Linguistics For Translators

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Almanna, Ali, and Juliane House. Linguistics for Translators, Taylor & Francis Group, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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“Yet another success story in the world of academic publishing.
Linguistics for Translators is a major undertaking. To reconcile the
two perspectives (sentence and text linguistics) and come up with a
product relevant to both translator and linguist is a mammoth task,
executed seamlessly and most effectively.”
Basil Hatim, American University of Sharjah, UAE
“Linguistics for Translators is a valuable addition to a field where

theory and practice are closely intertwined. The authors review a
wide range of linguistic concepts that are of relevance for the trans-
lator and illustrate them with clear, up-to-date examples in many
languages. Frequent questions and tasks test and enhance the reader’s
understanding.”
Jeremy Munday, Professor Emeritus in Translation
Studies, University of Leeds, UK
“Almanna and House adopt a perspective in their Linguistics for

Translators which shows convincingly that systematic knowledge of
language is a fascinating and necessary resource for understanding
translation. They maintain contact with questions arising in transla-
tion studies through their valuable linguistic orientation with a strong
pedagogical focus. A timely and most welcome contribution to the
field.”
Erich Steiner, Professor Emeritus in Translation
Studies Englisch, Saarland University, Dept. of Language
Science and Technology
“Linguistics for Translators by Almanna and House provides a ground-

breaking contribution to translation studies. It reinstates linguistics to

the forefront of the field, by demonstrating its crucial importance for
understanding what goes on in translation. This book is a must-read
for academics, teachers, practitioners and students.”
Dániel Z. Kádár, Ordinary Member of Academia Europaea,
Chair Professor, Dalian University of Foreign Languages, China,
and Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics
Linguistics for Translators
This engaging and accessible textbook, by two leading experts, is a care-

fully crafted introduction to linguistics for translators, students, and
researchers of translation.
Starting with basic concepts and gradually moving readers to the central
questions in different branches of linguistics, examples are drawn from
English and many other languages, including German, Arabic, Kurdish,
Swahili, French, and Chinese. The key areas of linguistics are covered,
from morphology and syntax to semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis,
stylistics, sociolinguistics, and cognitive linguistics. Striking a balance
between theoretical developments and empirical investigation, readers
gain both a comprehensive overview of linguistics and how it informs their
work in translation and learn how to argue for analysis and annotate their
own answers and translations academically. Each chapter provides the
reader with an overview outlining the main points and technical words used
in the chapter as well as illustrative examples, recommended readings, and
resources and activities to test knowledge.
This is the ideal textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate students
of translation in Translation Studies, Linguistics, and Modern Languages.
Ali Almanna is Associate Professor of Translation Studies at Hamad Bin

Khalifa University, Qatar. He is the series editor of Routledge Studies in
Arabic Translation. His recent publications include Translation as a Set of
Frames (2021), The Arabic-English Translator as Photographer (2019),
and The Routledge Course in Translation Annotation (2016).
Juliane House is Professor Emeritus, Hamburg University, Germany;

Professor at the Hungarian Research Centre of Linguistics, Budapest; Past
President of the International Association of Translation and Intercultural
Studies; and Director of the PhD in Language and Communication,
Hellenic American University. Her translation-relevant publications include

Translation: The Basics (2018), Translation as Communication across
Languages and Cultures (2016), and Translation Quality Assessment (2015).
Linguistics for Translators
Ali Almanna and Juliane House

First published 2024
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
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© 2024 Ali Almanna and Juliane House
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
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infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-13182-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-13181-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-22802-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003228028
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Newgen Publishing UK
Contents
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction 1
Aspects of difference 3
1 Setting the scene 5

Language and communication 5
Linguistics 6
Scope of linguistics 6
Formal linguistics 7
Phonetics 7
Phonology 7
Morphology 7
Syntax 8
Semantics 8
Interdisciplinary linguistics 8
Linguistic universals 9
Types of linguistic universals 11
Connecting the dots: Translation universals 12
Exercises and discussion 15
2 Phonetics and phonology 19

Phone, phoneme, and allophone 20
Sound production 20
Place of articulation 21
Manner of articulation 22
(1) Completely blocked 22
(2) Partially blocked 22
Voicing 23
Vowels 23
Connecting the dots: Phonological features and translation 27
3 Morphology 35
Morphology, morphemes, and words 35
Productivity 37
Homonymous morphemes 38
v i i i C o n t e n ts
Allomorphs and conditioning factors 39

Types of morphemes 41
Connecting the dots (1): Shift Theory 43
Connecting the dots (2): Analytic morphology versus
synthetic morphology 46
4 Morphological processes 52
Inflection 53
Word formation 54
Affixation 54
Compounding 55
Concatenation versus non-concatenation 56
Concatenation 56
Connecting the dots (1): Non-concatenative processes of
word formation and translation 57
(1) Suppletion 57
(2) Category extension and transposition 58
(3) Shortening 60
(4) Back-formation and coinage 63
(5) Blending 64
(6) Borrowing 66
Connecting the dots (2): Translating causativity 68
5 Syntax 74
Syntactic categories 76
Phrase structure rules 78
Tree diagram 79
Verb group 80
Inflection 82
Connecting the dots (1): Syntactic ambiguity and
translation 83
Connecting the dots (2): Reordering sentence constituents
through translation 84
Connecting the dots (3): Syntactic parsing and translation 86
Connecting the dots (4): Translating tense and aspect 88
Connecting the dots (5): Translating gender 90
Connecting the dots (6): Transformation and translation 93
Do insertion 94
Wh-movement 95
Connecting the dots (7): Translating voices 96
6 Semantics 104
Signifier versus signified 104
Reference versus sense 106
Connecting the dots (1): Lexical relations and translation 107
C o n t e n ts i x
Antonymy and modulation 107

Hypernymy and hyponymy 108
Obligatory generalization 109
Optional generalization 110
Synonymy 110
Polysemy and homonymy 112
Connecting the dots (2): Diagnostic components and translation 113
Connecting the dots (3): Semantic roles and translation 115
Connecting the dots (4): Semantic principles and
translation 119
Connecting the dots (5): Frame semantics and translation 121
7 Discourse analysis 128

Discourse analysis 129
Connecting the dots (1): Conversation analysis and translation 130
Connecting the dots (2): Critical discourse analysis and
translation 134
Transitivity 136
Agency 137
Nominalization 138
Modality 138
Attribution 140
Topicalization 141
Selectivity and presupposition 143
8 Pragmatics 152
Context and contextual meaning 153
Cross-cultural pragmatics 154
Connecting the dots (1): Translating deixis 157
Connecting the dots (2): References (c)overtly
translated 159
Covert translation versus overt translation 160
Connecting the dots (3): The cooperative principle and

translation 161
Cultural filters 163
Connecting the dots (4): Cross-cultural pragmatics and
translation 164
Connecting the dots (5): Speech acts and translation 166
Direct and indirect speech acts 169
9 Functional linguistics 175

Language and meaning 175
Connecting the dots (1): Register and translation 178
Field of discourse 178
Tenor of discourse 180
x C o n t e n ts
Mode of discourse 183

Connecting the dots (2): Appraisal and translation 184
Attitude 185
Engagement 188
Graduation 192
Connecting the dots (3): Cohesion and translation 193
Reference 194
Substitution 194
Ellipsis 195
Conjunction 195
Reiteration 195
Collocation 195
Repetition 195
Parallelism 196
Thematic progression 196
Continuity of tense, aspect, mood, etc. 196
Connecting the dots (4): Translation assessment 198
10 Sociolinguistics 207
Social Identity Theory 208
Social categorization 208
Social comparison 208
Social identification 209
Connecting the dots (1): Social identity and
translation 209
Connecting the dots (2): Social dimensions and
translation 212
Convergence versus divergence 213
Connecting the dots (3): Code-switching and translation 215
Inter-sentential code-switching 217
Intra-sentential code-switching 218
Tag code-switching 218
11 Language variation 224

Types of language variation 225
Regional variation 225
Social variation 225
Stylistic variation 226
Diglossia and polyglossia 227
Pidgin and creole 227
Pidgin 227
Creole 228
Connecting the dots (1) Translating dialects
and accents 229
Connecting the dots (2): Translating styles and
style shifts 232
C o n t e n ts x i
Frozen style 233

Formal style 233
Consultative style 233
Casual style 233
Intimate style 233
Connecting the dots (3): Audience type and translation 236
12 Cognitive linguistics 245

Cognitive grammar 246
Cognitive semantics 246
Commitments of cognitive linguistics 248
Main theories and approaches 251
Imaging systems 252
Connecting the dots (1): Configurational system and
translation 253
Connecting the dots (2): Attentional system and
translation 256
Connecting the dots (3): Perspectival system and
translation 258
Location 259
Distance 259
Mode 259
Direction 259
Connecting the dots (4): Force dynamic system and
translation 261
Index 268
newgenprepdf
Acknowledgements
Our deep indebtedness and sincere appreciation naturally go to Basil

