved in the production and consump-
tion of the source text need to undergo changes when other participants such
as the translator, the target-text publisher, and the target receiver are brought
in. The power holders in the source society may turn out to be the powerless
in the target society, and vice versa. Such changes of power relations behind
discourse inevitably lead to changes of power and power relations in dis-
course itself (Fairclough 1989: 43). Specifically, the altered power relations
and power struggles behind the translated text determine extensively whether,
how and to what extent mediation operates in discourse to maintain or adjust
the way the powerful controls the non-powerful or to subvert the power rela-
tions in the source text. The mediated translation, in return, intervenes in the
target text by shaping its social structure. Along this line of thinking, I can
add that mediation is an effective means of power negotiation. Note that the
power holders herein consist of those involved in the process of text produc-
tion, distribution, and consumption as well as those in a wider societal order,
that is, the ruling class and the ruled in a particular society. In addition to this,
due attention shall be given to power relations and power struggles between
the source and the target societies as well, which may greatly influence the
general tendency of mediation in translation.
Mediation in translation is, therefore, a result of power struggles between
a variety of translating parties who have similar, distinct or even conflicting
interests, and between the source and the target cultures. Power and power
relations behind the text activate and guide the operation of mediation in
the translation process; whereas the rendering, the mediated product, con-
solidates or subverts the existing power relations. Mediation is, so to speak, a
84 Hui Wang
deliberate and conscious act of selection, assemblage, configuration, and fab-

rication, so much so that the mediated translation can intervene in the target
society by establishing, maintaining, and resisting the existing power rela-
tions. A point to note, however, is that, as Fairclough reminds us (1989: 992),
power functions primarily through consent and coercion. Of these two ways,
consent is a ‘less costly and less risky’ (33–34) way that the ruling class can
adopt to maintain its rule, and has therefore gained increasing importance in
social control. At this juncture, it is time to reintroduce ‘ideology’, as it is a
primary means of manufacturing consent.
Mediation and ideology

Ideology, as one modality of power, legitimizes and sustains relations of power
through producing consent, or at least acquiescence. By implicitly infusing
their ideologies into discourse, the power holders get their ideas accepted in an
unconscious manner and easily win the consent of other people. Ideological
uniformity between the controller and the controlled is thus achieved. In prac-
tice, however, this is not always the case due to a great ideological diversity
among the parties involved in the discourse. This is especially true of trans-
lation, which brings at least two systems of values into contest, or even con-
flict, making the ideological struggle for hegemony even more severe. Under
some circumstances, due to ideological inconsistency between the source and
the target societies, some books are not even allowed to be translated, or the
translated text cannot be published, or the published translation invokes ser-
ious punishment. Undoubtedly, ideological conflicts in the translation process
call for effective solutions, otherwise the translation action cannot be pushed
ahead. One way to resolve these conflicts is to mediate between varying ideolo-
gies. When ideological divergence emerges, the mediator presumably will be
aligning his or her activity with the party that is more helpful in achieving his
or her goals; and when ideological conflicts occur, the mediator will, more
often than not, follow the party that is more powerful in deciding things such
as which behaviour is legitimate or correct or appropriate in a given society.
In this regard, NASIC’s translation sets us a good example in demonstrating a
mediational operation in line with NASIC’s ideological value. It is also likely
for the mediator to go against the dominant ideology when he or she chooses
to construct or promote new ideologies. To achieve these purposes, mediation
strategies will be determined accordingly. Conversely, as the mediated product,
translation itself functions as mediation in constructing, maintaining, or chan-
ging the ideologies of the target society. A telling example is the translation of
Buddhist scriptures in China during the Sui (581–618) and the Tang dynasties
(618–907), which helped promote Buddhism in China.
Ideology is most effective when its work is least visible. Such invisibility is
achieved when being embedded in the recurrence of ordinary, familiar ways
of behaving, which take the existing power relations and power differences
for granted. These ordinary, familiar ways are conventions and norms, which
index and express ideologies on the one hand and, on the other, are them-
selves the outcome of power struggles.
Mediation and norms

In every society, there is common knowledge of what is correct or appropriate
behaviour/practice. This knowledge exists in the form of conventions and
norms. The conventions and norms provide models for and regulate expec-
tations about behaviour, as well as about the products of certain behaviour.
In this sense, people are under obligation to act within a range of acceptable
behaviour in compliance with these conventions and norms. Mediation, as
a social practice, or social behaviour, operates under the constraint of par-
ticular conventions and norms. In this connection, how these conventions and
norms, as the embodiment of particular ideologies and an outcome of power
struggles, affect the act of mediation is of considerable significance in the pre-
sent research. Yet, after pinpointing the repressive and productive functions
of conventions and norms, Fairclough does not explore the norm theory fur-
ther. In view of this, I draw inspiration from translation studies to fill this gap.
The notion of norm was first introduced into translation by Gideon Toury
in the late 1970s and has continued to receive attention in Translation Studies
(cf. Hermans 1996, 1999; Chesterman 1997). Translational norms provide
standards or models of correct or appropriate translational acts and of cor-
rect or appropriate translation products with the aim of ‘promoting certain
values’ (Chesterman 1997: 172). Note that ‘correct’ here does not mean that
there is only one single correct translation. Instead, norms can be met in
various ways, and there is more than one way for translators to produce what
is expected of them.
A point to make before moving on to further discussions is the relation-
ship between norms, conventions, and rules that were often used side by side
in past research. Hermans (1996) explicates it as follows: conventions are the
weakest form of norms and depend on regularities, shared knowledge, and
preferences; norms are convention-like but more directive. They are used
to guide, control, or change the behaviour of agents with decision-making
capacities; when the role of norms turns to be ‘mandatory’ and ‘obligatory’
(Hermans 1996: 31), they are replaced by rules. In light of this, the difference
between conventions, norms and rules is a difference in degree rather than
kind. The relationship between them is, therefore, never cut and dried and can
vary with social changes. In light of this, ‘norms’ will be used to refer to all
three categories of conventions, norms, and rules in the following research to
avoid unnecessary confusion.
Norms can be strong or weak, depending on the position of norm-makers,
who are usually in a more powerful position in a community and may deter-
mine the content of norms (i.e., what is correct or proper behaviour). The more
86 Hui Wang
powerful they are, the more directive the normative force is. The stronger the
norm is, the more restrictive it is to human behaviour, including the operation
of mediation. Meanwhile, people with more power may feel more confident
than the non-powerful and can ignore the norm in mediating. Norms also
can be negative or positive. Their negative function lies in the fact that medi-
ation decisions in the translation process are, in Schäffner’s words (1999: 5),
primarily constrained and regulated by translational norms. Of the two types
of translational norms, as proposed in Chesterman (1997: 64–70), expectancy
norms play a role in determining the general tendency of the operation of
mediation and the extent to which mediation can be carried out; whereas pro-
fessional norms regulate when, how and to what extent mediation shall be
applied in the translation process. Despite this, norms also provide solutions
for problems arising in the mediation process and thus facilitate and guide the
process of decision-making.
The normative forces as such are validated partly by norm authorities such
as professional bodies or government agencies that have the power to impose
sanctions against noncompliance, and partly by their very existence. One
thing worth stressing in the process of norm validation is censorship, which
‘operates largely according to sets of specific values and criteria which are
established by a dominant body over a dominated one’ (Billiani 2007: 3–4).
Censorship is practised in accordance with the ideology and the power order
the authority wants to maintain or, in other words, the ‘wide national patterns
of taste’ (15) embodied in various laws and regulations. Any contents contra-
vening these norms should be ‘explicitly prohibited’ (Bourdieu 1991: 138).
Censorship, in this sense, becomes ‘an authoritarian control over what reaches
the public sphere’ (Müller 2004: 12) and a type of power for ‘establishing a
given cultural authority…by exercising the power of punishment and the right
of surveillance’ (Billiani 2007: 15). To avoid sanctions resulting from official
censorship, more often than not, the translator practices self-censorship by
mediating the translation process, that is, by including/ excluding/
revising
expressions that touch on what is forbidden in a given society. As such, the
deliberate mediation is masked as the text producer’s own editing, and the
impact of censorship on translation publication thus goes unnoticed.
Conclusion
As is widely acknowledged, translation is a site where the source and the
target texts meet and negotiate. Yet, in actual practice, translation is much
more than that. As Tymoczko and Gentzler (2002) remind us, it is also a site
where various types of power underlying the translation process meet, com-
pete, negotiate, and cooperate to produce a text for the target reader, a site
for the power holders to repress or restrain the powerless, and a site for the
powerless to seek empowerment. On top of this, translation is a potential
stake for anyone in repression or subversion. That is, translating participants

with or without power may contest for the right to decide on what to translate,
or what not to, and how to translate it in order that the goal of maintaining
or subverting the existing power structure can be achieved. However, at this
juncture one cannot help but wonder how repression or subversion as such
is actualized in translation, and how the translation in question is used to
achieve the desired result. Although much has been done in this regard from
a sociocultural perspective, to my knowledge, no systematic research has been
conducted from the perspective of mediation. From my point of view, power
relations and the power struggles underlying the translation action could
be more easily identified or uncovered by adopting this approach. Aimed at
shedding light on mediation in translation, this chapter devotes most of its
attention to the operation of mediation at the text level, which I assume to
embody all mediation activities throughout the translation process and pro-
vide a solid textual basis for further discussions of the relationship between
mediation and relevant social factors.
Bearing this in mind, the present research sketches out an integrated the-
oretical framework for investigating mediation in translation. To begin with,
it provides a general definition of mediation in translation so as to give a
panoramic view of the mediation phenomenon. On this basis, a parameter-
ized definition of mediation is established from a linguistic perspective for
ease of identification of mediation. The proposed framework is composed of
a micro-and a macro-analytical model. The micro-model aims at mapping
out how mediation is implemented step by step to create a textual world bear-
ing distinct ideological implications from the world presented in the source
text. The macro-model is underpinned by sociology, norm theory and skopos
theory, and aims at exploring the dialectic relationship between mediation
and social structure. It attends to the immediate as well as the wider social
contexts of mediation and places stress on power, ideologies, and norms in
both contexts of mediation and their interaction with the operation of medi-
ation. It is hoped that the model offers valuable insights into how the oper-
ation of mediation occurring in the process of transferring a text from one
language into another can be described systematically, and how mediation
operates step by step to create a textual world that is distinct from the one
presented in the ST in an ideological sense.
Funding
The author discloses receipt of the following financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the
2015 Jiangsu University Philosophy and Social Sciences Research Funding
Programme under Grant 2015SJD616, and the Research Development Fund
of Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University under Grant RDF-16-01-59.
88 Hui Wang
Notes
1 The translation process, in a narrow sense, refers to the translators’ text processing,
that is, their understanding of the source text and their production of the target text;
whilst in a broader sense, it may extend from the initial translation commissioning
to the translation publication. More specifically, it involves translation commission,
translator selection, source text understanding, target-text generation, editing, and
publication of the translation. However, the primary concern of this research is to
explicate what is involved in the production of the target text. To put it differently,
I assume that translation is first of all concerned with the production the target text.
2 Much has been discussed about the freedom of the author (see Boase-Beier and
Holman 1999). Admittedly, the writer is subject to a variety of constraints imposed
by the norms of the source cultural system and the broad context of his/her writing
activity. However, apart from the linguistic norms of the target cultural system and
the social context of his/her translating activity, the translator is also subject to the
ever-present model of the source text. In this regard, the writer is much freer.
3 After defining the notion of primary concepts, de Beaugrande (1984: 111) adds in
the end notes of his book, ‘[I]‌t can easily be seen that situations subsume objects,
and events subsume actions; we therefore usually speak of situations and events as a
cover-all designation of primary concepts and their organization’. However, in my
view, events are results of actions, and can thus stand as a designation; yet regarding
the relationship between objects and situation, I prefer to take them as separate in
the light of the significance of objects in network connection. A good example is the
author’s analysis of the word ‘rocket’ in a text in which the object, rocket, is the key
in connecting with the other objects to form a textual world.
4 Unless otherwise specified, all translations are the author’s.
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Chapter 5
Translation as the instigator of a

new Arabic discourse in Islamic
intellectual history
Gavin N. Picken
The historical development of Arabic: from Bedouin

verse to the vernacular of statecraft
That Arabic ever became a language of translation is one of the peculiar
quirks of history, as it began life as the youngest member of the Semitic family
of languages and was confined to its homeland of the Arabian Peninsula.
Although there were various kingdoms on the edges of the Arabian Peninsula
that spoke this language, the vast majority of Arabic speakers were nomadic
tribes, who were illiterate and roamed the land in search of essential resources
in an inhospitable desert environment (Versteegh 2001: 9–22 and 37–52; Shah
2008: 262–264; Knysh 2016: 7–18). Thus, Arabic was restricted to an oral
culture, which prided itself on the composition and transmission of a styl-
ized form of oral poetry. Arabic oral poetry, being the primary form of art-
istic and cultural production in this society, became the medium for recording
historical events, maintaining lineages, praising leaders, deprecating enemies,
expressing love, and remembering the dead. Poetry was so important to this
society that regional and seasonal competitions would be held to assess the
talent of the leading poets, who were immortalized in the legendary ‘Golden
Odes’ (al-Mu‘allaqat), which were said to have been written in gold and dis-
played in the Ka‘ba in Mecca (Allen 2000: 76–78; Irwin 1999: 3–7).
Mecca was a religious and cultural centre that thrived on the trade gener-
ated from its status as a pilgrimage site. The ruling tribe of Quraysh enjoyed
great prestige and great wealth for being the tribe that settled in Mecca and
became responsible for maintaining the polytheistic rituals of the society at
large. Quite ironically, it would be a clansman of this elite tribe who would
bring an end to the restricted and isolated nature of Arabic by declaring
that he had received divine revelations and was now the Messenger of God.
Muslim sources record that Muhammad received revelations over a period
of approximately 23 years and that these supernatural communiques consti-
tuted the Qur’an, Islam’s primary sacred reference and Arabic’s first formal
text (Irwin 1999: 2–30; Knysh 2016: 76–91). In addition to the Qur’an,
Muhammad also received extra- Qur’anic revelations that would later be
92 Gavin N. Picken
recorded in a subsidiary genre of literature known as hadith (pl. ahadith)

(Irwin 1999: 40; Knysh 2016: 92–104). These materials formed the essence
and foundation of Islam’s textual corpus and, at the same, changed the func-
tion of Arabic from being a language of orality and poetry to also being a
language of literacy and religion.
Upon his death, Muhammad was succeeded by his Companions, Abu Bakr
(r. 632–634), ‘Umar b. al-Khattab (r. 634–644), ‘Uthman b. ‘Affan (r. 644–656)
and ‘Ali b. Abu Talib (656–661), who were collectively known as the ‘Rightly
Guided Caliphs’ (al-Khulafa’ al-Rashidun). In many respects, their rule can
be considered an extension of the Prophet’s mission, but with perhaps one
significant exception –in less than 30 years after the death of the Prophet
they had expanded the territories under the control of Islam to include the
Persian Empire, the Alexandrian Patriarchy and a significant portion of the
Byzantine Empire (Afsaruddin 2008: 27–58; Knysh 2016: 40–51). Thus, with
the geographical expansion of the religion to include much of what we now
refer to as the ‘Middle East’, Arabic was an able travelling companion, being
the communicative language of the sacred texts associated with Islam.
The early caliphs were succeeded by the first dynastic rule in Islamic his-
tory –that of the Umayyads (661–750). Although the decision to create a her-
editary succession would prove highly controversial and create considerable
political instability, the Umayyads continued the policy of expansion, and the
Umayyad caliphate would eventually encompass most of North Africa, parts
of Central Asia and southern Spain in its orbit. Extending the territories of
the caliphate would be only part of the story, however, and such a huge land
mass would certainly benefit from having a single language that united its
populace. Ruling from Damascus in the eastern Mediterranean, where Greek
was the most common language, the fifth Umayyad caliph, ‘Abd al-Malik
b. Marwan (r. 685–705), took the critical decision to make Arabic the official
language of state, and thus the vital position of Arabic as the primary lan-
guage of the Middle East was consolidated even further (Afsaruddin 2008: 76–
87; Shah 2008: 266–267; Osman 2012: 167). Although much emphasis has
been laid on the role of the consequent ‘Abbasid dynasty regarding translation
of non-Arabic materials into Arabic, the process began much earlier, under
the Umayyads. In some senses this was inevitable, as the Umayyads ruled a
land mass that was familiar with multiple trends of intellectual activity, which
had been in place for many centuries and which needed to be utilized in the
administrative context. In addition, making Arabic the official language of
state required that the administrative records (diwan) would now be in Arabic,
but as a primer to this, under the reign of ‘Abd al-Malik’s son Hisham (r. 724–
743), the prior Greek diwan was also translated into Arabic. Moreover, the
bibliographic cataloguer, Ibn Nadim (d. 995) asserts that the first translations
from one language to another in Islam were books of alchemy, translated by
Stephanus from Coptic and Greek at the behest of Khalid b. Yazid (d. 704),
who was the grandson of Mu‘awiya (Vagelpohl 2008: 22; Rashed 2015: 22–26).
Translation instigates new Arabic discourse 93
‘Abbasid Baghdad: caliphal capital and cultural crucible

Although the Umayyad rulers certainly had the positive effect of expand-
ing Muslim territorial power and unifying the language of communication,
they were also unpopular because of the institutionalizing of a hereditary
succession that was at odds with the early caliphate, and because they pre-
ferred to select traditional Arab families to occupy positions of power. Thus,
in an ever-expanding state where the majority of people would have been of
non-Arab origin, these new converts to Islam were considerably disenfran-
chised and saw themselves as subjects under an Arab aristocracy, which was
contrary to the concept of social equity promoted in early Islam under the
Prophet and the early caliphs (Knysh 2016: 119–20).
This was seen as an opportunity by certain of the Prophet’s relatives, known
as the ‘Abbasids, being the descendants of the Prophet’s youngest uncle –
al-’Abbas b. ‘Abd al-Muttalib (d. 652) –and they mobilized the disaffected
masses of the eastern caliphate in Khurasan (modern-day Iran, Afghanistan,
and parts of Central Asia) to form a formidable force that would facilitate
regime change (Afsaruddin 2008: 87–90; Knysh 2016: 120–130). This dynasty
would rule for over half a millennium (750–1258) and as a result be central to
the advent of the so-called Golden Age of learning, which was driven by an
innovative trend in translation consequently referred to as ‘The Translation
Movement’.
The process of moving towards the Translation Movement was essentially
begun by the second ‘Abbasid caliph Abu Ja‘far al-Manṣur (r. 754–775), who
not only provided political stability and financial solvency to the caliphate
but also provided the ‘Abbasids with a new capital –Baghdad –which would
remain an important city until this very day. Baghdad was well situated to
receive the cumulative knowledge of the surrounding cultures, being located
between the intellectual trends of the Near East in cities such as Alexandria,
Damascus, Antioch, and Harran, and the Persian intellectual hub of
Jundishapur to the east. Although the geographical location of Baghdad
was certainly important, it could not have been the only factor in influen-
cing the initiation of a Translation Movement, since the Umayyads had ruled
from Damascus, which was equally, if not better situated (Gutas 1998: 29–34;
Vagelpohl 2008: 25–26; Picken 2011: 26–27).
Given that the ‘Abbasids had come to power through support from the
Persian ‘clients’ (al-mawali), who had converted to Islam, and the need to
prove themselves different from the Umayyad caliphate’s Arab-dominated
hierarchy, the ‘Abbasids not only welcomed the Persian mawali into their
regime but appointed them to some of the most significant positions in the
highest political echelons. This ushered in a period of ‘Persianization’ of the
caliphate, and the newcomers adopted the administrative model of the former
Sassanid Empire, which ultimately defined the caliphate’s political structure
and practice. Moreover, a new secretarial class of civil servants (al-kuttab)
94 Gavin N. Picken
was developed and, once again, it was the Persian mawali who would dom-
inate such positions in the ‘Abbasid administration (Vagelpohl 2008: 23;
Picken 2011: 18).
We would be forgiven for thinking that the ‘Abbasid caliphate was now
being reinvented as a Neo-Sassanid Empire, but we should not forget that the
Persian kuttab would also have to be fluent in Arabic, as this was the admin-
istration’s official language and so, many of the civil servants who worked for
the ‘Abbasids were at least bilingual. Thus, this new class of educated admin-
istrators came from a unique cultural background, heritage, and world view
that they could express in the caliphate’s official language of Arabic, which
enriched the social context of the ‘Abbasid society and exposed it to new atti-
tudes, ideas, and experiences (Vagelpohl 2008: 29).
For an administration to function efficiently it certainly requires a qualified
and capable workforce, which, as was just noted, was provided by the influx of
a new demographic into the ‘Abbasid capital. In addition, it also requires the
raw materials of writing and in this sense, the ‘Abbasids were at a disadvan-
tage, as writing materials were scarce and, hence, very expensive. All this was to
change, however, with the introduction into the caliphate of paper, said to have
been gleaned from Chinese prisoners of war. Once paper was ‘discovered’, the
‘Abbasids set about mass-producing it and built several paper mills in Baghdad
to facilitate the process and reduce the cost. Although the initial impetus in
paper manufacture may well have been to service the needs of a burgeoning
administration, it also meant that paper was now also available for other intel-
lectual activities, including translation (Gutas 1998: 13; Picken 2011: 18–19).
Therefore, on comparing the ‘Abbasid society with that of their predeces-
sors, we can make two general but significant observations: first, that in a
general sense there was an appreciation of and openness to other cultures,
societies, languages, and even religions. Second, that the aforementioned
activities were the subject of extensive and consistent patronage, and without
financial support and intellectual curiosity, the Translation Movement and,
consequently, the Golden Age could never have happened.
Translation during the ‘Abbasid ‘Golden Age’: Arabic

as a Target Language (TL)
From the above discussion, we can observe that until the advent of the
‘Abbasids, the achievements of Arabic–Islamic civilization was a rich and
deeply rooted tradition of poetry, a potent and fast-growing faith, and an
eloquent and widespread language. Yet, at the same time, they had little in
the way of cumulative knowledge, meaning a tradition of science, philosophy,
and medicine, which were emblematic of the civilizations that had preceded
them (Picken 2011: 18).
It was here that the open-mindedness and open-handedness of the ‘Abbasid
caliphs would come to the fore. Driven by what seemed to be a natural
curiosity, the ‘Abbasids set about acquiring and translating the intellectual
traditions of the ancient world; the primary source languages of interest were
Persian, Greek and Sanskrit, and the target language in all cases was Arabic.
Regarding the subjects that the ‘Abbasids translated, they were particularly
enamoured of the classical learning of the ancient world, which included in
its gamut astronomy, geography, literature, mathematics, medicine, and phil-
osophy. The process seems to have begun as early as the time of the second
caliph, Abu Ja‘far al-Manṣur, who had a personal interest in astronomy
and astrology and is said to have commissioned a translation of the Indian
astronomical work Sindhind by the architect of Baghdad, Ibrahim al-Fazari
(d. 777). It is worthy of note that al-Fazari is also said to have built the first
observatory on the left bank of the Tigris and produced the first Arabic astro-
labe (Vagelpohl 2008: 27; Picken 2011: 19; van Bladel 2014: 260–261).
It is evident that religious conviction was not a stumbling block for the
‘Abbasids when it came to translation, since many of the people in their
employ were Nestorian Christians; this religious denomination had been mar-
ginalized under Byzantine rule and found sanctuary under the auspices of the
Persian Empire, and eventually settled in the intellectual hub of Jundishapur.
When Baghdad was built they filled a natural gap in the necessary skillset
that was required by the caliphs; first, they were multilingual, having a know-
ledge of Greek and Persian, and had the added advantage of being familiar
with Syriac –a Semitic relative of Arabic –that was a liturgical language
in their religious context, being the language of the Peshitta, or the ‘Syriac
bible’. Moreover, their education was diverse, and they displayed a poly-
mathic familiarity with ancient knowledge while at the same time often dis-
tinguishing themselves in a field of specialism. The itinerary of translators
under the ‘Abbasids included Ibn Na‘ima al-Himsi (d. 835) who rendered the
pseudo Theology of Aristotle into Arabic, and Qusta b. Luqa (d. 912), who
was known for the mastery and depth of his knowledge of Greek. In add-
ition, there was Abu Bishr Matta b. Yunus (d. 940), who was the single most
important contributor in the field of logic (Vagelpohl 2008: 21–22; Picken
2011: 19; Osman 2012: 166).
Perhaps the most significant scholar in the Translation Movement, how-
ever, was Hunayn b. Ishaq (d. 873). Hunayn distinguished himself in the
fields of medicine and philosophy by translating the entire corpus of Galen’s
medical works as well as Galen’s paraphrases on many of Plato’s works.
Similarly, he spent a great deal of time translating most of Aristotle’s extant
oeuvre and, thus, provided early translations of the most sought-after med-
ical and philosophical texts of the ancient Greek tradition. Hunayn did
not work in isolation, either, but rather headed a team of translators that
included his son Ishaq (d. c. 910), his nephew Hubaysh, and his student ‘Isa
b. Yahya. Hunayn’s particular skill lay in his profound knowledge of Greek,
which he often used to first translate a text into Syriac, and then the Syriac
rendering would be translated into Arabic by another member of the team;
96 Gavin N. Picken
thus, Syriac often became an intermediary language between Greek and

Arabic in the translation process (Saliba 1996: 21–26; Iskandar 1997: 399–
400; Vagelpohl 2008: 35–37; Osman 2012: 161–175; Overwien 2012: 151).
One may get the impression that the patronage of translation in Baghdad
was an entirely royal affair, being restricted to the caliphs, but this is far
from the case. Indeed, anyone who had the financial means and the inclin-
ation could become the patron of a translator. One case of this type that
particularly stands out is that of the Banu Musa (lit. ‘The Children of
Moses’), who were three brothers, Muhammad, Ahmad, and al-Hasan. In
fact, the Banu Musa were not only patrons but scholars in their own right,
as Muhammad was concerned with mathematics and astronomy, Ahmad
was skilled in mechanics, and al-Hasan was a talented geometer. Moreover,
they were also involved in the politics of the day, undertaking a number of
building projects in Baghdad, and Muhammad and Ahmad in particular
are associated with a succession of ‘Abbasid caliphs. Thus, being both
wealthy and influential as well as scientifically gifted, they would spend
wealth on intellectual pursuits, including translation (Rashed 2012: 1–7).
Not only did the Banu Musa sponsor translations, but they would also pat-
ronize the training of gifted individuals, and a good example of this was
Thabit b. Qurra (d. 901). It is said that Muhammad, while returning from a
manuscript-sourcing trip in the Byzantine Empire, met Thabit in his native
Harran and, being suitably impressed with his linguistic talent, invited him
to return to Baghdad. Thabit was then trained by al-Hasan in mathematics
and went on to translate works, as well as authoring his own treatises on
mathematics (Rashed 2015: 35–36).
No discussion of the Translation Movement would be complete without
mention of Baghdad’s much- celebrated Bayt al-Hikma (‘The House of
Wisdom’). This is said to have been a specialized translation institute estab-
lished by the caliph al-Ma’mun (r. 813–833) to translate the Greek legacy
into Arabic. It is said that Yahya b. Masawayh was its first director, and that
he was succeeded by no less than Hunayn b. Ishaq. The purpose of the Bayt
al-Hikma was to translate the primary Greek source texts into Arabic and
have the resultant translations copied so they could be stored, thus creating a
nascent library for consultation.
From this brief discussion we can see that the ‘Abbasid period does
indeed deserve its common epithet of ‘Golden Age’ because of the enlight-
ened intellectual activity that took place then, driven by an appetite for
translation.
Translation during the ‘Abbasid ‘Golden Age’: between

myth and reality
When engaging with the subject of translation in the Islamic context of the
medieval period one is faced with a number of salient debates that occupy
the discussion. The first of note is that of ‘reception’, or what it was that the
‘Arabs’ encountered when they first translated. It is noticeable when reading
inventories of the texts translated that, in terms of the Hellenistic legacy,
Greek literature is almost entirely absent, and attention is paid almost exclu-
sively to philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. Peters (2003)
suggests that this was because this aspect of the Greek patrimony had been
absorbed into Christianity before the advent of Islam. Moreover, he goes a
step further and argues that Muslims were essentially unaware of the legacy
they were receiving, and that this had a significant impact on the way intel-
lectualism developed in the Muslim world (Peters 2003: 41–42). Peters’ argu-
ment is flawed from several perspectives, however, since he relies on a single
text –Ibn Nadim’s (d. 995) bibliographical catalogue the Fihrist –to inform
himself of the works that were translated, which is necessarily too limiting.
In addition, we will remember that much of the material that was translated
was undertaken by Nestorian Christians, which would not explain why they
were equally ‘unaware’ of the origin of and scope of the material they were
translating. Moreover, D’Ancona (2005: 1–20) has shown that there is a tan-
gible and traceable linear progression between Plotinus as the architect of
Neoplatonism, as it was he who introduced Aristotle to the Middle Platonism
popular at the time, right up until the Nestorian Church that flourished in
Persia just before the advent of Islam. Griffith (2008: 106–125) has also dem-
onstrated that not only were the Christians prior to Islam fully aware of the
legacy of Greek learning, but they had also assimilated some of its philo-
sophical elements into their theology and were using it to bolster their apolo-
getics. Thus, at least in terms of philosophy, we could say that the tradition
had been received in a manner congruent with how it had been developed
historically. Of equal interest is that the reception of ancient learning was not
all of Greek origin. In fact, some the earliest translations of astronomy and
astrology, thanks to the personal interests of the caliph al-Manṣur, were made
from Indian sources, as van Bladel has meticulously shown (2014: 257–294).
The second major discussion point is generated using the term ‘school’ to
describe various elements of the translation tradition. Thus, we have refer-
ences to the ‘School of Baghdad’ and the Bayt al-Hikma as an institution
or ‘school’ of translation. This term has been both loosely appropriated by
earlier generations of researchers, but perhaps taken far too seriously by their
modern counterparts. If we intend by the term ‘school’ a clearly identifiable
group of individuals who adopted the teachings and tradition of a given
eponym, who in turn adopted a specific methodology and followed a defini-
tive curriculum, then clearly such a rigorous definition will not be appropriate
to the translation history that we are examining. Although certain individuals
stand out, such as Hunayn b. Ishaq, it cannot be said that they founded a
school of translation, as neither an evident curriculum of training nor a spe-
cific methodology can be identified. What we do have, however, is a circle of
individuals who interacted with these major figures and with each other, in
98 Gavin N. Picken
a unique location and under specific circumstances that allowed them to be

particularly productive in terms of translation. Indeed, given that the transla-
tions were done at the behest of patrons in most circumstances, it is highly
unlikely that they had the time or the opportunity to develop a ‘school’, as
their work was time-sensitive, as translators today would appreciate.
Rashed (2012) has given credence to the notion of a ‘circle’ or a ‘team’ of
translators by using this term to refer to the scholars patronized by the Banu
Musa brothers, who included Hunayn b. Ishaq, his son Ishaq b. Hunayn,
and Hilal al-Himsi, as well as their protégé, Thabit b. Qurra. Moreover, the
Banu Musa circle were at odds with the circle of the renowned Arab phil-
osopher al-Kindi (d. 873), whom they competed with for the caliph’s favours
(Vagelpohl 2008: 31–35; Rashed 2012: 1–6). Regarding how these circles
developed, Rashed (2015: 29–36) suggests that there were three phases
in the genesis of the early Translation Movement in Baghdad: the initial
phase, which is constituted by the efforts of what Rashed refers to as ‘non-
professional’ translators, implying administrators who had to translate for
the nature of their occupation. This is followed by the more rigorous phase
of the ‘translator-scholar’, which is a period when high-quality translations
began to be produced by skilled and learned individuals such as Hunayn
b. Ishaq. The third and final phase is represented by ‘scholar-translator’,
which signifies that the various fields of leaning were now being studied
and supplementary translations being made by scholars such as Thabit
b. Qurra. This process first of all explains why many translations were per-
formed more than once, given that the skill level increased over time, and
indicates that the Banu Musa were at the core of this development, being
involved at each stage.
Related to the notion of ‘school’ is the concept of ‘institute’, and it is dif-
ficult not to read about the Translation Movement in Baghdad without there
being some mention made of the celebrated Bayt al-Hikma (‘The House
of Wisdom’). The traditional account, as mentioned above, states that the
Bayt al-Hikma was a translation ‘centre’, dedicated to the translation of the
Greek legacy that was founded by the caliph al-Ma’mun (r. 813–833) and
had such luminaries as Hunayn b. Ishaq in its employ. This assertion appears
unfounded, however, and seems to have been nurtured by Meyerhoff (1926)
until it became an accepted ‘fact’. More recent studies have shown, by refer-
ring to the classical Arabic historical accounts, that the Bayt al-Hikma, or
its cognate phrase Khizanat al-Hikma (lit. ‘The Storehouse of Wisdom’), are
Arabic translations of the Persian notion of a ‘library’ (ganj) and most prob-
ably referred to the ‘royal’ library of the caliph. Moreover, the earliest ref-
erences to this idea originate with the caliph Har‫‏‬un al-Rashid (r. 789–809),
rather than with his son, the caliph al-Ma’mun. The library is reported to
have stored historically important documents in Arabic and was also used for
the translation of Pahlavi works into Arabic, which is attested by the fact that
many of its employees were Persians, such as Abu Sahl al-Fadl b. Nawbakht.
Perhaps what has added to this confusion is that the Bayt al-Hikma was also
associated with the mathematician Muhammad b. Musa al-Khwarazmi (d.
c. 840), the astrologer Yahya b. Abu Mansur al-Munajjim (d. 830), and the
Banu Musa brothers (Vagelpohl 2008: 23–24; Gutas and van Bladel 2009: 2,
133–137). Nevertheless, even though the Bayt al-Hikma was perhaps not the
translation ‘centre’ it has regularly been perceived to be, it is also evident that
translation activity was taking place there, and that it was also frequented by
some of the most important intellectual figures of the age.
Translation during the ‘Abbasid ‘Golden Age’: towards a

New Arabic discourse
There is a common theoretical paradigm that Arabic intellectual development
was a three-step process: reception of ancient knowledge; its assimilation in
the new culture and environment; and, finally, a stage of production where
this knowledge was eventually utilized. As convenient as this model appears,
upon deeper examination it becomes evident that this theory is somewhat
naïve and belies the historical reality that the sources portray. From the outset
one may say that in the case of translation, scholars were not waiting idly for
texts to be translated so they could be studied, but rather that translation was
part of an interactive research environment that attempted to assist the pro-
gress of learning and understanding by accessing as many sources of infor-
mation as possible (Rashed 2015: 20–22).
Indeed, there are even examples of new intellectual trends and the develop-
ment of a new type of Arabic discourse that were completely independent of
translation. The primary example of this is the development of algebra at the
hands of Muhammad b. Musa al-Khwarizmi (d. c. 840). Upon examining the
mathematical legacy of the ancient world, we find no precedent in the works
of Greek luminaries such as Euclid, Heron, and Diophantus or the Indian
scholars like Aryabhata and Brahmagupta, which indicates a direct influence
of al-Khwarizmi’s elaboration of algebra in his magnum opus, Kitab al-Jabr
wa ’l-Muqabala (Rashed 2009: 57–80). Moreover, not only was al-Khwarizmi’s
elucidation of algebra articulated in a new form of Arabic mathematical ter-
minology, but the text also had an Islamic influence, as one section of the
book was dedicated to how algebraic functions may be utilized in the calcu-
lation of inheritance within Islamic law (Rashed 2009: 14–30). Later authors
would be convinced that al-Khwarizmi was heavily influenced by the Greek
mathematician Diophantus, but they were subtly deceived by a peculiar quirk
of fate. Al-Khwarizmi’s Kitab al-Jabr wa ’l-Muqabala would appear prior to
the most significant translation of Diophantus’ Arithmetica by Qusta b. Luqa
(d. 912). However, when translating the Arithmetica, Qusta was heavily reliant
on the terminology coined by al-Khwarazmi and, hence, when people later
read the translation, they assumed that al-Khwarizmi had been influenced
by Diophantus (Rashed 2009: 61–62). Thus, we have a situation in which the
100 Gavin N. Picken
translation of a classical Greek work was articulated in the vernacular of a

nascent Arabic mathematical discourse.
This novel form of Arabic discourse was, however, overshadowed by the
translation activities that took place in the same period, and this phenom-
enon necessitates a more detailed discussion. As Rashid asserts (2015: 33), the
principal figure who stands out as an ‘ideal translator’ was Hunayn b. Ishaq,
and given his productivity, he is a prime candidate in attempting to under-
stand the genesis of Arabic discourse in the ‘Abbasid Golden Age. Abu Zayd
Hunayn b. Ishaq –also known in Latin as Joannitius –was born in Hira, the
former capital of the Arabic-speaking Lakhmid dynasty, which ruled part of
modern Iraq in the pre-Islamic period. His family were Nestorian Christians,
and his appellation ‘al-‘Ibadi’ originates from ‘al-‘Ibad’, who were an Arab
Christian tribe. Given that his father was a pharmacist, it is reasonable to
assume that Hunayn was reasonably well educated, but he is also said to have
undertaken further studies, notably in Arabic philology and grammar with the
renowned linguist Khalil b. Ahmad al-Farahidi (d. c. 791–792) in Basra. His
medical training was instigated under Yuhanna b. Masawayh (d. 857), one of
the leading physicians of his day and an associate of the Bayt al-Hikma, but
their early relationship was fractious due to Hunayn being overly inquisitive,
and Ibn Masawayh requested that he leave his circle to improve his Greek.
Not discouraged by Ibn Masawayh’s critique, he acted on his advice and trav-
elled to the Byzantine territories to improve his linguistic ability, and we are
told that he returned to Baghdad able to quote Homer’s poetry verbatim.
Consequently, he was reconciled with his former (tor)mentor and they began
a very productive relationship together. It was not only Hunayn’s linguistic
competence that was lauded, however: his reputation as an expert in medical
learning eventually led to him being appointed by the caliph al-Mutawakkil
(r. 847–861) as a court physician, and his relationship with the ruler seems to
have been good since we are also told that the caliph put him in charge of the
Bayt al-Hikma (Iskandar 1997: 399; Rashed 2015: 33–34; Osman 2012: 165–
166; Overwien 2012: 151; Lamoreaux 2016: xii–xiii).
Hunayn also composed around thirty original works, including a book on
Arabic grammar (Kitab fi ’l-Nahw) and another on simple medicines organ-
ized alphabetically (Kitab fi Asma’ al-Adwiyya al-Mufrada ‘ala Huruf al-Mu
‘jam) (Rashed 2015: 35). One such treatise, titled ‘Hunayn b. Ishaq’s Treatise
Dedicated to ‘Ali b. Yahya The Works of Galen That Have Been Translated
and Those That Have Not’ (Risalat Hunayn b. Ishaq ila ‘Ali b. Yahya fi Dhikr
ma Turjima min Kutub Jalinus fi ‘Ilmihi wa ba‘d ma lam Yutarjam) that is of
considerable importance, since it was in this particular text that Hunayn shed
the most light on what it meant to be a translator during the ‘Abbasid Golden
Age. Hunayn wrote this treatise at the age of 48 and makes mention of 129
works that he personally translated, with around two-thirds of his production
being translations from Greek into Syriac, and the remainder being trans-
lations into Arabic. Perhaps more importantly, Hunayn highlights the titles
of his translation efforts, which focused on the corpus of works that consti-
tuted the curriculum of the late Alexandrian school of medicine that was
heavily reliant on the teachings of Galen (d. c. 200), and which was referred
to as Summaria Alexandrinorum. With regard to Galen in particular, Hunayn
translated 58 of his works in to Syriac, 12 into Arabic and 22 into Syriac first
and then into Arabic (Iskander 1976: 235–239; Osman 2012: 162; Lamoreaux
2016: xiii–xvi).
It is noteworthy that an important feature of Hunayn’s translations was
that all the source texts were in manuscript form, which raises critical issues
such as availability, scribal accuracy, and author attribution. This situation
was further complicated by the fact that –as just noted –Hunayn not only
translated into Arabic directly from Greek but also from Syriac manuscripts
that had previously been translated from the original Greek source text. To
begin the process of translation, one evidently requires a source text to work
with, but such a text was not always readily available. When Hunayn began
translating at the tender age of 17 he was challenged by lacunae in the original
Greek manuscripts, which he had to compensate for by examining further
manuscripts –often many years later –causing him to retranslate the ori-
ginal or edit his earlier efforts (Saliba 1996: 23–24; Pormann 2004: 114–115;
Osman 2012: 173; Olsson 2016: 42; Lamoreaux 2016: 10–11 and 24–25). In
addition, Hunayn actively sought manuscripts to act as source texts, which
is evinced by his quest to obtain a copy of Galen’s Logical Demonstration;
Hunayn travelled to Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Iraq to track down this rare
book and, ultimately, he could only retrieve half of it, in Damascus. It is
also worthy of note that this manuscript quest would not have been possible
without the financial support of the Banu Musa, whose patronage seems to
have encompassed each crucial step of the translation process (Vagelpohl
2008: 31; Osman 2012: 166; Overwien 2012: 152; Lamoreaux 2016: 116–119).
Thus, we may note that the primary stage for translators during this period
was to establish a source text from multiple existing manuscripts and, hence,
they were much more than mere translators but also scholars of an ancient
manuscript tradition.
Apart from having a well-attested source text, Hunayn also considered
experience a key factor in producing a sound translation. As previously
noted, Hunayn began translating at a relatively early age and he continued to
improve his method with time, experience, and availability of resources. This
was not only discernible in his own context, however, but also in the works
of his predecessors and contemporaries; for example, translations of Greek
medical texts into Syriac had a long tradition prior to the advent of Islam,
and one of the key figures was Serjius of Ra’s al-‘Ayn (on the Syria–Turkey
border) (d. 536), who was equally active in translating Galen’s corpus. Galen’s
work, Therapeutic Method, was separated into two parts, the first consist-
ing of six treatises, and the second comprising eight treatises. Hunayn com-
ments that Serjius’ translation of the first part was inferior to the second part,
102 Gavin N. Picken
since he had received further training before translating part two. Moreover,
Hunayn was equally critical of contemporaneous translators such as Ibn
Sahda from Karkh (a district in Baghdad), who had produced a defective
translation of Galen’s Sects, and Ayyub al-Ruhawi (Job of Edessa), whom he
regularly critiqued (Saliba 1996: 23–24; Pormann 2004: 114–115; Vagelpohl
2008: 30; Vagelpohl 2012: 127–128; Osman 2012: 173; Lamoreaux 2016: 10–
11, 36–37).
As discussed previously, one of the key features of the ‘Abbasid Golden Age
was caliphal patronage, but when examining Hunayn’s extant works they do
not appear to have been produced at the behest of a caliph (Saliba 1996: 26).
Nevertheless, patronage was a salient motif in the life of Hunayn, and one
may suggest that, to a large degree, it drove not only his productivity but also
the nature of his translations. It is interesting that, when undertaking a trans-
lation for a patron, Hunayn would take into consideration the personality
of his audience. For example, having reconciled with his teacher, Yuhanna
b. Masawayh, he translated The [Anatomy of] Bones for him, ensuring that
the language of the target text was clear and fluent, as this was the penchant
of Ibn Masawayh. For another patron, Salmawayh b. Bunan, Hunayn trans-
lated The Pulse, and was extremely careful to ensure the precision of the
target text because he knew that Salmawayh was highly intelligent and well
read. Similarly, Hunayn was diligent and meticulous in his rendering of The
Elements According to Hippocrates into Syriac for Bukhtishu‘ b. Jibra’il, as
he was a caliphal physician (Saliba 1996: 22; Osman 2012: 172; Overwien
2012: 166–167; Olsson 2016: 41–42; Cooper 2016: 4; van Dalen 2017: 65–77;
Lamoreaux 2016: 14–19, 20–23).
To give just a sample of Hunayn’s productivity and versatility, we can sum-
marize some of the details he gives in the early part of his treatise regard-
ing his translation activities and his interaction with patrons in Table 5.1
(Lamoreaux 2016: 8–38):
A cursory glance at the information provided above indicates that Hunayn
seems to have shared his time for translation activity between producing
Syriac target texts for the Christian medical community, and Arabic equiva-
lents, primarily for members of the Banu Musa family.
On examining Hunayn’s corpus of translations, one is struck by the fact
that he not only engages in what we commonly refer to as ‘translation’, but
rather provides considerable commentary, which often adds explanatory
details but on occasion even corrects the source text. For example, when trans-
lating the Hippocratic Oath into Syriac, he added explicatory glosses on what
he considered the difficult sections of the source text, and it was this sum-
mative edition that was consequently translated into Arabic by his nephew
Hubaysh and his student ‘Isa b. Yahya. When translating The Opinions of
Hippocrates and Plato into Syriac, Hunayn added an entire chapter to the
source text as an apologia for Galen’s opinions cited in the seventh chapter,
and it was this supplemented target text that was translated into Arabic by
Table 5.1. A summary of Hunayn b. Ishaq’s translatorial activity
Source Text [Galen’s Corpus] Language Patron

The Catalogue (Gr. Pinax) Syriac Da’ud [A practising doctor]
Arabic Muhammad b. Musa
The Order of His Books Arabic Ahmad b. Musa
The Sects Syriac Sabrisho’ b. Qutrub [at the age of 20]
Arabic Hubaysh [at the age of 40]
Muhammad b. Musa
The Art of Medicine Syriac Da’ud
The Pulse,To Teuthras Syriac Salmawayh b. Bunan
To Glaucon Arabic Muhammad b. Musa
Therapy
The [Anatomy of] the Bones Syriac Yuhanna b. Masawayh
The [Anatomy of the] Muscles Syriac Yuhanna b. Masawayh
The [Anatomy of the] Nerves
The [Anatomy of the] Veins and Arteries Syriac Yuhanna b. Masawayh
The Elements According to Hippocrates Syriac Bukhtishu’ b. Jibra’il
Arabic ‘Ali b. Yahya al-Munajjim
Mixtures Syriac Bukhtishu’ b. Jibra’il [?]‌
Arabic Ishaq b. Sulayman
Faculties Syriac Jibra’il b. Bukhtishu’
Arabic Ishaq b. Sulayman
The Extended Book on the Pulse Syriac Yuhanna b. Masawayh
Arabic Muhammad b. Musa [Volume One only]
Categories of Fever Syriac Jibra’il b. Bukhtishu’
Arabic ‘Ali b. Yahya al-Munajjim
Therapeutic Method Syriac Bukhtishu’ b. Jibra’il
Arabic Muhammad b. Musa [As an editor]
Hubaysh for Muhammad b. Musa (Saliba 1996: 24–25; Osman 2012: 171–
172; Vagelpohl 2012: 143–145; Overwien 2012: 152; Overwien 2015: 179–185;
Cooper 2016: 10–12; Lamoreaux 2016: 60–61; Olsson 2016: 42). Thus, we
can see that for Hunayn, translation was not merely the accurate rendering
of a source text into a target language, but rather the genesis of an intellec-
tual tradition and a genuine contribution to knowledge, driven by research,
patronage and, indeed, necessity.
Given Hunayn’s translatorial habitus and the linguistic diversity of the
languages with which he was engaged, it is little surprise that he was faced
with distinct challenges. On occasion Hunayn would solve such challenges by
Arabizing a word of the source language, transliterating it to a more Arabic-
sounding term and thus, introduce it to the vernacular of Arabic medical dis-
course. This can be seen in Hippocrates’s Regimen in Acute Diseases, where
Hunayn translates: τὴν ἐν τῷ ἀγκῶνι φλέβα τὴν εἴϲω (‘the inner vein at the
104 Gavin N. Picken
elbow’) as: ‫‘( العرق المسمى الباسليق‬the vein that is referred to as the basilic vein’).
Consequently, Hunayn utilizes the common medical terminology of the day
that was familiar to practising physicians but simultaneously introduces it
to the Arabic target text (Overwien 2012: 156–157; Cooper 2016: 12–23).
On other occasions Hunayn employs what is commonly referred to as hen-
diadys – a word of Greek origin implying ‘one through two’ – to use two
Arabic words (primarily adjectives) to fulfil the meaning of one Greek word.
A good example is from Galen’s Critical Days, where he describes the effect of
the heavenly bodies in maintaining order upon a chaotic Earth, and Hunayn
translates καλόϛ (‘good’/’beautiful’) as ‫‘( حسن جميل‬good and beautiful’) to
convey the meaning comprehensively and unambiguously in the target lan-
guage (Cooper 2016: 8–10; Overwien 2012: 153).
Perhaps one of the most challenging features of translating the Greek
patrimony was how to represent references to the pantheon of Greek
deities to an audience of Christian coreligionists and Muslim patrons. In
this regard Hunayn both utilized his knowledge of Hellenistic culture and
accommodated his target audience’s religious sensibilities. For example, in
the Commentary on Hippocratesʼ ‘Epidemics’, the Greek phrase: πέμπουϲί
γε πολλάκιϲ εἰϲ θεοὺϲ περὶ τῆϲ ἰάϲεωϲ αὐτῶν πυνθανόμενοι (‘they often send
to the gods to enquire about treatment’) was translated by Hunayn as:
‫‘( يلجؤون كثيرا في شفائهم منه إلى هللا‬they often turn to God [Allah] regarding their
cure’). Another example is observed in the Hippocratic Oath, where we
find: Ὄμνυμι Ἀπόλλωνα ἰητρόν καὶ Ἀϲκληπιὸν καὶ Ὑγείαν καὶ Πανάκειαν καὶ
θεοὺϲ πάνταϲ τε καὶ πάϲαϲ (‘I swear by Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by
Hygieia, by Panacea and by all the gods and goddesses’), which is rendered
by Hunayn as: ‫إني أقسم باهلل رب الحياة و الموت و واهب الصحة و أقسم بأسقليبيوس و خالق الشفاء و‬
.. ‫‘( كل عالج وأقسم بأولياء هللا من الرجال و النساء جميعا‬Indeed, I swear by God, the Lord
of life and death, Who bestows health, and I swear by Asclepius, and by the
Creator of cures and every treatment, and I swear by all of the spiritual elect,
whether they be male or female’). It is interesting here to note that although
various Greek deities are marginalized, Asclepius is retained in the target
text, but this can perhaps be explained by the fact that Hunayn seems to have
viewed him as an inspired individual, due to his self-mortification and con-
sequent spiritual elevation, rather than his demi-god status in Greek myth-
ology. Moreover, in the Commentary on Hippocratesʼs Epidemics we find that
the titan Atlas is transformed by Hunayn into an angel: εἰ δόξειε τῷ Ἄτλαντι
κάμνοντι μηκέτι βαϲτάζειν τὸν οὐρανόν (‘if Atlas were to decide no longer to
carry the sky because he is tired’) is translated as: ‫يتفكر و ينظر ما الذي يعرض إن برى‬
‫‘( الملك الذي قد يزعم الشعراء أنه يحمل السماء و يسمونه أطلس‬he reflects and considers what
would happen if the angel [al-malak] called Atlas, who the poets claim car-
ries the heavens, became exhausted’) (Strohmaier, 2012: 171–179; Vagelpohl
2012: 145; Cooper 2016: 23–26). In terms of modern translation studies, we
may regard Hunayn’s deliberate ‘mistranslations’ as somewhat of a failure,
yet he was certainly challenged by the lack of equivalence in the target culture
and attempted to contextualize the source text for his audience, perhaps in
an attempt to keep their focus on the medical content rather than have their
attention diverted by theological concerns.
One may expect that given Hunayn’s considerable contribution and
respected status that he lived a fruitful and happy life, but this was not always
the case. In an autobiographical tract recorded by Ibn Abi Usaybi‘a (d. 1270),
we find that Hunayn was the subject of trials and tribulations that befell him
in his position, as the prime translator of his age. We find that he often suffered
at the hands of his contemporaries, who questioned his medical acumen, sug-
gesting that he was a mere theoretician and not a physician of practical medi-
cine. Moreover, they plotted to disgrace him in front of the caliph, so that
they in turn could benefit from his fall from grace. Regarding these events, he
mentions that the situation caused him to fall into a form of depression and
that he even contemplated suicide (Cooperson 2001: 107–118). Therefore, we
can observe that although Hunayn certainly benefitted from the environment
he lived in and, in turn, enriched his intellectual milieu with his contribution,
the culture of patronage and the large sums of money involved, which were
emblematic of the ‘Abbasid Golden Age, were equally divisive because of the
competition they produced.
The figure of Hunayn is clearly important historically and portrays a great
deal regarding the Translation Movement and the ‘Abbasid Golden Age,
but at the same time, he continues to resonate with contemporary transla-
tion studies. In terms of discourse, Hunayn’s main focus was the genre of
medical literature. In terms of text type, he worked on informative texts with
a clear pedagogical and research purport (Paltridge 2006: 98–99; Munday
2008: 72–74). Given this context, one is naturally drawn to make mention
of translation theories that explore text function, such as translatorial action
and skopos theory (Munday 2008: 77–81), that would perhaps be useful in
examining Hunayn’s method. At the same time, however, when examining
Hunayn’s translational process and his multilingual approach, one also recalls
the notion of translating as rewriting, which was presented by Lefevere –
albeit in a literary setting –because of the elements of ‘internal professionals’
and ‘external patronage’, which his discussion proposes, and which were also
leitmotifs in the life of Hunayn (Munday 2008: 125–128). As observed earlier,
the challenge for Hunayn was that he was translating texts that were histor-
ically distant, culturally different, and often via a language intermediary,
namely Syriac. Consequently, Hunayn was challenged by a unique ‘discourse’
reminiscent of the pioneering work of Hatim and Mason, who defined dis-
course in its widest sense (Hatim and Mason 1997: 216). Given the linguistic
diversity and context of Hunayn’s work, one would also perhaps be reminded
of the importance of cultural agendas in translation, pioneered by Venuti
and, in particular, the issues of the ‘invisibility’ of the translator and espe-
cially the notions of ‘domestication’ and ‘foreignization’ of the target text
(Munday 2008: 143–146), examples of which can be observed in Hunayn’s
106 Gavin N. Picken
translation methodology. Thus, although Hunayn’s translation activity took

place over a millennium ago, we can identify in his works similar challenges
to those faced by translation practitioners today and scholars of translation
studies in the modern academy.
Tracing Arabic intellectual discourse in history:

challenges and trajectories
From the brief and summarized discussion above it is hoped that it will have
become clear that the role of translation in the development of Islamic intel-
lectualism and Arabic discourse is a complex and yet intriguing subject. At
the same time, however, the challenges of such a study are multifarious. To
begin with, we are dealing with numerous historical documents that in many
cases are in manuscript form. Apart from the tricky task of ensuring cor-
rect attribution of authorship, we are confronted by the process of collating
and comparing versions of the texts before we can even begin deciphering
their contents and interpreting their purport. This would be difficult enough
without the linguistic component, which incorporates the Semitic languages
of Syriac and Arabic, in addition to Greek as a language of antiquity, and
the Iranian language of Middle Persian or Pahlavi, which may also be supple-
mented by Sanskrit. From a historical perspective, this field of enquiry would
evidently necessitate a knowledge of Islamic history, but it would not be com-
plete without some familiarity with the Graeco–Roman world, Sassanid Iran,
and the Byzantine Empire. Religious studies would not be exempted either,
given that the primary focus is naturally Islam, but Judaism and Eastern
or Oriental Christianities are also vital components (Vagelpohl 2008: 1–9;
Vagelpohl 2012: 131). One will note that we have not even begun to discuss
translation studies!
To find an individual with such a rounded knowledge of history and
culture, and who was necessarily multilingual may seem an impossible task
(Hatim 2015). This challenge has been discussed by van Bladel (2015: 316–
325) who deliberates the challenges of training future students to be
equipped to take on Graeco–Arabic Studies in the context of Near Eastern
Studies. Yet, at the same time, although academicians are encouraged to be
multidisciplinary, the nature of the academy has been to produce individ-
uals with a deep knowledge of a ‘field of specialism’. In some respect, this
has led to a form of isolationism in academia, where colleagues in the same
department may not have anything directly in common, let alone with fel-
low researchers in their shared institutionalized context. It is noteworthy
that in many ways this is in sharp contrast with the ‘translators’ who were
the subject of this chapter; it was noted that in Baghdad they were in most
cases multilingual and polymathic.
At this point one may be inclined to submit and surrender to the enormity
of the task, but at the same the corpus of studies produced by pioneering
scholars such as Gutas and Rashed has been added to by a new generation of
researchers exemplified by Cooper, Overwien, Vagelpohl, van Bladel, and van
Dalen, among others. These contributions should be encouragement enough
that this area of study is not only valuable but, indeed, one that can be negoti-
ated successfully. Moreover, the studies regarding the Translation Movement
have been further advanced by modern technologies and by utilizing contem-
porary corpora studies, which has been enhanced by the development of a
digital corpus for Graeco–Arabic Studies by the Mellon Foundation, Harvard
University, and Tufts University (Vagelpohl 2012: 147–149). Therefore, to
build on the work of the aforementioned scholars, it is surely necessary to
genuinely incorporate translation studies as an integrated field within an
authentic multidisciplinary and collaborative approach, one which revives the
spirit of the illusive ‘House of Wisdom’.
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Chapter 6
A toolbox for critical translation

analysis in specialized discourse
(English/S panish)
Ovidi Carbonell Cortés
Introduction
One of the most important aspects of specialized discourse is its dependence
on translation. There is a decisive global drive in the creation of specialized
contents that apply to universal audiences.1 The focus of this chapter is the
creation and translation of scientific and technical texts; in these texts, there
is the assumption –or at least the ideal –that what is told remains stable, con-
stant, and readily verifiable. However, what is told is done so through discur-
sive practices that organize and represent reality. Although this organization/
representation is assumed to be ideally valid for all audiences, there are rea-
sons to doubt that this is the case. Scientific and technical writing is an exercise
of power: it is a mechanism by which arguments are shared and made to be
accepted; its acceptance entails the ascertainment of facts and the subsequent
acquisition of status on the part of the party advancing them. Acceptance is
achieved through a process that is cognitive and social to a great extent; in
this sense, we agree with Hyland’s (2000: 17) statement that disciplinary dis-
courses amount to ‘an authorized understanding of the world (and how it can
be perceived and reported) which acts to reinforce the theoretical convictions
of the discipline and its right to validate knowledge’. That this validation is
done across languages and cultures is only partially acknowledged; there is a
noticeable lack of references to translation in the most relevant approaches to
professional genre analysis or even contrastive rhetoric, although the opposite
is true in TS approaches to specialized genres2; García-Izquierdo and Monzó
underline the role of translation in the shaping of a disciplinary community
through discursive means (2003: 35). Gradually, linguistic theories and meth-
odologies are becoming central in cross-disciplinary, integrated approaches
that are characterized by critical awareness, a focus on social interaction, and
the use of corpora as a key research tool.3
Dennis K. Mumby’s analysis of organizational storytelling describes how
ideology is embedded in narrative through four ways:
(a) Through representing sectional interests as universal;

(b) By obscuring or transforming structural contradictions;
A toolbox for critical translation analysis 111
(c) Through the process of reification (making human constructions seem

natural and objective);
(d) As a means of control, or hegemony. (Mumby and Clair 1997: 187–188)
This applies clearly to scientific and technical discourse. Specialized argumen-

tation relies on universality as a prime condition of factual discourse; the
discourse of science aims at neutralizing, minimizing or altogether erasing
the possible contradictions that might prevent the acceptance of arguments;
complex phenomena and the human point of view are disguised in nominali-
zations; and, finally, science and technology are ways to control the world and
position the author-as-scientist/technician.
Both the earliest and the most recent approaches in discourse analysis, genre
analysis, contrastive rhetoric and translation studies applied to specialized
language raise awareness about how scientific and technical writing is a social
practice or social action (Miller 1984; Bazerman 1988; Mumby 1993; Bhatia
1993) that constructs its object of study (Potter 1996), uses rhetorical conven-
tions to persuade readers (Bazerman 1990; Parodi 2010b: 86), creates a mar-
ketized commodity (Pérez-Llantada 2012: 9) and positions its author among
peers and the disciplinary community. The use of argumentative resources is
key to transmit factual knowledge convincingly, striking a balance between
certain and uncertain, provisional and confirmed data, and establish a dia-
logic, intertextual relationship with the audience and their shared knowledge:
Scientific discourse has been broadly described as an objective, factual

discourse, always dependent on evidence. However, while the informative
load occupies the largest part of its textual (either written or spoken)
space, persuasive elements targeted at achieving credibility, recognition
and the acceptance of the new knowledge claims seep into the discourse.
(Pérez-Llantada 2012: 47)
My aim in this chapter is to provide a guide to some aspects that reveal how
universality and objectivity are created and transmitted through discourse,
including of course translated discourse, through syntactic and narrative
devices –and how these devices have an ideological dimension. Beyond the
scope of the present chapter remain other key lexical issues such as termin-
ology and metaphor, or the role of topoi and other argumentative resources
(Carbonell 2014).
The study of translation and ideology seemed at the beginning to be
restricted to, or at least primarily a matter of, certain genres and types of
texts whose contents were likely to be modified to suit particular agendas
(sociopolitical texts, media translation, and so on). Issues of identity, sub-
jectivity, and cultural representation were the subject of a number of remark-
able essays that have shaped what may be termed the critical turn of TS, or
critical translation. However, there is no genre in which ideologies, or current
112 Ovidi Carbonell Cortés
beliefs and representations, do not leave an imprint on both original texts and
their translations. Recently, the term ‘ideology’ has been losing currency, giv-
ing ground instead to other concepts and terms such as intervention, stance,
positioning, and more specific dimensions of argumentative construction such
as evaluation or appraisal, as we shall see. Academic and professional genres
do partake of these practices, and indeed specialized fields such as those of
science and technology make active use of them in order to make their dis-
course attractive, cogent, peer-and institutionally supported, and therefore
marketable.
We could, therefore, adapt the much-quoted statement by Susan Bassnett
and André Lefevere (1990) , acknowledging the fact that ‘all rewritings,
whatever their intention, reflect a certain ideology and a poetics and as such
manipulate literature to function in a given society in a given way’, to expand
its scope to all literatures, including, of course, specialized texts.
I shall use ‘scientific discourse’ as a generic term to encompass all instances
of texts whose field of discourse is explicitly or implicitly directed to the
description of or engagement with empirical reality, including expert and
non-expert audiences alike. Therefore, this term subsumes technical discourse
in empirical domains, as well as popularizing essays that aim to make scien-
tific contents accessible to a more varied audience.
Some basic discursive concepts in scientific-t echnical

texts
Transitivity
Transitivity is a key dimension of discourse. Grammatically, it refers to
the property of verbs to take on objects, and to the verbal category called
‘voice’ (active/passive) (Halliday 1967); from a discursive point of view, it
expresses how participants are involved in the processes narrated in discourse
(de Beaugrande 1997: 200). According to de Beaugrande, ‘the Active is the
least marked category in English, assigning the position of Clause Subject
to the Initiator or Agent…whereas the Passive assigns that position to the
Affected Entity’ (ibid.). Transitivity expresses how participants act or take
part in processes. In this sense, it is essential both in stating agency (who does
what) and establishing causal relations in stories (Trabasso, van den Broek
and Suh 1989). In functional-systemic grammar, these are aspects of the idea-
tional macrofunction, which codifies the participants’ experience. In this sense,
scholars such as Fowler (Fowler et al. 1979; Fowler 1991) or Fairclough (1989)
have pointed out the role of transitivity in constructing ideology in discourse.
As regards translation studies (TS), it was work by Basil Hatim and Ian
Mason that first drew attention to the implications of transitivity choices in
translation (Hatim and Mason 1990, 1997; Hatim and Munday 2005; Hatim
2012). Such choices, ‘among other things, can clarify or camouflage who is
affected by what’, for example, through devices such as nominalization or

passivization (Hatim 2012: 238). Take, as an example, the following sentence:
Our findings suggest that FFR is a potentially useful indicator of the like-
lihood of cardiac events.
Two different processes may be identified here, a relational process and an

existential process, in two embedded propositions:
(a) Relational process:

Our findings suggest that FFR is a potentially useful indicator…
ac t o r p ro c e s s va lu e
(b) Existential process:

Our findings suggest that FFR is a potentially useful indicator…
ac t o r p ro c e s s e x i s t e n t
Transitivity expresses various semantic roles: the actor or agent, and the
affected participant (as patient, beneficiary, experiencer, receiver, theme,
instrument, and so on.).
Passivization
Passivization is a syntactic device by which the agent in a statement is eluded
or altogether suppressed. In scientific and technical discourse, passivization
would reflect the tendency to erase the agent of an assertion or, at least, to
conceal its identity (Lewin 1998: 101, as cited in Alcaraz 2000: 26). In the fol-
lowing statement:
Between 1980 and 2005 a second, priceless set of data were collected.
no information is given as to the identity of those who collected the data,

their authority or their process. In English research texts, it is usual to use the
passive voice when data are explained. Concealing or deleting the identity of
the agent emphasizes the effect or result of the action, obviously more rele-
vant than the action’s agent.
In this sense, passivization implies or assumes the concept of the univer-
sality of science. Any theory, belief or claim finds its scientific validity weak-
ened when attributed to a human author or agent. Passivization is, therefore,
a most important grammar device to erase the agent’s identity or to fade it
into the background (Myers 1996: 4), through what is known as authorial
detachment (on this subject, see Pérez-Llantada 2011: 28). This grammatical
resource is another persuasive strategy aimed at underlining objectivity in dis-

course, according to Pérez-Llantada (2012: 66).
This erasure of the agent may be due to various reasons. From an ideo-
logical point of view, it may be of interest to conceal or minimize who is
responsible for the action. In scientific discourse, which focuses on processes,
agency choices need to be carefully calibrated to account for nuances as
regards the involvement of researchers as actors and therefore their control
over the process. Take the following sentences:
(a) The most stable conformation is called B-form DNA, although other
structures can occur under specific conditions.
(b) Many such translocation-associated oncogenes have been described in
human cancers.
(c) In a blockmodel actors are assigned to positions and network relations
are presented among positions, rather than among actors.
Examples (a) and (b) are related to the biologists’ consensus in naming a
particular phenomenon. Example (c) alludes to the social scientists’ meth-
odological consensus. When translating these texts into languages other than
English, several choices may be implemented, depending on usage. Spanish,
for example, resorts to reflexive-passive, impersonal passive (with intransi-
tive or copulative verbs, an ungrammatical construction in English [Castillo-
Orihuela 2010]), active or active periphrastic constructions, where English
would normally use a passive sentence:
(a) A la configuración más estable se le llama ADN-B…

La configuración más estable recibe el nombre de ADN-B…
La configuración más estable se conoce como ADN-B…
(b) Se han descrito muchos oncogenes similarmente asociados a translocaciones.

Los cánceres humanos presentan muchos oncogenes similares asociados a
translocaciones.
En la literatura abundan casos de oncogenes también asociados a
translocaciones.
(c) En un modelo de bloque los actores se asignan a las posiciones, mientras que las
relaciones reticulares se presentan entre posiciones, no entre actores.
A menudo estas representaciones adoptan la forma de un modelo de bloque,
en el que a los actores se les asignan posiciones y las relaciones de la red se
presentan entre posiciones, en lugar de entre actores.
En un modelo de bloque se les asignan unas posiciones a los actores y dentro
de una red las relaciones se presentan entre estas posiciones, en lugar de
hacerlo entre los actores.
The rules governing these ‘shifts’ are far from transparent. Only a thorough
corpus-based analysis would confirm what is largely a hypothetical general
preference for one type over another. It has been claimed that Spanish, being
an ‘agent-oriented language’, ‘has preference for active clauses which are used
more frequently than passive ones’ (Kozera 2013: 52).
Ergative verbs, which do not require the expression of an agent to present
a given process, constitute another passivization resource (Alcaraz 2000: 28):
When 0.793 g of the compound was dissolved in 14.80 mL of chloroform

(density = 1.485 g/mL), the solution boiled at 60.63 °C.4
Once the wire broke, the motor assembly and the slip-ring transducer
would register the resistance of just the wire against the sand.
(Kuester and Chang 2015: 1293)
Nominalization
Like passivization, nominalization also conceals the agent that is responsible
for the action or process (actor in material processes, experiencer in mental
processes, addresser in verbal processes). The whole process is here reduced
to a noun; that is, what could be narrated in a whole clause is conveyed by a
single word:
automation – integration – differentiation – elasticity – toxicity – density
In English, nominalization is carried out through a mere functional change

by which the verb is converted into a noun, or through derivation processes
with suffixation, especially in words of Latin origin (suffixes such as -al, -ing,
-ism, -ment, -sion, -tion, -ure, and so on.).
As Alcaraz (2000: 28) states, ‘nominalisation is a common resource in scien-
tific and technical texts and its aim is to present in a synthesised form the whole
process previously described by means of a long verbal clause. Therefore, a
verb which signifies a process may be converted into a noun expressing a state,
and a concrete activity may be converted into an abstract object’.5 One of the
most important consequences of nominalization, therefore, is the reification
of the event narrated. This resource is used both in technical English and in
technical Spanish (Méndez García de Paredes 2003: 1024), but further con-
trastive studies are needed.
Modality
Modality expresses the relationship of the narrator (or textual author)
with what is expressed in the narrated text. In scientific-technical discourse,
modality generally refers to the veracity of the given information –to its
degree of certainty or reliability.
Modality is essential for the scientificity or scientific character of a given
discourse, for the trustworthiness of reported information, or caution in data
handling. For Alcaraz (2000: 66), this corresponds to the approximate expos-
ition (exposición aproximativa), the caution by which scientific discoveries
need to be expounded as a result of what we may call ethical consensus. It
is, therefore, an aspect of the wider concept of hedging (Brown and Levinson
1978; Myers 1989; Hatim and Mason 1997: 81; Hyland 1998): this is an epis-
temological aspect that limits the authors’ knowledge claims, a pragmatic
aspect that regulates the author’s commitment to or detachment from claims
(and hence helps construct their authority and community status), and a
textual feature stemming from the use of specific markers.
Modality, indicated by expressions such as may, must and possibly, is a

central feature when analysing language use, as modal expressions are
means of conveying the speaker’s attitude concerning, for example, the
acceptability of an event or the certainty of knowledge. Modal expres-
sions are related to the interpersonal level of language, and they may
reflect the roles of the participants. In written language, modal expres-
sions can be used to show politeness toward the reader and to indicate
that the writer allows the reader to disagree. Modal expressions are of
interest when studying language used for specific purposes or when teach-
ing academic writing, as their use may reflect the conventions of discip-
linary genres.
(Vihla 1999: 1)
Let us take two texts by way of example. Both are taken from the same source,
a very famous earth science article on mass extinctions published in 1992
(Wignall 1992):
(a) Around 250 million years ago a terrible calamity overtook life on Earth.
Up to 96 per cent of all species became extinct, not overnight, but in a
geologically brief span of time, maybe a few hundred thousand years.
According to even the most conservative calculations, three-quarters of
species disappeared at this time. Nothing like it has happened before or
since. Palaeontologists have long been aware of this event, for it has left a
strong imprint.
(b) The only feasible source of such a swing is the oxidation of a lot of coal
and black shales, returning carbon-12 to the surface of the Earth and
atmosphere. This is where the large fall in sea levels enters the story. A sig-
nificant drop in sea levels would expose large areas of land, once under-
water as the continental shelves, to erosion and oxidation. And oxidising
organic matter increases the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the
expense of oxygen. So much organic matter appears to have been oxi-
dised in the last years of the Permian period that the oxygen levels in the
atmosphere may have declined substantially. Calculations suggest that
there may have been as little as half the present-day level of oxygen. This
latest scenario could explain the extinction of the terrestrial vertebrates;

active tetrapods need a high level of oxygen which the latest Permian
atmosphere may not have been able to supply.
While paragraph (a) is narrating a known, attested fact, paragraph (b) is

speculating with as yet unconfirmed causes and effects, therefore present-
ing hedges that mitigate the author’s statements, thus increasing accuracy by
making the statement conform better with the writer’s present state of know-
ledge (Vihla 1999: 96).
Epistemic modality
Although some other types can be identified, there are two basic types of
modality: epistemic modality and deontic modality. Epistemic modality is
related to knowledge and the degree of certainty. It ranges, from impossible
to certain:
Impossible – Unlikely – Possible – Probable – Certain
Epistemic modality in English scientific prose is expressed through various

means, the most common being:
• Modal auxiliary verbs (may, must)

•• Adverbs (perhaps, maybe, probably, likely, possibly, certainly)
•• Adjectival phrases that constitute epistemic expressions (it is possible
that, to some extent, to our knowledge)
• Epistemic lexical verbs (assume, suppose, suggest, believe, establish)
These express various degrees of commitment (Vihla 1999: 21–22). As an

example, the following sentence presents a high degree of probability, closer
to ‘certain’ than to ‘probable’ in the modality range:
Unlike the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction, which was most likely trig-

gered by the bolide impact that formed the Chicxulub impact crater, no
major impact event has been generally accepted as the cause of the end-
Permian mass extinction.
(Farley et al. 2005)
Students who translated this text into Spanish as a classroom exercise (2015)
presented the following options, ordered according to degrees of epistemic
certainty. I have identified 12 different degrees between possibility and abso-
lute certainty, nuanced by Spanish-language resources such as the use of the
subjunctive (which adds a degree of uncertainty) or phraseology (casi a todas
luces ‘clearly’):
0 desencadenada debido al impacto due to