Hatim (American University of Sharjah, UAE), Jeremy Munday (Leeds
University, UK), Erich Steiner (Saarland University, Germany), and Dániel
Z. Kádár (Dalian University of Foreign Languages, China), who have gone
through the manuscript and provided us with their opinion.
We owe a debt of gratitude to many people for their meticulous feedback on
the manuscript. In particular, we would like to thank: Rafik Jamoussi (Sohar
University, Oman), Qing Cao (University of Durham, UK), Chonglong
Gu (the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China), Majid Abdullatif Al-
Basri (University of Petra, Jordan), Alaa Ashour (University of Basrah,
Iraq), Abdolmehdi Riazi (Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar), Shabnam
Saadat (the Independent Persian, UK), Mª Carmen África Vidal Claramonte
(University of Salamanca, Spain), Narongdej Phanthaphoommee (Mahidol
University, Thailand), Juan José Martínez Sierra (Universitat de València,
Spain), Mohamed Erebih (Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar), Rawan
Mahmood Sabti (translator), Zahraa A. Shakir (translator), Djamel Goui
(Université Kasdi Merbah Ouargla, Algeria), Noreddine Hanini (University
of Sultan Moulay Slimane, Morocco), Raja Lahiani (United Arab Emirates
University, UAE), Fatma Benelhadj (University of Sfax, Tunisia), Malika
Kettani (Euroned University of Fes, Morocco), Kadhim Al-Ali (University
of Basrah, Iraq), and Fatima Litim (Ecole Normale Supérieure de Sétif
(Teacher Education College), Algeria).
Introduction
This book arrives at a time when investigations of translation as a socio-

psychological phenomenon are gaining prominence in translation studies,
while purely linguistic aspects are relegated to the margins as outdated
and old-fashioned interests. Our aim with Linguistics for Translators
is to emphasize that the linguistic dimension of translation cannot be
overlooked, and that linguistics remains, more than ever, a contemporary
and exciting field for translators, translation researchers, and translation
students to explore.
The significance of this book lies not only in its linguistic orientation,
but also in its strong pedagogical focus. Each chapter of the book links
linguistic explanation with the process and practice of translation into a
variety of languages, providing a range of exercises and suggestions for
discussion and further research. Through this approach, the reader is con-
stantly alerted to the crucial role of linguistic knowledge and competence
in producing appropriate translations, evaluating translations, and teaching
courses on translation. The book is produced by experts in both linguistics
and translation studies, with complementary expertise in different branches
of linguistics and mastery of various languages.
This book is intended for students and researchers of translation and lin-
guistics, as well as practising translators and interested lay readers. It can be
used as a standalone course in departments of translation studies or linguis-
tics or as supplemental material for existing courses. The volume has been
carefully designed to be reader friendly. Its 12 chapters offer the reader

the opportunity to study theoretical and practical aspects of linguistics and
translation through well-thought-out exercises and discussion topics. Each
chapter begins with a highly accessible overview of formal and functional
linguistic concepts. This is followed by practical sections connecting these
concepts with translation, providing examples in various languages.
In Chapter 1, we first provide an overview of linguistics by defining
its scope, main branches, areas of study, and interdisciplinary fields. We
also introduce the notion of linguistic universals. In the second part of the
chapter, we apply these concepts to translation and provide hands-on activ-
ities and discussion topics. This introductory chapter sets the scene for the
rest of the volume.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003228028-1
2 I ntr o d u cti o n
Chapter 2 focuses on the areas of phonetics and phonology. We begin by

distinguishing between these two areas, and then provide an overview of
the main parts of phonetics, the various stages of sound production, and the
importance of phonological features in translation.
Chapters 3 and 4 focus on morphology and morphological processes,
respectively. Chapter 3 covers the structure of the word, the classification
of morphemes and words, and the units that make up words, all illustrated
through ample examples from various languages. This theoretical presen-
tation is then related to the types of shifts that may be necessary in trans-
lation. Chapter 4 continues the discussion by explaining higher-level
linguistic analyses of morphological processes such as inflection, deriv-
ation, compounding, and affixation. Through practice activities and dis-
cussion questions, we emphasize the importance of understanding these
processes for the practice of translation.
In Chapter 5, we delve into syntax, which focuses on the structure of
phrases, clauses, and sentences. We explain the various categories at the
word level, such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives, as well as categories at
the phrase level, such as the noun phrase or verb phrase. We also explore
transformation processes and constituent tests and explain their importance
for translation.
In Chapter 6, we focus on the area of semantics, discussing important
concepts such as denotation and connotation, reference and sense, semantic
roles, and principles, as well as frame semantics. We emphasize the import-
ance of understanding these concepts in relation to translation and provide
examples to illustrate their significance.
In Chapter 7, readers are introduced to discourse analysis, a branch of
usage-based linguistics that covers both social and linguistic approaches.
We explain social approaches such as conversation analysis and critical
discourse analysis, and linguistic approaches such as functional linguistics,
sociolinguistics, and cognitive discourse analysis. We also discuss other
approaches like multimodal discourse analysis and intercultural communi-
cation and their relevance to translation.
Moving on to Chapter 8, we dive into pragmatics, a discipline par� -
ticularly important for translation. We define pragmatics and provide a
brief history of the discipline. Then we discuss key concepts, such as

deixis, reference, inference, conversational implicature, and speech acts.
All of these concepts are presented with a focus on their relevance to
translation.
In Chapter 9, the topic is functional linguistics, another topic of imme�-
diate relevance to translation. The chapter covers various notions such
as register, appraisal, cohesion, and coherence that are significant for
translators to understand. We explain the importance of these concepts for
the translator’s work. Additionally, the chapter includes the second author’s
model for translation quality assessment, which employs a register-based
approach to evaluate translation output.
Chapter 10 is about sociolinguistics. Here we explain basic sociolin�-
guistic concepts such as code-switching, convergence, and divergence, and
we discuss their immediate relevance to translation.
I ntr o d u cti o n 3
Chapter 11 of the book complements the sociolinguistic focus addressed

in the previous chapter and focuses on language variation, covering
regional, social, and stylistic variation, as well as the concepts of diglossia
and polyglossia, pidgins and creoles, dialects, accents, and styles. The
chapter explores how these variations can pose challenges when translating
into different languages, as translators must consider the target audience
and the nuances of the target language in order to convey the appropriate
meaning and tone.
In Chapter 12, the final chapter of this book, we provide readers with
an introduction to cognitive linguistics. We distinguish between cognitive
grammar and cognitive semantics and explore the basic principles of cogni-
tive linguistics and various cognitive systems. We demonstrate how famil-
iarity with these concepts is beneficial for producing accurate translations
and evaluating translation quality.
In summary, this book covers a broad range of linguistic topics relevant
to translation. By exploring these topics and trying out the various practice
activities and topic discussions, readers are gradually helped into having a
deeper understanding of the translation process and the importance of lin-
guistic knowledge in facilitating it.
Aspects of difference
When it comes to teaching linguistics to translation students at the univer-

sity level, there are two main schools of thought. One camp argues that lin-
guistics should be taught independently of translation, allowing students to
become familiar with linguistic concepts and issues and make connections
to translation on their own. To this end, they may use courses not specif-
ically designed for translation students, such as The Study of Language
(Yule 1985/1996), A Concise Introduction to Linguistics (Rowe and Levine
2022), and Linguistics for Non-Linguists: A Primer with Exercises (Parker
and Riley 1994/2010), among others.
On the other hand, some believe it is important to restrict focus to the lin-
guistic concepts and issues that are of immediate relevance to translation.
This approach tailors the curriculum to the needs of translation students

and is determined by those overseeing the programme. Titles such as In
Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation (Baker 1992) and Translation
and Language: Linguistic Theories Explained (Fawcett 1997) are common
examples of this approach. These titles are adopted as textbooks in many
translation programmes though they do not provide a comprehensive
enough coverage of the area they purport to address.
In Linguistics for Translators, we have taken a different approach by
connecting the dots between linguistics and translation. Each chapter
introduces the basic linguistic concepts and then proceeds to show their
relevance to translation students, researchers, and practising translators. In
doing so, we give due consideration to both opinions mentioned above.
Moreover, Linguistics for Translators discusses these linguistic concepts
and issues in the context of various languages. In addition to English, it
4 I ntr o d u cti o n
includes French, German, Arabic, Spanish, Italian, Persian, Chinese, Tok

Pisin, and Maltese, among others.
The aim of Linguistics for Translators is to provide a comprehensive
introduction to linguistics that is accessible to students of linguistics and
translation at the university level while still retaining a considerable level
of detail. The book is intended for a diverse audience, including students
of translation and linguistics, practising translators, and readers from
neighbouring disciplines who are interested in the subject. At the begin-
ning of each chapter, readers are provided with a route into the primary
literature, and the book includes connecting-the-dots sections that establish
a connection between linguistics and translation. This approach introduces
the reader to various translation theories, approaches, and models
throughout the book.
References
Baker, M. (1992). In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation. London/

New York: Routledge.
Fawcett, P. (1997). Translation and Language: Linguistic Theories
Explained. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
Parker, F. and Riley, K. (1994/2010). Linguistics for Non-Linguists: A
Primer with Exercises. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Rowe, B. M. and Levine, D. P. (2022). A Concise Introduction to Linguistics
(6th edn). London/New York: Routledge.
Yule, G. (1985/1996). The Study of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Setting the scene 1
This chapter provides the reader with a general overview of the discip-
line of linguistics. It introduces linguistics along with its main branches.
Further, it touches on translation universals. It tries to answer the
following questions:
• What is ‘language’?
• What is the difference between a ‘linguist’ and a ‘native speaker’ of
the language?
• What is ‘linguistics’? And what are its main branches?
• What is ‘formal linguistics’? And what are its main areas?
• What is ‘interdisciplinary linguistics’?
• What are the ‘linguistic universals’?
• What are the main types of ‘linguistic universals’?
• What are the main types of ‘translation universals’, if any?
Language and communication
In order to express your opinions or feelings, tell somebody about some-

thing, ask somebody about something, thank somebody for doing some- How would you
define ‘language’?
thing, promise somebody to do something, and so on, you need to
communicate with people in one way or another. In this regard, Baker and
Hengeveld (2012: 5) state:
Using a natural language, humans can in principle communicate with

each other about anything in their world, from talking about the wea-
ther to writing or reading a scientific article about global warming.
Depending on the subject a different jargon may be used –when talking
about football, people in a café use words that are quite different from
those used in a parliamentary debate about health insurance costs.
These different jargons are, however, part of the language as a whole.
Also, to a very large extent, they employ the same grammar. What is the diffe-
rence between
One may observe here that we are talking about linguistic communication. ‘linguistic com-
munication’ and
This is because we can communicate without using any language as we can ‘non-linguistic
smile to express pleasure or approval, we can laugh to express happiness communication’?
DOI: 10.4324/9781003228028-2
6 S e t t i n g t h e s c e n e
or disrespect, and so on. These are examples of non-linguistic communica-

tion. Building on this, communication can be linguistic communication
when a language is used. Otherwise, it is non-linguistic communication.
Language, accordingly, can be defined as a system of communication based
upon the use of words in a structured and conventional way.
Linguistics
Linguistics can be defined as the scientific study of language. It is

How would you
define ‘linguistics’? concerned with “the nature of language and linguistic communication”
(Akmajian et al. 2010: 5). Knowledge of linguistics, however, is different
from knowledge of a language. A speaker of a language can use language
without being able to analyse it. Like a person who is able to drive a car
without understanding how the engine of the car works, a language user
What is the diffe- can use language without any conscious knowledge of its internal structure.
rence between
a ‘linguist’ and a Conversely, a linguist can know and understand the internal structure
‘native speaker’? of a language without actually being able to speak it. Linguists do work
on specific languages, but their primary goal is to understand the nature of
language in general.
Scope of linguistics
Linguistics covers a wide range of areas, such as ‘phonetics’, ‘phonology’,

What are the
main branches of ‘morphology’, ‘semantics’, ‘pragmatics’, ‘discourse analysis’,
linguistics? ‘stylistics’, ‘sociolinguistics’, and ‘psycholinguistics’, to mention only the
most well-known areas. These areas can be divided into different branches
of linguistics, such as ‘formal linguistics’, ‘usage-based linguistics’, and
‘interdisciplinary linguistics’, as partially shown in the following diagram:
As we can see, inside the circle, there are five areas: ‘phonetics’, ‘phon-
What is the diffe- ology’, ‘morphology’, ‘syntax’, and ‘semantics’. These five areas are
rence between the main areas of ‘formal linguistics’; they “are the ‘bread and butter’
‘formal linguistics’
of linguistics” (Aitchison 1999/2003: 9). When ‘semantics’ is excluded,
and ‘usage-based
linguistics’? then we have what is called ‘structural linguistics’. However, when only
‘morphology’ and ‘syntax’ are studied, then we talk about what is called
Setti ng th e sce n e 7
‘grammar’. As for ‘pragmatics’ and ‘discourse analysis’, they are outside

the scope of ‘formal linguistics’. This is because pragmatics focuses on the
study of what is not explicitly said and the role of context in interpreting the
speaker/writer’s intended meaning while discourse analysis examines how
smaller linguistic forms relate in larger linguistic units, such as conversa-
tional exchanges or written texts.
Formal linguistics
Formal linguistics, as hinted at above, focuses on studying the structures

What are the main
and processes of language, paying particular attention to how language is areas of ‘formal
organized and how it works. The goal of formal linguists is to identify the linguistics’?
common elements among the available structures under consideration in an
attempt to discover the most efficient way to describe language in general.
Formal linguistics includes five main areas of study.
Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of formal linguistics that studies how sounds are
produced by the vocal apparatus (the lungs, vocal cords, tongue, teeth,
etc.), thus providing a framework for sound classification. Phonetics, more
accurately ‘auditory phonetics’, studies how sounds produced by people
are heard, perceived, and then interpreted. In another area of phonetics
called ‘acoustic phonetics’, the focus of attention is shifted towards the
frequency, duration, or intensity of the sound.
Phonology
Phonology is another branch of formal linguistics that studies how sounds What is the diffe-
function in a code (be it a language or dialect) or across these codes. To rence between
explain, in English, the sound /p/ has two phones or sounds depending ‘phonetics’ and
‘phonology’?
on its position in a word. In words like ‘put’, ‘place’, and ‘park’, it is
pronounced with a stronger burst of air than a /p/ in words like ‘spin’,
‘apple’, and ‘grape’.
Morphology
Morphology is a branch of formal linguistics that deals with the struc-
ture of words. Morphologists “study minimal units of meaning, called
What are the main
‘morphemes’, and investigate the possible combinations of these units in dimensions of
a language to form words” (Almanna 2016: 5). The word ‘carelessness’, grammar?
for instance, is made up of three smaller units called ‘morphemes’. They
are the root ‘care’ and two suffixes ‘–less’ and ‘–ness’. The root ‘care’ is
transformed into an adjective by the effect of the suffix ‘–less’, which is, in
turn, transferred into a noun by virtue of the suffix ‘–ness’. For more details
on morphology, see Chapters 3 and 4 of this book.
8 S e t t i n g t h e s c e n e
Syntax
Syntax is a branch of formal linguistics that deals with how smaller units,
such as words, are put together to form larger units, such as phrases or
clauses. The sentence ‘Our manager travelled to London yesterday’ is
made up of six words. The first two words, ‘our’ and ‘manager’, are
put together to form a larger unit called a ‘noun phrase’, whereas the
other four words are pieced together to form a larger unit called a ‘verb
phrase’. To round it off, the above simple sentence is made up of two
main phrases. The first phrase, syntactically called a ‘noun phrase’, is
made up of two words: ‘our’ (determiner) and ‘manager’ (noun). The
second phrase, called a ‘verb phrase’, however, is made up of three
phrases: ‘travelled’ (finite verb), ‘to London’ (preposition phrase), and
‘yesterday’ (adverbial phrase).
Semantics
Semantics is another branch of formal linguistics that is concerned with
the meaning of morphemes, words, phrases, and clauses. In semantics, the
relationship between the referring expressions, such as words or phrases,
and what they stand for is given adequate consideration. In other words, the
focus in semantics is on “what the words conventionally mean, rather than
on what a speaker might want the words to mean on a particular occasion”
(Yule 1985/1996: 114).
Interdisciplinary linguistics
Why is Interdisciplinary linguistics, like any other interdisciplinary subject,

‘sociolinguistics’, for involves at least two different, but somehow related, disciplines, for
instance, an inter-
example ‘society’ and ‘language’. The common branches of interdiscip-
disciplinary sub-
ject? Discuss. linary linguistics include:
● ‘sociolinguistics’ (studying the relationship between language and

society);
● ‘psycholinguistics’ (studying the relationship between language and

mind);
● ‘ethnolinguistics’ also known as ‘anthropological linguistics’ or
‘cultural linguistics’ (studying the relationship between language and
culture);
● ‘computational linguistics’ (studying how to apply computers to the
analysis and comprehension of texts);
● ‘historical linguistics’ (studying language change);
● ‘philosophical linguistics’ (studying the relationship between language
and logical thought);
● ‘forensic linguistics’ (studying the relationship between language and
law).
Linguistic universals
Linguistic universals (also known as ‘language universals’) are “those

categories and rules that all human languages, past and present, have in
common” (Parker and Riley 1994/2010: 149). Examples of linguistic
universals include:
● all languages have the categories ‘noun’ and ‘verb’;

● all languages have ‘vowels’ and ‘consonants’;
● all languages have ‘pronouns’;
● most languages belong either to SOV, SVO, or VSO type.
To make this point clear, let us translate this English sentence ‘I like your
car’ into some other languages:
Language Example
Arabic .‫أحبّ سيارتك‬
Swahili Naipenda gari yako.
Malay Saya suka kereta kamu.
German Ich finde dein Auto gut. Or: Ich finde Ihr Auto gut.
Filipino Gusto ko ang koste mu.
Tok Pisin Mi laikim Ka bilong yu.
Chinese 我喜欢你的车 (Wo xihuan ni de che)
French J’aime ta voiture. Or: J’aime votre voiture.
In French or German, as can be noticed, ‘status’ as a social dimension is

given serious consideration when we use sentences of this kind. To explain,
‘J’aime ta voiture’ or ‘Ich finde dein Auto gut’ meaning ‘I like your car’
is used when we talk about a car owned by a person who is not superior
to us, i.e. a friend or a family member. However, ‘J’aime votre voiture’ or
‘Ich finde Ihr Auto gut’, which has the same meaning in English, i.e. ‘I like
your car’, is used just to show respect when we talk about a car owned by
a person who is superior to us, such as a boss.