0 que fue causada por el impacto caused by
0 que se desencadenó por el impacto de un meteorito caused by
0 sí se ha determinado, en cambio, que la causa…fue el the cause was
impacto
1 provocada seguramente por el impacto surely
1 que seguramente desencadenó el impacto surely
2 que seguramente estuviera provocada por el impacto surely
3 que fue más bien provocada por el impacto rather
4 que con toda probabilidad fue causada por el with all likelihood
meteorito cuyo impacto
5 cuya causa más probable es el impacto its most probable cause
5 que con más probabilidad fue desencadenada por el with more likelihood
impacto
5 que lo más probable es que fuera desencadenada por most probable + s u b j
el impacto
6 muy probablemente, fue provocada por el bólido very likely
6 provocada muy probablemente por la colisión very likely
6 que fue desencadenada muy probablemente por el very likely
impacto
6 que fue muy probablemente provocada por el very likely
impacto
6 que muy probablemente fue causada por la colisión very likely
6 que muy probablemente se desencadenó tras la very likely
colisión
6 que se produjo casi a todas luces debido al impacto almost clearly
7 cuya principal causa muy probablemente fuera el very likely + s u b j
impacto
8 cuyo desencadenante fue probablemente el impacto likely – probably
8 desencadenada probablemente por un bólido likely – probably
8 fue probablemente desencadenada por el impacto likely – probably
8 que probablemente fue causada por el impacto likely – probably
8 que se desencadenó probablemente por la colisión likely – probably
9 que probablemente fuera desencadenada por la colisión likely –probably + s u b j
9 que probablemente fuera provocada por el impacto likely –probably + s u b j
10 es muy posible que se produjera por un fuerte very possibly
impacto
11 que posiblemente fue provocada por el impacto possibly
We may further classify these modal options according to a cline of their

general epistemic idea:
0 –Absence of modality
1 – Certainty
1.1. (1) Certainty (surely)
1.2. (2) Certainty attenuated by the use of the subjunctive form of
the verb
1.3. (3) Qualified certainty (rather)
2 – Probability
2.1. (4) Absolute probability (with all likelihood)
2.2. (5) Highest degree probability (most probable)
2.3. (6) High degree probability (very likely)
2.4. (7) High degree probability attenuated by the use of the subjunctive
2.4. (8) Probability (likely – probably)
2.5. (9) Probability attenuated by the use of the subjunctive
3 – Possibility
3.1. (10) High degree possibility (very possibly)
3.2. (11) Possibility (possibly)
Epistemic modality is a constant source of translation problems. These seem

to arise from a faulty decoding of epistemic modal markers, or a hasty selec-
tion of similar markers from the target-language repertoire on the part of the
translator. In this particular translation case, absence of modality or certainty
options constitute serious mistakes. In fact, the novel scientific-technical
translator must be wary that removing modality or conveying certainty are
more the exception than the rule, for the scientific method always leaves room
for a further revision in the light of new evidence, which may imply discarding
previous assumptions.
Evidentiality
A very important dimension of epistemic modality is the evidentiality of
given information (Chafe 1986; Vihla 1999): in what ways is this contrastable
information, what authority backs it, and so forth. While epistemic modality
in general provides information about the degree of certainty, evidentiality
provides information about the source of knowledge.
Going back to our previous example text, the two paragraphs that follow
provide very different qualifications as regards the evidentiality of sources
(Wignall 1992: 54):
(a) Steve Stanley of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland,

has put forward a different theory –that the mass extinction is related to
a glacial period. The greatest ecological diversities come about in warm
tropical climates, but when glaciation is at a peak, these areas contract
and diversity falls. Unfortunately for Stanley’s proposition, however, there
is only weak evidence of glaciation at the time of the boundary, and a
major glaciation ended in middle Permian times.
(b) A few years ago, a fourth theory was aired, albeit briefly, by several Chinese
geologists. If a meteorite impact annihilated the dinosaurs at the end of
the Cretaceous period, the argument went, a similar event could have
created the Permian-Triassic boundary. To date there is no evidence to
support this theory.
Similarly, there is also room for translation inadequacies when evidentiality is

not properly accounted for:
The eruption of the Siberian Traps ﬂood basalts has been invoked as a
trigger for the catastrophic end-Permian mass extinction.
La erupción de los traps siberianos **fue el detonante de la extinción masiva

que tuvo lugar a finales del período Pérmico.
[the eruption of the Siberian traps **was the trigger for the massive
extinction which took place in the late Permian period]
Appraisal, stance, evaluation

It must be noted that evidentiality is closely related to (or even synonymous
with, cf. Munday 2012: 20) the concept of appraisal. Appraisal theory (Martin
2000; Martin and White 2005) has recently been developed to account for a
‘system of meanings’ available to the speaker/writer and that may be used
to ‘approve and disapprove, enthuse and abhor, applaud and criticize, and…
position their reader/listeners to do likewise’ (Martin and White 2005: 42;
Hunston 2010: 11). Its application to TS by Munday 2012 has been a tour de
force that appears to have inaugurated a promising scholarly trend. However,
it is also common to refer to this dimension under other terms such as stance
(Conrad and Biber 2000) or evaluation (Hunston and Thompson 2000;
Thompson and Alba-Juez 2014), especially in LSP literature. (On evaluation
in scientific discourse, see the pioneering studies by Hunston (1993), Hunston
(2010), Degaetano and Teich (2014), among others.) Obviously, the expression
of epistemic modality is closely linked to authorial evidences (evidentiality)
and involves the author’s evaluation of them. Gil-Salom and Soler-Monreal
(2010) explore appraisal resources in a corpus of scientific research articles,
finding variation across fields and paper sections in terms of attitudinal adjec-
tives of appreciation, intensifying adverbs, certainty adjectives and epistemic
expressions in pragmatic moves such as evaluating results, recommending fur-
ther research or drawing implications.
How appraisal devices are culturally determined remains largely unexplored.
Contrastive studies on evaluative expressions across languages are Mauranen
and Bondi (2003), Suárez Tejerina (2006). See Martín-Martín (2005) for a con-
trastive study of hedging in scientific abstracts in English and Spanish, and
Oliver (2015) for a review of hedging devices in academic Spanish.
Deontic modality
Deontic modality or obligation is related to behaviour and includes prescrip-
tive expressions (what can be done, what cannot be done, what should be
done). It too ranges, from forbidden to obligatory:
Forbidden – Inadvisable – Indifferent – Permitted – Obligatory
In instructive types of texts this kind of modality plays an essential role:
Unless serious adverse effects of the drug dictate otherwise, dosage

always should be reduced gradually when a drug is being discontinued, to
minimize the risk of precipitating status epilepticus.
(McNamara, TB)
Deontic modality is generally expressed through:
• Modal auxiliary verbs (should, must)

•• Adverbs (obligatorily, compulsorily)
• Adjectival phrases (be allowed/required to; it is obligatory to; it is optional to)
According to Vihla (1999: 23):
Deontic expressions indicate whether the speaker regards the action

described in the proposition as right or wrong, with reference to a moral,
legal or, for example, professional code. They imply the existence of an
authority having the power to say what is right or wrong, i.e. ‘norm-
authority’…. This authority of the speaker over the addressee is a ‘felicity
condition’ for deontic expressions, since if it is lacking, the utterance is
not regarded as a valid command, request, or permission.
Formal logic distinguishes other types of modality:
• Dynamic modality is related to potentiality or capacity.

•• Alethic modality is related to the necessity of something taking place.
• Existential modality is related to the extent of something existing (from
universal to particular, or even non-existence at all).
Generally, the distinction between epistemic and alethic modality is unneces-

sary in scientific-technical discourse analysis, and both are subsumed
under epistemic modality, although some cases may require a finer-grained
distinction.
Other classifications of modality that are relevant for scientific and tech-
nical writing include probability (equivalent to epistemic modality); usuality
(the frequency of something’s occurrence, expressed with adverbial phrases
such as usually, never, tends to, and so on); obligation (equivalent to deontic
modality); and inclination (expressed with intention verbal forms such as will,
wish, want, determined, and so on) (Munday 2012: 15).
Corpus analysis has shed light on how structural patterns help define the
argumentation and the narrative of research. One of the most telling features
of technical and scientific writing from a contrastive perspective is the presence
Table 6.1 Types and degrees of modality according to von Wright (1951)–Vihla (1999)
ALETHIC EPISTEMIC DEONTIC EXISTENTIAL

necessary verified obligatory universal
possible not falsified permitted existing
contingent undecided indifferent particular
impossible falsified forbidden empty
of lexical bundles (or lexical clusters, in Mike Scott’s [2015, version 6] Wordsmith
Tools). The most frequent combinations of four- word bundles have been
explored by Hyland (2008) and Salazar (2014), among others. These authors
find evidence of phraseological units that play a significant role in structuring
the argument, helping to shape meanings in specific contexts and contributing
to textual coherence in a text. These often constitute persuasive devices. Some
of these bundles perform epistemic or deontic modal functions, reinforce caus-
ality (due to the fact that and so forth), or mark text-reflexivity (in the next sec-
tion, the subsequent text, and so on) marking and framing parts of the text and
reinforcing overall coherence (Mauranen 1993: 165; Pérez-Llantada 2012: 91).
Clustering
Long noun phrases are linguistic units that offer enough slots in which to
insert attributes (Bhatia 1993: 146; Alcaraz 2000: 31). In scientific-technical
discourse, the search for the expressive precision of highly complex processes
or states leads to the use of linguistic units that bring together a large number
of conceptual tokens (Alcaraz 2000: 31).
Alcaraz (2000: 31) distinguishes between compound words, which make up
a single conceptual unit, and long noun phrases (lexical units composed of
several words). However, I prefer to group them under the item nominal com-
position. Following Bhatia, I take into account that this distinction may be
qualified as Eurocentric and fail to apply to other languages such as Arabic
(where compound words are largely absent) or Chinese or Japanese (where
compound words are the norm).
The English language forms composites by means of participles, adjectives,
adverbs, or nouns with adjectival value that qualify other nouns. Although
most visible in technical discourse, it is a characteristic not circumscribed to
ESP, and it is possible to find composites that multiply its elements even in
general language. I will call this feature clustering:
Ginza is recognized as one of the most luxurious shopping districts in

the world. Many upscale fashion clothing flagship stores are located here,
being also recognized as having the highest concentration of western
shops in Tokyo.6
Flagship is itself a two-element compound. Flagship store forms a conceptual

unit, which may be translated into Spanish as ‘establecimiento emblemático’.
Upscale is another compound (in Spanish, ‘de alto nivel, lujoso, prestigi-
oso’). All in all, store is qualified by six elements, thus forming a six-element
compound.
The translation of multiple-element compounds into languages that do not
articulate nominal composition in such a way is a constant source of diffi-
culties for the translator. The usual determinant de (‘of’) quickly becomes an
awkward solution, and it becomes necessary to resort to other strategies to
compensate for the relationship between elements, making explicit some of
them, or altogether omitting and making implicit some others:
Aquí se encuentran muchas de las tiendas de ropa de moda más emblemáti-

cas y lujosas.
Aquí se encuentran muchas de las tiendas de [ø] moda más emblemáticas y
lujosas
But the biggest challenge is the ambiguity that results from the need for the
translator to determine what are the conceptual units at play in a long nom-
inal composition. In scientific and technical fields, the relationship between
elements may not be apparent, and the translator needs to apply special-
ized knowledge or appropriate documentation skills. Consider the following
sequence:
the descriptive algebraic analysis of social models

(Wasserman and Faust 1994: 394)
At face value, this sequence may be analysed into two possible clusters or
conceptual units: a descriptive analysis that is algebraic (análisis descriptivo
algebraico), or an algebraic analysis that is descriptive (análisis algebraico
descriptivo). Sometimes (like here) the order may be irrelevant, or the trans-
lation may be undertaken with the mere rule of thumb of inverting the
sequential order:
el análisis algebraico descriptivo de los modelos sociales
However, in some other cases, this ambiguity may be a source of serious

translation errors:
That participation is possible to different degrees refers to different

levels of commitment to the platform in terms of time and active task
performance.
(Frischmann et al. 2014: 293)
Active task performance may refer, at face value, to the ‘performance of active
tasks’ or an ‘active performance of tasks’. The Spanish rules of subject-adjective
concordance make it necessary to disambiguate: either desempeño/realización
de tareas activas or desempeño activo de tareas. It is necessary to carry out a
documentation task on usual collocations in reference corpora. In this case, any
search tool or reference corpus will reveal that active performance is the most
common collocation in that particular field (participation in online communi-
ties) and it should, therefore, be the best logical candidate for a conceptual unit.
In other cases, such as the following sentence,
This initiative combines large and small scale public deliberation

processes.
(Hartz-Karp et al. 2012: 189)
the search results in tools such as Linguee reveal the ordeal of unexperienced
translators who have gone through the same problem. Some translators
understood and translated [AB]C [procesos deliberativos] públicos, while some
others opted for A[BC] procesos de [deliberación pública]. However, a simple
Google search presented (10/12/11) 13,400 cases of the cluster ‘procesos de
deliberación pública’ (the most correct translation in this case), but just 60 of
the cluster ‘procesos deliberativos públicos’.
While in some cases the variation in conceptual units can be optional, in
highly specialized texts, it is necessary to break down the clustering sequence
into ‘nested’ units. The following cluster (Wasserman and Faust 1994: 508),
random directed graph probability distributions
should be analysed as A[B(C{DE})]. Therefore, only the first two of the fol-
lowing translation options are correct:
distribuciones de probabilidad aleatorias de grafos dirigidos CORRECT

distribuciones de probabilidad de grafos dirigidos aleatorias CORRECT
distribuciones aleatorias de probabilidades de grafos dirigidos INCORRECT
distribuciones de probabilidades de grafos dirigidos aleatorios INCORRECT
In fact, nominal composition as a feature of specialized discourse represents

a ‘gate-keeping function’ that restricts intelligibility to the disciplinary com-
munity that possesses sufficient knowledge to disambiguate the relationship
between the elements.7 This is especially relevant in translation practice and
translation training.
Paratactic and hypotactic organization

A contrastive feature that calls for corpus analysis confirmation is the sup-
posedly different organization across languages according to their syntactical
hierarchy. Traditional grammar considers two basic types of sentences or

clauses regarding their relationship to each other: coordinate sentences are
juxtaposed without an apparent relationship of dependence, while subor-
dinate clauses are nested in a relationship of dependence generally marked
by conjunctions. A syntactical organization that favours juxtaposition and
coordination is also called a paratactic organization, whereas a structure that
presents subordination is called a hypotactic organization. It has been argued
that some languages like French (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958: 229) or Spanish
(Vázquez- Ayora 1977: 111– 112) prefer hypotaxis over parataxis (Fawcett
1997: 96); however, such preference should be demonstrated with sufficient
empirical data from corpus analysis and, in any case, would be contingent on
genre and type of text.
Professor Hatim (1977: 162–163) has also drawn attention to these struc-
tures, quoting Bauman’s observation of the paratactic nature of oral Arabic
argumentation. For Hatim (1997: 156–157), this fact established a ‘meta-
communicative frame’ that characterizes languages –not in an essentialist
approach, but as ‘the capacity of any linguistic system of communication to
evolve in a way which responds to and copes with the ways its community of
users evolves through time’.
A contrastive corpus analysis of syntactic structures English/Spanish in
technical subfields may thus reveal a tendency of Spanish texts to ‘evolve’
towards more paratactic modes of organization, themselves a product of
translational influences, but such analysis is beyond the scope of this chapter.
As regards translation proper, a tendency towards parataxis is considered a
flaw in specialized translation teaching. As an example, compare the punctu-
ation of these two translations by students:
But in Permian times a range of organisms lived and fed at a variety of

different heights on and above the sea bed. Feeding space was divided into
distinct but closely spaced levels that palaeontologists call tiers. The tiers
probably arose through intense competition for nourishment in crowded
seas. These complex tiered communities had thrived for a hundred mil-
lion years or more; the mass extinction 251 million years ago eliminated
them and changed the nature of the sea floor.
(Wignall 1992)
(a) Tendency towards parataxis

Pero en el Pérmico una serie de organismos vivía y se alimentaba a
diferentes alturas en el fondo marino y por encima de él. El espacio de
alimentación se dividía en zonas diferenciadas pero cercanas que los
paleontólogos llaman niveles tróficos. Estos niveles probablemente sur-
gieron debido a la gran competitividad por el alimento que existía en los
mares atestados de especies. Estas complejas comunidades niveladas se
desarrollaron durante cien millones de años o incluso más, pero la gran
extinción que tuvo lugar hace 251 millones de años las eliminó y alteró así
la naturaleza del fondo marino.
(b) Tendency towards hypotaxis

Sin embargo, durante el Pérmico Superior, había una gran cantidad
de organismos que vivían y se alimentaban a diferentes niveles en el
fondo marino y por encima de él. Estas zonas tróficas estaban divididas
en franjas bien definidas y adyacentes a las que los paleontólogos han
denominado «capas» y, probablemente, se originaron debido a la fuerte
competencia por el alimento en unos mares superpoblados. Estas com-
plejas capas tróficas prosperaron durante cien millones de años o incluso
más hasta que la extinción masiva del Pérmico-Triásico acabó con ellas y
cambió la naturaleza del fondo marino.
Paratactic constructions in Spanish, especially if juxtaposed and separated by

full stops, may produce a ‘jerky’ impression on the reader and the subjective
feeling that the discourse is disjointed, and ideas are not properly connected.
However, they may be used as a rhetorical device to achieve certain effects.
Many of the syntactic structures reviewed so far are also aimed at providing
an idea of objectivity in which the action of a human agent is minimized, in
which facts appear as definite, unproblematic, and stable entities. It would
seem that the English language, heir to the empiricist tradition (Locke, Hume,
and so on), is especially adapted to this discursive perspective. Translation
scholars such as Vázquez-Ayora point to the fact that the Spanish language
seems to have a tendency towards a more active and less factual conceptual-
ization –but again, this would need to be statistically verified.
Theme/r heme
Related to the syntactic organization of discourse, the use of thematization
in order to strengthen the authorial viewpoint or the relevance/reliability of
the evidence presented has also been subject of inquiry. Differences in the-
matic/rhematic organization in Spanish and English scientific discourse
have been explored by Fernández and Gil-Salom (2000), finding variation
across types of text and a range of audiences (specialized, non-specialized).
As Pérez-Llantada (2012: 93) points out, ‘the comparison across languages
indicates that in the L1 Spanish texts arguing grams are embedded within
abundant clausal subordination and complementation, hence construct-
ing a digressive argumentative flow’. Pérez-Llantada (2012: 93) assumes a
pragmatic-persuasive aim in this hypotactic organization, arguing that ‘this
cause-effect line of reasoning is a typical face-saving strategy of Spanish aca-
demic prose’, and it seems to be retained when L1 Spanish authors write in
English, acknowledging ‘more vulnerability to criticism’ and therefore opting
for ‘less visible intersubjective stances’ (2012: 104).
Personification
However factual the phenomena, events, or processes described in scientific-
technical discourse, let us not forget that these are communicated through
narrative devices. According to Alcaraz (2000: 29), personification occurs
when the results of an action are narrated as if they were the actor or agent
themselves, ascribing human qualities to them. Sentences such as:
These data show that…

The present results demonstrate that…
The second hypothesis suggests that…
These facts support the conclusion that…
present a metaphorical personification of the subject (Salazar 2014: 174).

This resource highlights the object and conceals the real agent, being gener-
ally used with reporting verbs such as show, suggest, and so on. It is, again,
an expression of the author’s stance, inasmuch as it places the action in a
cline of involvement/detachment. For Salazar, this implies a continuum from
personal to impersonal, ranging from active sentences with human subjects
at one end of the continuum, to highly impersonal passives with no deter-
mined agent (Salazar, Ventura, and Verdaguer 2013: 139; Salazar 2014: 174).
A complex process that has been nominalized may also be personified in a
metaphoric construction:
Fieldwork on seahorses in Australia and the Caribbean, and in Sweden on

the seahorses’ close relations, the pipefishes, cemented the bond.8
It is noteworthy that, in a classroom exercise, students would either preserve

this personification, articulating a basically factual narrative
(a) Después, el trabajo de campo sobre los caballitos de mar en Australia y el

Caribe, y también en Suecia sobre los peces aguja, sus parientes cercanos,
fortalecieron el vínculo.
… or would rather transform it into a more active construction expliciting

the human agent, or leaving it implicit in a reflexive-passive construction (d):
(b) Después, el trabajo de campo sobre los caballitos de mar en Australia y

el Caribe, y también en Suecia sobre los peces aguja hizo que Vincent/la
investigadora consolidara/fortaleciera sus vínculos con estos peces/con-
firmara su pasión por estos peces.
(c) Después, Vincent confirmó su pasión por estos peces tras una serie de
trabajos de campo en …
(d) Después, este vínculo se consolidó tras una serie de trabajos de
campo en …
Personification as an ideological device is well known among critical linguists.

As regards scientific discourse, Myers (1990: 142) distinguished between a
narrative of science in professional articles and a narrative of nature in popu-
larizing articles, ‘in which the plant or animal, not the scientific activity, is the
subject, the narrative is chronological, and the syntax and vocabulary empha-
size the externality of nature to scientific practices’. An example from my
own classroom texts is the following, where Hipericum perforatum becomes
the subject, and hence the agent, of a series of material and behavioural pro-
cesses, in a particularly negative account of its alleged benefits:
St John’s What?
The ‘natural’ antidepressant may not work. Bummer.
(Frederic Golden, Time, Sunday, Apr. 22, 2001)
But St. John’s wort came into its own in 1984, when the German govern-
ment classified it as an MAO inhibitor, on the basis of in-vitro studies,
and approved its use as a mild, natural antidepressant. Sales took off
both in Germany, where St. John’s wort easily outsells prescription drugs
like Prozac, and in the US, where concoctions of the herb, sold under
such labels as Mood Support and Brighten Up, became flagships of the
booming alternative-medicine industry. Before last year’s warnings that
St. John’s wort could interfere with other medications –notably AIDS
treatments, antibiotics, cardiac drugs and oral contraceptives –yearly
sales had reached $310 million. Even today, some 1.5 million Americans
take the extract regularly to treat their psychic pain.
Personifications do not in themselves generally pose translation problems

into Spanish, since this is also a common feature of Spanish popularizing
scientific texts. However, the narrative of the organism as an actor may be
challenging when there are metaphors of human behaviour involved. In the
above case, the use of a colloquial negative expression (Bummer) forces the
translator to find pragmatic equivalents of disappointment (such as Vaya,
hombre; Qué lástima, and so on).
Conclusion
TS approaches to scientific and technical translation, as to any professional
discourse genres, need to integrate advances in applied interdisciplinary lin-
guistics (Parodi 2010: 234). It would seem that the construction and relaying
of scientific and technical information is built on a series of clines, or continua,
in which authors articulate their claims while negotiating at least the follow-
ing dimensions: (a) agency: the author’s involvement/detachment, achieved
through boosting/mitigating devices such as passivization, nominalization,
the personification of abstract or inanimate agents, epistemic expressions,
probability adjectives, adverbs, modal verbs, epistemic lexical verbs, and so

on; (b) status: the information’s reliability/unreliability; the information’s cer-
tainty/vagueness; the information’s relevance (important/irrelevant), achieved
through various hedging devices such as modal verbs, epistemic expressions,
evaluative lexis, and so on; (c) dialogism: the inclusion/restriction of other
voices (monogloss-heterogloss) (Martin and White 2005; Munday 2012), thus
managing the authorial support of the facts and events narrated, achieved
through the use of evidentiality resources, intertextual references, citations,
epistemic expressions, modal verbs, epistemic lexical verbs, evaluative lexis,
and so on. All in all, these discursive tools help authors persuade and influ-
ence their readers, anticipate their reactions, highlight achievements and pre-
vent criticism in a dialogic interaction (Livnat 2015) with previous research
and its authors, one’s own text(s), and an ample variety of potential readers/
consumers. Although these tools have compounded into a rather standard-
ized language of international scientific communication, there is no doubt
that there exist differences across languages and cultures, and that these dif-
ferences are, through translation, influencing both English as a global language
of science and Spanish as the second most important international language
of scientific dissemination.
Notes
1 On globalization and scientific discourse, see Pérez-Llantada, ‘The Role of Science
Rhetoric in the Global Village’, in Pérez-Llantada 2012, ch. 1. It is essential to note
that English as a lingua franca for research networking and scientific dissemination
goes well beyond the limits and sociocultural constraints of a certain ‘Anglophone
rhetoric of science’. Issues such as the generic integrity of socio-cognitive and cul-
tural factors (Bhatia 2004: 112), or the commodification of scientific knowledge, are
also raised by this author.
2 See, for example, in the realm of scientific and technical translation Spanish/
English: García- Izquierdo 2000, García- Izquierdo 2005; Gea- Valor, Garcia-
Izquierdo, and Esteve, eds. 2010; or the latest issue of the journal Sendebar at the
University of Granada (Suau Jiménez and Gallego Hernández 2017). An exception
is Pérez-Llantada’s remarkable 2012 essay.
3 Although general, Munday 2012 offers a cogent model to apply appraisal theory to
translation, especially focused on political texts. This essay complements Munday’s
breakthrough research, taking into account the specificities of scientific and tech-
nical discourse.
4 ‘Boiling Point Elevation Problems #1– 10’, www.chemteam.info/Solutions/BP-
elevation-probs1-to-10.html (accessed 6 November 2017).
5 ‘La nominalización es un recurso corriente en los textos científicos-técnicos y su
finalidad es presentar de forma resumida, por medio de un nombre, todo el proceso
que se ha descrito previamente por medio de un predicado verbal largo. Así, un
verbo que significa un proceso se convierte en un nombre que significa un estado, y
una actividad concreta se convierte en un objeto abstracto. Tienen la ventaja de que
se pueden tematizar y calificar con atributos’.
6 GettyImages, ‘Japan –Tokyo –Ginza’, www.gettyimages.se/detail/nyhetsfoto/store-

sale-ginza-neighboorhood-tokio-it-is-known-as-an-nyhetsfoto/542629544?#store-
sale- g inza- n eighboorhood- t okio- i t- i s- k nown- a s- a n- u pscale- a rea- p icture-
id542629544
7 Cf. Pérez-Llantada (2012: 59): ‘The gate-keeping function of lexical specificity in
noun compounds works as follows. In a nominal compound the semantic relation-
ship between the two nouns is not stated explicitly. While this involves writers’ com-
pressing of information for the sake of brevity, at the same time it requires the
readers’ disambiguation of the semantic connection between the nouns. High lexi-
cality indicates that the text addresses a specialized audience with sufficient shared
background knowledge so as to be able to decompress the semantic information
appropriately’.
8 ‘Dances with Seahorses’, interview with Professor Amanda Vincent, Department
of Zoology. Oxford Today, 1994.
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Chapter 7
Types of connotative meaning, and

their significance for translation
James Dickins
Denotative vs. connotative meaning

This chapter operates with a basic distinction between denotative and con-
notative meaning. Denotative meaning involves the overall range, in a par-
ticular sense, of an expression –word, multi-word unit, or syntactic structure.
A ‘syntactic structure’ is defined to include the words involved in that struc-
ture, not just the abstracted structural relations. Thus, in relation to a ‘parse-
tree’ approach, a syntactic structure under this definition goes beyond the
nodes (terminal and non-terminal) to include the vocabulary items that are
attached to terminal nodes. Two expressions in a particular sense that ‘pick
out’ the same extensional range of entities in the world –or better, in all pos-
sible worlds, real and imaginable –have the same denotative meaning.
Denotative meaning is also known by other terms: for example, denota-
tional meaning, denotation, propositional meaning and cognitive meaning
(Cruse 1986: 45, 271–277). Connotative meaning, or connotation, is defined
here negatively as all kinds of meaning that are not denotative meaning. The
denotative meaning of an expression in a particular sense is that kind of mean-
ing which, in the context of a proposition, contributes to the truth-conditions
of that proposition (for an extension of these principles to questions and
other non-propositions, see Dickins 2010: 1079). There is thus an intimate
connection between denotative meaning and truth-conditional semantics.
Connotative meaning, as noted, covers all kinds of meanings that are not
denotative meaning: meanings that do not involve the extensional range of
an expression in a particular sense, minus denotative meaning. There are
many types of connotative meaning (perhaps an endless number), but in this
chapter, 15 are identified as particularly important for their significance for
translation. In doing so, the following basic notions are used here to analyse
connotative meaning.
Reference: referent vs. ascription

Referent and ascription are two aspects of reference. A referent is what an
expression in a particular sense refers to in a particular ‘speech/writing event’.
136 James Dickins
An ascription is the category to which this referent is related. Thus, in using

the expression ‘the baker’ in the sense ‘the one who bakes’ (OED Online) with
the referent on a particular occasion of a particular individual, I have ascribed
the individual to the category ‘baker(s)’. This person (referent) could, how-
ever, also be referred to in any number of other ways (‘your dad’, ‘her hus-
band’, etc.) –these other ways being different ascriptions of the same referent
(cf. Dickins 2014, 2016). In ‘That man’s a fool’, ‘that man’ and ‘a fool’ are co-
referential, but not co-ascriptive. In ‘He’s a fool, but he’s alright’ (where the
two ‘he’s’ refer to different people), the two ‘he’s’ are co-ascriptive (they assign
the two people concerned to the same category of ‘he’), but not co-referential
(they do not refer to the same person).
Peirce: symbol vs. index vs. icon

In his semiotics, Peirce made a distinction between three kinds of
signs: symbol, index, and icon (e.g., Peirce 1868). Hervey (1982: 30–31) pro-
vides clear definitions:
(1) If the sign denotes its object by virtue of a real similarity that holds
between physical properties…of the sign and physical properties of its
object, Peirce designates that sign as an icon;
(2) If the sign denotes its object by virtue of a real cause-and-effect link…that
holds between sign and object, Peirce designates that sign as an index;
(3) If the sign denotes its object by virtue of a general association of ideas
that is in the nature of a habit or a convention…Peirce designates that
sign as a symbol.
Symbols, indexes (or indices) and icons are sometimes regarded as wholly dis-
crete. For current purposes, however, we can view them as potentially overlap-
ping categories. Thus, the stylized figures representing ‘man’ and ‘woman’ on
toilet doors are iconic in that they look somewhat like a man and a woman.
They are also, however, symbolic, in that it would be impossible to know what
precisely they refer to unless one knew the convention that these signs are used
on toilet doors to refer to male and female toilets. Their stylized nature is also
indicative that they are not purely iconic; the vaguely skirt-like shape around
the ‘woman’s’ legs and the vaguely trouser-like shape around the ‘man’s’ legs
are only generally indicative that what is intended is a man and a woman;
think also of a woman wearing trousers, or a man wearing a kilt.
Other signs involve a combination of symbol and index. The fundamental
mechanism of a Torricellian (mercury) barometer is indexical; changes in air
pressure cause the mercury in the barometer to go up or down. However,
barometers are calibrated using numbers (and other signs) for air pressure;
this is a symbolic aspect.
In fact, symbolicity dominates both indexicality and iconicity: we could
not know that the ‘man’ and ‘woman’ signs indicate men’s and women’s toilets
Connotative meaning and significance 137
if we had not learnt the convention that this is so. Similarly, we could not
interpret a Torricellian barometer if we did not know the conventions for
numbers and other symbols marking air pressure.
The fuzzy connotative meaning vs. effect/a ffect boundary

Consider the difference between a sign on a placard in the street reading
‘Stop!’ which is 20 centimetres by 20 centimetres, and one which is 2 metres by
2 metres. The latter is likely to have more effect on the passer-by (even if that
effect is only to attract their attention). We would be inclined, however, to say
that the two placards have the same meaning, even though the latter might be
said to emphasize the message more. As discussed later in this chapter, there
are some features relatable to connotation where it is not clear whether what is
more prominent is meaning or effect/affect. Connotative meaning can there-
fore be divided into two kinds: (purely) meaningful, and meaningful/affective
(i.e., where meaning and effect/affect are both prominent).
Modes of connotative meaning: reference-f ocusing,

parenthetical, secondary-r eferential, pseudo-r eferential
I suggest that there are at least four ‘modes’ of operation of connotative mean-
ing: (i) reference-narrowing (narrowing down the overall ascription of a particular
expression in a particular sense in a given context); (ii) parenthetical (comment-
ing, in much the same way as does a parenthetical element, on the entity referred
to); (iii) secondary-referential (producing a reference additional to, and existing
alongside, the reference involved in the denotative meaning); and (iv) pseudo-
referential (producing what looks like a reference, but in fact is not one).
Forms of connotative meaning

We can, on the basis of Hervey and Higgins (2002; also Dickins, Hervey,
and Higgins 2016: 95–107; based on Leech 1981 and Lyons 1977), and Baker
(2011; 11–13; based on Cruse 1986), initially recognize the following forms of
connotative meaning:
1. Associative meaning
2. Attitudinal meaning
3. Affective meaning
4. Allusive meaning
5. Reflected meaning
6. Selectional restriction-related meaning
7. Collocative meaning
8. Geographical dialect-related meaning
9. Temporal dialect-related meaning
10. Sociolect-related meaning
138 James Dickins
11. Social register-related meaning

12. Emphasis (emphatic meaning)
13. Thematic meaning (theme–rheme meaning)
14. Grounding meaning
15. Locution-overriding illocutionary meaning
Figure 7.1 presents these types of meaning, with alternative terms, as in

Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins (2016: 95–107), and Baker (2011: 11–13).
As seen in Figure 7.1, it is possible to group certain kinds of connotative
meaning into larger categories. Thus, geographical dialect- related mean-
ing, temporal dialect-related meaning, sociolect-related meaning, and social
Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins (2016) Baker (2011)