Now, let us use the following table to see whether or not all these
languages have nouns, verbs, pronouns (including possessive adjectives),
and tenses.
Language Noun Verb Pronoun Tense If languages do not

English car like I yes have a grammatical
category of ‘tense’,
Arabic ‫سيارة‬ ّ‫حب‬ ‫ك‬ yes how do its speakers
talk about the past
Swahili gari penda nai, yako yes or future?
Malay kereta suka saya, kamu no
German auto finde ich, dein yes
Filipino kotse gusto ko, mu yes
1 0 S e t t i n g t h e s c e n e
Language Noun Verb Pronoun Tense

Tok Pisin ka laik mi, yu no
French voiture aime Je, ta/votre yes
Chinese 车(che) 喜欢(xihuan) 我 (wo)/ 你 ni。 no
As we mentioned above, all languages have nouns, verbs, and pronouns,

but not all of them have tenses. Languages such as Malay, Chinese,
and creole languages like Tok Pisin do not have tenses. To take the
discussion a step further, let us raise this question: Do all languages
belong to the Subject–Verb–Object pattern? The answer is ‘No’ as some
languages, such as Arabic, Swahili, and Filipino, start with the verb
ّ‫أحب‬, ‘naipenda’ and ‘gusto’, respectively, as can be seen above. Others,
such as English, German, Malay, French, Chinese, and Tok Pisin, on
the other hand, start with a subject ‘I’, ‘Ich’, ‘Saya’, ‘Je’, 我 (wo),
and ‘Mi’, respectively. In addition, in some of these languages, such
as Filipino, the noun does not change its form to indicate whether it is
singular or plural, but the determiner ‘ang’ and ‘mga’ used before the
noun will see to this, as in:
Gusto ko ang koste mu (I like your car).

Gusto ko mga koste mu (I like your cars).
Now, let us shift our focus of attention to determiners and their position
in noun phrases. Do they always precede nouns? The answer is ‘No’
as in some languages, such as Filipino, Malay, Swahili, and Arabic, to
mention but a few, some determiners come after the noun. To explain,
the noun phrase ‘your car’ can be discussed in the above-mentioned
languages. In English, and some other languages, such as German ‘dein
Auto’ and French ‘ta voiture’, the possessive adjective, which is a deter-
miner, comes before the noun. However, in languages such as Filipino,
Malay, Swahili, and Arabic, the possessive adjective comes after the
noun, as shown below:
Language Noun phrase

Filipino Kotse = car mu = your
Malay Kereta = car kamu = your
Swahili Gari = car yako = your
Arabic ‫ = سيارة‬car ‫ = ك‬your
Unlike English, some languages and creoles, such as Malay, Swahili, Tok
Pisin, Arabic, and French, distinguish between a possessive adjective that
refers to singular and a possessive adjective that refers to plural. Therefore,
when one says ‘your car’ in these languages, ‘the car’ could belong to one
person or more, as shown below:
Types of linguistic universals

Linguists distinguish between two kinds of universals: ‘absolute universals’
Why are some
and ‘implicational universals’. Absolute universals apply to every known
universals called
language and are quite few in number. For example, all languages have ‘implicational
pronouns, verbs, nouns, and the like. Implicational universals, on the other universals’?
hand, apply to languages with a particular feature that is always accom-
panied by another feature. For instance, if a language requires a subject–
verb inversion for ‘yes–no questions’, then it also requires a subject–verb
inversion for ‘wh-questions’. To make this point clear, consider the
following sentence in English:
He will travel to France soon.
In this sentence, there is an auxiliary verb ‘will’ after the subject of the sen-
tence ‘he’. To form a ‘yes–no question’ in English, a transformation known
as ‘inversion’ is needed. In the example we are considering, the auxiliary
‘will’ is moved from the Infl (short for ‘inflection’) to the left of the subject,
as shown in the following tree:
This ‘yes–no question’ is formed by applying the inversion transformation

to the deep structure ‘He will travel to France soon’ to produce a surface Try to learn the
differences
structure of the following kind: ‘Will he travel to France soon?’. between ‘deep
To form a ‘wh-question’ in English, in addition to the inversion trans- structures’ and ‘sur-
formation discussed above, another transformation called ‘wh-movement’ face structures’.
is used that can move the ‘wh-phrase’ from its normal position (indicated
by the symbol ‘e’ that stands for the word ‘empty’) to a position at the
beginning of the sentence, as shown below:
He will travel to France soon.
As shown above, in English, ‘wh-questions’ cannot be formed without

What about
applying the inversion transformation, i.e. moving the auxiliary from its
other languages?
Do they need Infl position to the left of the subject. This can be considered as an example
‘inversion’ trans- of an implicational universal as the ‘wh-movement’ transformation is
formation and ‘wh-
accompanied by the ‘inversion’ transformation.
movement’ to form
‘wh-questions’?
Connecting the dots: Translation universals
From a functional-linguistic perspective, ‘universals’ can be defined as

“those properties that are necessarily common to all human languages”
(Comrie 2003: 195). Here a claim is made about the potential of human lan�-
guage where universals are assumed to exist because of how human beings
are made, and the physical and cognitive limitations they are subjected to.
Thus, for example, certain sounds may not be possible given the nature of
the human body, and they are thus universally absent from human language.
Another major group of universals relates to the functions of language. The
two essential functions of language are (1) to convey information and (2) to
establish and maintain social relations between human beings.
The universals posited in the functional approach are used to represent
exclusively bottom-up generalizations across languages. Their explanatory
potential includes general cognitive, social-interactional, processing,
and perceptual, as well as possibly other human faculties. The emphasis
is here on empirical cross-linguistic comparison and on the relationship
between linguistic forms and language functions. One important functional
approach is the systemic-functional one, which places particular emphasis
on the relationship between form and function, and which has proved to be
most useful for the study of translation.
About the same time as Greenberg and Chomsky came up with their
suggestions of linguistic universals, Halliday (1961, 1973) proposed that
language as a system of ‘meaning making’ has a universal meaning poten-
tial, which evolved around three motifs that he called ‘metafunctions’: the
ideational metafunction, the interpersonal metafunction, and the textual
metafunction (for more details, see Chapter 9 of this book). Ideationally,
How many language reflects our human experience, our interpretation of all that goes
processes are on around us, outside and inside, mapping systems of meaning into lan-
in this complex guage such that human beings can capture and construe their individual
sentence?
‘ “I’ll give him a call and collective experiences of the world. Interpersonally, language is a way
later”, she says’. of initiating and maintaining social relationships, and of construing human
language learners and users as personal and collective beings. Textually,

language involves the creation of information: it creates discourse, that
is, the patterned forms of wording that constitute meaningful semiotic
contexts. The textual function has an enabling, facilitative force, which
allows the other two functions to operate.
The ideational function contains a general category of process split into
material, mental, and relational processes. Processes are happening to, or
are being enacted by, human agents in time and space, past or future, real or
imaginary, here or there. The interpersonal function is a mode of enacting
personal relationships of different kinds, exchanges of speech roles, real-
izing discourse functions, and implying systems and resources of mood
and modality. The textual function is intrinsic to language itself, refer-
ring to the resources any language must have for creating discourse and
ensuring that each instance of text makes contact with its environment.
This ‘environment’ includes the context of situation (Malinowski 1935),
the context of culture, and other instances of text. The resources tapped
into here are potentially higher than clauses or clause complexes, setting
up relationships which create not only semantic cohesion, but also contrib-
uting to the overall grammar of the clause. A typical way of construing the
clause as a ‘message’ is as a combination of two perspectives: that of the
speaker and that of the listener, which lead to different types of information
flow. All languages display some form of textual organization of the clause.
However, how far the tension between the speaker–listener perspectives
are weighted one against the other in the languages of the world is far from
clear. The textual metafunction also provides for the creation of ‘cohesion’
of five kinds: reference (or ‘phora’ [e.g. anaphoric, cataphoric] to distin-
guish it from reference as defined in the philosophy of language), ellipsis,
substitution, conjunction, and lexical cohesion (Halliday and Hasan 1976).
In systemic-functional theorizing, it is at this ‘deep’ metafunctional level of
language that we can say ‘universality’ exists.
Now what might these functional universals mean for translation?
Various ‘translation universals’ as universal tendencies of the trans-
lation process, laws of translation, and norms of translation have
been suggested in the literature (e.g. Blum-Kulka 1986; Baker 1993;
Laviosa-Braithwaite 1998; Toury 2012); see also the contributions to

the volume on Translation Universals: Do They Exist? (Mauranen and
Kujamäki 2004). Toury (2012), in an attempt to formulate probabilistic
‘laws’ of translation that would hopefully lead to translation universals,
has proposed two laws, namely:
(1) The law of growing standardization, referring to the modification of

the textual relations of the original text while translating in favour of
more “habitual options offered by the target repertoire”.
(2) The law of interference, referring to the adaptation of the lexical and Is there any diffe-
rence between
syntactic features of the original text in the target language. ‘explicitation’ and
‘explicitness’ in the
As prime candidates for translation universals, the following operations field of translation
studies?
have been suggested: explicitation, simplification, disambiguation,
conventionalization, standardization, levelling out, avoidance of repetition,

and over-or underrepresentation of source or target language elements, as
well as the general manifestation of a so-called ‘third code’, i.e.
translations as opposed to original non-translated texts.
Many researchers who posited translation universals have relied on cor-
pora, the assumption being that through the technical possibilities corpus
methodology affords, universals can be found. However, the question we
have to ask ourselves is the following: Can there be something like ‘trans-
lation universals’ at all? (House 2008, 2018). Unlike the linguistically
based quest for universals of language, the quest for translation universals
is, in essence, futile, as there can be no universals at the level of perform-
ance, i.e. no proper translation universals, for the following four reasons:
(1) Translation is undeniably an act that operates on language, so

universals proposed for language must necessarily also apply to
translation. But: these are then NOT universals of translation per se,
or sui generis universals, but simply universals of language that also
Can you imagine an
English-translated apply to translation.
text without, for (2) Obviously, however, translation is not identical to language, let alone
instance, verbs? If to the two linguistic systems involved in translation. Translation
not, can we con-
sider this as a trans- can be described as an act of performance, of parole, specific to a
lation universal? certain language pair. This is, of course, reflected in the nature of
Discuss. translation: it is inherently language specific. This language-pair
specificity of translation cannot really be offset, such that even
corpus-based multi-pair comparisons remain agglomerations of
different pairs. Only detailed linguistic analyses of the particular
phenomenon suggested to be universal can help us to prove the
validity of the claim.
(3) Closely related to the language-pair specificity of translation is the
issue of directionality in translation. This means that candidates of
universality suggested for one particular translation direction need not
necessarily be candidates for universality in the opposite direction.
What about the
language-pair House (2004) has shown on the basis of a corpus of translations of
that you are children’s books from English into German and vice versa that, for
familiar with? example, procedures of explicitation common in translations from

English into German are not traceable in the reverse translation direction
at all. In fact, a body of earlier contrastive analyses of many different
genres (House 2006) suggested that explicitation holds for translations
into German but not the other way round. But even this hypothesis can
be disconfirmed if we take the passage of time into account, as was
done in the Hamburg research project ‘Covert translation’ (summary
in House 2014). Baumgarten (2007), for instance, has shown that the
use of the German sentence-initial coordinative conjunction ‘und’, i.e.
‘and’, has significantly increased over the last 25 years in German
academic discourse under the influence of translations from English,
which can be taken as indicating an increase of implicitness and
vagueness, i.e. a decrease in explicitness regarding this particular
functional category.
(4) Another consideration that militates against the very assumption

of translation universals, is genre specificity and the dynamic
development of genres over time. In the project ‘Covert translation’,
English original texts, translations from English into German,
French and Spanish, and comparable texts in these languages were
compared with a focus on how the phenomena ‘subjectivity’ and
‘addressee-orientation’ are realized linguistically and how they
change over time under the influence of global English. While there
is a tendency for explicitation (use of elaboration, extension, and
enhancement) in the German translations of popular science texts,
this is not the case to the same degree for the different genre of
economic texts.
Given the above four arguments, there is no justification at the present time
for assuming the existence of translation universals. But the quest needs
to go on!
Exercises and discussion

Exercise 1: Mark the following statements as true (T) or false (F).
(1) ‘All languages have pronouns’ is an example of an

absolute universal.
(2) ‘All languages have vowels’ is an example of an impli-
cational universal.
(3) ‘All languages have the category noun’ is an example
of an implicational universal.
(4) Absolute universals take the form of ‘if …, then …’.
(5) ‘If a language has adjectives for shape, then it has
adjectives for colours’ is an example of an implica-
tional universal.
(6) All languages have a grammatical category of ‘aspect’.
(7) All languages have a grammatical category of ‘duality’.

(8) All languages belong to the SVO type.
(9) Formal linguistics covers five main areas. They are
phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and
pragmatics.
(10) Usage-based linguistics covers two main
areas: pragmatics and semantics.
(11) Ethnolinguistics is a branch in linguistics that studies
the relationship between language and logical
thought.
(12) Computational linguistics studies how computers
simulate languages and their workings.
Exercise 2: Before translating the following three sentences into a lan-

guage you know, comment on them by referring to Halliday’s three
metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual.
(a) The girl asked this question.

(b) The stupid girl asked this embarrassing question.
(c) It is the girl who asked such a question.
Exercise 3: Select any text from BBC News and:
(a) translate it into any language you know;

(b) comment on your translation by referring to such notions as
‘explicitation’, ‘simplification’, ‘disambiguation’, ‘conventionalization’,
‘standardization’, ‘levelling out’, ‘avoidance of repetition’,
‘over-representation of source language elements’, and
‘underrepresentation of target language elements’.
Discussion and research points

(1) Are procedures of explicitation common in translations between
English and your own language or another language which you know
and from and/or into which you can translate, or it is influenced by
the directionality of translation? Discuss.
(2) It is argued by Frawley (1984) that a so-called ‘third code’ is
different from both the original language and target language
as it is a result of the combined impact of the original text and
the linguistic and stylistic norms of the target language. Do
you agree?
(3) What are the main hypotheses regarding translation universals?
(4) When you translate into your own language, do you have the
tendency to make your sentences shorter or longer than the
sentences used in the original text regardless of the text type
and genre?
(5) Toury’s (2012) law of growing standardization refers to the selection
of certain linguistic and stylistic options that are more common
in the target language at the expense of the patterns used in the

original language. With this in mind, carry out a descriptive study
to identify some examples in which the translator opted for what is
commonly used in the target language, thus modifying the patterns
used in the original text while translating.
(6) Carry out a descriptive study of any translated book to answer the
following questions:
(a) What generalizations can you make about the translation
process?
(b) What hypotheses can you propose?
(c) How would you seek to investigate them?
S e t t i n g t h e s c e n e 17
References
Aitchison, J. (1999/2003). Linguistics (6th edn). London: Teach Yourself.

Akmajian, A., Demers, R. A., Farmer, A. K., and Harnish, R. M. (2010). An
Introduction to Language and Communication (6th edn). Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press.
Almanna, A. (2016). Semantics for Translation Students: Arabic–English–
Arabic. Oxford: Peter Lang.
Baker, E. A., and Hengeveld, K. (eds.) (2012). Linguistics. Oxford: Wiley
Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Baker, M. (1993). “Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies: Implications
and Applications”. In Baker, M., Francis, G., and Tognini-Bonelli, E.
(eds.), Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair (pp. 233–50).
Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Baumgarten, N. (2007). “Converging Conventions? Macrosyntactic
Conjunctions with English and and German und”. Text & Talk,
Vol. 27, pp. 139–70.
Blum-Kulka, S. (1986). “Shifts of Coherence and Cohesion in Translation”.
In House, J. and Blum-Kulka, S. (eds.), Interlingual and Intercultural
Communication (pp. 17–35). Tübingen: Narr,.
Comrie, B. (2003). “On Explaining Language Universals”. In Tomasello,
M. (ed.), The New Psychology of Language, Vol. 2. Mahwah, NJ:
Erlbaum, pp. 195–209.
Frawley, W. (1984). Translation: Literary, Linguistic and Philosophical
Perspectives. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1961). “Categories of the Theory of Grammar”, Word,
Vol. 17(3), pp. 241–92.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1973). Explorations in the Functions of Language.
London: Arnold.
Halliday, M. A. K. and Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English.
London: Longman.
House, J. (2004). “Linguistic Aspects of the Translation of Children’s
Books”. In Kittel, H., Frank, A. P., Greiner, N., Hermans, T., Koller,
W., Lambert, J., and Paul, F. (eds.), Übersetzung- Translation-
Traduction: An International Handbook (pp. 683–97). Berlin: Mouton

de Gruyter.
House, J. (2006). “Communicative Styles in English and German”.
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House, J. (2008). “Beyond Intervention: Universals in Translation?”,
transkom, Vol. 1, pp. 6–19.
House, J. (2014). “Translation as a Site of Language Contact, Variation
and Change”. In Ahrens, B., HansenSchirra, S., Krein-Kühle, M.,
Schreiber, M., and Wienen, U. (eds.), Translationswissenschaftliches
Kolloquium III (pp. 155–80). Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang,.
House, J. (2018). Translation: The Basics. London: Routledge.
Laviosa-Braithwaite, S. (1998). “Universals of Translation”. In Baker,