Denotative meaning Propositional/cognitive meaning
Associative meaning
Attitudinal meaning
Affective meaning Expressive meaning
Allusive meaning
Reflected meaning
Selectional
No category restriction-related
meaning Presupposed
Connotative meaning
Collocation meaning
Collocative meaning restriction-related
meaning
Geographical dialect- Geographical dialect-
related meaning related meaning
Temporal dialect- Temporal dialect-
Language- related meaning related meaning Evoked
variety-related Sociolect-related meaning
meaning meaning Register-related
Social register- meaning
related meaning
Emphasis (emphatic
No category
Information meaning)
prominence- Thematic meaning
Theme and information structure
related (theme–rheme meaning)
meaning No precise category, but cf. Theme and
Grounding meaning
information structure
Locution-overriding illocutionary Pragmatic meaning (esp. implicature)
meaning
Figure 7.1. A typology of meaning according to Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins, and Baker.
register-related meaning can all be grouped under the category of language-

variety-related meaning, while emphasis (emphatic meaning), thematic mean-
ing (theme–rheme meaning) and grounding meaning can all be grouped under
the category of information prominence-related meaning.
I will discuss these types of meaning in turn, considering how each relates
to denotative meaning. I first consider associative meaning, followed in
sequence by attitudinal meaning, affective meaning, allusive meaning, and
reflected meaning, all of which fall under what Baker terms ‘expressive mean-
ing’ (Baker 2011: 11–12).
Associative meaning
Associative meaning is
that part of the overall meaning of an expression which consists of expec-

tations that are –rightly or wrongly –associated with the referent of the
expression. The word ‘nurse’ is a good example. Most people automat-
ically associate ‘nurse’ with the idea of female gender, as if ‘nurse’ were
synonymous with ‘female who looks after the sick’ –on the basis that in
the real world (at least in Britain and other English-speaking countries
at the start of the twenty-first century) nurses are typically female. This
unconscious association is so widespread that the term ‘male nurse’ has
had to be coined to counteract its effect: ‘he is a nurse’ still sounds seman-
tically odd, even today.
(Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins 2016: 97)
A similar, though less extreme, example is provided by ‘engineer’. Engineers

in British culture are in the great majority men. Thus, in a statement like, ‘An
engineer has been assessing the structural faults’, one is likely to interpret the
reference as being to a man, rather than a woman.
Associative meaning specifies a narrower typical ‘denotative range’ than that
of the (full) denotative meaning of an expression in a particular sense: there
is a narrowing of the ascription from that of the expression in its overall par-
ticular sense, giving a ‘sub-ascription’ as compared to the overall ascription in
the particular sense. In terms of the modes of connotative meaning we have
so far established, associative meaning is thus reference-narrowing.
In the cases of ‘nurse’ and ‘engineer’, associative meaning is extralinguistic
(real-world) based; in British culture, nurses are typically female and engin-
eers typically male. There are, however, at least two other types of associative
meaning: linguistic-based and communicative-efficiency-based.
Linguistic-based associative meaning is illustrated by ‫ إثم‬iṯm and ‫ ذنب‬ḏanb
(Elewa 2004) in classical Arabic. These both mean ‘sin, wrong, offence’, and
seem to have had the same range of meaning: anything that could be called
an ‫ إثم‬iṯm could be called a ‫ ذنب‬ḏanb, and vice versa. They were thus synonyms
(i.e., they had the same denotative meaning). On the basis of the usages of
140 James Dickins
these two words in a corpus of classical Arabic texts, however, Elewa con-
cludes that they tended to be associated with different types of activity. ‫ إثم‬iṯm
was typically used for sins that are personal or do not entail a punishment in
this world (e.g., failing to perform obligatory acts of worship or doing a bad
deed that is liable to have a bad effect on oneself, such as drinking or gam-
bling). ‫ ذنب‬ḏanb, on the other hand, was typically used for sins that involve
punishment in this world or the next, such as killing, theft or adultery (Elewa
2004: 123–124; cf. also, Dickins 2014; Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins 2016: 99).
Finally, communicative-efficiency-based associative meaning is illustrated
by the fact that ‘some’ in English, although its denotative range includes ‘all’,
is typically used to mean ‘some but not all’, that is, the normal ascription of
‘some’ is not ‘some including the possibility of all’ but ‘some excluding the
possibility of all’. This can be seen from the fact that if I say, ‘He spent some
of the money’, this will typically be interpreted to mean that he did not spend
all of it. The fact that the denotative range of ‘some’ includes all, however,
is shown by the possibility of utterances such as ‘He spent some, but not all,
of the money’ and ‘He spent some, in fact all, of the money’. These kinds
of utterances reflect a hyperonymy–hyponymy-type relationship; cf. ‘It’s a
vehicle, but not a lorry’, and ‘It’s a vehicle, in fact a lorry’. (This is a simpli-
fication of the actual situation, ignoring some of the problems in analysing
‘some’ as a hyperonym of ‘all’; for a more developed analysis of ‘some’, and
related issues of scalar implicature, see Dickins 2014.) It seems clear that it is
much more communicatively useful to have a language in which ‘some’ typic-
ally excludes ‘all’ than to have one in which ‘some’ is typically interpreted in
its full ‘some including all’ ascription. In a language in which ‘some’ typically
has the ascription ‘some excluding all’, communication is more succinct and
likely to be more successful than it would be in one in which ‘some’ typic-
ally had the ascription covering its full meaning range ‘some including all’.
Accordingly, the ‘some excluding all’ associative meaning of ‘some’ seems to
be a general feature of natural languages.
In Peircean terms, extralinguistic-based associative meaning is indexical.
There is a natural –causal-type –relationship between the facts of the real
world, and the linguistic expressions that denote these facts. Extralinguistic-
based associative meaning is, however, indexical within symbolic, the overall
denotative range of the expression being defined by linguistic convention.
Extralinguistic-based associative meaning can thus be more fully character-
ized as indexical (within symbolic), where the ‘(within symbolic)’ element makes
plain that the connotative indexical element of meaning further restricts the
overall symbolically defined denotative element of meaning.
Linguistic-based associative meaning, by contrast, is purely symbolic; both
the overall denotative ranges of ‫ إثم‬iṯm and ‫ ذنب‬ḏanb are symbolic, and it is part
of the conventions of classical Arabic that ‫ إثم‬iṯm was typically used for sins
that are personal or do not entail a punishment in this world, while ‫ ذنب‬ḏanb
was typically used for sins that involve punishment in this world or the next.
Linguistic-based associative meaning can thus be more fully characterized as

symbolic (within symbolic).
Communicative- efficiency-
based associative meaning is more interest-
ing. On the one hand, it is conventional (symbolic); languages would not,
in principle, need to be organized such that words for ‘some’ typically mean
‘some excluding all’. On the other hand, this convention has a quasi-indexical
underpinning; given that languages operate better in terms of communicative-
efficiency if word(s) for ‘some’ typically mean ‘some excluding all’, the
demand for communicative-efficiency quasi-causally impels the associative
meaning ‘some excluding all’. Like extralinguistic- based, communicative-
efficiency-based associative meaning occurs within the more symbolic context
of the expression’s overall denotative range. Communicative-efficiency-based
associative meaning can thus be characterized as quasi-indexical (within sym-
bolic). All associative meaning is clearly meaningful, rather than meaningful/
affective.
Translation problems involving associative meaning are illustrated by the
translation into English of the Arabic word ‫ مقهى‬maqhā, for which
a denotative near-equivalent might be ‘tea-house’, ‘tea-garden’, ‘coffee-

house’, or possibly ‘cafe’. However, in terms of the cultural status of the
‫ مقهى‬as the centre of informal male social life, the nearest equivalent in
British culture might be the pub. Given the Islamic prohibition on the
drinking of alcohol, however, such a translation would in most cases be
obviously ruled out.
For further discussion of translation issues relating to associative mean-

ing for Arabic, see Dickins, Hervey and Higgins (2016: 97–99); for French,
Hervey, and Higgins (2002: 150–151); for German, Hervey and Higgins
(2006: 90–91); for Italian, Hervey Higgins, Cragie, and Gambarotta
(2005: 96); and for Spanish, Haywood, Thompson, and Hervey (2009:
172–173).
Attitudinal meaning
Attitudinal meaning is ‘that part of the overall meaning of an expression
which consists of some widespread attitude to the referent. The expression
does not merely denote the referent in a neutral way, but also hints at some
attitude to it’ (Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins 2016: 95). An example is ‘pigs’
in the sense ‘police’. ‘Pigs’ (= police) and ‘police’ are denotatively identical,
covering the same range of referents (real and imaginary). However, while
‘police’ is a neutral expression, ‘pigs’ has pejorative overtones.
While associative meaning specifies a narrower typical ‘denotative range’
than that of the (full) denotative meaning of an expression in a particular
142 James Dickins
sense, attitudinal meaning does not. Thus, while ‘nurses’ may typically be
female, ‘pigs’ (= police) are not typically police whom one does not like.
Rather, ‘pigs’ suggests that the speaker/writer does not like police in gen-
eral, as does even the use of a singular form ‘the pig’ referring to one specific
policeman.
A comparison can be drawn between attitudinal meaning and the mean-
ing relayed by parenthetical elements in sentences, such as non-restrictive
relative clauses. In a standard restrictive relative clause, the meaning of the
relative clause plus its noun-phrase head is described by the intersection of the
denotative meaning of the two elements. In ‘Drivers who break the law will be
prosecuted’, the denotative meaning of ‘drivers who break the law’ is the inter-
section of the set of drivers (in a given discourse context) and the set of [those]
who break the law (in that same discourse context). Contrast this with ‘Drivers,
who break the law, will be prosecuted’, in which ‘who break the law’ is a non-
restrictive (parenthetical) relative clause. Here the denotative meaning of ‘driv-
ers, who break the law’ is not the intersection of the denotative meaning of
‘drivers’ and ‘who break the law’. Rather, no denotative narrowing of ‘drivers’
is introduced by ‘who break the law’: all drivers (in the discourse context) will
be prosecuted, and another fact about them is that these drivers break the law.
Just as parenthetical elements introduce additional –‘offstage’ –infor-
mation that does not involve any restriction on the denotative meaning of
the element to which they relate (in the case of non-restrictive clauses, the
head-noun), so attitudinal meaning can be regarded as an additional ‘off-
stage’ element of meaning that does not involve any restriction of the denota-
tive meaning of the expression (in a particular sense) that has this attitudinal
meaning. Attitudinal meanings are typically marked in dictionaries by terms
such as ‘derogatory’, ‘pejorative’, and so forth.
In Peircean terms, attitudinal meaning is symbolic; it is a matter of the
conventions of English, for example, that ‘police’ has a neutral attitudinal
meaning, while ‘pigs’ (= police) has a negative one. As a parenthetical-type
element, the connotative derogatoriness conveyed by a word such as ‘pigs’
(= police) functions independently of the ‘police’ denotation. While asso-
ciative meaning is indexical (within symbolic), symbolic (within symbolic), or
quasi-indexical (within symbolic), attitudinal meaning might be character-
ized as symbolic (plus symbolic), in that it adds an additional non-defining
(parenthetical) meaning to the basic denotative meaning. Given, however,
that attitudinal meaning is simply additional to the basic denotative mean-
ing, I will subsequently (in Figure 7.4) refer to it simply as symbolic.
Translation problems involving attitudinal meaning are illustrated by the
translation into English of the pejorative French word for ‘police’ flicaille.
‘Translating “la flicaille” as “the police” accurately renders the literal mean-
ing of the ST, but fails to render the hostile attitude connoted by “la flicaille”
(“the filth”, “the pigs”)’ (Hervey and Higgins 2002: 149).
For discussion of translation issues relating to attitudinal meaning for
Arabic, see Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins (2016: 95–97); for French, Hervey
and Higgins (2002: 149–150); for German, Hervey and Higgins (2006: 90);
for Italian, Hervey, Higgins, Cragie and Gambarotta (2005: 94–95); and for
Spanish, Haywood, Thompson, and Hervey (2009: 172).
Affective meaning
Affective meaning is that kind of meaning conveyed by tonal register, that is,
‘the tone that the speaker takes –vulgar, familiar, polite, formal, and so forth’
(Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins 2016: 212; cf. Figure 7.3, below). With affective
meaning, ‘the expression does not merely denote its referent, but also hints at
some attitude of the speaker or writer to the addressee’ (Dickins, Hervey, and
Higgins 2016: 212). An example of two words with the same denotative, but
different affective, meaning are ‘toilet’, with no or neutral affective meaning,
and ‘bog’ with impolite/disrespectful affective meaning.
Affective meaning can be regarded as functioning via a two-stage pro-
cess: (i) the belonging of an expression to a particular tonal-register category,
such as vulgar, familiar, polite, or formal; and (ii) the meaning this tonal-
register category has for the addressee in the context in which the expression
is used. As an example, we can take the expression ‘Would you like…?’ in
English, regarded as belonging to the tonal-register category ‘polite’; that is,
‘Would you like…?’ is a polite way of making a request in English. (There
are, in fact, significant academic disagreements about what politeness is; cf.
Dimitrova-Galaczi 2002. These do not concern us here.)
The belonging of the expression ‘Would you mind…?’ to the tonal-register
category ‘polite’ represents stage (i) of affective meaning. Stage (ii) is what
meaning this polite form has for the addressee in the specific context in which
it is used. In general, we may consider politeness to involve behaviour that,
by convention or otherwise, suggests respect for one’s interactant(s) (the
person or people with whom one is interacting). The greater the respect due
to an interactant, the more politeness one is expected to demonstrate. Thus,
the standard affective meaning of ‘Would you mind…?’ can be regarded as
respect for the addressee.
Politeness itself is therefore not meaning but carries meaning. Thus, in
British culture, it is traditionally considered impolite to put one’s elbows on
the table while eating. Behaviour, such as putting one’s elbows on the table
during a meal, may just be polite or impolite, it does not mean polite/polite-
ness or impolite/impoliteness. The impoliteness of putting one’s elbows on
the table during a meal does, however, carry affective meaning –this meaning
typically being something like disrespect for the other people at the table.
The most important, though not perhaps the most obvious, area in which
affective meaning operates is formality vs. informality. Formality and infor-
mality are features of expressions –more precisely, features of expressions
in particular senses. Thus, ‘channel’ in the sense of ‘bed or course of a river,
stream or canal’ (Collins English Dictionary) is a standard word with no par-
ticular formality. ‘Channel’ in the sense of ‘course into which something can
144 James Dickins
be directed or moved’ (Collins English Dictionary; as in ‘through official chan-

nels’) is, by contrast, a somewhat formal usage. Formality and informality
can be thought of as being on a cline from very informal to very formal, as
in Figure 7.2:
(very) informal (very) formal
Figure 7.2 The cline of formality.
Thus, formality is not an all-or-nothing matter. We may reasonably describe

a word or phrase as being relatively informal, slightly formal, and so forth.
Although it is expressions in particular senses that are formal or informal,
just like politeness, formality, and informality imply affective meaning. This
is because they suggest a relationship between the speaker/writer and the lis-
tener/reader. In informal writing/speech, this connoted relationship is one of
emotional closeness and normally rough equality of status. In formal writ-
ing/speech, the relationship is one of emotional distance and normally of
non-equality of status. Expletives such as ‘bloody’ in ‘a bloody good thing
too’ arguably have only affective meaning (plus reflected meaning), without
denotative meaning (cf. Ljung 2010: 86–87).
In Peircean terms, affective meaning is symbolic: it is a matter of linguistic
convention that ‘toilet’ is fairly polite, but ‘bog’ impolite. In terms of mean-
ing vs. effect/affect, affective meaning can be regarded as meaningful/affective.
This is most clearly seen in the two-stage analysis of politeness (above), where
politeness is not itself meaning, but carries meaning.
Unlike associative meaning, affective meaning does not involve narrowing
of the overall denotative range of an expression: ‘bog’ is not typically used
to refer to only one kind of toilet. Rather, like attitudinal meaning, affective
meaning involves an ‘offstage’ assessment and can thus be classified as paren-
thetical. In the case of attitudinal meaning, this is an assessment of the ref-
erent. In the case of affective meaning, it is an assessment (in terms of respect,
relative social status), and so forth, of the addressee. Where the addressee is
also the referent, for example, in ‘Pigs, I hate you’ (where ‘pigs’ = policeman),
attitudinal meaning and affective meaning coincide.
Translation problems involving affective meaning are illustrated by the
following:
in French, you might lend a book to a friend and say ‘Tu me le rendras
mardi’. A literal translation of this would sound rude in English: ‘You’ll
give it me back on Tuesday’, although the ST does not have that affective
meaning at all. A better TT would avoid such brutal assertiveness: ‘(So)
you’ll give it me back on Tuesday, then?’
(Hervey and Higgins 2002: 154)
For translation issues relating to affective meaning for Arabic, see Dickins,
Hervey, and Higgins (2016: 99– 100); for French, Hervey and Higgins
(2002: 154); for German, Hervey and Higgins (2006: 91); for Italian, Hervey,
Higgins, Cragie, and Gambarotta (2005: 99); and for Spanish, Haywood,
Thompson, and Hervey (2009: 173–174).
Allusive meaning
Allusive meaning ‘occurs when an expression evokes an associated saying or
quotation in such a way that the meaning of that saying or quotation becomes
part of the overall meaning of the expression’ (Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins,
2016: 101). Discussing the example of the novel ‫ مدينة البغي‬madīnat al-bağy
(The City of Oppression), by the Palestinian novelist ‫ عيسى بشارة‬ʕīsā bišāra,
Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins say
the city in question is clearly Jerusalem (or a fictional equivalent). The term
‫[ مدينة البغي‬madīnat al-bağy], which is used as the name of the city, alludes
to the fact that Jerusalem is sometimes referred to as ‫[ مدينة السالم‬madīnat
al-salām] ‘City of Peace’. It also perhaps recalls St Augustine’s ‘City of
God’ (‫[ عيسى بشارة‬ʕīsā bišāra] is a Christian, and makes widespread use of
Christian symbolism in this work). For Arabic readers, a further possible
allusive meaning is ‫[ مدينة النبي‬madīnat al-nabī], i.e. the term from which is
derived the name for the city ‘Medina’ ‫[ المدينة‬al-madīna] (in pre-Islamic
times known as ‫[ يثرب‬yaṯrib]). For English-speaking readers, particularly
those of a Protestant background, the TT ‘City of Oppression’ might
also carry echoes of John Bunyan’s ‘City of Destruction’ in A Pilgrim’s
Progress, although it is extremely doubtful that these would have been
intended in the ST.
Allusive meaning is a form of pseudo-reference. This can be illustrated by

the title of a book on the fall of Soviet communism: The Future That Failed
(Arnason 1993). This title involves an allusion to the name of the series in
which the book was published: ‘Social Futures’. It also contains two further
allusions –the first to ‘I’ve seen the future and it works’, found on the title
page of the book Red Virtue by the American writer and communist, Ella
Winter, and the second to a book written by a group of disillusioned ex-
communists in 1949, entitled The God That Failed (the ‘God’ in the title being
communism itself).
The real reference in the title ‘The future that failed’ is to the Soviet
Union –this is the denotative meaning of the book title. The denotative
meanings of ‘I’ve seen the future and it works’ and ‘the God that failed’ are
recalled by the use of the phrase ‘The future that failed’. However, these
are merely ‘echoes’ of the phrase ‘The future that failed’, that is, allusive
146 James Dickins
meaning is pseudo-referential. Given that these pseudo-denotations, are,

however, meaningful, we can classify allusive meaning as meaningful (rather
than meaningful/affective).
In Peircean terms, allusive meaning is both iconic and symbolic. Thus, the
relationship between the phrase, ‘The future that failed’, and the phrase (sen-
tence), ‘I’ve seen the future and it works’, for example, is one of similarity;
the first phrase recalls the second because the second is similar to the first.
However, the relationship between ‘I have seen the future and it works’ and
what it refers to is symbolic (albeit that this is a pseudo-reference in the con-
text of this allusion): the meaning of ‘I have seen the future and it works’ is
determined by the conventions of English (as interpreted in the particular
context in which this particular utterance was made).
Translation problems involving allusive meaning are illustrated by the fol-
lowing example between French and English:
[A]‌book title using allusive meaning is Julien Green’s Mille chemins

ouverts [Literally ‘A thousand open roads’], his memoir of the Great War.
The allusion is to Act 1 Scene 2 of Racine’s Phèdre, in which Oenone, the
loyal, misguided servant, says to her mistress: ‘Mon âme chez les morts
descendra la première. /Mille chemins ouverts y conduisent toujours’.
[Literally, ‘My soul will descend to the dead the first one. /A thousand
open roads lead there always’.] The allusive meaning is ‘how easy it is to
die’, an appropriate way of referring to the trenches of the First World
War. It is tempting to translate with something like ‘Roads to Hell’. The
danger here is to avoid unwanted allusions, in this case the proverb ‘The
road to hell is paved with good intentions’ (cf. ‘L’enfer est pavé de bonnes
intentions’), which would place intentions, rather than hell, at the centre
of the allusion. If this is unsuitable, a quite different title will have to be
found; this is actually common with book titles, which are often built
round intertextual allusions.
(Hervey and Higgins 2002: 148)
For translation issues relating to allusive meaning for Arabic, see Dickins,
Hervey, and Higgins (2016: 101); for French, Hervey and Higgins (2002: 148–
149); for German, Hervey, Higgins, and Loughridge (2006: 93–95); for Italian,
Hervey, Higgins, Cragie, and Gambarotta (2005: 96–97); and for Spanish,
Haywood, Thompson, and Hervey (2009: 176–178).
Reflected meaning
Reflected meaning is
the meaning given to an expression over and above the denotative mean-
ing which it has in that context by the fact that it also calls to mind another
meaning of the same word or phrase. Thus, if someone says, ‘Richard

Nixon was a rat’, using ‘rat’ in the sense of ‘a person who deserts his
friends or associates’ (Collins English Dictionary), the word ‘rat’ not only
carries this particular denotative meaning, but also conjures up the more
basic denotative meaning of the animal ‘rat’. (Note also the standard col-
location ‘dirty rat’.)
Reflected meaning is normally a function of polysemy, i.e. the exist-
ence of two or more denotative meanings for a single word…. The sim-
plest forms of reflected meaning are when a single word has two or more
senses, and its use in a particular context in one of its senses conjures up
at least one of its other senses, as in the example ‘rat’ above. A similar
example in Arabic is calling someone ‫[ حمار‬ḥimār]. In colloquial Arabic,
‫[ حمار‬ḥimār] applied to a person means ‘stupid’. However, this metaphor-
ical meaning also very strongly calls to mind the more basic sense of ‫حمار‬
[ḥimār] ‘donkey’.
Like allusive meaning, reflected meaning is pseudo-referential. When we

call someone ‫ حمار‬ḥimār, we are not saying they are a donkey – we are not
ascribing them to the set (class) of donkeys. We are, rather, ascribing them
to the set of stupid people. However, the use of ‫ حمار‬ḥimār in this secondary
sense recalls the primary ‘donkey’ sense –that is, it is as if we are ascribing
the person to the set of donkeys. There is in this respect, however, a distinc-
tion between lexicalized cases and non-lexicalized cases of reflected mean-
ing. In ‫ حمار‬ḥimār ‘donkey’/‘stupid person’, the secondary sense ‘stupid
person’ is fixed – that is, lexicalized – by the conventions of Arabic. In the
case of ‘tree’ in an utterance, ‘Tom is a tree’, by contrast, the sense of ‘tree’
(which, as in the case of ‫ حمار‬ḥimār meaning ‘stupid’, is also metaphorical) is
not fixed; that is, in ‘Tom is a tree’, ‘a tree’ is non-lexicalized, such that it is
impossible to deduce from the general conventions of English, what ‘Tom
is a tree’ means in a given context.
I have argued (Dickins 2005, 2018) that with non-lexicalized metaphors,
the overall ascription is along the lines ‘like in some non-basic respect to …’.
Thus, in ‘A man is a tree’, the overall ascription is ‘like in some non-basic
respect to a tree’, and the specific meaning in a particular context is deter-
mined by a ‘sub-ascription’ narrowing down this overall ascription. Thus, if
‘A man is a tree’ was uttered in a context in which the focus was on the distinc-
tion between the relatively small amount that is apparent or conscious about
human personality and the relatively large amount that is hidden or uncon-
scious, the reader might conclude that ‘A man is a tree’ is roughly equivalent
to saying, ‘A man is like a tree in that only a certain proportion is apparent (in
the case of the tree the trunk, branches and leaves; in the case of a man some
psychological features), while much remains hidden (in the case of the tree
the extensive root system; in the case of a man most psychological features)’.
148 James Dickins
Here, the meaning element ‘like a tree in that only a certain proportion is
apparent (in the case of the tree the trunk, branches and leaves; in the case of
a man some psychological features), while much remains hidden (in the case
of the tree the extensive root system; in the case of a man most psychological
features)’ constitutes the sub-ascription. In terms of traditional metaphor
analysis, the element ‘in that only a certain proportion is apparent (in the case
of the tree the trunk, branches and leaves; in the case of a man some psycho-
logical features), while much remains hidden (in the case of the tree the exten-
sive root system; in the case of a man some psychological features)’, that is,
the core of the sub-ascription, is known as the grounds (e.g., Dickins 2005).
Reflected meaning in lexicalized cases is, in Peircean terms, fundamentally
symbolic. The fact that ‫ حمار‬ḥimār in colloquial Arabic means both ‘donkey’
and ‘stupid’ is part of the conventions of the language. There is, however, a
strong indexical –or quasi-indexical –element in reflected meaning. The fact
that we perceive the sense ‘stupid’ as strongly reflecting the sense ‘donkey’,
but we do not perceive the sense ‘donkey’ as reflecting the sense ‘stupid’ (or
only weakly so) is a function of the fact that the ‘donkey’ sense of ‫ حمار‬ḥimār
is more psychologically basic than the ‘stupid’ sense (e.g., Dickins 2005: 228).
This psychological basicness is not a function of the conventions of lan-
guage –or of any other conventions –but of basic psychological mechanisms,
that is: how we perceive things in the world as more basic or less basic, phys-
ical objects (and animate entities in particular) being perceived as more basic
than mental traits, such as stupidity. This relationship causes us to understand
there to be a reflected meaning relationship between ‫ حمار‬ḥimār = ‘stupid’ and
‫ حمار‬ḥimār = ‘donkey’. If we were to include sameness within the category of
similarity, we might also argue that reflected meaning in ‫ حمار‬ḥimār = ‘stupid’
and ‫ حمار‬ḥimār = ‘donkey’ also involves iconicity –since the two ḥimār’s sound
exactly the same. Since identity is, however, only rather dubiously included
under similarity, it seems best to characterize lexicalized reflected meaning as
symbolic (plus quasi-indexical).
In non-lexicalized cases, reflected meaning is fundamentally symbolic, but
not in the same way as with lexicalized reflected meaning. Thus, it is not part
of the conventions of English that ‘tree’ means both ‘perennial plant having a
self-supporting woody main stem or trunk’ (Oxford English Dictionary Online)
and ‘like a tree in that only a certain proportion is apparent [and so on], while
much remains hidden [and so forth]’. However, it is part of the conventions
of English (and perhaps of all natural languages) that non-lexicalized meta-
phors can be generated from words in a more basic sense. In addition, just as
there is a (quasi-)indexical element in our perception of ‫ حمار‬ḥimār in the sense
‘stupid’ as strongly reflecting ‫ حمار‬ḥimār in the sense ‘donkey’, so there is also
a (quasi-)indexical element in our perception of ‘tree’ in the sense ‘like a tree
in that only a certain proportion is apparent [and so on], while much remains
hidden [and so forth]’ as strongly reflecting ‘tree’ in the sense ‘perennial plant
having a self-supporting woody main stem or trunk’. Like lexicalized reflected
meaning, non-lexicalized reflected meaning is analysed in Peircean terms as

symbolic (plus quasi-indexical).
An example of the problems involved in the translation of reflected mean-
ing is provided by the following fairly literal translation of ‫ثم شد الغطاء على جسمها‬
‫ الهرم‬as ‘then pulling the covers over her old body’ (from the book ‫مدينة البغي‬
madīnat al-bağy, The City of Oppression, by the Palestinian novelist ‫عيسى بشارة‬
ʕīsā bišāra):
The reader has, in fact, learnt earlier in the book that the mother of the
central character ‫[ صابر‬ṣābir] is old. The statement that her body is old,
therefore, does not provide any information in this context. In order to
extract some meaning, […] the reader therefore looks for another inter-
pretation of ‘old’ in this context. One possible interpretation which pre-
sents itself is that based on another sense of ‘old’, viz ‘former’. That is to
say, ‘old’ is polysemous, having senses ‘not new’ and ‘former’, amongst
other senses […]. Thus, the interpretation ‘former body’ (i.e. not the one
which the lady is incarnated in now) momentarily presents itself as a pos-
sibility. This is, of course, rejected in the context. However, this reflected
meaning of ‘old’ has enough of an influence here, in combination with
the oddity of ‘old’ in the sense of ‘not new’ […], to make the reader feel
that ‘old’ is odd in this context.
For further translation issues relating to reflected meaning for Arabic, see
Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins (2016: 103–104; and for metaphor, see Dickins
2005; Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins 2016: 194–210); for French, Hervey and
Higgins (2002: 153); for German, Hervey, Higgins, and Loughridge (2006: 91–
92); for Italian, Hervey, Higgins, Cragie, and Gambarotta (2005: 98–99); and
for Spanish, Haywood, Thompson, and Hervey (2009: 174–175).
Selectional restriction-r elated meaning

Some expressions (in particular senses) are sometimes described as having
selectional restrictions. Thus, ‘rancid’ only occurs in certain combinations, for
example, ‘rancid butter’, while ‘addled’ occurs in others, for example, ‘addled
eggs’ (cf. Cruse 1986: 289). One way of looking at this is to regard such selec-
tional restrictions as a form of connotation. However, it makes better sense to
analyse very strict selectional restrictions of this type as reflecting denotative
differences. Thus, if we consider the set of all ‘rancid [things]’ (both real and
imaginary) it will include instances of butter but none of eggs. By contrast,
if we consider the set of all ‘addled [things]’, it will include instances of eggs,
but none of butter. According to this analysis, therefore, ‘rancid’ and ‘addled’
are denotatively different (they have different ranges of referents), and we do
not need to invoke connotative meaning to describe the semantic differences
between them.
150 James Dickins
Where selectional restrictions are looser, such as the expectation that ‘geo-
metrical’ should go with an inanimate noun (Baker 2011: 12–13), we can
analyse the restriction in terms of associative meaning; ‘geometrical’ has the
associative meaning’ of ‘inanimate geometrical entity’. Thus, an expression
such as ‘geometrical rodent’, which collocates ‘geometrical’ with an animate
noun ‘rodent’ may be difficult to interpret, but is not impossible, even where
‘geometrical’ and ‘rodent’ are both used in their standard non-metaphorical
sense. A ‘geometrical rodent’ could, for example, be a rodent that builds geo-
metrical structures, or that delimits its territory according to a mathematic-
ally regular pattern.
Although I have included selectional restricted-related meaning as a type
of connotative meaning in Figure 7.1, I have argued in this section that it
is, depending on the degree of restriction, either a case of denotative mean-
ing (i.e., the restriction of the denotation), or associative meaning. It should
therefore properly speaking not appear as a separate category in Figure 7.1.
Selectional restriction-related meaning is not dealt with as a separate category
in the Thinking Translation series.
Collocative meaning
Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins (2016) define collocative meaning as the mean-
ing given to an expression over and above its denotative meaning by the mean-
ing of some other expression with which it typically collocates (co-occurs) to
form a commonly used phrase. They give the example of the word ‘inter-
course’, which they note has largely dropped out of usage in modern English,
because of its connotative sexual associations, derived from the common col-
location ‘sexual intercourse’ (Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins 2016: 102). Like
reflected meaning, collocative meaning can be regarded as pseudo-referential.
If I use the phrase ‘social intercourse’, I am referring to social interaction,
rather than sexual activity. There is no real reference to sexual intercourse,
regardless of the psychological ‘echo’ of ‘sexual intercourse’ which the phrase
‘social intercourse’ may engender.
Collocative meaning is in Peircean terms essentially symbolic. The mean-
ing of ‘intercourse’ (in its general sense) and of ‘sexual intercourse’ are both
determined by the conventions of English. Like reflected meaning, however,
collocative meaning also has an indexical-type aspect, at least in origin. Thus,
it is the ‘sensitive’ nature of the reference ‘sexual intercourse’ that has caused
the term ‘intercourse’ to become associated with sex, and thus to acquire the
same sensitivity as ‘sexual intercourse’ itself. Collocative meaning can thus be
characterized as symbolic (plus quasi-indexical). In referential terms, colloca-
tive meaning is clearly meaningful, rather than meaningful/affective.
An example of the operation of collocative meaning in translation is pro-
vided by the following from the Syrian poet ‫ نزار قباني‬nizār qabbānī):
‫أحمل الزمن المحترق في عيني‬

This has been translated (Rolph 1995: 10) as:
I carry this scorched era in my eyes

Here, ‘scorched era’ sounds more acceptable than other more literal
alternatives because of the existence of the phrase ‘scorched earth’. The
denotative meaning of ‘scorched earth’ gives ‘scorched era’ a collocative
meaning which is strongly suggestive of the devastation wrought by war.
For further translation issues relating to collocative meaning for Arabic, see
Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins (2016: 101–102); for French, Hervey and Higgins
(2002: 151–153); for German, Hervey, Higgins, and Loughridge (2006: 92–
93); for Italian, Hervey, Higgins, Cragie, and Gambarotta (2005: 98–99); and
for Spanish, Haywood, Thompson, and Hervey (2009: 175–176).
Language-variety-r elated meaning

Baker (2011: 13–15) talks about ‘evoked meaning’, under which may be
included: geographical dialect- related meaning, temporal dialect- related
meaning, sociolect- related meaning and social register- related meaning.
Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins (2016: 211–217) similarly identify five aspects
of the way a message is formulated that reveal information about the speaker/
writer: tonal register, social register, sociolect, dialect, and temporal variety.
They relate these to each other as in Figure 7.3.
Under the category of register, Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins distinguish
tonal register and social register. Tonal register is the feature of linguistic
expression that carries affective meaning, as discussed above, but (geograph-
ical) dialect-related meaning, temporal dialect-related meaning, sociolect and
register are discussed below.
(Geographical) dialect-related meaning

A dialect is a speech variety defined in terms of its geographical spread;
(geographical) dialect-related meaning may be of two types: primary and
x
SUB-LANGUAGE
(geographical) dialect
temporal variety (‘temporal dialect’)
sociolect (‘social dialect’) social register
tonal register
REGISTER
Figure 7.3. Language-variety related meaning.

152 James Dickins
secondary. Primary (geographical) dialect-related meaning is exemplified by

the fact that, if we know what a Yorkshire accent sounds like, we can derive
the information that a particular person who speaks with a Yorkshire accent
is from Yorkshire. Secondary (geographical) dialect-related meaning involves
any further inferences –frequently of a stereotypical kind –that we derive
from this. Thus, for many people in Britain, individuals from Yorkshire are
traditionally regarded as direct and honest in what they say. When such
people hear someone speaking in a Yorkshire dialect, this evokes for them a
sense of directness and honesty. Other people may have different views about
Yorkshiremen, of course, resulting in different evoked meanings for them.
In Peircean terms, primary (geographical) dialect-related meaning is sym-
bolic; there is a conventional relationship between the form of language used
(the dialect) and a geographical region. People in a particular region hap-
pen to talk the way they do; they are not constrained to talk this way by
virtue of the local topography or the minerals in the local water. Secondary
dialect-related meaning is indexical; it involves what we take to be a real
association between regional identity (as marked by dialect) and behaviour
(Yorkshiremen are, we believe, direct and honest, for example); (geographical)
dialect-related meaning is meaningful (rather than meaningful/affective), and
it is parenthetical, providing ‘offstage’ information about the speaker, rather
than, for instance, further narrowing the denotative meaning of an expression
used by the speaker.
The analysis of (geographical) dialect-related meaning as symbolic (in its
primary mode) and indexical (in its secondary mode), meaningful, and paren-
thetical applies also to the other types of language-variety meaning: temporal
dialect-related meaning, sociolect-related meaning, and social register-related
meaning.
For translation issues relating to (geographical) dialect-related meaning
for Arabic, see Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins (2016: 215); for French, Hervey
and Higgins (2002: 166–169); for German, Hervey, Higgins, and Loughridge
(2006: 33); for Italian, Hervey, Higgins, Cragie, and Gambarotta (2005: 108–
110); and for Spanish, Haywood, Thompson, and Hervey (2009: 185–186,
197–202).
Temporal dialect-related meaning

A temporal dialect is a language variety that is used by a certain social group
at a particular time. The discussion of evoked meaning in relation to dialect
also applies to temporal dialect. Thus, we may get both primary information
(e.g., that the speaker/writer is from the nineteenth century) and secondary
information (e.g., that they will therefore have specific attitudes towards reli-
gion or politics). As noted earlier, temporal dialect-related meaning is sym-
bolic (in its primary mode) and indexical (in its secondary mode), meaningful,
and parenthetical.
For translation issues relating to temporal dialect- related meaning for

Arabic, see Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins (2016: 216–217). The topic is not
covered in other books in the Thinking Translation series.
Sociolect-related meaning
A sociolect (also sometimes termed ‘social dialect’) is a language variety defined
in terms of sociological class, or another broad social category. Together
with (geographical) dialect and temporal dialect, sociolects constitute ‘sub-
languages’, as ways of speaking/writing that may constitute the totality of
the speech/writing behaviour of some speakers/writers. Thus, from this fact
we may get both primary information (e.g., that the speaker/writer is working
class) and secondary information (e.g., that they will therefore probably like
football). As noted earlier, sociolect-related meaning is symbolic (in its primary
mode) and indexical (in its secondary mode), meaningful, and parenthetical.
For translation issues relating to sociolect-related meaning for Arabic, see
Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins (2016: 214–215); for French, Hervey and Higgins
(2002: 165–166); for Italian, Hervey, Higgins, Cragie, and Gambarotta (2005:
107–108); and for Spanish, Haywood, Thompson, and Hervey (2009: 185–186,
197–198, 202–204). The topic is not included in Thinking German Translation
(Hervey, Higgins, and Loughridge 2005).
Social register-related meaning

A social register is:
a particular style from which the listener confidently infers what social
stereotype the speaker belongs to. Of course, a stereotype by definition
excludes individual idiosyncrasies of people belonging to the stereotype;
but, however unfortunate this may be, we do tend to organize our interac-
tions with other people on the basis of social stereotypes. These stereotypes
cover the whole spectrum of social experience. They range from broad
value-judgemental labels, such as ‘pompous’, ‘down-to-earth’, ‘boring’,
etc. to increasingly specific stereotypical personality-types, such as ‘the
henpecked husband’, ‘the macho football fan’, ‘the middle-aged Guardian-
reading academic’, etc. In so far as each of these stereotypes has a charac-
teristic style of language-use, this style is what we mean by social register.
… Social register carries information about such things as the speaker’s
educational background, social persona (i.e. a social role the person is used
to fulfilling), occupation and professional standing, and so on.
While a sociolect covers the whole range of speech/writing situations pos-

sible for a member of a sociologically defined group, a social register is much
154 James Dickins
more restricted, covering ‘a style that is conventionally seen as appropriate to

both a type of person and a type of situation’ (Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins
2016: 213). The boundary between what is sociolectal and what is social
register-related is fuzzy –hence their placement side by side in Figure 7.3.
We may get from this fact both primary information (e.g., that the speaker/
writer is an Islamist intellectual) and secondary information (e.g., that they
are probably hostile to left-wing views). Social register-related meaning is
symbolic (in its primary mode) and indexical (in its secondary mode), mean-
ingful, and parenthetical.
For translation issues relating to social register-related meaning for Arabic,
see Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins (2016: 213–214); for French, Hervey and
Higgins (2002: 162– 165); for German, Hervey, Higgins, and Loughridge
(2006: 127); for Italian, Hervey, Higgins, Cragie, and Gambarotta (2005: 104–
107); and for Spanish, Haywood, Thompson, and Hervey (2009: 185–186,
197–198, 202–204).
Information prominence-r elated meaning