M. (ed.), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation (pp. 288–91).
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They Exist? Amsterdam: Benjamins.
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University Press.
Phonetics and phonology 2
This chapter is an introduction to phonetics, phonology, and the main

differences between them. It also familiarizes you with the main branches
of phonetics, such as ‘articulatory phonetics’, ‘acoustic phonetics’, and
‘auditory phonetics’. Further, the main stages of sound production,
such as ‘respiration’, ‘phonation’, ‘oro-nasal process’, and ‘articulation’
are explained in this chapter. Added to this, phonological features are
discussed in a direct link to translation.
After studying this chapter, you should be able to (1) define phones,
phonemes, and allophones; (2) identify vowel and consonant sounds in
English; (3) identify the place of articulation and manner of articulation;
(4) describe voiced and voiceless consonants; (5) distinguish simple
vowels from diphthongs; and (6) assess the phonological features that
should be reflected while translating between languages.
Phonetics and phonology (from the word ‘phone’, meaning ‘sound’) are
the branches of linguistics that study sounds but from different perspectives
What is the diffe-
(for more details, see Ladefoged and Johnson 2010). While phonology rence between
focuses on how sounds function in relation to each other in a certain lan- ‘phonetics’ and
guage, phonetics concentrates on how sounds are produced by speakers’ ‘phonology’?
vocal apparatus, transmitted by atmospheric air, and perceived by listeners’
auditory system. It thus provides “methods for their description, classifica-
tion, and transcription” (Crystal 1980/2008: 363).

On this principle, phonetics can be classified into three main branches:
● ‘Articulatory phonetics’ studies how the vocal organs (lips, tongue,

teeth, etc.) are used to produce speech sounds.
● ‘Acoustic phonetics’ investigates the physical properties of speech
sounds in terms of duration, frequency, intensity, and quality.
● ‘Auditory phonetics’ focuses on how people perceive speech sounds,
i.e. how the listener’s eardrum is activated by the sound waves on the
one hand, and how messages are carried to the brain in the form of
What about the
nerve impulses on the other. other languages
that you are
familiar with?
DOI: 10.4324/9781003228028-3
2 0 P h o n e t ic s a n d ph o n o lo gy
While the English alphabet is comprised of 26 letters, the sound system of

Why are there more
sounds than letters English contains 44 sounds. This is because:
in English?
(1) the same sound may be represented by many letters or combination of
letters, for example the long vowel /iː/ is presented by the letters ‘e’,
Discuss these ‘ey’, and ‘ee’ in such words as ‘he’, ‘key’, and ‘see’;
points in other (2) the same letter may refer to a variety of sounds, such as the letter ‘a’ in
languages.
words like ‘cake’, ‘father’, and ‘village’;
(3) a combination of letters may stand for plenty of sounds, such as the
letters ‘ch’ in words such as ‘character’ and ‘church’ or the letters ‘th’
in words like ‘either’ and ‘through’;
(4) a single letter may represent a great deal of sounds, such as the letter
‘c’ in such two words as ‘car’ and ‘receive’;
(5) there may be no letter to represent a sound that occurs in a word, such
as the sound /j/in words like ‘cute’ and ‘use’.
Phone, phoneme, and allophone
A ‘phone’ (from the Greek word ‘phone’, meaning ‘sound’ or more accur-
ately ‘voice’) is defined as “the smallest perceptible discrete segment of
sound in a stream of speech” (Crystal 2008: 361). A ‘phoneme’, however,
is the smallest unit that can bring about a change in meaning; it includes all
the phonetic specifications of phones. To explain, let us consider the sound
/t/in the words ‘team’ and ‘stem’ as a phoneme. The slight difference in the
realization of this phoneme is that the /t/in ‘team’ is aspirated [th], i.e. there
is a puff of air following the release of /t/, while the /t/ in ‘stem’ is non-
aspirated [t]‌. Phones that belong to the same phoneme, such as [t] and [th]
How would you for English /t/, are called ‘allophones’, as shown in the following diagram:
define an ‘aspirated
sound’?
Sound production
To produce speech, we use our vocal tract, which consists of the pas-
What are the main sageway between the lips and nostrils on the one hand, and between the
stages of sound lips and the larynx on the other. As such, speech is produced by pushing
production?
air from the lungs up through the vocal tract (the first stage) where the
vocal folds convert the air into audible sound (the second stage). Then,
these audible sounds are distributed to the oral cavity or nasal cavity by
the soft palate (the third stage). Finally, these sounds are transformed into
intelligible speech sounds with the help of the organs of speech (the fourth
P h o n e t ic s a n d ph o n o lo gy 2 1
stage). Building on this, the stages of sound production are classified into
four stages, as shown and explained below.
● Respiration: the air is pushed from the lungs up through the vocal
tract.
● Phonation: the vocal folds convert the air into audible sounds.
● Oro-nasal process: these audible sounds are distributed to the oral
cavity or nasal cavity by the soft palate (velum).
● Articulation: these sounds are transformed into intelligible speech
sounds with the help of the speech organs by manipulating the lips,
tongue, teeth, velum, pharynx, and vocal cords.

Place of articulation
As stated earlier, in the fourth stage, the audible sounds are transformed
into intelligible speech sounds with the help of the speech organs by
manipulating the lips, tongue, teeth, velum, pharynx, and vocal cords. In
the articulation stage, the vocal tract is constricted at one of the following
points, as shown in the following table:
Speech organ Sound Place of articulation

at the lips /b, p, m, w/ bilabial Be familiar with
the main points of
between the lower articulation.
/f, v/ labiodental
lips and upper teeth
between the tongue
/θ, ð/ (inter)dental
and upper teeth
Speech organ Sound Place of articulation

between the tongue
/t, d, s, z, n, l/ alveolar
and the alveolar ridge
between the tongue
/dʒ, tʃ, ʃ, ʒ, j, r/ palatal
and the palate
between the tongue
/k, g, ŋ/ velar
and the velum
at the glottis /h/ glottal
Manner of articulation
We have seen that in the fourth stage, i.e. articulation, the vocal tract is
How would you constricted at one of the seven points. Now special attention is paid to the way
divide consonants
according to in which the vocal tract is constricted, which can be classified into (1) com-
their manner of pletely blocked and (2) partially blocked, as explained in what follows.
articulation?
(1) Completely blocked

Oral stops
In some sounds such as /p, b, t, d, k, g/, the flow of air through the vocal
What are the ‘oral tract is completely blocked because the two articulators are brought
stops’ in your own
language?
together. These sounds, called (oral) ‘stops’ (more recently they have been
called ‘plosives’), can be classified into three groups depending on the
articulators used:
Two articulators Sounds

-the two lips are brought together; /p, b/
-the tip of the tongue pressed against the alveolar ridge; /t, d/
-the back of the tongue pressed against the velum. /k, g/
How many ‘nasal Nasal stops

stops’ can be In some other sounds such as /m, n, ŋ/, the flow of air through the mouth is
identified in your completely blocked but the velum is lowered, thereby forcing the air to go
language?
through the nose; hence they are called ‘nasal stops’ or just ‘nasals’.
(2) Partially blocked

Fricatives
What about the In sounds such as /f, v, s, z, θ, ð, ʃ, ʒ, h/, the flow of air through the vocal tract
other languages or is impeded, but it is not completely blocked because the two articulators are
dialects that you brought near each other. Here, the air escapes through a narrow passage,
are familiar with?
Do you have these thus making a hissing sound. To hear these hissing sounds, try to put your
sounds? hand very close to your mouth and say these sounds one by one.
Affricates Do you have these