I turn now to three types of meaning that are related to the prominence of
the information they convey: emphatic meaning, thematic meaning (theme–
rheme meaning), and grounding meaning.
Emphatic meaning
‘Emphasis’ is a broad and vague term in linguistics, covering, amongst other
things:
1. Semantic repetition: repetition of the same meaning, using synonyms or

near-synonyms; for example, ‘protect and preserve’ in ‘May God preserve
and protect him’.
2. Parallelism: repetition of the same semantic structure; for example, ‘He
has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns’ (from the
US Declaration of Independence).
3. Alliteration, assonance and rhyme: repetition of the same and/or similar
sounds; for example, ‘pr’ in ‘preserve and protect’.
4. The use of emphatic intonation in speech, or an exclamation mark in
writing.
5. Rhetorical anaphora: repetition of a word or words at the start of succes-
sive or closely associated clauses or phrases; for example, ‘[W]‌e shall fight
on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the
fields…; we shall never surrender’. (from a speech by Winston Churchill
during World War II).
6. Metaphor (metaphorical effect).
7. Emphatic particles: for example, English ‘so’ (as in ‘That was so amusing!’).
It might be felt that emphatic meaning is not really meaning, but rather
effect/affect. Emphasis (even when interpreted in terms of effect) can, how-
ever, be easily converted into one of meaning, that is, this element of the
text is particularly important –or similar. Given the tendency for emphatic
meaning to be associated with extended sections of text (e.g., in cases of
parallelism), emphatic meaning is not typically labelled in dictionaries.
A major exception is emphatic particles, such as Arabic ‫إن‬ َّ inna, which may
be labelled (e.g., ‘emphatic particle’) in addition to, or instead of, being
glossed.
In Peircean terms, at least some kinds of emphasis are indexical. A good
example is the fact that a placard bearing the message ‘Stop!’ that is 2 metres
by 2 metres is more emphatic than one that is 20 centimetres by 20 centimetres
(as discussed above). While the message ‘Stop!’ is symbolic, being expressed
through the conventions of natural language, the difference in prominence
given to this message between the two metres by two metres placard and the
20 centimetres by 20 centimetres placard is indexical; it is caused by the fact
that things that are bigger are more perceptually prominent. The same is true
in spoken language in respect of a whispered utterance, ‘Stop!’ compared to
one that is bellowed: the greater prominence (emphasis) of the latter is purely
indexical.
It might appear that at least some of the types of emphasis in 1–7 above
are also to be analysed as indexical. Thus, in the case of no. 6, rhetorical
anaphora, we might imagine that the repetition of lexical items (e.g., ‘We shall
fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight
in the fields’.) gives rise to emphasis via purely natural (non-conventional)
psychological processes. It seems to be true that repeating things gives them
more prominence –as acknowledged by the use of phrases such as ‘I can-
not repeat this enough’ in the context of a repeated instruction, for example.
However, contrastive linguistic analysis shows that repetition of lexical items
is not used to the same extent in different languages, or for the same pur-
poses. Thus, Arabic typically makes greater use of lexical repetition than does
English (e.g., Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins 2016: 141–143; Baker 2011: 216–
218). Lexical repetition in Arabic, unlike in English, is also typically used
to enhance textual cohesion (e.g., Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins 2016: 175–
178; Hatim 2015). Thus, indexical aspects notwithstanding, there is a sym-
bolic (conventional) aspect in the interpretation (meaning/effect) of lexical
repetition in different languages –symbolicity, as noted above, dominating
indexicality.
Corresponding arguments apply to all the other forms of emphasis listed
in this section, with the exception of no. 7, emphatic particles, such as ‘so’
(as in ‘That was so amusing’). These particles are purely symbolic. Emphatic
meaning can thus be variously indexical (e.g., the shouted nature of a par-
ticular utterance), symbolic (plus indexical) (e.g., lexical repetition), or purely
َّ inna).
symbolic (e.g., English ‘so’, Arabic ‫إن‬
156 James Dickins
The question of whether forms of emphasis are referential is more interest-

ing. While words and phrases have references (and have them separately each
time they are repeated), the emphasis that emerges from repetition (whether
of words or phrases, or meanings) is not an additional element of reference
on a par with these other references. Rather, like attitudinal and affective
meaning, emphatic meaning provides an ‘offstage’ parenthetical assessment
of the information provided by these words and phrases.
For a discussion of translation issues relating to emphatic meaning for
Arabic, see Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins (2016: 104–105); for French, Hervey
and Higgins (2002: 115–117); for German, Hervey, Higgins, and Loughridge
(2006: 170–187); for Italian, Hervey, Higgins, Cragie, and Gambarotta (2005:
190–192); and for Spanish, Haywood, Thompson, and Hervey (2009: 123,
127, 133).
Thematic meaning (theme–rheme meaning)

Thematic meaning is the meaning of old/given/relatively predictable informa-
tion (‘theme’) as compared to that of new/relatively unpredictable informa-
tion (‘rheme’) in a clause or sentence (for recent discussions consonant with
the approach taken here, see Dickins 2010; Alharthi 2010).
Like emphatic meaning, thematic meaning can be thought of in terms of
effect or meaning. The effect of a theme, for example, is for the hearer/reader
to assign less interest to the information in it. This can, however, be easily
converted into the meaning, ‘this element is being presented as old/given/
relatively predictable information’. Thematic meaning is typically treated as
a form of meaning in linguistics (in Hallidayan systemic-functional gram-
mar, it is central to one of three basic types of meaning: ‘textual meaning’;
for example, Halliday and Matthiessen 2004). Given its strongly affective
element, we will here classify thematic meaning as meaningful/affective. Like
emphatic meaning, thematic meaning is best thought of as parenthetical, that
is, an ‘offstage’ assessment of the status of the denotative meaning in the rele-
vant stretch of language.
In Peircean terms, thematic meaning has an indexical and even iconic
aspect. In many (perhaps all) languages, themes (old/given/relatively predict-
able information) tend to occur at the start of utterances, and rhemes (new/
relatively unpredictable information) at the end. This reflects the fact that in
developing new ideas (i.e., new information) we start with what is already
understood and then proceed to what is not yet understood. Typical theme–
rheme order thus mirrors communicative demands both indexically (in terms
of cognitive processes) and iconically (in terms of the order in which we pro-
cess bits of information) (cf. also Dickins 2009: 494 –where I have used the
term ‘topic’, rather than ‘theme’). Thematic meaning is, however, also sym-
bolic. This can be seen in the fact that theme–rheme placement of the (appar-
ently) same items in the same position in an utterance in different languages
does not necessarily have the same meaning/effect. Thus, in English, for
example, thematized (utterance-initial) temporal adverbials are unmarked
(i.e., only weakly emphatic), and occur frequently as linking elements in past
tense narratives (e.g., ‘On 11th March the merchant bank Kleinwort Benson
announced…. Three hours later a junior official of the DTI sent a note….
In ten days, the unknown Fayeds gained permission…’; Baker 2011: 144). In
Dutch, by contrast, thematized temporal adverbials are strongly emphatic
and contrastive, and thus do not occur in this function (Baker 2011: 144). In
overall terms we can classify thematic meaning as symbolic (plus indexical,
plus iconic).
For translation issues relating to thematic (theme–rheme) meaning for
Arabic, see Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins (2016: 163–171). The topic is not
covered in other books in the Thinking Translation series. Baker (2011: 131–
189) provides an extended general discussion with reference to numerous
languages.
Grounding meaning
Grounding meaning is the meaning of information within the sentence (or
clause) as foregrounded or backgrounded, that is, as a likely candidate for
further discussion in subsequent sections of the text or not. (For recent
discussions consonant with the approach taken here, see Dickins 2010;
Alharthi 2010).
Like emphatic meaning and thematic meaning, grounding can be thought of
either in terms of effect or of meaning. The effect of a backgrounded element,
for example, is for the hearer/reader to assign the information in it only tem-
porary interest. This can, however, be easily converted into the meaning ‘this
element is being presented as not a likely candidate for further discussion in
subsequent text’. Here, we will classify grounding as meaningful/affective.
In English, main clauses are almost always foregrounded while subordinate
clauses are backgrounded (for some limitations, see Dickins, Hervey, and
Higgins 2016: 166–171; Sekine 1996: 78). In Arabic, by contrast, main clauses,
while normally foregrounded, may be backgrounded, and subordinate clauses
may, under some circumstances, be foregrounded (Dickins 2010; Dickins,
Hervey, and Higgins 2016: 166–171). In Peircean terms, grounding meaning
is symbolic; it is meaning that is conventionally associated with the main–
subordinate structuring of languages, and, as seen from this comparison
between English and Arabic, varies from language to language. Like emphatic
and thematic meaning, grounding meaning is best thought of as parenthet-
ical, that is, as an ‘offstage’ assessment of the status of the denotative mean-
ing in the relevant stretch of language.
For translation issues relating to grounding meaning for Arabic, see
Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins (2016: 163–171). The topic is not covered in
other books in the Thinking Translation series or by Baker (2011).
158 James Dickins
Locution-overriding illocutionary meaning

For brevity I have referred here to this type of meaning as locution-overriding
illocutionary meaning. A less concise though more easily comprehensible
term would be illocutionary meaning that overrides locutionary meaning.
The terms ‘locutionary meaning’ and ‘illocutionary meaning’ are adapted
here from Austin’s (1975) ‘locutionary act’ and ‘illocutionary act/ force’.
Various attempts have been made to analyse the distinction between ‘locu-
tionary meaning’ and ‘illocutionary meaning’ in general pragmatic terms
(e.g., Levinson 1983: 270–275). For current purposes, we can take locutionary
meaning to mean the ‘linguistic meaning’ of an utterance. Accordingly, state-
ments have locutionary meaning, but so do non-statements such as questions
and commands. The locutionary meaning of ‘The cat sat on the mat’ is thus
different from that of ‘Did the cat sit on the mat?’, and different from ‘Sit on
the mat, cat!’ –though the meanings of all three are similar by virtue of their
shared ‘underlying’ propositional content. Similarly, locutionary meaning
includes figurative meaning which is ‘lexicalized’ (i.e., semantically fixed by
the conventions of the language). Thus, the locutionary meaning of ‘hit the
roof’ in ‘When he heard the news, John hit the roof –and didn’t calm down
again for hours’, is ‘got very angry’ (not the literal meaning ‘collided against
the house-top partition’).
Illocutionary meaning is defined for current purposes as meaning that goes
beyond locutionary meaning but does not annul or amend it. An example is
provided by the English, ‘Do you want to do the washing up?’ In many con-
texts, this is used as a polite request, along the lines ‘Please do the washing
up’. This polite request meaning does not annul or amend the ‘desire’ (‘want’)
meaning but operates alongside it (albeit that it can be said to override it). This
can be seen from the fact that an interlocuter who did not really want to do the
washing up could coherently reply to ‘Do you want to do the washing up?’ by
saying, ‘No, I don’t want to do it. But if you really want me to, I will do it’. The
meaning, ‘Do you want to do the washing up’ (i.e., ‘Do you desire…’) is thus
the locutionary meaning of this utterance, while the meaning, ‘Please do the
washing up’ (or similar) is its illocutionary meaning. Many phenomena of this
type are not universal. In some Arabic dialects the Arabic equivalent of ‘Do
you want to do the washing up?’, for example, does not have the illocutionary
meaning of ‘Please do the washing up’ (though in others, it apparently does).
As seen from the fact that, depending on dialect, the Arabic equivalent of
‘Do you want to do the washing up?’ may or may not have the illocutionary
meaning of ‘Please do the washing up’, locutionary meaning-overriding illo-
cutionary meaning is symbolic. It is also clearly meaningful (rather than mean-
ingful/affective). By virtue of the fact that it does not annual or amend the
basic (primary) reference, locution-overriding illocutionary meaning can be
analysed as secondary-referential, that is, providing a secondary reference in
addition to the primary one.
For a brief discussion of translation issues relating to locution-overriding

illocutionary meaning for Arabic, see Dickins, Hervey, and Higgins (2016: 105).
The topic is not covered in other books in the Thinking Translation series or in
Baker (2011), although she does provide an extended discussion of pragmatic
equivalence (2011: 230–273).
A revised typology of meaning

Figure 7.4 below revises Figure 7.1 in a number of ways. First, it removes
selectional restriction-related meaning as a category of connotative mean-
ing, incorporating strict selectional restriction- related meaning under
denotative meaning, and loose selectional restriction-related meaning under
associative meaning. Second, it moves affective meaning from immediately
after attitudinal meaning, to the sub- category ‘language- variety-
related
meaning’, where it more coherently belongs (see Figure 7.3), adding as an
alternative term for this type of meaning ‘tonal register-related meaning’
in brackets. In Figure 7.1, affective meaning was placed after attitudinal
meaning, because it has some analytical similarities to attitudinal meaning,
and because this roughly reflects the order of discussion in the Thinking
Translation books.
Third, Figure 7.4 characterizes each of the forms of connotative mean-
ing discussed in this chapter in terms of three categories: (1) Whether the
meaning is, in Peircean terms, symbolic, indexical (plus quasi-indexical), or
iconic; (2) Whether what is involved is purely meaningful, or whether it can
be thought of as being meaningful/affective; (3) Whether the phenomena
are: reference-focusing, parenthetical, secondary-referential, or pseudo-
referential. In Figure 7.4, I have also analysed denotative meaning, as sym-
bolic, meaningful, and referential.
Conclusions and prospects

In this chapter, I have considered various forms of connotative meaning,
particularly in terms of (1) whether the meaning relayed is, in Peircean
terms, symbolic, indexical (also quasi-indexical) or iconic; (2) whether what is
involved is purely meaningful, or on the meaningful/affective fuzzy boundary;
and (3) whether the phenomena involved are: reference-focusing, parenthet-
ical, secondary-referential, or pseudo-referential. I have also considered how
these phenomena are treated in the Thinking Translation books, as well
as Baker (2011). I have not, however, considered the specific relevance for
translation of the analytical categories established in this chapter (symbolic,
indexical, quasi-indexical, iconic; meaningful, meaningful/affective; reference-
focusing, parenthetical, secondary-referential, and pseudo-referential), whether
viewed singly or in combination. The exploration of these issues is a task for
future research.
Dickins, Hervey and Higgins (2016) Baker (2011)
Denotative meaning
(including strict selectional restriction-related
meaning)
Propositional/cognitive meaning
1. Symbolic
2. Meaningful
3. Referential
Associative meaning
(including loose selectional
restriction-related meaning)
1. (a) Extralinguistic-based:
Indexical (within symbolic);
(b) Linguistic-based: Symbolic;
(c) Communicative-efficiency
based: quasi-indexical (within symbolic)
2. Meaningful
3. Reference-narrowing
Attitudinal meaning
1. Symbolic Expressive meaning
2. Meaningful
3. Parenthetical
Allusive meaning
Connotative meaning
1. Symbolic (plus iconic)

2. Meaningful
3. Pseudo-referential
Reflected meaning
1. Symbolic (plus quasi-indexical)
2. Meaningful
Collocative meaning
Collocation
1. Symbolic (plus quasi-indexical) Presupposed
restriction-related
2. Meaningful meaning
meaning
(Geographical)
dialect-related meaning
Geographical
1. (a) Primary: Symbolic Evoked
dialect-related
(b) Secondary: Indexical meaning
meaning
2. Meaningful
3. Parenthetical
Temporal dialect-related
Language-
meaning
variety-
1. (a) Primary: Symbolic Temporal dialect-
related
(b) Secondary: Indexical related meaning
meaning
2. Meaningful
3. Parenthetical
Sociolect-related meaning
1. (a) Primary: Symbolic
Register-related
(b) Secondary: Indexical
meaning
2. Meaningful
3. Parenthetical
Figure 7.4. A revised typology of meaning.

Dickins, Hervey and Higgins (2016) Baker (2011)

Social register-related
meaning
1. (a) Primary: Symbolic
(b) Secondary: Indexical
2. Meaningful
3. Parenthetical
Affective meaning (tonal
register-related meaning)
1. Symbolic Expressive meaning
2. Meaningful/affective
3. Parenthetical
Emphasis (emphatic
meaning)
1. (a) Indexical
No category
(b) Symbolic (plus indexical)
3. Parenthetical
Information Thematic meaning (theme–
prominence- rheme meaning)
related 1. S ymbolic (plus indexical,
Theme and information structure
meaning plus iconic)
3. Parenthetical
Grounding meaning
1. Symbolic (plus indexical) No precise category, but cf. Theme
2. Meaningful/affective and information structure
3. Parenthetical
Locution-overriding illocutionary
meaning
Pragmatic meaning (esp.
1. Symbolic
implicature)
2. Meaning
3. Secondary-referential
Figure 7.4. (Continued)
References
Alharthi, Nasser. 2010. ‘The Discourse Structure of English and Arabic, with
Particular Reference to the Syntactic, Thematic and Grounding Structures of
Newspaper Editorials’. PhD thesis, University of Salford.
Arnason, Johann Pall. 1993. The Future that Failed. London and New York: Routledge.
Austin, John Langshaw. 1975. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Baker, Mona. 2011. In Other Words. London and New York: Routledge.
Cruse, David Alan. 1986. Lexical Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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162 James Dickins
———. 2009. ‘Topic and Comment’. In Kees Versteegh et al., eds, Encyclopedia of
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———. 2010. ‘Junction in English and Arabic: Syntactic, Discoursal and Denotative
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———. 2014. ‘Associative Meaning and Scalar Implicature: A Linguistic-Semiotic
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—— — . 2016. ‘Construction of a Linguistic Theory from First Principles and
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cz/linguistica/art/dickins/dic-004.pdf. Accessed 15 October 2018.
———. 2018. ‘Tropes and Translating’. In Adelina Hild and Kirsten Malmkjaer, eds,
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Linguistics (pp. 208–222). London and
Dickins, James, Sándor Hervey, and Ian Higgins. 2016. Thinking Arabic Translation
Dimitrova-Galaczi, Evelina. 2002. ‘Issues in the Definition and Conceptualization of
Politeness’. Columbia Working Papers in TESOL and Applied Linguistics 2(1): 1–20.
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Corpus-based Study’. PhD thesis, University of Manchester.
Halliday, Michael, and Christian Matthiessen. 2004. An Introduction to Functional
Grammar. London and New York: Macmillan.
Haywood, Louise, Michael Thompson, and Sándor Hervey. 2009. Thinking Spanish
Translation (2nd ed.). London and New York: Routledge.
Hervey, Sándor. 1982. Semiotic Perspectives. London: Allen & Unwin.
Hervey, Sándor and Ian Higgins. 2002. Thinking French Translation (2nd ed.). London
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Italian Translation (2nd ed.). London and New York: Routledge.
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Leech, Geoffrey. 1981 [1974]. Semantics. Harmondsworth: Pelican Books.
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thesis, University of Birmingham.
Chapter 8
A case study of modality in

legal translation: The Omani
constitution
Mohammed Farghal
Introduction
The general existing literature on modality (Halliday 1970; Lyons 1977; Perkins
1983; Coates 1983; and Palmer 1986/2001, among others) divides it into two
basic categories: epistemic and deontic. While epistemic modality involves the
producer expressing his or her judgement of a state of affairs in terms of the
likelihood of its occurrence apart from asserted propositions, deontic modality
views any state of affairs in terms of necessity, which ranges between placing a
strong obligation on the referent and a weak one (permission). In this way, epi-
stemic modality views propositions as ‘information’, while deontic modality
views them as ‘action’ (Palmer 1986). In addition, several semanticists (e.g.,
Palmer 2001; Huddleston and Pullum 2002; Nuyts 2001; Nuyts et al. 2005)
list dynamic modality as a third type of modality, which is traditionally listed
under deontic modality. Dynamic modality basically involves the use of the
modal verbs can/could and will or shall/would in utterances where they assert
propositions about the subject of the sentence without any trace of the pro-
ducer’s modalizing the proposition, whether epistemically or deontically, for
example, John will/shall travel to Paris next month. Because of the absence of
any modality shade of meaning, Gisborne (2007) rightly suggests removing
this type from the domain of modality altogether, arguing for a grammatical-
ization process of the modals can and will/shall in such cases.
In general, the verb may be considered the most prominent element in a
sentence because of the fact that it relates the participants in a proposition
together to produce a meaningful unit of discourse. Whereas lexical verbs
perform this function straightforwardly based on their semantics, auxiliary
verbs, including modal verbs, are employed within verb groups in order to add
nuances of meaning, such as aspect and modality, to the proposition (Farghal
and Beqri 2012). A modal verb, as defined by the Longman Dictionary of
American English (2008: 643), is ‘a verb that is used with other verbs to change
their meaning by expressing ideas such as possibility, permission, orientation’.
Modality, which seems to be a linguistic universal, may vary from one language
to another based on the nature of its grammatical as well as its lexical system
164 Mohammed Farghal
(Abdel-Fattah 2005; Farghal and Shunnaq 2011). Such variation may result
in discrepancies and gaps that create serious difficulty in translation activity.
Examining modality from a translational perspective, Baker (1992)
divides modals into action modals and belief modals. While the former
express nuances such as permitting, recommending, or prohibiting, the
latter express the producer’s beliefs about the likelihood of a certain situ-
ation. Baker argues that modality between English and Arabic translation
can be problematic because English modals are predominantly grammat-
ical while their Arabic counterparts are a mix of grammatical and lexical
resources. Several studies on Arabic modality (Zayed 1984; El-Hassan 1990;
Farghal and Shunnaq 2011; Abdel-Fattah 2005; Al-Qinai 2008; Al-Ashoor
2009; Wided 2010) mostly reach the general conclusion that Arabic lacks
a highly grammaticalized system of modals, although it possesses a rich
lexico–grammatical means to express various modality shades of meaning
in discourse. These authors mainly present interlingual data in the two lan-
guages in lists of items or in decontextualized sentences (e.g., see Abdel-
Fattah 2005 and Al-Qinai 2008) based on the dichotomy of epistemic vs
deontic modality. Few studies (e.g., Badran 2001; Farghal and Beqri 2012;
Al-Hamly and Farghal 2016), however, examine textual data extracted from
authentic discourse. Badran shows that Arabic modal expressions in polit-
ical discourse may be subject to manipulation when translated into Arabic,
while Farghal and Beqri, and Al-Hamly and Farghal, indicate that modality
shades of meaning can be problematic in literary translation (drama and
fiction, respectively).
Moving on to legal discourse, English legal jargon has been widely researched
(e.g., Crystal and Davy 1969; Bhatia 1983; Danet 1984, 1985; Goodrich 1990).
This jargon exhibits certain patterns that are not found in other technical
materials or other general varieties. The draftsmen’s incessant effort to exter-
nalize intentions in their documents so as to avoid ambiguity inevitably brings
about inherent peculiarities of legislative texts. These peculiarities are mainly
established forms or norms that are taken from the standardized legal register,
such as the phrase ‘In Witness Whereof’ or the legal use of ‘shall’ to express
deontic modality. Crystal and Davy (1969: 194) write, ‘Therefore, much legal
writing is by no means spontaneous but is copied directly from “form books”,
as they are called, in which established formulae are collected’. Hence, legal
English exhibits a high degree of linguistic conservatism.
The features of legal English, as expounded by Crystal and Davy
(1969: 213), are many. First, the features of layout, by which attention is
drawn to the parts of the documents that are crucial to meaning. Second,
the grammatical characteristics such as the chain-like nature of some of the
constructions, syntactic discontinuity (Bhatia 1983), and the minimal use of
anaphora. Third, the careful interplay between precise and flexible termin-
ology in vocabulary. Finally, the legal register’s preservation at all levels of
forms that have long been abandoned, such as ‘hereons’ and ‘hereunders’.
A case study of modality in legal translation 165
Table 8.1 Distribution of functions of deontic modality in Arabic ST
Category No. %
Imposition of Obligations 92 46.0
Assigning Responsibilities 44 22.0
Prohibition 41 20.5
Conferring Rights and Permissions 23 11.5
Total 200 100%
On the other hand, Arabic legal discourse, which manifests similar pecu-
liar technical features, has only been investigated from a translational per-
spective between English and Arabic, focusing on certain genres/aspects: for
example, UN resolutions (Farghal and Shunnaq 1993), general legal docu-
ments (Hatim et al. 1995), Arabic religious documents (Shunnaq and Farghal
1999), contracts (Mohammed et al. 2010; Emery 1989), general linguistic
features (Shiflett 2012; El-Farahaty 2015), and so forth. As legal discourse
belongs to institutional translation, which is culture dependent (Newmark
1988), Shiflett (2012: 29) argues that ‘[l]‌egal translators are obligated to not
only speak the target and the source languages fluently, they must be closely
familiar with the law and the legal system in the country where the translated
text originated, and the country for which the translation is being prepared’.
It combines, according to Harvey (2002: 177), ‘the inventiveness of literary
translation with the terminological precision of technical translation’.
The aim of this chapter is to investigate Arabic modality markers as
employed in Omani Basic Statute of the State (issued in 1996 and amended in
2011) and examine their counterparts in the official English translation. The
data consists of 200 instances of modality (all deontic) which have been closely
examined in an attempt to explore how the Arabic resources are employed in
this type of legal discourse and detect what translation procedures are used to
capture the shades of modality they encapsulate. Table 8.1 below shows the
distribution of functions within deontic modality.
In addition, the British and the American constitutions will also be
examined briefly in order to, first, detect any differences between them in
the employment of deontic modality markers and, second, to compare the
English translation markers of deontic modality in the Omani constitution
with the modality markers in both the British and American constitutions.
Data analysis and discussion

Imposition of obligations
Constitutional texts tend to impose obligations and set forth duties, a ten-
dency accounting for a full 46 per cent of the examples in the textual data.
Arabic constitutional discourse employs several types of obligation-oriented
modality markers, which can be classified into: (1) action obligations (72
instances/78.26%), (2) duty obligations (13 cases/15.13%), and (3) conditional
obligations (6 instances/6.52%).
Action obligations
The Arabic examples involving action legal obligations categorically employ
the Arabic simple present ‫ المضارع البسيط‬to communicate the message that an
act will thereof impose an obligation upon its declaration. In 70 out of 72
instances, the legal shall is employed in English to instate a corresponding
obligation. The examples below are illustrative:
‫ يتولى نواب رئيس الوزراء والوزراء اإلشراف على شؤون وحداتهم ويقومون بتنفيذ‬.1
،‫كما يرسمون اتجاهات الوحدة ويتابعون تـنفيذها‬. ‫السياسة العامة للحكومة فيها‬
The Deputies to the Prime Minister and the Ministers shall supervise the
affairs of their units, implement the general policy of the Government
therein, draw up the guidelines of the unit and follow up the implementa-
tion thereof.
.‫ تجرى التعديالت المرفقة على النظام األساسي للدولة‬.2

The attached amendments shall be made to the Basic Statute of the State.
.‫ تكون اجتماعات مجلس الوزراء صحيحة بحضور أغلبية أعضائه‬.3

The meetings of the Council of Ministers shall be made valid by the pres-
ence of the majority.
.‫ وتحدد القوانين واالتـفاقيات الدولية أحكام تسليم المجرمين‬.4

Laws and international treaties shall determine the rules for the extradi-
tion of criminals.
As can be observed, the legally employed Arabic simple present in the

examples above technically corresponds to the legal shall in English: they both
impose action obligations that become effective upon declaration. Notice that
the use of the English simple present instead of the legal shall may strip them
of their technicality and turn them into factual statements that are devoid
of the deontic shade of meaning, as can be seen in (5) and (6) below, which
rephrase (2) and (3) above:
5. The attached amendments are made to the Basic Statute of the State.
6. The meetings of the Council of Ministers are (made) valid by the pres-
ence of the majority.
By the same token, the use of the Simple Future in Arabic would deprive
the utterances of their technicality and turn them into statements expressing
future acts that are devoid of deontic modality, as can be noted in (7) and
(8) below: [back-translations in square brackets]
.‫ ستجرى التعديالت المرفقة على النظام األساسي للدولة‬.7

[The attached amendments will be made to the Basic Statute of the State.]
.‫ ستكون اجتماعات مجلس الوزراء صحيحة بحضور أغلبية أعضائه‬.8

[The meetings of the Council of Ministers will be valid by the presence
of the majority.]
In this way, the Arabic simple present and the English legal shall prove to be
technically equivalent in expressing action legal obligations. The two cases in
which the translator has employed the English simple present as an equivalent
to the Arabic simple present may reduce their technicality because they read
like statements describing existing facts rather than ones that impose legal
obligations. Both are given in (9) and (10) below:
.‫ يحـدد القانـون عـلم الدولة وشعارها وأوسمتها ونشيدها‬.9

The Law determines the Flag, Emblem, Insignia and National Anthem
of the State.
.‫ يشترط لصحة انعقاد كل من مجلس الدولة ومجلس الشورى حضور أغلبية أعضائه‬.10
The validity of a meeting of Majlis Al Dawla and Majlis Al Shura requires
the presence of the majority.
One should note that the use of the legal shall in the English renderings of
(9) and (10) will enhance their technicality and make them more congruent
with the English legal register as statements imposing legal obligations (11
and 12 below).
11. The Law shall determine the Flag, Emblem, Insignia and National
Anthem of the State.
12. The validity of a meeting of Majlis Al Dawla and Majlis Al Shura
shall require the presence of the majority.
Duty obligations
Assigning duties, which accounts for 12 cases, mainly takes the form of verb-
less Arabic nominal sentences (syntactically known as equational sentences; for
more on these, see Obeidat and Farghal 1994). They assign duties by featuring
lexical modality markers, which are nouns derived from modal verbs (e.g., the
nominal ‫‘ واجب‬duty’ is derived from the modal verb ‫‘ يجب‬must’) or grammatical
modality markers (e.g., the preposition ‫على‬, which is commonly used to assign
duties). In terms of translation, English usually employs the modal noun ‘duty’
as the head of the predicate in copulative sentences when rendering sentences
featuring ‫ واجب‬and the legal shall when rendering sentences featuring ‫على‬. The
following sentences are illustrative:
.‫ الحفاظ على الوحـدة الوطنية وصـيانة أسرار الدولـة واجب على كل مواطن‬.13
[Preserving the national unity and safeguarding the secrets of the State
(is) a duty (incumbent) upon every citizen.]
Preserving the national unity and safeguarding the secrets of the State is
a duty incumbent upon every Citizen.
.‫ أداء الضرائب والتـكاليف العامة واجب وفقا للقانون‬.14

[Paying taxes and public dues (is) a duty according to the law.]
Paying taxes and public dues is a duty according to the Law.
.‫ وعليه (كل أجنبي) مـراعاة قيم المجتمع واحترام تـقاليده ومشاعره‬.15

[Every foreigner must observe the values of the society and respect its
traditions and feelings.]
He (every foreigner) shall observe the values of the Society and respect
the traditions.
‫ وعليهم (أعضاء مجلس الوزراء) في كل األحـوال أن يستهـدفـوا بسلوكهم مصالح الوطن‬.16

.‫وإعالء كلمة الصالح العام‬
[Members of the Council of Ministers must, in all circumstances, pursue

by their conduct the interests of the country and work in furtherance of
the public benefit.]
They (Members of the Council of Ministers) shall always, by their con-
duct, pursue the interests of the Country and work in furtherance of the
public benefit
On the one hand, the duty obligations in (13) and (14), which express stative
situations, are lexicalized by the modality noun ‫ واجب‬and the modality noun
duty in equational Arabic sentences and their counterpart copulative English
sentences, respectively. One should note that changing a stative situation into
a dynamic one would require the employment of the strong Arabic modal
verb ‫يجب‬, viz. ‫‘( يجب أدا الضرائب والتكاليف العامة وفقا للقانون‬Taxes and public dues must
be paid according to the Law’), which is avoided in Arabic legal discourse in
favour of the nominal ‫( واجب‬e.g., (14) above or the simple present, viz. ‫تُدفع‬
‫‘( الضرائب والتكاليف العامة وفقا للقانون‬Taxes and public dues shall be paid according
to the Law’).
On the other hand, Arabic duty obligations expressed in utterances with
the preposition ‫ على‬in (15) and (16) involve dynamic situations; hence, they
translate into English utterances employing the legal shall. Notably, the
lexicalization of Arabic deontic modality (e.g., the use of the nominal ‫واجب‬
‘duty’) may require lexicalizing it when rendering it into English (e.g., by the
use of the noun duty). By contrast, obligations including the Arabic deontic
preposition ‫ على‬are grammaticalized into the legal shall when rendered into
English.
Conditional obligations
Arabic conditional legal obligations commonly employ the conditional
marker ‫إذا‬, which requires the use of the past tense in the conditional clause
and may employ it in the result clause. Such conditional sentences involve
real conditions on future acts that may take place and, consequently, instate
obligations when such conditions are realized. In terms of translation, they
correspond to English Type 1 conditionals in which the legal shall rather than
the non-legal will is employed, as can be observed in (17) and (18) below:
،‫ فإذا تم انتخاب أحد الموظفين العموميين لعضوية المجلس اعتبرت خدمته منتهية من تاريخ إعالن النتائج‬.17
In case a public employee is elected to the membership of the Majlis, his
service shall be considered terminated from the date of the announce-
ment of the results,
..‫ إذا ُحل مجلس الشورى توقفت جلسات مجلس الدولة‬.18

If Majlis Al Shura is dissolved, Majlis Al Dawla sessions shall be
suspended …
..‫ فإذا اختلف المجلسان بشأن المشروع اجتمعا فـي جلسة مشتركة‬.19
If the two Majlis disagree upon the draft law, they shall hold a joint
meeting …
The examples above clearly show that there are some register constraints
governing the coding of conditional obligations. On the one hand, Arabic
chooses a conditional marker, commonly ‫اذإ‬, which requires the use of the
simple past in the conditional clause and, as a distancing procedure, may call
for the employment of the simple past in the result clause (17–19 above). On
the other hand, English employs the legal shall in the result clause of a Type
1 conditional instead of the non-legal will. Failing to do so in both languages
would result in non-legal discourse, as is illustrated in the rephrasing of (19)

above in (20) below non-legally:
..‫) فإذا اختلف المجلسان بشأن المشروع يجتمعا في جلسة مشتركة‬20(
If the two Majlis disagree upon the draft, they will hold a joint meeting …
Notably, both the Arabic and the English result clauses in (20) are interpreted
as possible consequences of real conditions without inducing the legal nuance
of obligation, hence their register deficit.
Assigning responsibilities
Examination of the data shows that assigning responsibilities in Arabic
constitutional discourse can be classified into action responsibilities (34
instances) and stative responsibilities (10 instances). While imposing obliga-
tions is generally directed toward institutions and people in general, assigning
responsibilities is directed toward bodies and individuals which/who assume
authority, such as the state and ministers.
Action responsibilities
Action responsibilities, just like action obligations, are performed by employ-
ment of the Arabic simple present as well as the Arabic deontic preposition
‫على‬. In terms of translation, they both require the use of the legal shall. The
following are illustrative examples:
‫ تـقوم على حفظها وحسـن‬،‫ الثروات الطبيعية جميعها ومواردهـا كافة ملك للـدولة‬.21,
.. ‫استغـاللهــا‬
All natural wealth and resources thereof are the property of the State,
which shall preserve and utilize them in the best manner…
.. ‫ وتمنع الـدولة كل ما يـؤدي للفرقة أو الفتـنة‬.22

The State shall prevent anything that might lead to division, discord …
.. ‫ وعلى الـدولة حمايتها‬.. .23

… the State shall protect it …
‫ وعلى رئيس مجلس الدولة رفعه إلى جاللة السلطان‬.24

The Chairman of Majlis Al Dawla shall submit the same to His Majesty.
While (21) and (22) above assign action responsibilities by the employment of
the simple present, viz. ‫ تقوم‬and ‫تمنع‬, (23) and (24) perform the same function
by using the deontic preposition ‫على‬. In both cases, English utilizes the legal
shall to assign action responsibilities.
However, in 8 out of the 34 instances of assigning action responsibilities,
the translator has opted for the simple present instead of the legal shall, which
is an alternate option in British constitutional discourse. Below are two illus-
trative examples:
‫ ويحـدد القانـون عقــاب من يفعــل ذلك‬.25

The Law stipulates punishment of whomever commits such acts.
‫ كما تعمل على المحافظة على البيئة وحمايتها‬.26

The State also works for the conservation of the environment,
The English renderings of (25) and (26) need to be rewritten using the legal shall
in American constitutional discourse (see Section 4), as in (27) and (28) below:
27. The Law shall stipulate punishment of whomever commits such acts.
28. The State shall also work for the conservation of the environment,
Stative responsibilities
Stative responsibilities, which usually involve states implying the responsibility
of an understood party (usually an agent), are mainly assigned by the employ-
ment of Arabic passive participle forms in equational sentences (for more on
the translation of passive forms between English and Arabic, see Farghal and
Al-Shorafat 1996; Al-Khafaji 1996). In a few cases, however, an active parti-
ciple with an expressed subject whose function is theme rather than agent is
utilized (for more on semantic roles, see Kreidler 2014). In terms of transla-
tion, the translator opts to render passive participle forms into English passive
forms whose agents are implied, while the active participle form (one instance
only/example 30 below) is relayed as a simple present copulative sentence whose
predicate is semantically headed by an adjective. Following are some illustrative
examples:
‫ الملكية الخاصة مصونة‬.28