In sounds like /dʒ, tʃ/, the flow of air through the vocal tract is com- affricates in your
own language or
pletely blocked (like the stops /d, t/), but ends with a narrow opening
dialect?
in the vocal tract (like the fricatives /f, v, s, z/). It is worth noting that
‘affricates’ are quite common around the world, though less common
than ‘fricatives’.
Approximants
‘Approximant’ is a term used to cover ‘glides’ and ‘liquids’ where there
is some or very little obstruction. To begin with ‘glides’, the flow of air
through the vocal tract is constricted, but not enough to block or impede
the flow of air, as in: /w, j/. However, in ‘liquids’, the flow of air through
the vocal tract is constricted, but neither enough to block the flow of air nor
to cause friction, as in: /l, r/.
Note that unlike the liquids (/l, r/), which are produced with some
obstruction of the airstream, the glides (/w, j/), which are sometimes called
‘semivowels’, are produced with very little obstruction and are always
followed by a vowel.
Voicing
‘Voicing’ is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech

sounds (usually consonants). Consonants can be described as either
‘voiceless’ (also called ‘unvoiced’; − voice) or ‘voiced’ (+voice), as shown
in the following table:
Voiced Voiceless
/b, d, g, v, z, ð, r, l, w, ŋ, y, m, n, ʒ, dʒ/ /p, t, k, f, s, h, θ, ʃ, tʃ/
Note that nasals (/m, n, ŋ/), glides (/w, j/), and liquids (/r, l/) are all In Arabic, as there
voiced. To explain how we can distinguish between voiced and voiceless is no /p/sound,
sounds, try to place your finger(s) on the voice box (i.e. the location of the Arabs sometimes
pronounce ‘park’
Adam’s apple in the upper throat) and say (1) ssssssssssssssss and then
and ‘bark’ in a
(2) zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. What do you feel? Is there any vibration? If yes, similar way. Which
then the sound is a voiced sound; otherwise, it is a voiceless sound. To put sound is missing in
your language?
it differently, at the phonation stage, to produce a voiced sound such as /z/,
the vocal folds are brought together fairly tightly. However, to produce a
voiceless sound like /s/, the air passes through the glottis as the vocal folds
are set apart.
Vowels
Unlike consonants, vowels “are produced in a smaller area of the vocal

How many vowels
tract – the palatal and velar regions” (Davenport and Hannahs 2010: 39). are there in your
To produce vowels, people use their tongue, lips, and jaw. As such, in own language?
describing and classifying the vowels, full consideration is given to these

three speech organs. It is worth noting that the most difficult task in
describing the vowels is to identify the position of the tongue as it changes
its position from one vowel to another without touching any place of articu-
lation (such as teeth, alveolar ridge, palate, velum, or glottis) discussed in
the previous section. With this in mind, in producing vowels, there will be
no obstruction to the air flow through the mouth. However, the position of
the lips and jaw will not cause a big problem as it can be identified by the
person without the aid of any instrument.
To begin with, let us try to pronounce these two vowels:
● /iː/in ‘see’
● /ɒ/in ‘watch’
Try to pronounce them slowly and then speed up. Now, can you identify
the position of (1) your tongue horizontally and vertically, (2) your lips,
and (3) your jaw?
Let us begin with the position of the jaw; it is characterized by
closeness in /iː/ and openness in /ɒ/. What about the lips? Are they
rounded, relaxed/neutral, or spread? They are spread in /iː/and rounded
in /ɒ/, as shown here:
/iː/as in ‘he’, ‘we’, etc. /ɒ/as in ‘water’, ‘watch’, etc.
Now, let us identify the position of the tongue. Horizontally, it is

front in /iː/and back in /ɒ/. Vertically, however, it is high in /iː/and low
in /ɒ/.
Building on this, to distinguish one vowel from another, we need to pay
extra attention to:
(1) the horizontal position of the tongue (be it ‘front’, ‘centre’, or

‘back’);
(2) the vertical position of the tongue (be it ‘high’, ‘mid’, or ‘low’);
(3) the position of the lips (be it ‘rounded’ or ‘relaxed’, also called
‘neutral’, or ‘spread’);
(4) the position of the jaw (be it ‘close’, ‘mid’, or ‘open’).
Added to these positions, the length of the vowel (be it ‘short’ or ‘long’)
can be given serious consideration while describing vowels. The diffe-
rence between short and long vowels resides in length: long vowels are
given symbols written with (ː), as in /iː/ or /aː/, while short vowels are
given symbols without (ː) like /ɪ/ or /e/ (for more details, see Underhill Do you have this
1994: 5). Further, English vowels can be classified into two main complex system of
types: ‘monophthongs’ (also known as ‘pure vowels’) and ‘diphthongs’. vowels in your own
language?
The former phonetically refers to those vowels which remain constant and
do not glide, whereas the latter represents those which are composed of a
glide from one vowel to another one.
As one may observe, the vowels in the words ‘sit’, ‘speak’, ‘book’,
‘cup’, and ‘bed’ are examples of monophthongs (pure vowels). However,
the vowels in the words ‘may’, ‘kite’, ‘toy’, ‘near’, ‘dare’, ‘cure’, ‘cold’,
and ‘mouth’ are examples of diphthongs.
The question that may arise here is: Why is the letter ‘o’ in ‘dog’
considered a monophthong while it is a diphthong in ‘go’? This is because
the vowel phoneme in ‘go’ exhibits some changes where the tongue
What about the
moves from one position to another, thus showing a change in quality. two words ‘boat’
However, the vowel phoneme in ‘dog’ does not show changes in quality and ‘poet’? Do
as the tongue does not move from one position to another. By quality they have the
same vowel?
(more accurately ‘sound quality’), it is meant that vowels show consider-
able differences in three phonetic parameters: tongue shape, tongue pos-
ition, and lip position.
Building on this discussion, pure vowels can be classified according
to the horizontal position of the tongue into (1) front vowels, (2) central
vowels, and (3) back vowels. The following table shows vowels from
Standard Southern British English:
• front vowels
●high front /iː/as in ‘seat’, ‘feat’, etc.
/ɪ/as in ‘sit’, ‘fit’, etc.
●mid front /e/ as in ‘left’, ‘bed’, etc.
●low front /æ/ as in ‘cap’, ‘bad’, etc.

• central vowels
●mid central /ə/as in ‘the’, ‘teacher’, etc.
●low central /ʌ/as in ‘cup’, ‘bus’, etc.
• back vowels
●high back /uː/as in ‘food’, ‘rude’, etc.
/u/ as in ‘boot’, ‘pull’, etc.
/ʊ/as in ‘good’, ‘push’, etc.
●mid back /ɔː/as in ‘snore’, ‘law’, etc.
●low back /ɒ/as in ‘dog’, ‘want’, etc.
/ɑː/as in ‘far’, ‘car’, etc.
As regards the diphthongs in Southern Standard British English, they are

classified into eight vowels, as shown below:
(1) /ɪə/as in ‘beer’, ‘fear’, ‘here’, ‘idea’, ‘beard’, etc.

Note that the word
‘moor’ has three (2) /ʊə/, as in ‘sure’, ‘moor’, ‘tour’, ‘obscure’, etc.
pronunciations: (3) /eə/, as in ‘there’, ‘where’, ‘chair’, ‘dare’, ‘stare’, etc.
/mɔ:/ UK, /mʊə/ UK, (4) /eɪ/, as in ‘cake’, ‘make’, ‘take’, ‘say’, ‘pain’, ‘they’, ‘vein’, ‘vain’,
/mʊr/ US.
‘weight’, ‘wait’, ‘way’, etc.
(5) /ɔɪ/, as in ‘boy’, ‘toy’, ‘enjoy’, ‘voice’, ‘avoid’, etc.
(6) /aɪ/ as in ‘eye’, ‘tie’, ‘die’, ‘high’, ‘buy’, ‘bye’, ‘by’, ‘might’, ‘cry’,
‘shy’, ‘try’, etc.
(7) /əʊ/, as in ‘go’, ‘goal’, ‘snow’, ‘hello’, ‘although’, ‘home’, etc.
(8) /aʊ/, as in ‘house’, ‘loud’, ‘down’, ‘how’, ‘bough’, etc.
The best way to memorize them is to divide them into groups, as shown in
this diagram (after Roach 2009):
P h o n e t ic s a n d ph o n o lo gy 27
The English-based creole of Papua New Guinea, Tok Pisin, takes most of its
words from English, but they are used in different domains and pronounced
quite differently. Unlike the lexifier language, i.e. English, Tok Pisin has a What is a ‘lexifier
limited number of vowels. It only has five vowels (/i/, /o/, /a/, /u/, and /e/). language’?
This results in a great number of examples of homophones, which are
words pronounced in a similar way. Examples of homophones in Tok Pisin
are the word ‘was’ resulting from ‘watch’ and ‘wash’, and ‘sip’ resulting
from ‘ship’ and ‘sheep’.
Further, sounds such as /θ/, /ʃ/, /d/, and /f/ are conflated, as shown in
this table:
• from /θ/to /t/or /s/