Private ownership is safeguarded
‫ حرية القيـام بالشعائر الدينية طـبقا للعـادات المرعيـة مصونة‬.29

The freedom to practice religious rites according to recognized customs
is protected,
‫ أعضـاء مجلـس الـوزراء مسؤولون سـياسيا مسؤولية تضامنية أمام السلطان عن تنفيذ‬.30
‫السياسة العامة للدولة‬
Members of the Council of Ministers are politically collectively respon-
sible before His Majesty the Sultan
As can be seen, the Arabic passive participle form ‫( مصونة‬is safeguarded/

protected) functions as the predicator of the Arabic sentences in (28) and (29)
and is translated into English passive predicators, viz., be safeguarded and be
protected. As for (30), the Arabic active participle ‫ مسؤولون‬functions as the
predicator of the sentence and has a subject that is interpreted as a theme.
That is to say, the subject ‫ أعضاء مجلس الوزراء‬is charged with a responsibility.
The English rendering simply employs the adjective responsible, whose sub-
ject, Members of the Council of Ministers, is interpreted as a theme charged
with a responsibility. However, the examples in (28) –(30) would use the legal
shall in American English, for example: Private ownership shall be safeguarded.
Prohibition
Prohibition, which is an important function of modality in language, is per-
formed using both explicit and implicit negation in both Arabic and English.
In Arabic legal discourse, one can distinguish between action and stative pro-
hibitions that may employ both types of negation.
Action prohibitions
Arabic action prohibitions mainly employ explicit negation by the negative
particle ‫ال‬, which is usually followed by the Arabic deontic verb ‫يجوز‬, viz. 23
out of 30 action prohibitions employ this legally oriented deontic verb. This
deontic verb can be contrasted with other Arabic deontic verbs that share
the same semantics such as ‫ يُسمح‬and ‫ يُمكن‬but may not be used in the legal
register. In terms of translation, the translator has opted for negation by two
devices: negation of the legal shall (17 cases) and literal translation into It is
not permissible to (13) cases. Following are some illustrative examples:
‫ وال يجوز مد فترة المجلس إال للضرورة‬.31

The term of the Majlis shall not be extended unless there is a necessity
‫ ال يع ّرض أي إنسان للتعذيب المادي أو المعنوي‬.32

No person shall be subjected to physical or psychological torture
‫ وال يجوز ألية هيئة أو جماعة إنشاء تشكيالت عسكرية أو شبه عسكرية‬.33
It is not permissible for any authority or group to establish military or

paramilitary formations
‫ ال يجوز الحجز أو الحبس في غير األماكن المخصصة لذلك‬.34

It is not permissible to detain or imprison in places other than those
designated for…
While the negated legal shall appropriately renders the Arabic prohibitions in
(31) and (32), one should notice that the translator’s opting for literal transla-
tion of the Arabic negated deontic verb ‫ يجوز‬in (33) and (34) may not be the
best option in the legal register. In fact, I have not found a single case of the
use of it is not permissible to for expressing prohibition in the American or
British constitutions. Therefore, the English renderings in (33) and (34) may
respectively be rephrased using either the negated legal shall or may in (35)
and (36) below:
35. No authority or group shall/may establish military or paramilitary

formations.
36. No person shall/may be detained or imprisoned in places other than
those designated for …
In this way, prohibitions that are deontically lexicalized in legal Arabic lend
themselves appropriately to grammatical rather than lexical deontic modality
in English.
Arabic action prohibitions may also use implicit negation (3 cases) by the
employment of verbs whose semantics involve the prohibition of some states
of affairs, usually the deontic verb ‫‘ يُحظر‬It is prohibited’, which must be fol-
lowed by a masdar (‘a present participle form’). In terms of translation, the
translator has used explicit negation in one case and implicit negation in two
cases. Consider the two examples below:
‫ ويحـظر إيـذاء المتهـم جسمانيـا أو معنويا‬.37

It is not permissible to harm an accused either bodily or mentally.
‫ ويحظـر إنشـاء جمعيات يكــون نشاطهـا معاديــا لنظـام المجتمـع‬.38

It is prohibited to form societies the activity of which is adverse to the
order of society,
One should note that the implicit negation in (38) is more appropriate in
the legal register than the paraphrased explicit negation in (37). To recover
explicit negation in the English rendering of (37), it is more appropriate to
employ the legal shall/may (see examples 35 and 36 above).
Stative prohibitions
Though infrequently employed, because prohibitions commonly enforce
actions through negation, Arabic can legally express prohibitions (5 instances
out of 41) statively by employing equational sentences which may involve
both explicit and implicit negation. In such cases, explicit negation uses the
negative particle ‫ ال‬followed by a masdar or a count common noun derived
from the masdar, while implicit negation may employ a deontic noun derived
from a deontic masdar. In terms of translation, English negative copulative
sentences featuring the legal shall are the most appropriate way to render
explicit negation, while a deontic noun may lend itself to English affixal neg-
ation. The following examples are illustrative:
‫ وال عقاب إال على األفعـال الـالحقة للعمل‬،‫ ال جريمـة وال عقوبـة إال بناء على قانون‬.39
.‫بالقـانـون الذي ينص عليهـا‬
There shall be no crime except by virtue of a Law. There shall be no pun-
ishment, except for acts subsequent to the entry into force of the Law
wherein such acts are stated.
‫ لألموال العـامة حرمتها‬.40

Public property is inviolable
In (39), the prohibitions featuring the negated common nouns ‫ جريمة‬and

‫ عقوبة‬and the negated masdar ‫ عقاب‬lend themselves appropriately to translating
into English copulative sentences featuring the negative particle no (which is
necessitated by the fact that a noun rather than an act is being negated) and
the legal shall. Notice that the rephrasing of a stative prohibition as an action
prohibition in Arabic would require different textualizations in English. The
first part of (39) is rephrased as an illustrative example in (41):
‫ ال يجرّم أو يعاقب شخص إال بناء على قانون‬.41
The Arabic action prohibition in (41) appropriately lends itself to an English

corresponding action prohibition rather than a stative one, as in (42) below:
42. No person shall/may be incriminated or punished except by virtue

of a Law.
As for the Arabic prohibition in (40), it is expressed statively by employing

a deontic noun ‫‘ حرمة‬being sacred/inviolable’ derived from a major Islamic
religious concept ‫‘( حرام‬what is religiously forbidden’), which is the opposite
of the concept ‫‘( حالل‬what is religiously sanctioned’). The translator has
appropriately employed affixal negation (i.e., inviolable) to render the Arabic
prohibition statively in English. One should note that the use of other mor-
phologically related forms such as the passive participle ‫محرمة‬, the masdar ‫حرام‬
and the passive verb ‫ يُحرم‬may affect the semantics of the deontic noun ‫حرمة‬
and, consequently, may not fit the legal register. For example, using the verb
‫ يُحرم‬to rephrase (40) would produce the prohibition ‫تحرم األموال العامة‬, which
translates into public property is forbidden, thus producing a prohibition
with a completely different meaning. To produce the intended prohibition, a
morphologically- unrelated Arabic masdar must be added after the verb such
as ‫‘( المساس‬touching’), as in (43) below:
.‫ يُحرم المساس باألموال العامة‬.43

Public property shall/may not be violated.
Conferring rights and permissions

Conferring rights
The examination of the data indicates that conferring rights in Arabic legal
discourse is overwhelmingly performed by prefixing the deontic ‫ الم‬to the con-
feree, followed by a masdar representing the semantics of the relevant right.
Linguistically, this produces Arabic equational sentences designating states
(15 out 19 instances). In terms of translation, it has been noticed that the
translator has used different deontic procedures depending on the status
of the conferee (e.g., His Majesty the Sultan vs Omani citizens). On the one
hand, he/she alternates between the legal shall in shall have the right to and the
simple present in have the right to when the conferee is an ordinary person.
On the other hand, the translator opts for wholly grammaticalizing the right
by employing may when the conferee is the Sultan or an authoritative person/
body, thus legally capturing the power discrepancy between the two parties.
Witness the following examples:
.‫ للمواطنين حق االجتماع ضمن حدود القانون‬.44

The citizens have the right to assemble within the limits of the Law.
‫ له (المتهم) ولمن ينوب عنه التظلم أمام القضاء‬.45

He or his representative shall have the right to petition …
‫ لجاللة السلطان دعوة مجلس عمان لالجتماع فـي الحاالت التي يقدرها‬.46
His Majesty the Sultan may summon Majlis Oman, outside the regular
session …
‫ لمجلس عمان اقتراح مشروعات قوانين‬.47

Majlis Oman may propose draft laws …
As can be seen, (44) and (45) confer rights by prefixing the deontic ‫ الم‬to
[-power] conferees; they lend themselves to translation into either the simple
present (44) or the legal shall (45). One should note that both of the Arabic
utterances may be rephrased by recovering the present form of the verb ‫يحق‬
(‘have the right’), which is derived from the explicit or implicit masdar ‫ق‬ ّ ‫ح‬
(‘right’), as below:
.‫ يحق للمواطنين االجتماع ضمن حدود القانون‬.48

.‫ يحق للمتهم ولمن ينوب عنه التظلم أمام القضاء‬.49
Although the corpus does not include any examples in which the masdar
ّ ‫ ح‬is verbalized into ‫ق‬
‫ق‬ ّ ‫يح‬to confer rights, there is one case employing a
similar stative verb, as is shown below:
.. ‫ يتمتع كل أجنبي موجود في السلطنـة بصفة قانونية بحماية شخصـه‬.50

Every foreigner who is legally present in the Sultanate shall enjoy protec-
tion for himself …
The Arabic example in (50) may be rephrased using the deontic ‫ الم‬to confer
rights, as is shown below:
‫ لكل أجنبي موجود في السلطنة بصفة قانونية حق بحماية شخصه‬.51

Every foreigner who is legally present in Sultanate shall have/has the right
to protect himself.
Finally, the conferral of Arabic conditional rights (5 cases), just like condi-
tional obligations, should employ a distancing procedure by using the simple
past rather than the simple present in the result clause. However, such a dis-
tancing device may escape the translator in some cases (53 below). Conferring
such conditional rights is rendered into English using the legal shall in type 1
conditionals, as can be illustrated below:
..‫ عاد إلى وظيفته‬،‫ فإذا صدر الحكم ببطالن عضويته وإلغاء قرار فوزه‬.52
If the decision is made to invalidate his membership and annul the deci-
sion of his win, he shall return to his employment …
..‫ وفـي حال الطعن فـي صحة عضويته يظل محتفظا بوظيفته‬.53
and in case of a challenge to his membership he shall retain his
employment …
Examining (52) and (53), one can argue that the use of the simple past in the
result clause of (52) is more appropriate than the use of the simple present
in the result clause of (53). Thus, (53) will sound more congruent with the
Arabic legal register if rephrased as (54) below:
.. ‫ وفي حال الطعن في صحة عضويته ظل محتفظا بوظيفته‬.54
Conferring permissions
The data includes four cases of conferring permissions, all of which feature
the Arabic deontic verb ‫يجوز‬, which seems to be the hallmark of this modality
function. Similarly, one would expect the modal auxiliary may to hold a
comparable status when conferring permissions in English. The following
examples are illustrative:
.. ‫ ويجوز عقد جلسات غير علنية فـي الحاالت التي‬.55

Closed sessions may be convened in circumstances …
‫ ويجوز لمن انتهت فترة عضويته الترشح ثانية لعضوية مجلس الشورى‬.56
It is permissible for whoever completes his membership term to run again
as a candidate to Majlis Al Shura
‫ والحدود التي يجوز فيهـا التـنـازل عن شيء من هـذه األمالك‬.57

… the limits within which part of these properties can be assigned …
Looking at the renderings of the conferred permissions in (55)–(56), one

may argue that the translation in (55) is the most congruent with the English
legal register. It has already been noted (in the section ‘Action prohibitions’)
that the phrase it is not permissible to does not appear in the American and
the British constitutions, and the same is the case with it is permissible to when
conferring permissions. Also, may is more legally appropriate than can when
conferring permissions because legal discourse is characterized by clarity and
precision, a condition that is not met by can, which usually fluctuates between
ability and permission readings. In this way, the English translations in (56)
and (57) may be more appropriately rephrased as (58) and (59) below:
58. Whoever completes his membership term may run again as a candi-
date to Majlis Al Shura
59. … the limits within which part of these properties may be assigned …
Variation in English constitutional discourse

Examining the legal discourse in the British and American constitutions
shows that there is a key difference between them in the use of the legal shall
for performing different modality functions. On the one hand, the British
constitution generally moves freely between the simple present and the legal
shall in expressing various affairs. The American constitution, on the other
hand, consistently employs the legal shall in its articles. The following two
extracts attest to this kind of difference.
60. The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators
from each State, for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.
Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the first
Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes. The
Seats of the Senators of the first Class shall be vacated at the Expiration
of the second Year …
61. The Cabinet —
1. has the general direction and control of the government of the
United Kingdom;
and
2. is collectively responsible to Parliament for the performance by the
Government of its functions.
62. The Ministers shall include —
1. a Chancellor of the Exchequer (having responsibility for finance);
2. a Minister of Justice (having responsibility for courts and legal
services);
3. a Minister having responsibility for international relations, who shall
be appointed from among members of the House of Commons.
As can be observed, the extract from the American constitution in (60) uses
the legal shall throughout (there are 5 occurrences of it). By contrast, the
extracts from the British constitution (61 and 62 above) show a kind of free
choice between the simple present and the legal shall, viz. (61) and (62) involve
a similar affair but the former employs the simple present while the latter uses
the legal shall. One may speculate that the choice is dependent on whether
the state of affairs in question is a stative or an action affair. For this specula-
tion to be borne out, the extract in (62), by virtue of its referring to a stative
affair, should start with ‘The Ministers include’ rather than ‘The Ministers
shall include’, which is not the case. This free movement between the simple
present and the legal shall in the British constitution is even attested within
the same article, as can be seen below:
64. A local authority —

1. shall perform such functions as Act of the parent Assembly shall
determine; and
2. has general competence to undertake whatever measures it sees fit
for the benefit of all those within its area, including the making of
bye-laws…
This may be due to the fact that the British constitution has not been as a
written document the way the American constitution has. Hence, when trans-
lating highly codified written constitutions of Arab countries into English, it
would be more appropriate to use the American constitution as a model.
However, the two constitutions generally agree on the use of the legal shall
not for expressing prohibitions, with the negative particle usually brought to
focus at the beginning of the sentence (No…shall). In a few cases, prohibitions
are performed by may not and lexicalization by be prohibited. In neither of
the two constitutions are there any traces of lexicalizing prohibitions by the
phrase It is not permissible to, which is frequently used for coding prohibitions
in the English translation of the Omani constitution. This being the case, and
in order to be more congruent with English constitutional discourse, most of
these cases can be rephrased using more standard legal discourse in English.
For example, (65) and (66) below may be rewritten as (67) and (68) to con-
form to the norms of English constitutional discourse:
65. It is not permissible for any authority or group to establish military or
paramilitary formations.
66. It is not permissible to detain or imprison in places other than those
designated for…
67. No authority or group shall/may establish military or paramilitary
formations.
68. No person shall/may be detained or imprisoned in places other than
those designated for…
One further key difference between American constitutional discourse and

British constitutional discourse relates to how rights are conferred. While the
former consistently confers rights by empowering a party to act in a certain
way using the phrase shall have the power to, the latter usually entitles a party
to act in a certain way by employing the phrase have the right to. In terms
of translation, the translator of the Omani constitution adopts the British
method while subtly distinguishing between conferring rights on ordinary
people and conferring rights on authority people/bodies. In the former case,
the phrase have the right to is used (e.g., in citizens have the right to do some-
thing), while in the latter case may is employed (e.g., His Majesty the Sultan
may do something). Apparently, the translation of the Omani constitution was
guided by British rather than American constitutional discourse, as Oman
was colonized by the British and still has close ties with the UK.
Concluding remarks
The main objective of this chapter has been to detect key modality features
of Arabic constitutional discourse by examining the Omani constitution as a
case study from a translational perspective. Several conclusions can be drawn

from this study:
(1) Arabic constitutional discourse employs deontic modality to perform a

variety of functions, including imposing obligations, assigning respon-
sibility, prohibition, and conferring rights and permissions. It utilizes a
variety of modality markers to communicate these functions, including
both grammatical (e.g., the ‫ الم‬prefixed to a noun to confer rights) and lex-
ical (e.g., the employment of the verb ‫ يجوز‬for expressing prohibitions and
permissions). English constitutional discourse is largely grammaticalized
(and sparingly lexicalized) through the use of the modal auxiliaries shall
and may for a variety of functions. In contrast, Arabic deontic modality
tends to be less grammaticalized and more lexicalized, for example, the
heavy use of the simple present form and the noticeable employment of
deontic lexical/particle markers.
(2) Insofar as verb tense is concerned, the Arabic simple present emerges as
the hallmark of deontic modality, marking both deontic-free verbs (e.g.,
‫‘ ينشر‬be published’ and ‫‘ تستمر‬continue’) and deontic-related verbs (e.g.,
‫‘ يجوز‬be permissible’ and ‫‘ يُحظر‬be prohibited’). In terms of translation,
however, deontic modality expressed by deontic-free verbs lends itself
to translating into the legal shall, while some cases of deontic modality
expressed by deontic-related verbs may be lexicalized in British consti-
tutional discourse: for example, have the right to and be prohibited. In
general, the commonality of using the simple present verb form for legal
shall in English.
(3) The Arabic ‫ الم‬negated deontic verb ‫‘( يجوز‬be impermissible’) and its
positive counterpart ‫ يجوز‬emerge as the standard means of expressing
prohibitions and conferring permissions, while the deontic ‫ الم‬prefixed
to the first noun in the utterance in question holds a similar status for
conferring rights. In terms of translation, the negated shall, particularly
the phrase No…shall in both American and British English, seems to be
the most appropriate for expressing prohibitions, despite the fact that the
translator in this case study mostly opts for the phrase it is not permis-
sible to, which does not occur in the American and British constitutions.
For conferring rights, the modal auxiliary may, the verb to have, or the
phrase have the right to are the most used in British constitutional dis-
course, while the phrase shall have the power to is consistently used in its
American counterpart.
(4) Equational Arabic sentences (i.e., verbless sentences) prove to be an
important tool for expressing various deontic modality functions in
Arabic constitutional discourse. They usually feature deontic-derived
nouns such as ‫‘( واجب‬duty’) or a passive participle deontic form such as
‫‘( محظور‬prohibited’). In addition to rendering them by the legal shall,
passive participles may lend themselves to lexicalization into passive

forms, such as ‘is protected’ and ‘is prohibited’ in British English.
(5) Arabic constitutional discourse employs the simple past instead of the
simple present in the result clauses of conditional sentences as a distan-
cing procedure. Such conditional sentences represent real conditions and
correspond to type 1 English conditionals. In terms of translation, the
English legal shall is employed instead of the non-legal will in the result
clause of the conditional sentence.
(6) For future research, it is suggested that more Arabic constitutions be
examined in order to establish a more reliable standard profile of the
features used in this genre of Arabic legal discourse. This may also lead to
the establishment of a more standard profile of the translation procedures
adopted when dealing with this type of legal discourse. In particular, con-
sistency in terms of British vs. American constitutional discourse may
emerge as an important matter to consider in translating Arabic constitu-
tions into English. The variation in British constitutional discourse may
be due to the absence of a codified written document compared with the
highly codified American written constitution, which may function as a
better model when translating Arabic constitutions into English.
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Chapter 9
The translation of film titles in the

Egyptian film industry
Muhammad Y Gamal
Introduction
Egyptian cinema, the leading film industry in the Arab world (Hayward 2000),
began with Leila in 1927. Twenty years earlier, in Alexandria, cinema houses
were purposefully built for public screenings of imported filmic material as
well as locally made short films. Leila was the first of a series of only silent
films that appeared on Egyptian screens until the first Egyptian talkie, Children
of the Rich, Awlad el zawat, was released in 1932. This first talkie was also the
first Egyptian film to be subtitled, into French. Four years later, in 1936, a
film titled Wedad was screened at the first session of the Venice International
Film Festival, thus inaugurating the participation of Egyptian films at inter-
national film festivals. Since the early thirties, foreign films (mostly Hollywood
productions) were shown in Egypt, subtitled. The distribution of foreign films
in Egypt gave rise to ancillary activities such as film magazines, film posters,
film title translation, and film subtitling. Several local distributors and cine-
matic companies in the country provided these post-production professional
activities (Gamal 2007).
Translating foreign film titles into Arabic

Since the early days of cinema in Egypt, the distribution of foreign films,
a commercial exercise par excellence, has been geared towards attracting
crowds to the cinema. This has meant that film titles must exhibit linguistic
and extralinguistic features designed to be easily understood and instantly
appreciated. This has largely meant that the foreign film title would have to
be redesigned in a way that arouses interest, curiosity, and the desire to see
the film (Salmawy 2005). More often than not, this meant that, linguistically,
the title would have to be liberally translated, employing emotionally charged
clichés to the tune of ‘Crime does not pay’, ‘An impasse’, ‘Forbidden pas-
sion’ and so forth. The extralinguistic features were predominantly achieved
through the artistic skills in creating the film poster highlighting a prominent
feature in the film (Fathi 2014). Quite often, that included a fistfight, a gun,
Translation of film titles in Egypt 185
a kiss, a portrait of the leading actor, or the face of a pretty woman. To fur-
ther augment the interest, a special typeface would be employed to heighten
interest in the film. Apart from numerous and indeed instructive journalistic
articles by film critics and commentators, there is little academic research into
the translation of foreign-film titles in Egypt.
Internationally, however, the phenomenon of film-title translation has
attracted considerable attention, albeit for a different reason, namely mar-
keting. Title translation is carried out in the importing markets by indi-
viduals who are not always translators, but more often are people working
in the film-distribution business (Telling 2014). There is no shortage of
Internet articles that examine the phenomenon of foreign-film title transla-
tions, offering examples of the funniest or strangest instances. Major web-
sites, such as those of the Daily Telegraph and the BBC in the UK, and the
Special Broadcasting Service in Australia, have published articles with lists
of ‘funny translations’ of film titles. Commercial reasons determine the way
films are translated with little or no regard to translation principles, profes-
sional translation practice or translation theories. Quite often, they are not
only different or incorrect, but reflect an attitude that has nothing to do with
translating meaning, conveying sense, or doing justice to a work of art in
a foreign market. Oaster (2017) examines the way Lost in Translation was
received in foreign markets and traces the translation of the film title in a
diverse range of cultural and linguistic contexts. In Portugal, Oaster shows
that the film was given the title Love in a Strange Place; in Turkey, One Can
Talk…; and in Latin American markets the redesigned title became Lost in
Tokyo. It is noteworthy that, against the more liberal attitude, there has been
an effort to maintain the spirit of the original title by keeping the element of
translation in the film. Thus, in French-speaking Canada, the title became
Unfaithful Translation, in Hungary Lost Meaning, and in Poland Between
Words. However, the Russian rendering of the original was clear and to the
point: Translation Difficulties.
A great deal of effort goes into the design of a film title. It is the name by
which viewers, fans, and audiences will discover the film, understand the dra-
matic conflict, and remember the artistic work. Although it is brief, consisting
of a very few words, a film title assumes significant importance, as it can make
or break the entire oeuvre. Appreciating the significance of the few words that
make a film title and its relation to the entire film is of primary importance.
This does not apply solely to film buffs and film critics, but equally, and per-
haps more so, to translators, as I will explain later in the section that considers
translating for the DVD industry. The main function of a title is to grab the
attention of viewers, and this explains why film titles tend to be unique with a
very small chance of repetition. The title also has the function of giving a hint
to the subject matter of the film, if a very subtle one. Films with big budgets
or those directed by famous directors tend to choose a title that implies the
genre of the film. A good film title is one that also implies the plot or dramatic
186 Muhammad Y Gamal
conflict in the film. Finally, a film title needs to be memorable which, in itself,
is another way of promoting the artistic work (Monaco 2000).
Egyptian film titles tend to adhere to the general cinematic criteria of
film title design. This conclusion is gleaned from the examination of a large
number of Egyptian films. However, for the purpose of examining how
Egyptian film titles are translated into English, a deeper understanding of
the process is required. Qassem’s Guide to Egyptian Films in the Twentieth
Century (2002) is an encyclopaedic list of more than three thousand films
with relevant technical data on each entry. The Guide lists films chronologic-
ally, and thus it provides a unique opportunity to examine how film titles have
changed over time. One of the interesting observations is the word Gharam
(love), which was profusely used until the mid-Fifties, to be replaced by the
more modern Hob (love), which continues until today. A cursory examination
of the titles reveals the prominent features in the writing of titles in Egyptian
Arabic: short, simple, expressive, powerful and memorable. However, to
achieve this, there appears to be a sociolinguistic hypothesis that underpins
the creative process. The hypothesis could be summed up as follows: for film
titles to be compact, they are generally expressed in modern standard Arabic,
and they may exhibit, rely upon, or draw on Egyptian cultural references.
To appreciate this hypothesis, I will now separately examine each of the two
tenets, language and culture, highlighting the significance of each component.
The use of modern standard Arabic in the design of

Egyptian titles
Since its inception, the Egyptian film industry has used uncomplicated but
powerful words to express its artistic work. In so doing, the focus has been on
titles in modern standard Arabic that lend themselves to the new artistic form.
The first Egyptian talkie, Awlad El Zawat (Children of the Rich), produced
in 1932 heralds a tradition that would continue until the twenty-first cen-
tury. Film titles, like other artistic genres that appeared in Egypt in the early
years of the twentieth century –namely plays, novels, and academic books,
used much shorter titles compared to the lengthy titles used in the nineteenth
century.
Arabic is a diglossic language (Ferguson 1959), which means it has two var-
ieties. Generally speaking, in Egypt and throughout the Arab world, Arabic
is seen as having two general varieties: Fusha and Darija. The former refers
to the higher, educated and fine variety acquired through study and prac-
tice of formal contexts such as literature, religion, and the media. The latter,
Darija, refers to the vernacular attained at home and prior to going to pri-
mary school. It is used in everyday conversations and is associated with the
man in the street.
While an Arab country may have one Fusha, it is not unimaginable to see
a host of local varieties reflecting geographical, climatic, ethnic, or industrial
factors that shape the variety of Arabic spoken in that particular country.
This explains the significance of modern standard Arabic, which serves as a
lingua franca for the Arab world, that it has a geographic as well as historical
congruity. Darija, on the other hand, is far more vibrant, contemporary, and
powerful, as it resonates with speakers in a particular region. In this respect,
Darija could be seen as more communicative and expressive, and therefore
more effective. Although the word diglossic means two varieties, Arabic, par-
ticularly in Egypt, recognizes five different levels: classical Arabic, modern
classical Arabic, educated spoken Arabic, semi-literate and illiterate Arabic
(Badawi 1973). Each of the five levels reflects a different command of the
language, which also implies a different level of education. Badawi’s work
has been instrumental in teaching Arabic as a foreign language and is equally
significant for Egyptian film translators. The distinction of the five levels of
Arabic becomes readily significant when film titles are pragmatically exam-
ined with a view to suggesting linguistically correct and culturally acceptable
translations into English, as we shall see shortly.
Drawing on Egyptian cultural sources

The second half of the statement used above to sum up the hypothesis for
the creation of a film title states that titles ‘may exhibit, rely upon or draw on
Egyptian cultural references’. I will now examine the cultural component in
film titles, which is expressed in modern standard Arabic. Generally speaking,
film titles in Egypt can be short and to the point in an abstract fashion. Titles
such as Leila as a Schoolgirl, Love and Revenge, The White Rose, and My
Wife Is a General Manager are direct in their meanings with no other mean-
ing implied. However, titles can also be a little more expressive by drawing on
cultural sources that vary from personal and geographic names to religious,
ethnic, or historical references or overtones. For instance, titles such as Adham
Al-Sharqawi, Khan Al-Khalili, Hassan and Morcos, and El Leila El-Kebeera
are complex to translate due to the high connotative meaning of each title.
They refer to an Egyptian patriot, a Cairo suburb, the names of a Muslim
and an Egyptian Copt, and the major night in a popular festival, respectively.
Translating such titles requires a translation strategy that takes into account
not only the denotative meaning but also, and equally important, the conno-
tative meaning. This entails some latitude on the part of the translators as
they attempt to do justice to the film title on the one hand, and on the other to
suggest a translation that reflects the dramatic conflict expressed in the film.
However, the most highly expressive, and indeed complex titles to explain,
let alone to translate, are those drawn from cultural references and packaged
in the vernacular. This register of spoken Arabic tends to be emotionally
charged, and with immediate punch. Those such as Ashara baladi, Muwled
ya dunya, El beida wal hagar, Wesh Egram, and Heyya fawdah? are short
titles that would require many more words to translate in order to make the
denotative meaning understandable and the connotative references readily

appreciated. Yet, such translation strategy would not only defeat the purpose
of title design but would also undermine the impact intended in the highly
charged short title, in the original. Literal translations for the above titles
would be: Local Dance, The World is a Festival, Hocus Pocus, Crime’s Face,
and Chaos? This is a common translation strategy employed in translating
Egyptian films, as can be seen on Wikipedia (under ‘Egyptian Cinema’),
YouTube listings of Egyptian films, or in some of the recently released DVDs.
Drawing on cultural sources in the design of Egyptian film titles is an old
technique practised since the early days of cinema by many film directors
and producers. However, it has been noted that Egyptian directors of New
Wave Cinema that began with the 1995 Ismailia Rayeh-gai (Round Trip to
Ismailia), have been favouring titles that are expressed in the vernacular (Waly
2017). Equally significant is another strong trend that favours or relies upon
titles that are unusual, outlandish or even unrelated to the film plot, conflict,
or characterization. However, Waly (2017) argues, such a phenomenon needs
to be debated nationally, highlighting the artistic principles in the process of
film design on the one hand and the commercial considerations that govern
the marketing strategy adopted by filmmakers on the other.
Translating film titles is essentially a post-production process, and transla-
tors have to deal with it regardless of how challenging or indeed complex the
film title is in Arabic. What is required here is the ability to unpack the title
by separating the denotative meaning from the connotative reference(s), and
search for a translation strategy that focuses primarily on the connotative
meaning that is reflected in the film through the plot, characterization, and
dialogue.
Towards a typology of Egyptian film titles

Egyptian directors draw on a large repertoire of cultural sources for the design
of their titles. Understanding the cultural source and its layers of meanings
helps translators, and particularly subtitlers and film distributors, to identify
a translation strategy that is linguistically correct and culturally appropriate.
Table 9.1 shows a list of popular Egyptian film titles deemed complex to
translate, arranged in five columns. The first column gives the Arabic title
transliterated into English. The second gives a literal translation of the Arabic
title. In the third column, a pragmatic translation is suggested, which may
vary from the literal translation. The fourth column describes the linguistic
register of the title, whereas the fifth refers to the cultural dimension of the
title, explaining its cultural provenance.
The table shows, therefore, a list of Egyptian film titles drawn from sources
that have provided the frameworks for the design of titles. Linguistically, the
register varies between the modern standard Arabic (MSA) variety and that
of the vernacular (darija). The last column sheds light on the framework that
Table 9.1 The complexity of film title translation
Arabic title Literal trans Pragmatic trans Register Reference

Al wesada al khaliya Empty pillow Lonely bed MSA Novel
Shei min el khawf Some of the fear A taste of fear MSA Koran
Wesh Egram Crime’s face Budding officer Darija Idiom
El beida wal hagar Hocus pocus Clever as the devil Darija Proverb
Khan el khalili Khan el Khalili Khan el Khalili MSA Location
Adham el Sharqawi Adham el Sharqawi Adham MSA History
Heina Maysara Heina maysara Until better times MSA Koran
Haddouta Masriya An Egyptian story An Egyptian tale Darija Autobio
Ehna betou’ el autobis We of the bus Coincidence Darija Declarative
Kaf al Kamar Hand of the moon Family ties Darija Ethnic
Sarkhat namlah Ant’s cry Insignificant MSA Figurative
largely, but not exclusively, determines the design of the title. Thus, com-
mon names of novels, places, personalities, popular proverbs, famous verses
from the Koran, or idiomatic phrases provide a rich source of inspiration.
Knowledge of this source and appreciation of its denotations and connota-
tions assists the translator in determining the overall meaning before attempt-
ing a translation. The second column shows the literal translation, which is
widely used on the Internet. Such translation is deemed unprofessional, being
carried out mostly by amateurs who lack the minimum requirement of pro-
fessional translation. This translation is helpful as far as it shows the original
title, but it undermines the artistic merit of the oeuvre as a whole, as it does
not tell what the film is about. The third column, however, suggests a prag-
matic translation that gives the film a feature that is clearly missing in the
second column: identity. Such identity helps viewers to know what to expect
in the film. In some cases, a good pragmatic translation helps in promoting
the artistic work to international markets and audiences.
Translating Egyptian cinema

For a long time, the subtitling of Egyptian films into foreign languages was
a post-production activity confined to participation at foreign film festivals
abroad. Thus, it became exclusive and, indeed, excluded from academic exam-
ination. However, the emergence of DVD technology, the Internet and the
popularity of YouTube, as well as the availability of subtitling programs, have
all made the examination of subtitled Egyptian films more accessible and
more frequent.
The emergence in 1951 of young film director Youssef Chahine provided
a change and a challenge to the way films were directed in Egypt and shown
abroad. Chahine was 24 when he directed his first film. Not only was he a
newcomer, but also a lot younger than almost everyone else in the 18-year-old
talking cinema industry in Egypt. The Fifties were the Golden Age of Egyptian
cinema with an average output of 70 films per year. The local cinema industry
was in waiting for an energetic, talented, trained, and trilingual director who
would translate his own film career and the national cinema industry into an
international success.
The cinema of Youssef Chahine

For over half a century Egyptian cinema abroad was represented –and
indeed known by –one director whose films not only represented the country
but also secured international film awards. Youssef Chahine (1926–2008) gave
cinema in Egypt substance, style and stature (El-Gamal 2014). Critics speak
of a Chahinian film style (Abu-Shadi 2003), a Chahinian film language (Fawzi
2002), a Chahinian film set (Shawky 2004), and a Chahinian film structure
(Hashem 2014) in a manner that reflects his long, varied, complex, and also
controversial cinema career. Chahine made films that required the public’s
attention and demanded multiple viewings. His works were not cheap flicks
that one watched if bored or had nothing better to do. When confronted by
angry viewers who professed their inability to understand his films, he often
replied, both in print and on camera: ‘My films will be appreciated thirty years
later’. Chahine appealed to the hearts and minds of viewers in a language of
his own, one that was not always readily understood. A prominent reason for
this is, perhaps, as Phillips points out, that ‘fictional films that often include
explicit meanings are frequently thought of as flawed, at least in Western soci-
eties, because modern audiences in the West generally expect movies to show,
not tell or explain, their meanings’ (2002: 441). His Cairo Station (1958), a
psychological thriller and never previously attempted in Egyptian cinema,
drew the ire of viewers who disagreed with the film’s ending. It is rather inter-
esting that, 40 years later, Chahine received the Grand Jury Prix at the Cannes
Film Festival mostly for his pioneering work in Cairo Station.
Born in Alexandria in 1926, Chahine grew up in the cosmopolitan
Mediterranean city and was educated at its famous Victoria College, where
he met the likes of Hussein Bin Talal, the future king of Jordan; Edward Said,
the prominent Palestinian-American professor of comparative literature; and
the future international film icon, fellow Alexandrian Omar Sharif. Fluent
in French and English, Chahine would put his cultural background to good
use not only in his work, participating at international film festivals, but also
through including a foreign dimension in his films.
Although Chahine studied both cinema and acting in the United States,
upon his return to Egypt he decided to direct rather than act. He began his
career in 1951 with Papa Amin. He distinguished himself through large pro-
ductions such as Saladin (1963), The Land (1969), The Sparrow (1973) and,
most famously, his Alexandria Tetralogy (1978, 1982, 1989, 2004), a series of
four autobiographical films that reflect his own life. Seven of his films appear
in ‘The Most Important 100 Films in Egyptian Cinema’, a list that chroni-
cles the technical development of films in the Egyptian cinema industry (Al-
Hadary 2007). He is also the most awarded Egyptian film director, and at the
time of his death in 2008 was the only film director to have received the Nile
Award in the Arts (bestowed in 2007), the highest cultural award in Egypt.
The difficulty with Chahinian films is that his style is complex, and his cine-
matic language is sophisticated, requiring attention. This can be gleaned from
the choice of his film topics and the design of the title sequence that inaugu-
rates the dramatic conflict. Not unlike other international directors such as
David Lean, Chahine has also been known as a dictator, insisting on super-
vising all minutiae in his work, including the subtitling of his festival films –a
task that is usually seen as a post-production matter left to distributors and
media companies.
Youssef Chahine is credited with discovering Omar Sharif, introducing
him to Egyptian cinema, and directing three of the young actor’s first four
films. The partnership brought success and fame to both director and actor.
Sharif soon became a popular face (particularly after his marriage to leading
Egyptian actress Faten Hamama), appearing in 21 films prior to co-starring
in Lawrence of Arabia (1963). However, it is The Blazing Sun (1954), Chahine
and Sharif’s first film together, that best shows the developing craftsmanship
of the young director and the emerging style of Chahinian filmmaking.
Struggle in the Valley

Chahine enlisted his former schoolmate, Sharif, for his Sira’a fil Wadi (Struggle
in the Valley) featuring Faten Hamama, commonly known as ‘the Lady of
the Arab Screen’. Omar, who was essentially a middle-class young man from
multilingual Alexandria, was cast in an unusual role: the son of a farmer
from the south. The plot revolves around the struggle of a sugarcane farming
community trying to produce better crop in defiance of the will of a powerful
landlord. In his debut, Sharif had to learn the dialect of southern Egypt,
among other cinematic skills. The film was a success, heralding not only the
arrival of a new actor but also his marriage to the Lady of the Arab Screen.
However, the film is also artistically significant for the translation strategy
employed by Chahine. Intending to show his film abroad, Chahine offered
an English translation for the title of his film, and which actually appears in
the title sequence. At that time, it was not unusual for some Egyptian films
to include translations of their titles, either in English or in French. However,
what was unusual is the translation strategy Chahine employed. He offered
The Blazing Sun, a pragmatic translation (or what is called today ‘a trans-
creative approach’) to the original title of Struggle in the Valley.
Chahine’s trilingual background gained in the cosmopolitan city of
Alexandria, his cultural upbringing, and his subsequent study of film acting
in California shaped his artistic views and his translating style. His translation
offers an approach that is undoubtedly informed by his understanding of the

plot and appreciation of the entire film. In opting for a pragmatic translation,
in contrast to the literal or liberal approaches to film title translation, Chahine
offers examples and case studies of title translation. In the title sequence, the
translation appears in the following format:
Original title in Arabic

Translation in English
This example offers audiovisual translators unique insight into film transla-
tion, where one knows that omissions, changes, additions and sacrifices are
inevitable. This strategy requires an appreciation of the cinematic language
of the director and his holistic approach to the work, in order to appreciate
the translation decisions. Essentially, this approach means that audiovisual
translators must watch the video of the film (several times, in the case of a
film by a great director) prior to subtitling the film and attempting a transla-
tion of the title. Mera (1999: 79) underscores the importance of taking care
when subtitling a film by a ‘great director’. This is significant not only due to
the participation of a film at international festivals, but also when it comes to
creating subtitles in the production of films on DVD, a professional practice
that has not been fully examined, particularly in Egypt.
Struggle at the Port

In Struggle at the Port (1956), Chahine directed Sharif for the third time.
Within three years of The Blazing Sun, Sharif had established himself as
the rising actor in Egypt. Here Chahine directed the most promising couple
in Egyptian cinema, Sharif and Hamama, in a romantic action film set in
Alexandria. The plot revolves around the struggle of a young stevedore
(Sharif) who, after returning to Alexandria from a long overseas journey, runs
into trouble with the spoiled son of the shipping tycoon over workers’ rights
and a young woman (Hamama). In this film, Sharif is more at home speaking
in the dialect of Alexandria, and he delivers one of his most memorable roles
in Egyptian cinema. Chahine is also at his best behind the camera. With his
enthusiasm for real shots, he almost killed the young actor he had brought to
prominence only four years earlier. There is a scene in which not only does a
fire break out, but there is also a physical fight between the stevedore and the
son of the shipping tycoon. The two not only had to fight before the camera,
but also to fight for their lives as the fire was too close for comfort. The plot
has another twist, as the rich tycoon reveals that he is the biological father of
the young stevedore who, upon learning this fact, leaves Alexandria and goes
overseas.
Although the title in Arabic, Siraa fil mina, means Struggle at the Port,
Youssef Chahine embarked on a new strategy in film title translation. First,
he continued his pragmatic approach in translating the film title while hav-
ing the international viewer in mind. By now, with five years’ experience,
Chahine has firmly established himself as a promising film director and
already made a name for himself at international film festivals. He next
translated Siraa fil mina into Dark Waters. The Arabic title is shown in an
artistic handwritten poster style, in a point size larger than the English trans-
lation, which is shown in bold block letters underneath. Second, Chahine
offers a translation in French, Les eaux noirs, which appears beneath the
English title and in brackets, smaller in size, in block letters but not bold. The
French translation is a literal translation of the English. The film title format
appears in this fashion:
Film title in Arabic

Film title in English
(Film title in French)
It is interesting to observe that this Chahinian style of translating Egyptian
film titles into English and French developed over time, as it provides insights
for both translators and distributors alike. This style of film title translation
and presentation became popular in the Fifties as more and more producers
espoused the strategy for translation and marketing, particularly when their
films participated at international film festivals.
Struggle on the Nile

In 1959 Sharif appeared in his third and last film to bear the word ‘struggle’
in the title. This was Struggle on the Nile, directed by Atef Salem (1921–2002).
Like Chahine, Salem was another significant film director of the second
generation, who created the Golden Age of Egyptian cinema in the Fifties
and Sixties. Dubbed ‘The Mirror’ for the way he used cinema to present his
society, Salem tackled numerous Egyptian social issues in his films, which
became classics in Egyptian cinema. He directed Omar Sharif five times and
instructed him on how to speak in the local dialect of southern Egypt, an
essential feature in Struggle on the Nile. The plot of this action drama revolves
around a naïve southerner (Sharif) who accompanies his more mature cousin
on a river journey to Cairo to buy a bigger Nile barge in order to modernize
the family transport business. Rivals of the family try to stop the young cous-
ins from reaching Cairo, and the film ends with the successful acquisition of
a modern barge. Although the three films –Struggle in the Valley, Struggle
at the Port, and Struggle on the Nile –may appear to form a series, they do
not. Of the three, only the last film appeared on DVD, in 2004, subtitled in
English and French and bearing the English translation Struggle on the Nile.
The decision to go for a literal translation of the Arabic title is consistent with
the modus operandi employed by the various DVD production companies
in Egypt in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Likewise, the French
translation of the title in Arabic is a literal translation Lutte sur le Nil.
This literal approach to the translation of film titles is the modus operandi
for a translation that must not only be linguistically correct but, also, and
equally significant, pragmatically acceptable. Recent research by translation
scholars and also publications by young researchers in the growing field of
Arabic audiovisual translation has not paid sufficient attention to this intri-
cate issue of translating film titles and has not debated the pros and cons of
literal versus pragmatic translation of film titles. In the DVD industry, as we
shall see shortly, there is much more to the issue than just translating a few
words that make the DVD title.
Chahine’s translation style

Eight years after his first film, Chahine reached a turning point in his cinematic
career, with Bab el Hadid. The title literally means ‘The Iron Gate’ and refers
to the huge wrought-iron gate at the entrance to the Central Train Station in
Cairo. ‘The Iron Gate’ is the colloquial name given to the central train station
and for over a century the gate had been a landmark in the capital.
Chahine translated the title, simply and eloquently, as Cairo Station.
Translating literally would have missed the meaning and detracted from the
main conflict in the film. However, the film’s title sequence has something that
does not usually happen in Egyptian films. The director chose to add, under
the Arabic title, a transliteration in brackets following the English translation.
Thus, the title sequence has the following design:
Film title in Arabic

Title translation in English
(Transliteration in brackets)
What Chahine did here deserves attention. It provides a theoretical framework
for the examination of film-title translation in Egypt and also in other regional
cinemas. Given that film titles in Egyptian cinema are couched in sociolin-
guistic terms (as seen in Table 9.1 above) and given the likelihood of their
being expressed in the vernacular, it would be a challenging task to translate
Egyptian film titles in a way that is linguistically correct, culturally appropriate,
and pragmatically acceptable. In the example above, Chahine offers a model to
contemplate: beneath the original film title in Arabic, a pragmatic translation
into English is offered. On a third line, a transliteration in English is offered
in brackets. This helps non-Arabic speakers to know (and pronounce) the ori-
ginal title of the film when they need to refer to it. There is no shortage of ref-
erences to Cairo Station in international literature on cinema and filmmaking
(Karney 2001: 470). The title design gives prominence to the original in Arabic
as the translation and transliteration are given smaller type sizes.
Since his early films, Chahine always had an eye on the international arena
and was determined to show his work at the most prominent international film
festivals. Cairo Station participated in the Berlin Film Festival and competed
for the Golden Bear Award. It was selected to compete for Hollywood’s Best
Foreign Film Award but was not nominated. However, the film appears in
the ‘List of the Most Important 100 Films in Egyptian Cinema’ (Al-Hadary
2007) and features among ‘The 1001 Movies You Must See before You Die’
(Schneider 2003). His success was testimony to how he personally supervised
the subtitling of his own films. The model, however, has not been given suf-
ficient attention, either by film researchers or by Egyptian audiovisual trans-
lation scholars.
Film title translation in the DVD industry

The emergence of the Digital Video Disk (DVD) in 1998 offered Egyptian
cinema a rare opportunity to make its classic films available in a format never
seen before. The DVD is not only portable and durable, and has much bet-
ter image quality than the old VHS tape, but it has a unique feature: it can
have up to forty languages in subtitles and eight soundtracks for dubbing
in different languages. This feature alone made digital technology seem like
the panacea the local film industry needed for its distribution and marketing
troubles. However, the local DVD production companies, all private estab-
lishments, had only one objective in sight: profit. This meant that the invest-
ment in film translation protocols, subtitling expertise or subtitler training
programs was not one of their immediate priorities. To be fair, this investment
should have been made a priori by the numerous translation schools in Egypt
as the country began moving into the digital age.
However, most DVD production companies failed to grasp the technical
reality that generalist translators are not necessarily the best film translators.
In Arabic, the word ‘subtitler’ has no equivalent and, like some other lan-
guages, the meaning is expressed as ‘film translator’. The distinction here lies
in the fact that traditional translator training is not geared towards exam-
ining the multimodality of film, where meaning is constructed through the
combined effect of audio and visual media. The deficit in appreciating the
impact the image makes on the text is readily apparent in the translation of
film titles that appear on the DVD covers. Some of the most frequent short-
comings of the DVD industry in Egypt have been with the translation of the
film title, and in the disparity between the title on the DVD cover and that in
the subtitles of the film.
The DVD industry was launched in Egypt within five years of the appear-
ance of American films on DVD. Classics of Egyptian cinema, restored and
remastered, were selected to launch the new product. Omar Sharif’s A Man
in Our House (1961) was the first title in the emerging DVD industry in Egypt
(Gamal 2007). Thereafter, Egyptian classic films began to appear, subtitled in
English and French. However, the nascent industry was soon to realize that its
modus operandi was faulty, as ‘film translators’ do not necessarily make pro-
fessional subtitlers. One of the major requirements in subtitling is to actually
view the film, not just to translate the dialogue list without checking the video.
Naturally, the DVD companies in Egypt resorted to the method of sending
the script to translators in order to cut costs, save time and to produce more
subtitled films. This method resulted in glaring discrepancies between the
film titles translated on the cover and those that appear in the subtitles. For
instance, Omar Sharif’s most popular film Fi baitina rajul is literally trans-
lated A Man in Our House on the DVD cover, but viewers of the DVD read
another version of the film title in the subtitles –A hero under Our Roof –
which confuses the foreign viewer and detracts from the overall quality of
the product. This is not just an anomaly with the very first subtitled DVD to
be produced. It in fact reveals a methodology espoused by the various DVD
production companies of treating subtitling as a form of written translation
where the focus is on the dialogue and without any regard to the visual. The
discrepancy between the translation of the film title on the DVD cover and
the version that appears in the subtitles is a feature that is almost always pre-
sent in Egyptian DVDs, regardless of the DVD production company.
The film translation strategy offered by Chahine in Cairo Station gives
insights into the development of a methodology for the translation of titles
not only in cinema but also in other fields such as literature. Indeed, it is
instructive for the whole of the intricate and difficult genre of translating
proverbs, where a literal translation, despite its significance, is quite often an
under-translation that does not capture the implied meaning. Barnes argues
that ‘[e]‌laborate titles can bring danger’ as she quotes a marketing consultant
with experience working for Miramax, United Artists, and Disney who
believes, ‘You want people to know what they’re getting. But you also want
to leave them wanting to learn more’ (Barnes 2010). As film titles, and par-
ticularly those of recent works, tend to be expressed in the vernacular, a more
creative approach may offer an acceptable solution. However, the addition of
the transliteration of the work, as suggested by Chahine under the transla-
tion, seems to solve the issue of foreignness and give currency to the original
title. At times, a local film needs to be known by its original name, particularly
if it becomes well known abroad and –even more so –if its translation alludes
to another film known in the West.
The translation of film titles is an area that remains under-researched and
therefore requires a great deal of attention by both the translation scholar and
the professional translator. Film titles are both so simple, usually comprising
no more than four words, and yet so intriguing, as the connotative meaning
could be different, and distant, from the denotative. This gives scope to cre-
ative translation, although this area needs a degree of experience in visual
literacy, that is, the ability to appreciate the film language used and the tech-
niques that contribute to the overall meaning in the film. Such experience is
seen as a prerequisite for carrying out translations that are linguistically cor-
rect, culturally acceptable, and pragmatically appropriate. Given the theoret-
ical and practical challenges subtitling raises in Egypt (as mentioned above),
I have previously characterized the status of the DVD industry in Egypt as
‘an industry without a profession’ (Gamal 2007: 85). Later, I argued that
expertise in film literacy could be gained through the examination of non-
verbal communication in Egyptian films (Gamal 2009). I further proposed a
typology of common challenges in subtitling Egyptian films where a trans-
creative approach is required to deal with meaning that is not only expressed
in the Egyptian vernacular but also where the visual has a direct bearing on
the verbal (Gamal 2015). Audiovisual translation in Egypt, and despite the
emerging market, needs an informed theoretical background that is condu-
cive to better teaching and training. Research of audiovisual translation in
Egypt needs to examine the landscape in order to develop its own agenda
and to tackle its local issues and challenges confidently and creatively. This
can only be achieved by examining the field, context, and landscape of audio-
visual translation in the country (Gamal forthcoming).
Conclusion
Film titles, despite their brevity, can often pose a challenge to the subtitler
because of the connotative meaning implied. This usually requires further
explanation, using more words than used in the original. Youssef Chahine
gives the example of adopting a holistic approach to the entire work in a
bid to grasp the meaning of the film. This challenge, however, would seem
trivial when the opposite is the case (i.e., a very long film title) (Barnes 2010).
A recent film by Egyptian director Shadi Ali boasts the longest film title ever
employed in the Egyptian cinema industry When a Man Falls in the Quagmire
of His Thoughts and Ends Up in a Farce (2017). The 11-word Arabic title
was originally intended to be a simple one-word title (Counterattack), but
the producers opted for something different. It remains to be seen how the
film industry, the media, and indeed professional subtitlers will tackle this
unusually long title.
Over the years, I have increasingly been drawn to the field of translating
short texts of very few words. This has been in the field of community trans-
lation in Sydney, where I am required to translate brand names, commercials,
adverts, and information leaflets. Quite often, the translation of a very pithy
slogan or motto requires a great deal of research. This equally applies to the
translation of film titles and indeed to subtitling, a genre of translation that is
severely restricted by the factors of time and space. It is significant to observe
that the earlier work of Basil Hatim was written at a time when audiovisual
translation and the systematic examination of film translation was no more
than an eccentric endeavour (Delabastita 1989). Even Hatim’s work with
Mason on ‘Politeness in Screen Translation’, published as early as 2000, was
equally pioneering, as audiovisual translation was just beginning to receive

academic attention.
References
Abu-Shadi, Ali. 2003. ‘Youssef Chahine: Seeking to Capture Meaning’ (in Arabic).
Jaridat Al Fonoon (p. 23). Kuwait: National Council for Culture, Arts and Literature.
Al-Hadary, Ahmed. 2007. The Most Important 100 Films in Egyptian Cinema (in
Arabic). Alexandria: Library of Alexandria.
Badawi, El-Said. 1973. Levels of Contemporary Arabic in Egypt (in Arabic). Cairo: Dar
Al Maarif.
Barnes, Brooks. 2010. ‘Invasion of the Big, Scary, Long Film Titles’. New York Times,
21 May. Accessed 17 August 2017: www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/movies/22titles.
html.
Delabastita, Dirk. 1989. ‘Translation and Mass- communication: Film and TV
Translation as Evidence of Cultural Dynamics’. Babel 35(4): 193–218.
El-Gamal, Amal. 2014. Egyptian Films at Major International Festivals (in Arabic).
Cairo: Supreme Council of Culture.
Fathi, Sameh. 2014. Poster Art in Egyptian Cinema (in Arabic). Cairo: Sameh Fathi.
Fawzi, Nagy. 2002. Special Readings in the Visuals of Egyptian Cinema (in Arabic).
Cairo: Supreme Council of Culture.
Ferguson, Charles. 1959. ‘Diglossia’. Word 15: 225–245.
Gamal, Muhammad Y. 2007. ‘Audiovisual Translation in the Arab World: A Changing
Scene’. Translation Watch Quarterly 3(2): 78–126.
—— — . 2009. ‘Adding Text to Image: Challenges of Subtitling Non- Verbal
Communication’. Journal of Multicultural Research 1(1): 1–27.
—— — . 2015. ‘Subtitling Naguib Mahfouz’. Translation and Translanguaging
2(1): 186–201.
———. Forthcoming. ‘Audiovisual Translation in the Arab World: The Road Ahead’.
In Sameh Hanna, Hanem El- Farahaty and Abdel-Wahab Khalifa, eds, The
Routledge Handbook of Arabic Translation. London: Routledge.
Hashem, Salah. 2014. Documentary Realism in Arab Narrative Cinema (in Arabic).
Cairo: National Centre for Cinema.
Hatim, Basil, and Ian Mason. 2000. ‘Politeness in Screen Translation’. In Lawrence
Venuti, ed., The Translation Studies Reader (pp. 430–445). London: Routledge.
Hayward, Susan. 2000. Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
Karney, Robyn, ed. 2001. Cinema Year by Year: 1894–2001. London: DK Books.
Mera, Miguel. 1999. ‘Read My Lips: Re- Evaluating Subtitling and Dubbing in
Europe’. Links & Letters 6: 73–85.
Monaco, James. 2000. How to Read a Film: Movies, Media and Multimedia.
Oaster, Brian. 2017. ‘The Best and Worst of Movie Title Translations’. Day
Translations, 3 August. Accessed 17 August 2017: www.daytranslations.com/blog/
2017/08/movie-title-translations-9532.
Phillips, William H. 2002. Film: An Introduction (2nd ed.). Boston: Bedford/ St.
Martin’s.
Qassem, Mahmoud. 2002. Guide to Films in the Twentieth Century: In Egypt and the
Arab World (in Arabic). Cairo: Madbooli Bookshop.
Salmawy, Seif. 2005. Film Posters in Egyptian Cinema (in Arabic). Cairo: Dar Al
Shorouk.
Schneider, Steven, ed. 2003. 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die. London: Quintet.
Shawky, Soad. 2004. The Cinema of Youssef Chahine (in Arabic). Horizons of Cinema
Series #40. Cairo: General Organization of Culture Palaces.
Telling, Marie. 2014. ‘26 Hilarious Titles of Hollywood Movies in France’. Buzzfeed,
7 January. Accessed 17 August 2017: www.buzzfeed.com/marietelling/26-hilarious-
titles-of-hollywood-movies-in-france?utm_term=.blmMyVkDg#.gfzZkq10J.
Waly, Amru. 2017. ‘Ali Me’zza and We’ aren’t facing Disaster: Unusual Film
Titles: Hint of the Content or Just Attracting Audiences? Let’s Open the Debate’ (in
Arabic). Al Hilal al Youm, 24 April. Accessed 17 August 2017: http://alhilalalyoum.
com/news/68942/24–4-2017/.
Filmography
Papa Amin, Youssef Chahine, 1950.
The Blazing Sun, Youssef Chahine, 1954.
Dark Waters, Youssef Chahine, 1956.
Cairo Station, Youssef Chahine, 1958.
Struggle on the Nile, Atef Salem, 1959.
A Man in Our House, Henry Barakat, 1961.
Hasan and Morcos, Ramy Imam, 2008.
When a Man Falls in the Quagmire of His Thoughts and Ends Up in a Farce, Shadi
Ali, 2017.
Chapter 10
Strategic media misrepresentation

and the Arab–Israeli conflict
Rajai Al-Khanji
Introduction
Particularly in conflict zones, language is used to promote certain views,
whether positive or negative, and to reinforce a certain ideology. This is the
power of language used to shape public opinion, as Reah (2002: 53) puts it:
Language can be a powerful tool. It is, perhaps, at its most powerful when
its role in presenting the world to an audience is not explicit; in other
words, it is easy to resist a particular viewpoint or ideology when you
know it is being presented to you, but not so easy to resist when the view-
point or ideology is concealed.
This concealing of realities allows producers of information as texts to

manipulate receivers through misrepresentations (Hatim 1997, 2001;
Tymoczko 2010). Here, misrepresentations are similar to mistranslations,
whereby source texts (source realities and images) are mistranslated to influ-
ence particular audiences. This is usually achieved through manipulations of
language (what Hatim and Mason 1990 label ‘situation managing’) to provide
favourable images (representations) of one party/side of a conflict vis-à-vis
the other party/side.
In this context, the concept of representation, which is often used to
examine translation, is quite relevant for our purpose. Representation refers
to ‘a statement or an account intended to convey a particular viewpoint to
influence opinions’ (Tymoczko 2010: 112), and usually achieved through
textual manipulations that shape opinion and promote certain ideological or
political contestations for an audience. Textual manipulation strategies may
include additions, deletions, message avoidance, among others. SC and its
related promotion strategies as employed in Hasbara by Luntz (2009) have
the same ultimate aim. The terms ‘communication strategies’ or ‘promotion
strategies’ are used here to describe the type of strategic communications uti-
lized in media framing. Such strategies rely mainly on the concept of ‘spin’, or
on the way information is framed to favour one particular interpretation, with
the aim of conditioning the views and attitudes of the audience.
Strategic media misrepresentation 201
As stated above, the data samples used in this chapter are taken from in
the Hasbara 2009 Global Language Dictionary produced by Frank Luntz.
The word ‘Hasbara’ means in Hebrew ‘explanation’. It is a euphemistic term
for propaganda. Its main aims are public-relations efforts for promoting the
Israeli government by creating a positive image in the face of negative mass
media that attempts to delegitimize the state.
The document is meant for distribution to only opinion-forming Zionists,
especially in America. The aim of this document (guide), is to provide instruc-
tions on how to employ persuasive language that can generate positive images
(representations) of views of Israel, even if such images are misrepresentations
of Palestinians, for example. As such, the document informs ‘visionary’ lead-
ers of the mass media, at the front line of Israel’s media war (Luntz (2009: 3).
It states that it ‘is written in English specifically for English-speaking individ-
uals (advocates for Israel in America and Europe) who can influence world
opinion, especially the LEFT (not the conservatives) who see a world where
basically all people are good’.
For Luntz, the justification for writing this document is that Israel finds
itself the victim of attacks from enemies in the Middle East and has suf-
fered from negative attitudes, mostly in Europe and North America, where
Palestinians have been seen in more favourable terms. So, to him, the hearts
and minds of mostly English-speaking audiences need to be won in favour
of Israel, even if information is misrepresented through ‘strategic communi-
cations’. So, the aim of this chapter is to explore the strategies used in The
Hasbara Document with the ultimate aim of achieving specific effects on par-
ticular audiences. The analysis of 20 excerpts demonstrates how media leaders
are asked to alter language used by Arabs and/or Palestinians for the purpose
of propaganda and deception, especially in the American mass media, to
frame Israel in favourable and positive ways. The analysis is informed critical
discourse analysis (CDA). CDA not only allows a deeper level of understand-
ing of a certain text in context, but also offers an explanation of how and why
a text producer creates a specific effect to promote or to demote a particular
ideology, concept, or issue. Furthermore, CDA brings to the fore the power
dynamics between users of discourse (language), an issue that is pivotal in
how the media is positioned to serve a particular ideological purpose in a
conflict context like the Arab–Israeli conflict.
For its usefulness in exploring media and (mis)representations of realities,
mostly political in the case of the Arab-Israeli conflict, CDA is used here to
try to detect the underlying meanings of textual structures employed in The
Hasbara Document such as particular word choices, falsifications, decontex-
tualizations, and prejudice.
Promotion strategies
The term ‘promotion strategies’ is used here to refer to a plan to achieve
specific goals. For example, in the business world, an organization follows a
202 Rajai Al-Khanji
strategy for a reason, such as cutting costs, workforce reduction, and so forth.
In communication and media, the following are classic definitions found in
the literature in this respect:
• A systematic technique employed by a speaker to express his meaning

when faced with some difficulty (Corder 1978: 80).
•• A mutual attempt of two interlocutors to agree on a meaning in situations
where requisite meaning structures are not shared (Tarone 1980: 420).
• Potentially conscious plans for solving what to an individual presents
itself as a problem in reaching a particular communicative goal (Farerch
and Kasper 1983: 213).
From The Hasbara Document, Luntz (2009: 18), outlines the use of strategic
communications: ‘[T]‌ogether, we can use strategic communications to make
Israel and all Jews safer and more secure’. This outcome needs careful lin-
guistic and communicative planning, mostly by pointing to the causes that
deny Israel and Jews safety and security.
As a framework, strategic communications almost encompasses what
is meant by the concept of ‘representation’ to frame communication and
translation, for example, and whereby communication and translation are
seen as representations (images that are transmitted through discursive
strategies and tools), and miscommunication and mistranslation are mis-
representations (altered images and realities transmitted through discursive
strategies and tools). For Tymoczko (2010:112), representation is ‘a state-
ment intended to convey a particular aspect of a subject so as to influence its
receptors’. In The Hasbara Document, for example, the major slogan Luntz
(2009: 3) uses in the introduction is, ‘And remember it’s what you say that
counts. It’s what people hear. Use words that work, not words that don’t
work’. This slogan clearly urges media leaders to select effective language to
slant discourse in a specific direction with the aim of representing issues and
situations in favour of Israel and to influence audiences accordingly.
In this chapter, promotion strategies used in The Hasbara Document are
explored through the analysis of 20 excerpts. Five major promotion strategy
types are adopted in The Hasbara Document, namely appeal for empathy,
semantic contiguity, repetition, message avoidance, and euphemism. They are
all employed to manipulate texts to serve a particular ideology, in this case the
Israeli, and that shapes political statements about the Arab–Israeli conflict.
Analysis: Promotion strategies and their contexts

The Hasbara Document
The data analysed here consist of 20 excerpts taken from The Hasbara
Document. As pointed out above, this document is used by opinion-forming
individuals and organizations to project a positive view of Israel, but most
importantly in language that justifies Israeli policy towards Palestinians,

including waging wars, building settlements, legitimizing military occupation,
killing and expelling indigenous populations, and erecting concrete walls
inside confiscated Palestinian lands.
The 116-page document consists of 18 chapters and 4 appendices. According
to its author, Luntz (2009: 2), all the material in this document is ‘new or
updated and based on research conducted in 2008 and 2009’. Using the stra-
tegic communications approach, Luntz states in the preface: ‘And remember,
it’s not what you say that counts. It’s what people hear’. It is clear that the
document is meant to shape global opinion and perceptions of Israel through
trained foreign-service officials. According to Luntz (2009: 3) Mizrahi, the
founder and president of the document project, is quoted as saying in the
preface: ‘Visionary leaders fighting the media war for Israel: we want you to
succeed in winning the hearts and minds of the public’. Given the volatility
and contested history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, this document aims to pro-
mote particularly positive representations (images/translations) of one side
of the conflict, namely Israel, even if this requires misrepresentation (altered
images/mistranslations) of the other side, namely the Palestinians.
Strategies adopted in The Hasbara Document

As stated, there are five major types of promotion strategy adopted in The
Hasbara Document: appeal for empathy; semantic contiguity; repetition; mes-
sage avoidance; and euphemism.
Appeal for empathy

Through this strategy, Israeli politicians are asked to project their own per-
sonalities onto the ‘other’, Palestinians, in order to pretend to understand
them better. It is a strategy meant to reach beyond the self to understand what
others feel. The following excerpts reflect this strategy in the first chapter of
the document as rule number one:
(1) Persuadables won’t care how much you know until they know how much
you care, show empathy for both sides.
(2) Even the toughest questions can be turned around if you are willing to
accept the notion that the other side has at least some validity. The tough-
est issue to communicate will be the final resolution of Jerusalem.
(3) A final solution for Jerusalem is probably the hardest issue of all to nego-
tiate. Let’s save it for last, in order to keep the rest of the peace process
moving. Israel is committed to a better future for everyone –Israelis and
Palestinians alike. Israel wants the pain and the suffering to end and is
committed to working with the Palestinians toward a peaceful, diplo-
matic solution where both sides can have a better future.
204 Rajai Al-Khanji
(4) The most effective way to build support for Israel is to talk about ‘work-
ing toward a lasting peace that respects the rights of everyone in the
region’. (4–7).
The way the information is presented in the excerpts above clearly shows an
explicit directive to deception embodied in these political statements. The
deception resorted to here is a kind of strategic communications to achieve
certain positive effects in the hearer. These statements are in obvious viola-
tion of Grice’s maxims (1975) in relation to the truth factor (the cooperative
principle for speaking) in explaining the meaning of what is said. In other
words, it takes no time, knowing the context of the discourse, for an informed
hearer/audience to understand, not necessarily through ‘implicature’, that the
utterances above are directives to engage in deception, through a pretence of
empathy.
With regard to the excerpt (1), the term ‘persuadable’ refers to those who
might still be undecided or who have not yet taken a position to support Israel.
The first rule stated in the document explicitly calls for avowals of empathy
in order to communicate effectively in support of Israel. It is noteworthy that
the word ‘both’ is stressed, as is the selection of the passive structure modality
in using the verb ‘turned around’ in example (2), ‘the toughest questions can
be turned around’. In this way, the text producer presents the information
with an ideological slant imposed on both the reader and listener.
As for example (3), it presents an ideology that is emotionally charged
by resorting to expressions such as ‘a better future for both’, ‘the pain and
suffering’, and ‘peaceful, diplomatic solution’. The intended effect of these
emotional expressions is to convince readers and recipients of these messages
about certain desirable and noble concepts in order to rally public opinion
behind what is being said. In fact, Palestinians suffer daily indignities and
humiliation in the simple processes of going about their lives, such as hav-
ing to go through Israeli military checkpoints when they need to move from
one place to another. Spinning and staging of media in this type of appeal is
meant to justify the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and to deny the right of
return for the Palestinians.
The language used through this strategy gives the impression that Israelis
and Palestinians have a symmetrical discursive relation, when in fact this is
contrary to what we know. Atawneh (2011: 113), discussing the Israeli media’s
‘spinning’ in news reporting, argues that ‘governments often make demands
on the media to serve their national interests. They classify information and
withhold access. They stage media events, frame the issues and articulate posi-
tions that are, in essence, pure propaganda’. Moreover, based on the loaded
language of the excerpts above, anyone who is familiar with the context of
the conflict in the Middle East will have no problem instantly answering the
questions: How much do the Israeli war leaders care about the plight of the
Palestinians under occupation with regard to peace with an occupier, and
also regarding the pain and the suffering of the occupied people? Schechter
(2003: 163), who talks about media war at a time of terror, says that ‘report-
ing the news of the Israeli occupation has never been fair’, even though ‘Israel
is one of the top countries regularly reported in the media. It features high
on the international news list of the major television channels in the United
States and the United Kingdom’.
Notice, finally, that in excerpt (4), the strategy of an appeal for empathy
does not explicitly mention either Israel or the Palestinians: ‘to respect the
rights of everyone in the region’. The word ‘everyone’ was deliberately chosen
to exclude the reference to Palestinians in this example, implying equality
between the various parties, even though one is a powerful occupier and the
other is occupied and dominated. It is obvious, therefore, that an appeal for
empathy expressed through the power of the media language in this text can
have some positive international effects on a misinformed audience, leading it
to believe such a propagandist discourse.
Semantic contiguity
According to Bialystok (1983: 106), semantic contiguity is defined as ‘the use of
a single lexical item that shares certain semantic features with the target item’. In
such cases, the language user employs text structures that are close to each other
in sharing common features or common values. For example, in this strategy,
speakers resort to comparison and contrast when they talk positively about
themselves or when they talk negatively about the ‘others’. In other words, the
strategy is used in order to personalize the conflict for the Western audience
by drawing parallels between positive or negative concepts or values shared
between countries. This kind of parallelism can consequently win the sympathy
of public opinion. In the following examples, a comparison of positive values
is made to show contiguity or similarities between Israel and America (10–11).
(5) The language of Israel is the language of America: ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’,

‘security’, and ‘peace’. These four words are the core of the American pol-
itical, economic, social, and cultural systems, and they should be repeated
as often as possible because they resonate with virtually every American.
(6) Israel, America’s ally, is a democracy in the Middle East. Draw direct
parallels between Israel and America –including the need to defend
against terrorism. The more you focus on the similarity between Israel
and America, the more you are likely to win the support of those who
are neutral. Americans overwhelmingly want Israel to be in charge of
the religious holy sites and are frankly afraid of the consequences should
Israel turn over control to the Palestinians.
As can be seen from these two excerpts, this kind of language may help the
American audience to identify with the conflict and to feel the threat of a
206 Rajai Al-Khanji
common enemy. This is expected of Israeli diplomats and pro-Israel media

practitioners. It is another kind of ‘spinning’ and framing to ‘win more
points’ in support of Israel. The semantic contiguity of Israel and America is
described in terms of positive values shared between the two countries. One
may wonder if the four key words in example (5) are applicable equally to
everyone, including Israeli Arabs living in the old occupied territories. To an
audience informed about the Middle East conflict, the claims in the examples
above about Israeli values are clearly misleading when one considers them
against Israel’s treatment of both Israeli Arabs and the Palestinians under
occupation. The propagandizing of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict by claim-
ing to have positive values is also described by Said (2001: 2) as ‘misinfor-
mation’. Said argues that this kind of misinformation is ‘a double standard
propaganda’ with the intention of covering up the criminal actions, especially
killing people unjustly, with the mask of justification and reasoning labelled
as the ‘war on terror’. We notice this label again in (6) when the writer of the
document uses the cliché of ‘the need to defend [Israel and America] against
terrorism’.
The semantic contiguity strategy can also be used in a negative contrast
between the two sides to show a significant discrepancy, such as in the follow-
ing examples taken from the document (12–13):
(7) In contrast to those in the Middle East who indoctrinate their children to
become hate-mongers and suicide bombers, Israel educates their children
to strive for progress, and peace.
(8) Clearly differentiate between the Palestinian people and Hamas. If it
sounds like you are attacking the Palestinian people (even though they
elected Hamas) rather than their leadership, you will lose public support.
Example (7) draws a sharp distinction between a negative stereotype of all

other countries of the Middle East and Israel in terms of positive and nega-
tive values. It is a contrast between the good people in the Middle East (i.e.,
Israel) and the bad ones (i.e., Arabs, Muslims, and the Palestinians). The text
is an explicit discriminatory statement that embeds prejudices. The accusa-
tions are stated clearly, and there is no need to infer the bias embodied in
these lines. This type of hate discourse is by no means an example of an impli-
cature that requires a broad context for analysis, interpretation, or investi-
gation. It is a discourse of superiority, a discourse that glorifies Israel and
demonizes all ‘those in the Middle East’. Explaining the Israeli discourse,
Atawneh (2011: 120–121) says, ‘The Israeli leader’s discourses of superiority
and of being better than others in leadership, intelligence, vision and political
perspectives have been linked to the arrogance of Orientalism, a term coined
by Said (1978). This ideology of superiority on the part of the leadership
disallows any spirit of reconciliation or peace’. In fact, Atawneh concludes
that the rift between the Israelis and the Palestinians is increasing every day,
and hope for peace is being lost in spite of some weak voices in Israel that
are against war. He also cites numerous examples of boasting by well-known
Israeli leaders who dehumanize Palestinians. A question to ask here is: How
then can one trust ‘the commitment to working with the Palestinians toward
a peaceful, diplomatic solution where both sides can have a better future’, as
is claimed in The Hasbara Document? It is, therefore, a sheer contradiction
between what is said and what is actually practised on the ground.
Example (8) above is another negative contrast between Palestinians and
their leadership. This distinction is made merely to avoid losing public sup-
port for Israel. The contrastive statement in this excerpt condemns both (i.e.,
the Palestinian people and their leadership, who are both under fire). They are
both to blame for electing Hamas. In this connection, Atawneh (2011: 126–
127) also explains why Hamas was elected by some Palestinians.
Actually, seeing peace never materialized with never-ending negotiations,

the public voted for Hamas, the resistance movement, whose leadership
led an ideology of freeing all Palestinians and no more believing in futile
peace negotiations. Therefore, the public has given support for such
movement though the consequences have been more suffering and kill-
ing under the Israeli attacks against what they claim as terrorists hiding
among civilians.
Atawneh argues that the resistance movement of Hamas is fighting an occu-

pation, and that their leaders think resisting occupation gives them legitimate
grounds for fighting. He concludes that ‘there are two extremes here: the
Israelis on one side wanting all the land by force, and the resistance on
the other by wanting all the land based on religious ideology. The Israelis
have the power to control and kill and evict people refusing to share the land’.
Finally, it is noticed that excerpt (8) makes use of the conditional structure
(If…then…). It is used to fulfil the function of ‘warning’, that is, to avoid los-
ing public support for Israel. In fact, this structure is overused in The Hasbara
Document, and quite often also in other media framing statements for another
function, ‘promising’, such as ‘if Hamas reforms’, ‘if Hamas renounces ter-
rorism’, ‘if Hamas supports international peace agreements’ (20). The choice
of this conditional structure is clearly used in order to ‘put the burden’ on
the other side, and to justify the constant military attacks on the Palestinian
people. Israeli diplomats are, therefore, instructed to follow this pattern of
misinformation when addressing the Western media.
Repetition
A point clearly emphasized throughout the document is that repeating spe-
cific keywords and phrases may help pro-Israel spokespeople to build cred-
ibility. Luntz (2009: 13) emphasizes the value of the repetition strategy. Thus,
208 Rajai Al-Khanji
‘A simple rule of thumb is that once you get to the point of repeating the
same message over and over again so many times that you think you might
get sick –that is just about the time the public will wake up and say: ‘Hey –
this person just might be saying something interesting to me!’. This strategy
is employed in an instructive tone because repetition may facilitate more effi-
cient learning. The following are some examples of the many found on almost
every page of the document:
(9) Stop. Stop. Stop. … There is one aspect of Palestinian behaviour that
you have every right to demand an end –and will win points by doing
so. And so we ask the Palestinians to stop using the language of incite-
ment. Stop using the language of violence. Stop using the language of
threats (8).
(10) Remind people –again and again that Israel wants peace. Every time
someone makes the plea for peace, the reaction is positive. The speaker
that is perceived as being most for PEACE will win the debate. If you
want to regain the public relations advantage, peace should be the core
of whatever message you wish to convey (8–9).
(11) Read from the Hamas Charter. Don’t just ‘quote’ from it. Read it. Out
loud again and again. Draw arrows to the most offensive parts. Give
time to anti-Israeli activists to digest the words and meaning (33).
(12) Continually establish the connection between Iran and ‘Iran-backed
Hamas’, and ‘Iran-backed Hezbollah’. Doing so will help you continu-
ally remind the audience of the threat presented by Iran –a reminder
they need. And the audience will be receptive to the connection (37–38).
(13) Renew your commitment to peace even in spite of continued deliberate
rocket attacks. Remind people –again and again –that Israel wants
peace (50).
As the excerpts above show, repeating certain utterances is possibly one of the
most frequently used strategies. In fact, Luntz (2009) states in chapter 1 that
‘This manual will provide you with many specific words and phrases to help
you communicate effectively in support of Israel’ (4).
Excerpt (9) comes under a subheading (in capital letters), ‘WORDS THAT
WORK’. The word ‘Stop’ is repeated three times as a slogan in this example,
and it is directed at both the American and the European audiences. Audiences
who are described as sophisticated, educated, and opinionated think that
Israelis are often seen as the occupiers and the aggressors (8). Moreover, this
excerpt makes use of the repeated word ‘stop’ to describe Palestinian behav-
iour. One may wonder to whom this description is more applicable: Israeli
behaviour, or that of the other side? In fact, the ‘sophisticated’ and ‘educated
audience’ that is well-informed on the conflict can easily answer this question.
One can also observe in excerpts (10) and (13) a further repetition of the
word ‘peace’, which is a key-word. It is a word that gives hope. Peace here
is the opposite of what the ‘other’ side, the Palestinians, do from an Israeli
point of view. It is peace versus terror, an emotionally loaded language of the
media. It is meant to deceive recipients or readers by leading them to believe
in this hopeful and optimistic lexical item, that is, ‘peace’, in contrast with
terrorism. It is a type of dichotomy that is often used in the document to
explain the positive aspects of the Israelis versus those negative ones among
the Palestinians. Moreover, it is a dichotomy between the powerful and the
powerless, the civilized versus the barbaric, and the good versus the evil. The
appeal for peace on the Israeli side is thus contrasted with the Palestinian
threat to peace. However, Atawneh (2009), analysing media discourse during
the second Palestinian Intifada, finds that Israelis used many more threats,
being the more powerful side in the conflict, while Palestinians used many
more appeals, as would be expected given their relative powerlessness in the
situation. In contrast to these findings, however, we discover the opposite
trend in the document. Pro-Israeli spokespeople are, in the document, urged
repeatedly to resort to ‘appeals’ rather than to ‘threats’.
The redefinition of terrorism by both the United States and Israel follow-
ing the September 11 attacks on America targeted Middle Eastern coun-
tries. Excerpts (11) and (12) above aim to connect both the Palestinians and
Hezbollah to Iran. This can be considered a form of hate speech that attempts
to justify war against the redefined notion of terrorism. Therefore, any Israeli
military action against Palestinians, as repeatedly described in the document,
is mentioned through two adjectives: ‘defensive’ and ‘preventive’. The broader
context of this redefinition is well expressed and confessed in the document,
which literally ‘[t]‌hanks 9/11 and the continuing threat of terrorism’ (77). The
meaning of this statement is clear: Take advantage of this lucky event (which
is supposed to be tragic) in favour of Israel to kill people, as this can easily
justify Israel’s right for legitimate, defensive and preventive military actions.
Taking advantage of the 9/11 events is, therefore, a strategic plan employed
to serve the ideology of the more powerful side of the conflict. Consequently,
the strategy may be well received through the mainstream media, since Israel
maintains a hegemonic position in disseminating misinformation and its
ability to portray possibly a one-sided picture of such news to an audience
that may not be able to perceive a true picture of reality.
Message avoidance
This strategy is usually employed when Israeli diplomats are asked to make a
deliberate attempt not to mention or speak about certain topics or messages
that are considered to be harmful. Specific words and expressions that are
likely to damage its positive image are avoided completely (misrepresenta-
tion). Restricting communication to other more positive utterances that are
prescribed for usage both lexically and semantically is often recommended as
an alternative strategy (foregrounding, i.e., emphasising certain expressions
210 Rajai Al-Khanji
and backgrounding, i.e., ignoring and playing down other expressions). The
following are some examples:
(14) Don’t talk about religion. Some of those who are most likely to believe
that Israel is a religious state are most hostile towards Israel (‘they’re
just as extreme as those religious Arab countries they criticize’).
Unfortunately, virtually any discussion of religion will only reinforce
this perception (12).
(15) There are three arguments involving settlements that you should not
make, according to the document:
A. The religious argument: Quoting from the bible in defence of the
current settlements will have absolutely the opposite impact.
B. The ownership argument: To claim that Israel ‘owns’ the land that
the settlements are on will cause most listeners to reject everything
else you say. We have to accept that settlements are ‘disputed terri-
tory’, when they (Palestinians) say ‘occupied territory’.
C. The scapegoat argument: Claiming that Palestinians and other Arab
groups are using the settlement issue to gain political advantage may
be correct, but it does nothing to legitimize Israel policy (64).
Examples (14) and (15) refer to a taboo language that must be avoided in
political discourse about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. It is all about sensi-
tive words connected to religion, such as a ‘Jewish state’ or a ‘Zionist state’.
Such words generally cause a negative reaction in the media (the exceptions,
of course, are Orthodox Jewish and Evangelical Christian communities who
are supportive of Israel). A more neutral label to use is ‘disputed territory’,
instead of ‘occupied territory’. The controversy over the religious issue could
be attributed to the fact that Jewish immigrants from all over the world are
accepted, but others who are non-Jewish, such as Christians and Muslims,
are denied. Another related taboo expression is the ‘right of return’ for
Palestinian people who were displaced by the establishment of the State of
Israel in 1948 and then following the Six-Day War of 1967. Luntz (2009)
claims, for example, ‘we cannot allow [the phrase “right of return”] to enter
the opinion leader lexicon. He further adds that whenever “right of return”
is raised, we must immediately respond with “No, you are talking about the
right of confiscation” ’ (75). Therefore, as far as the occupied territories are
concerned, Palestinians’ right of return must be changed to ‘right of confis-
cation’. In other words, the author attempts to show whose private property
is confiscated.
It is beyond the scope of this chapter to give a historical background to the
Palestinian land confiscation, or rather occupation. Nevertheless, discussions
about the historical perspective are, unfortunately, usually avoided. They are
sidestepped by controlling the media discourse and through avoiding the use
of taboo terminology (as shown above) which may damage the ‘peaceful’
image Israel tries to project in the world. It may also undermine the peace
processes from an Israeli perspective. The following excerpt clearly explains
this point:
(16) Talk about the future, not the past. At worst, if you spend your com-
munications capital (time and money) on history lessons of who got
the land, when and who promised what to whom, it will be viewed by
Americans and Europeans as a game of ‘got you’ and not a vision for a
better future. (13)
The statement above calls for avoiding talking about the history of the land
because it is difficult to make a case in support of Israel. In fact, as the docu-
ment admits, ‘the right of return is a tough issue for Israelis to communicate
effectively’ (76), and historical facts can fatally undermine their argument.
Peterson (2016: 105) correctly explains how the absence of important histor-
ical content about Palestine is a regular feature of the distorted US media
coverage of the issue, and argues that this is achieved through ‘a strategy of
omission’, often applied by the Israeli political discourse in order to refashion
and misrepresent realities of the region.
The last example considered in this section relates to the call to avoid using
certain linguistic lexical items:
(17) Never, never, never speak in declarative statements. Never. So every time
you say ‘every’, ‘totally’, ‘always’, ‘never’, or the like, the reaction is
immediate and negative. Soften the tone just a little bit and you’ll keep
them tuned in. (16)
The words to avoid in excerpt (17) can, in general, create an effective com-
munications strategy for credibility purposes. Therefore, the document cites
a political statement that did not work. Notice how the adverb ‘totally’ must
not be used, as in the following example:
‘Those who think that the conflict is driven by an Israeli desire to hold
onto territories are totally wrong’. (17)
All the excerpts above are used in an instructive language that tells pro-Israel
media leaders what to avoid and what to say in an alternative terminology.
Euphemism
Another strategy that is largely responsible for creating spinning and influen-
cing public opinion is euphemism. It is one way of covering facts by framing
the propositional content of offensive expressions with the result that infor-
mation is presented in a vastly different and favourable manner. For example,
212 Rajai Al-Khanji
the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) is itself a euphemism (using it instead of

‘army’). In this case, a negative label for the same institution indicates a differ-
ent ideological position toward the agent, a position that leads both readers
and listeners to construct a positive opinion.
The following are some euphemisms prescribed in The Hasbara Document.
(18) Using ‘a security fence’ instead of ‘an apartheid wall’ or ‘separation

wall’. (69)
A special chapter in the document is devoted to what is called, euphemis-

tically, the ‘security fence’. The argument to justify it is that it is a ‘temporary’
wall used in order to achieve safety and peace for everyone in the region. This
is, in fact, like saying ‘good fences make good neighbours’. Moreover, the
document instructs pro-Israeli media leaders to keep using rhetorical ques-
tions to support building the fence: ‘What would we do in America if our
neighbours shot rockets at us?’, ‘What would you do?’, ‘What is Israel to do?’
The argument proceeds to explain that the purpose of the fence is to save
lives, but not to add land. However, as we know, Palestinians describe the
fence in the way it affects their lives as ‘an apartheid wall’ and ‘a separation
wall’, reminding them of the ‘Berlin Wall’. It is simply segregation, a lack of
freedom, and huge physical restrictions negatively affecting their daily lives
when moving from one area to another in their own homeland.
The wider context necessary to understand the discourse of euphemism
regarding the ‘security fence’ needs to be explained. The decontextualization
of information regarding the deliberate choice of certain lexical items, and
the intentional avoiding of other words or phrases, calls for critical analysis to
interpret the outward and the underlying intentions of such expressions, espe-
cially in media propaganda. Knowing the context within which pro-Israeli
media supporters operate leads to a better understanding of the discourse
used in this analytic process. Excerpt (18), for example, is about erecting a
concrete wall in 2002 inside the occupied Palestinian territories. The wall iso-
lated families, schools, and businesses, and this caused them to live in enclosed
areas, requiring them to get a permit to pass through gates when moving from
one place to another. It should be added that this separation wall was found
to be illegal, according to the International Court of Justice ruling of 2004
(see Sabra 2011 for more details on this issue).
The following are further examples of euphemistic options recommended
to Israeli diplomats:
(19) ‘Hamas deliberately firing rockets into civilian communities’ instead of,
‘Hamas is randomly rocketing Israel’. (51)
This is an example of hate speech that incites hatred against the targeted
group, Hamas. It is also an example of ‘negative euphemism’ or ‘pejoration’,
which involves using offensive lexical items instead of mild ones. The pejora-
tive statement in this excerpt prescribes using the adjective ‘deliberate’, a more
powerful word than ‘random’ attacks. Notice also the choice of the phrase
‘civilian communities’, employed to win the sympathy of both listeners and
readers.
The wider context in which to interpret the discourse of war used by both
Hamas and the Israelis in this situation is to claim that a small number of
Hamas fighters have used violence to resist Israeli occupation and the Gaza
blockade imposed on the strip. However, it is a known fact that the majority of
the Palestinians who belong to the peace camp negotiate regularly with Israeli
leaders for peace. The irony here is that both Hamas and the other Palestinian
majority are wrongly portrayed as enemies. One recalls the Israeli war on the
Gaza Strip on 26 December 2008, a massive invasion that resulted in about a
thousand Palestinian deaths, with more than 400 injured in addition to dev-
astating damage to buildings, houses, schools and the hospitals. That was
reported by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, which also added that the Israeli side
lost only ten soldiers and four civilians (Sabra 2011). Finally, the question that
may arise here is: If individuals from Hamas are violent or terrorists, what type
of term can one use to describe the Zionist organization, Hagenah (Hebrew for
‘the defence’)? This organization killed both British soldiers and Palestinians in
1948 and destroyed about 350 Palestinian villages in various parts of Palestine.
The answer to this question is beyond the scope of the discussion.
The following is another example of the euphemism strategy in which diplo-
mats are instructed to use certain specific expressions and avoid other words:
(20) Using ‘Militant Islam’ instead of ‘Islamic Fascism’.
The euphemistic strategy in this example is employed to avoid an offensive

phrase such as ‘Islamic Fascism’, already used by President George W. Bush
and now by Trump. Bush, the former American president, used it to describe
terrorist movements, a mischaracterization of the religion that was regularly
made by the top government official, especially after 9/11. Instead, the use of
‘militant Islam’ by Israeli opinion makers through American television news,
journals, and talk show radio, can give a positive perception that Israel is not
as tough on the religion as others, nor is it religiously biased.
Ultimately, the aim is to gain support for Israel in the United States. On
contemporary discourse on Palestine in the American news media, Peterson
(2016: 96) explores the major factors that negatively influence the American
audience. First, very few in the ‘media-consuming public’ have enough infor-
mation resources to broaden views about Palestine and Palestinians; second,
Palestine is ‘too distant for most individuals to feel capable of questioning’,
accepting or rejecting news reports; and, third, domestic and international
media sources about Palestine have ‘not been encouraged in the contemporary
United States’. Such factors may indeed create the prerequisite vacuum for
214 Rajai Al-Khanji
media outlets adopting the Hasbara strategies/instructions to heavily influ-

ence public opinion in the United States. In this connection, Christison
(1999: 97) rightly stipulates that, ‘in interpreting Palestine-Israel, individuals
are isolated from the formation of alternative, non-Israeli-centred frames of
knowledge and are therefore hindered in their practical construction of pol-
itical and social realities’.
Conclusion
The power of language identified by Reah (2002) makes it readily applicable
to the analysis carried out in this study. It is, therefore, the choice or selec-
tion of words and expressions that count in ‘framing’ media. To establish an
effective ideological stance in a text, there is then a need to use a powerful
tool, namely language and word choices affected in it. Kent et al. (2011: 2017)
quote Kenneth Burke, who argued that, ‘Every selection of speech is also a
deselection: we say “this” instead of “that”; we offer descriptions with “these”
terms instead of “those”. Each selection accomplishes a certain depiction of
reality, and also a deflection of reality’ (217). The discourse of Israel in media
language employed some types of promotion strategies that carried selected
linguistic and discursive devices in an attempt to connect with and persuade
the target audience about a one-sided image/representation of the situation in
the Middle East. Such strategies aim at softening anti-Israeli sentiments and
also at winning new converts or persuadables so that they will be at least silent
and neutral, and at best be made supporters. The five types of promotion
strategies employed in The Hasbara Document aim at humanizing the con-
flict, appealing to mutual well-being and prosperity on both sides, and reiter-
ating the call for peace. Moreover, wider situational and extra-situational
contexts were provided in order to explain the underlying political stances of
these claims, which help in shaping and altering international public opinion.
Critical discourse analysis is a helpful framework in exploring such strategies
of an underlying propaganda, and where the aim, as Paltridge (2010: 183)
argues is ‘to unpack what people say and do in their use of discourse in rela-
tion to their views of the world, themselves and relations with each other’.
The excerpts analysed in this chapter indicate how the author of The Hasbara
Document has manged to create a particular pro-Israeli effect. Given the state
of affairs of media in the United States, in particular, vis-à-vis the Arab-
Israeli conflict, misinformations seem to be the norm in feeding the American
public opinion news reports that are pro-Israel, and at the same time down-
play any issues, news, or events that can negatively impact on the image of
Israel in the United States.
Ghareeb (1977: 15), for example, says that ‘many in the American media
are guilty of accepting terminology coined by the Israelis. This is a highly
effective device for influencing opinions’. Along a similar line of argument,
Christison (1999: 96) argues that the American news media definition of the
conflict is ‘for the most part Israeli-centred, approaching the conflict gener-
ally from an Israeli perspective and seldom recognizing the existence of the
legitimacy of a Palestinian perspective’.
The Hasbara excerpts analysed here point to these conclusions. How to
redress this imbalance in representations of the Arab-Israeli conflict? Would
a Palestinian Hasbara, for example, counter Luntz’s?
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Index
Note: Page references in italics refer to Figures. Page references in bold refer to Tables.
Alcaraz, Enrique 115–16, 122, 127 obligation-oriented modality markers

allusive meaning 137–39, 138, 145–46 165–66; obligation-oriented modality
American constitution. see English markers (action obligations) 166–67;
modality markers in legal and obligation-oriented modality markers
constitutional discourse (conditional obligations) 169–70;
Arab-Israeli conflict. see Hasbara obligation-oriented modality markers
Document (Luntz) (duty obligations) 167–69; prohibition
Arabic: Arabic-French translators career and 172; prohibition and (action
trajectory and translation choices prohibitions) 172–73; prohibition and
31–40; associative meaning in classical (stative prohibitions) 174–75 see also
139–41; attitudinal meaning and 142; English modality markers in legal and
collocative meaning and 150–51; constitutional discourse
deferential translational norm in 44; Arabic-Islamic discourse and
foreignizing approach to translation translation (medieval period): algebra
and 38–40, 42, 44; grounding meaning development by al-Khwarazmi and
and 157; historical development of 99; Bayt al-Hikma (‘The House of
91–92; lexical repetition and emphatic Wisdom’) as translation institute
meaning and 155–156; locution- 96–100; challenges and trajectories
overriding illocutionary meaning of study of 106–107; debates on texts
and 158–59; marginalization of as translated and Bayt-al Hikma 96–99;
vector of knowledge production historical development of Arabic and
40–41; modality between English and 91–92; Hunayn b. Ishaq as significant
Arabic translation and 164; reflected scholar and translator 95–98,
meaning and 147–49; transability of 100–106; Translation Movement
38–39; use of in Egyptian film-title under ‘Abbasid society and 5, 93–96,
translation 186–87 98, 105, 107
Arabic modality markers in legal ascription, as aspect of reference 135–36
and constitutional discourse: associative meaning 137–41, 138
assigning responsibilities in Atawneh, Ahmad 204, 206–207, 209
170; assigning responsibilities in Australia, legal interpretation
(action responsibilities) 170–71; competencies and 48, 62
assigning responsibilities in (stative
responsibilities) 171–72; comparison Baker, Mona 137–39, 157, 159,
with British and American 160– 61, 164
constitutions 177–81; conferring Bayt al-Hikma (‘The House of
permissions 177; conferring rights Wisdom’) 96–100
175–76; distribution of functions in Beekman, John 12
deontic modality in Arabic ST 165; Benmaman, Virginia 49, 61
218 Index
Berman, Antoine 14–15, 38 Cresswell, Robyn 38–39

Bhabha, Homi 9–10 critical discourse analysis (CDA) 1; of
Biblical translation 12, 22–25 Hasbara Document (Luntz) 201, 214;
British constitution. see under English mediation in translation model of
modality markers in legal and 71–72, 73, 74; text, discursive practice,
constitutional discourse and social practice as 3 dimensions of
71–72, 73
Callow, John 12 culture and translation 1–4, 8–9
censorship 86
Chahine, Youssef 189–97 de Beaugrande, Robert 69, 75, 77,
Chesterman, Andrew 11 80, 112
China, anti-satellite development policy de Waard, Jan 12–13
translation errors by U.S. 67–68, denotative meaning: affective meaning
79, 81, 84 and 137–39, 143–45, 144; allusive
collocative meaning 137–39, 138, 150–51 meaning and 137–39, 145–46;
community interpreters, remuneration associative meaning and 137–41;
and education and training for 47–48 attitudinal meaning 137–139, 141–43;
see also legal interpreters collocative meaning and 137–39,
conference interpreters, remuneration 150–51; vs. connotative meaning
and education and training for 47–48 135; reflective meaning and 137–39,
conflict-zones, power of language 146–49; selectional restrictions-
to influence pov and promote related meaning and 137–39, 149–50;
ideology in 200 typology of meaning of forms of 138,
connotative meaning: affective meaning 160–61
and 137–39, 143–45, 144; allusive Derrida, Jacques 10
meaning and 137–39, 145–46; descriptive translation studies (DTS)
associative meaning and 137–41; 13–14, 31
attitudinal meaning 137–139, 141–43; designated job commission of
collocative meaning and 137–39, translation 21
150–51; vs. denotative meaning 135; Dickins, James 137, 138, 142, 146,
emphatic meaning 137–39, 154–56; 149–54, 156, 159, 160–61
film-title translation and 197; fuzzy discourse analysis: critique of 2; macro
connotative meaning vs. effect/affect and micro levels of communication
boundary 137; geographical dialect- (Discourse with capital D/discourse
related meaning 151, 151–52; grounding with small d) 1, 3–4; specialized
meaning and 157; information discourse 110
prominence-related meaning 137–39, Dressler, Wolfgang 69
154–57; language-variety-related
meaning 137–39, 151, 151–54; Egypt: Arabic-French translators career
locution-overriding illocutionary trajectory in 31–40; Egyptology
meaning 137–39, 158–59; modes of in translation 41 see also film-title
137; referent vs. ascription and 135–36; translation (in Egypt)
reflective meaning and 137–39, 146–49; English: as global language of science
selectional restrictions-related meaning 41, 129; grounding meaning and
and 137–39, 149–50; signs (symbol, 157; lexical repetition and emphatic
index, and icon) and 136–37; sociolect- meaning and 155–156; locution-
related meaning 151, 153–54; temporal overriding illocutionary meaning and
dialect-related meaning 151, 151–53; 158; modality between English and
thematic (theme/rheme) meaning Arabic translation and 164; scientific
137–39, 156–57; typology of meaning and technical texts translation and
of forms of 138, 160–61 114–115, 117–18, 120, 122–28; thematic
context in translation 20, 21, 54–55 (theme/rheme) meaning and 157
Index 219
English modality markers in legal Gee, James 3

and constitutional discourse Ghareeb, Edmund 214
164; assigning responsibilities in Goodman-Delahunty, Jane 60–61
170; assigning responsibilities in Guide to Egyptian Films in the Twentieth
(action responsibilities) 170–71; Century (Qassem) 186
assigning responsibilities in (stative Gutt, Ernst-August 16
responsibilities) 171–72; comparison
between British and American Hale, Sandra 60–61
constitutions 177–81; conferring Halliday, Michael 75, 80, 156
permissions 177; conferring rights Hasbara Document (Luntz): aim of as
175–76; obligation-oriented modality pro-Israeli public relations 201; critical
markers 165–66; obligation-oriented discourse analysis (CDA) of 201,
modality markers (action obligations) 214; pro-Israel stance in American
166–67; obligation-oriented news media 214–215; promotion
modality markers (conditional strategies in 202–203, 214; promotion
obligations) 169–70; obligation- strategies in (appeal to empathy)
oriented modality markers (duty 203–205; promotion strategies in
obligations) 167–69; prohibition (euphemism) 211–14; promotion
and 172; prohibition and (action strategies in (message avoidance)
prohibitions) 172–73; prohibition and 209–11; promotion strategies in
(stative prohibitions) 174–75 see also (repetition) 207–209; promotion
Arabic modality markers in legal and strategies in (semantic contiguity)
constitutional discourse 205–207
ethical turn in translation 38 Hatim, Basil 1–2, 4, 12, 50, 53,
112, 125; ‘Politeness in Screen
Fairclough, Norman 71, 74–75, 82, 84 Translation’ 197–98
film-title translation (in Egypt) 184–85; Haykel, Bernard 39
challenges of due to brevity and Hermans, Theo 85
connotative meaning 197; cinema of Hervey, Sándor 137, 138, 142, 146,
Youssef Chahine and 189–97; in the 149–54, 156, 159, 160–61
DVD industry 195–97; framework Higgins, Ian 137, 138, 142, 146, 149–54,
for translation strategy 188–89; Guide 156, 159, 160–61
to Egyptian Films in the Twentieth Hunayn b. Ishaq 95–98, 95–99, 100–106
Century (Qassem) and 186; longest
film title 197; popular Egyptian film incompetent or unethical interpreters,
titles requiring complex translation damage caused by 48
188–89, 189; use of Egyptian cultural Israel. see Hasbara Document (Luntz)
references in 187–89, 189; use of
modern standard Arabic in 186–87 Kulacki, Gregory 67–68
film-title translation (international)
185–86; ‘Politeness in Screen language, power of to influence public
Translation’ (Hatim and Mason) opinion 200
and 197–98 legal discourse. see Arabic modality
foreignizing approach to translation markers in legal and constitutional
14; Arabic translation and discourse; English modality markers
38–40, 42, 44 in legal and constitutional discourse
Fowler, Yvonne 54 legal interpreters: competences
frame of reference model 25 (contextual competence) 54–
French: Arabic-French translators career 55; competences (interactional
and translation choices 33–40 management) 60–61; competences
Freud, Sigmund 11 (interpreting professional/ethical
functionalist approaches 15, 21, 25 competence) 58–60; competences
220 Index
(interpreting technical competence) epistemic modality 117–20, 163;

56; competences (interpreting modal verb defined 163; scientific
theoretical competence) 55–56; and technical texts and 115–22; types
competences (linguistic and discursive and degrees of modality table 122;
competence) 49–54; competences variations in languages and 163–64
(steps taken to improve in Australia) see also Arabic modality markers in
62; competences needed for 48–49, legal and constitutional discourse;
63; education and training of 47–48, English modality markers in legal and
53–54, 56–58, 60–63; remuneration constitutional discourse
and 47–48, 63 model, motive and manner of
lexical repetition 155 translation 18
Lost in Translation (movie), translation Moody, Bill 59
of title 185 Muhammad b. Musa al-Khwarazmi
Luntz, Frank 200–201, 203 see also 99
Hasbara Document Mumby, Dennis K. 110–11
Munday, Jeremy 9–10, 12, 17
manipulation: mediation in translation
and 70–71; textual manipulation National Accreditation Authority for
strategies 200 see also Hasbara Translators and Interpreters (NAATI,
Document (Luntz) Australia) 48, 62
Martschuk, Natalie 60–61 Nida, Eugene A. 12–13
Mason, Ian 12, 112; ‘Politeness in Screen Niranjana, Tejaswini 4
Translation’ 197–98 Nord, Christiane 15–16, 23
meaningful, vs. mechanical translation 18
media representations and Omani Basic Statute of the State. see
misrepresentations. see Hasbara Arabic modality markers in legal and
Document (Luntz) constitutional discourse
mediation in translation: author’s Oxford English Dictionary, translation
definition of 70; censorship and definitions in 17
86; Chinese anti-satellite document
translation errors by U.S. example Palestinians. see Hasbara Document
67–68, 79, 81, 84; cognitive and (Luntz)
intercultural/interlingual definition passivization 113–15
of 69; contractual definition of Peirce, Charles Sanders 136, 140, 142,
69–70; critical discourse analysis 144, 146, 148–50, 152, 155–57, 159
(CDA) based model for 71–72, Peters, F.E. 97
73, 74; ideology and 82–85, 87; at ‘Politeness in Screen Translation’ (Hatim
information-presentation stage 76, 78, and Mason) 197–98
80–82; macro-analytical sociocultural promotion strategies 201–214
approach to social structure and Pym, Anthony 2, 11–13
82–87; manipulation and 70–71;
micro-model text level linguistic Rashed, Roshdi 98, 107
approach of 74–82, 78, 87; norms Reah, Danuta 200, 214
and 82–83, 85–87; power and recomposition 19–21
power relations and 82–87; at reconceptualization 19
stage of information selection and referent, as aspect of reference 135–36
configuration 76–77, 78, 79–80; reflective meaning 137–39, 138, 146–49,
translating process and 75–77 160–61
modality: action and belief modals relevance theory (RT) of translation
164; deontic modality 120–22, 163; 16–17, 21, 25
dynamic modality 163; between Robyns, Clem 1–2
English and Arabic translation 164; Russell, Debra 55–56, 58
Index 221
Said, Edward 38 (Biblical translation) 12, 22–25;

Schechter, Danny 205 cognitive reframing of SL text and
scientific and technical texts: appraisal, 19, 25; critical review of fluidity of
stance and evaluation and 120; definitions of 8–13; culture and 1–4,
clustering and 122–24; English and 8–9; descriptive translation studies
Spanish as first and second global (DTS) 13–14; discourse analysis and
languages of science and 129; English/ 1–4; documentary vs. instrumental
Spanish translation examples translations 23–24; foreignizing
114–115, 117–18, 120, 122–28; approach to 14; functionalist
evidentiality of given information approaches to 15; as intercultural
(epistemic modality) 119–20; ideology and interlingual communication
and translation 110–12; modality 18–19; interlingual re-signification of
and 115–17; modality and (deontic original text into TL 19; intralingual
modality (obligation)) 120–22; vs. interlingual translation 24; literal
modality and (epistemic modality) translation approach to 15; model,
117–20; modality and (types and manner and motive of translation and
degrees of modality table) 122; need 18; vs. moncultural communication
to integrate advances in applied 21–22; in Oxford English Dictionary
interdisciplinary linguistics for 128; 17; person trajectory of Arabic-
nominalization and 115; paratactic French translator 31–40; prescriptive
and hypotactic organization and approach to 17; relevance theory
124–26; passivization and 113–15; (RT) 16–17, 21, 25; shift in in
personification and 127–28; theme/ 80s 1–2; skopos’ (communicative
rheme and 126; transitivity and 112–13 ‘purpose’) theory 15, 18; text analysis
selectional restrictions-related meaning methodology 15–16; translational
137–39, 138, 149–50, 160–61 norms and 82–83, 85–87 see also
skopos’ (communicative ‘purpose’) Arabic-Islamic discourse and
theory of translation 15, 18 translation (medieval period); film-
Spanish: as global language of science title translation (in Egypt); legal
129; scientific and technical texts interpreters; mediation in translation
translation and 114–115, 117–18, Translator’s Invisibility (Venuti) 32
120, 122–28 transnationality 9
specialized discourse 110 see also Turner, Jonathan H. 82
scientific and technical texts
United States: pro-Israel stance in
Takeda, Kayoko 56, 58 American news media 214–215;
text analysis methodology 15–16 translation errors by in Chinese anti-
texts vs. meaning in translation 19 satellite document 67–68, 79, 81, 84
Toury, Gideon 13–14, 31, 85 see also English modality markers in
translation and translation studies: legal and constitutional discourse
basic components of translating
process 19–22, 75–77; basic van Dijk, Teun A. 3
components of translating process Venuti, Lawrence 14, 31, 32, 38

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Discourse in Translation

Said Faiq, FRSA, is Professor of Intercultural Studies and Translation at the

Edited by Said Faiq

Professor Basil Hatim, a gentleman and an internationally renowned scholar

What the contributors say about Basil Hatim

I first worked with Basil Hatim at Heriot-​Watt University in 1986. As well as

Well-​known in translation studies, discourse analysis, and theories of trans-

Introduction: Translation as D-​discourse 1

1 Translating ‘translation’: What do translators ‘translate’? 8

2 Theory and practice in the French discourse of translation 31

3 Specialist legal interpreters for a fairer justice system 47

4 Investigating mediation in translation 67

5 Translation as the instigator of a new Arabic discourse in

6 A toolbox for critical translation analysis in specialized

7 Types of connotative meaning, and their significance for

8 A case study of modality in legal translation: The Omani

9 The translation of film titles in the Egyptian film industry 184

10 Strategic media misrepresentation and the Arab–​Israeli

My most sincere thanks and gratitude to the contributors.

Ernst Wendland has a PhD in African Languages and Literature, University

James Dickins is professor of Arabic at the University of Leeds. He has a

US Information Agency in 1981, working as a senior interpreter for the

involved in a number of funded research projects dealing with various

Without revealing the ‘secretive’ nature of publishing this volume in his

KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD

To move on to the middle layer, a third assumption to be entertained by any

• Would I bother to test items such as ‫ لخص‬or ‫ عامة‬simply to mean what

Translation as D-​d iscourse

Under what may be termed ‘the ideology of translation’, translation the-

• the choice of works to be translated (what is valued and what is

I believe that most existing forms of discourse analysis are fundamen-

As noted above, this web of communication is what discourse analysis

The distinction between ‘Discourse’ with a ‘big D’ and ‘discourse’ with

So, translation as Discourse invokes higher-​order levels of analysis (often

the basis of the social representations shared by members of a group.

Culture is also assumed to cover material elements (material culture), which

as such they trigger underlying perceptions derived from Discourse (turban,

For the sake of the usual human inclination of generalizing objects,

set of strategies’. This is another example of how Discourse animates dis-

The problem: Will the real ‘translation’ please stand up?

Translation is the performative nature of cultural communication. It is

The preceding quotation seems to reflect a very different understanding or

We welcome new concepts that speak about translation and hope to

Perhaps we should turn instead to a philosophical approach for some dir-

Good translation…can be defined as that in which the dialectic of

Unfortunately, there is not much enlightenment available in the preceding

Translation represents only an extreme instance of the figurative fate of

A selective survey of definitions: Where have we

The task of a Bible translator as a secondary source is always a diffi-

the receptor-​language audience to appreciate fully the relevance and

A mixed-​b ag of definitions: Why the diversity?

add, such as in cases of misrepresentation, misunderstanding, and gross

‘literal translation’, which in his opinion ‘restores the particular signifying

analysis’ (e.g., content, including connotation and cohesion, presuppositions,

verbal reconstitution across linguistic-​conceptual boundaries can only be an

Restatement: A satisfactory interdisciplinary synthesis?

you call a text a “translation” will depend on several factors…your historical

Translation may then be briefly defined as the practice of intercultural and

1. The intercultural re-​ideation or cognitive reframing of a given SL text,

The first operation requires the mental comprehension and interpret-

I first worked with Basil Hatim at Heriot-Watt University in 1986. As well as

Well-known in translation studies, discourse analysis, and theories of trans-

Introduction: Translation as D-discourse 1

10 Strategic media misrepresentation and the Arab–Israeli

Translation as D-d iscourse

So, translation as Discourse invokes higher-order levels of analysis (often

the receptor-language audience to appreciate fully the relevance and

A mixed-b ag of definitions: Why the diversity?

verbal reconstitution across linguistic-conceptual boundaries can only be an

1. The intercultural re-ideation or cognitive reframing of a given SL text,

4. A careful analysis of the compositional macro- and micro-structure is

The manifold, cognitive-based communicative activity of translating (cf.

Translation is (a) the conceptually mediated verbal re-composition of

Watt, Milton L. 2015. ‘Re-sculpting a Sacred Text: Towards an Acceptable Poetic

reliable modern Arabic–French dictionary, let alone online resources!) and

There was, thus, a fundamental inequality between Arabic–French and

Example (1) illustrates a typical unfriendly question from a cross-examiner

(5) S –¿cómo así, cómo así drogas?

———. 2004/2010. The Discourse of Court Interpreting. Discourse Practices of

Figure 4.2. Mediation in translation.

The micro-m odel: a linguistic approach to textual mediation in

• Information selection and configuration, which includes two sub-processes