thank tenk
teeth tit
something samting
mouth maus
• from /ʃ/to /s/
show so
shop sop
wash was
ship sip
• from /d/ to /t/
blood blut
• from /f/ to /p/
finish pinis
flight pait
fly plai
afternoon apinun
enough inap
Further, the sound /r/ is not pronounced in many words, such as ‘wok’
meaning ‘work’, ‘woksop’ meaning ‘workshop’, ‘apinun’ meaning ‘after-
noon’, ‘bepo’ meaning ‘before’, and ‘moning’ meaning ‘morning’.
Connecting the dots: Phonological features and

translation
Phonologically speaking, each language has its own sounds and some
of these sounds are shared by many languages. However, these shared
sounds are in an arbitrary relationship with the meanings of the words
formed by those sounds, except for a limited number of words. As such,
there is no correspondence between any language pair at the phono-
logical level, and content therefore should be given priority at the
expense of the sounds. At times, however, when translating between

languages, phonological features (here, the very use of the concept of
‘phonological features’ is no longer tied with the well-known concept of
distinctive features proposed by Jakobson and Chomsky) are considered
“an important aspect of translation when ‘form’ comes to the fore in
discourse and presents itself as inseparable from content” (Farghal and
Almanna 2015: 51). To explain, let us consider the following Chinese
conversation between a husband and his wife along with its translation
into English (Wong and Shen 1999: 78–9):
ST Henhao, buyong danxin le. Wo haiyou weiyuan de fufen ne.

“Moshi de guiyuan?” qizi mei ting qingchu tade hua.
TT He gave me very good news. We need not look for trouble.
I have the possibility of being a member of the committee!
“What’s a common tea?” asked the wife, who only vaguely
Comment on caught the sound.
the translation
suggested here by
the translator in an
As can be observed, the Chinese words ‘weiyuan’ meaning a member of a
attempt to reflect committee and ‘guiyuan’ meaning longan, which is a type of tropical fruit
those phonological somehow similar to a lychee, require extra effort from the listener to distin-
features.
guish between them when being pronounced quickly. Now, the question
that rears its ugly head here is: How would you act as a translator in such a
situation? Will you ignore the phonological features? Will you change the
meaning? Will you opt for using a footnote or endnote? Here, being fully
aware that translating them literally would make the whole story behind
the use of these two words lost, the translator, as one may see, decided to
take care of the phonological features at the expense of the content, thus
translating ‘guiyuan’, which is a type of tropical fruit, into a ‘common tea’
with the potential to make it rhyme with ‘committee’ used in the translation
of the Chinese word ‘weiyuan’. This example shows clearly that phono-
logical features are sometimes important and cannot always be ignored on
the pretext that there is no correspondence between languages at the phono-
logical level.
To reinforce this point, let us consider the following example where the
phonological features emerge as an important aspect that needs to be given
serious consideration by translators.
I think that I used to detest Doctor Fischer more than any other man I
have known just as I loved his daughter more than any other woman.
(Greene 1980: 9–10)
Here, the dominant sounds that present themselves as inseparable from

the content are /t/, /d/, and /m/. Further, the author introduces two pairs
of antonyms, namely ‘detest’ versus ‘love’ and ‘man’ versus ‘woman’, in
a very short extract. These antonyms are used in parallel structures, thus
acquiring stylistic features that need to be given full consideration. As one
may notice, there is an example of alliteration used by the author: ‘detest’ Alliteration refers
and ‘doctor’. to the repetition
Now, giving serious consideration to these phonological features and of usually initial
consonant sounds
the antonyms and alliteration employed by the author, one may opt for the in two or more
following translations: neighboring words
or syllables, as
in ‘buy’, ‘book’,
Arabic ‫رجل آخر عرفته في‬
ٍ ‫ي‬ ُ ‫أظنُّ أنني‬
ّ ‫كنت أكره الدكتور فشر أكثر من أ‬ ‘before’, etc.
ُ ‫ تما ًما كما‬،‫حياتي‬
.‫كنت أحبُّ ابنته أكثر من أية امرأة أخرى في العالم‬ Assonance, how-
ever, refers to the
Back I think that I used to hate Doctor Fischer more than repetition of the
translation any other man I’ve known in my life just as I used to same or similar
love his daughter more than any other woman in the vowel sounds within
words, phrases, or
world. sentences, as in
German Ich glaube, daß ich Doktor Fischer mehr als irgend ‘seem’ and ‘beam’.
jemanden, den ich je in meinem Leben kannte, immer
gehasst habe, genau wie ich seine Tochter mehr als
irgendeine Frau in der Welt immer geliebt habe.
Back I think that I have always hated Doctor Fischer more
translation than anyone I have ever known in my life, just as I have
always loved his daughter more than any woman in the
world.
French Je pense que je détestais le docteur Fischer plus que
tout autre homme que j’ai connu dans ma vie, tout
comme j’aimais sa fille plus que toute autre femme au
monde.
Back I think I hate Doctor Fischer more than any other man
translation I’ve known in my life, just as I loved his daughter more
than any other woman in the world.
In Arabic, we have more than one option to translate the lexical item
‘detest’. It can be translated into ‫أكره‬, ‫أمقت‬, or ‫ أبغض‬roughly meaning ‘to
hate’, but the degree of hatred is different. Having paid extra attention to
the phonological features and the issues of readability and acceptability
that feed into naturalness, the translator opted for ‫أكره‬, thus making up for
the alliteration formed by virtue of the sound /d/in English.

In German, the lexical item ‘detest’ might well have been translated as
‘verabscheuen’, which offers itself as an immediate translational option.
However, the translator wisely chose the word ‘hassen’ with its strong and
hissing double /s/ sound, which is repeated in the conjunction ‘dass’ that
also features a strong hissing double /s/ sound. This sharp /s/ sound not
only better expresses the idea of ‘detesting’, but it also strengthens it con-
siderably. And the /s/sound again appears as an initial sound in the adjec-
tive ‘seine’, which cumulatively adds to the strong effect of this repeated
sound /s/in German.
In French, the translator has several options to translate the lexical item
‘detest’; these include ‘detester’, ‘abominer’, and ‘haïr’. They have the
same denotative meaning with different shades of meaning that show
the different levels of hatred. For the sake of readability that feeds into
naturalness, the translator opted for ‘détestais’ to cater for the alliteration
used in the original text.
Speakers of Tok Pisin, as explained in this chapter, tend to conflate the
sound /tʃ/in watch and /ʃ/in wash with /s/, thus having one word, which is
‘was’, for these two verbs, ‘watch’ and ‘wash’. To avoid such confusion,
they opt for doubling the word ‘was’ without any change, thus having a
new word which is ‘was was’ to mean ‘to wash’, ‘to have a shower’, or ‘to
swim’, as in:
Mi go was was (meaning ‘I go swimming’).
Reduplication is The second reason for reduplicating the word in Tok Pisin is to show that
a morphological the action is drawn out over a period, as in ‘lukluk’, literally meaning
process where
the word or part ‘look look’. In English, when the verb is preceded by the verb ‘to keep’,
of it is repeated for instance, as in ‘He kept looking at my car’, it indicates that the act of
exactly or with a looking is characterized by multiplexity, i.e. it consists of more than one
slight change, as in
‘easy-peasy’. element/one look. To reflect such a characteristic in Tok Pisin, people opt
for reduplication, as in
Em i luklukim ka bilong mi (meaning ‘He kept looking at my car’).
However, to indicate that the matter is characterized by multiplexity,

consisting of more than one element, speakers of Tok Pisin tend to attach
the suffix ‘–pela’ to the pronoun referring to a plural noun, as in:
Asde mi lukim yupela long rod. (meaning ‘Yesterday, I saw you all on
the street’)
To translate the same sentences from Tok Pisin into English, the phono-
Find words in your logical feature created by virtue of doubling the words ‘was’ and ‘luk’ is
own language lost due to the differences between the interfacing languages.
that can express In interpreting, to finish off this section, intonation and stress present
different feelings
and meanings themselves as an important aspect that should be given adequate consider-
depending on the ation by interpreters to accurately convey the intended meaning. The word
intonation used. ‘really’ in English can be discussed here as an example. It can express
different feelings depending on its intonation. When it is uttered with rising
pitch, it expresses surprise. However, when it is uttered with falling inton-
ation, it expresses disbelief. As such, when paying little or no attention
to intonation in interpreting, and the context is of little help, the intended
meaning cannot be reflected.

Exercise 1: Mark the following statements true (T) or false (F).
(1) The word ‘brother’ begins with a stop.

(2) The word ‘car’ begins with an approximant.
(3) The word ‘sheep’ begins with a glide.
(4) The word ‘sister’ begins with a voiced sound.
(5) The word ‘tree’ begins with a labiodental, affricate,
and voiceless sound.
(6) The letters ‘oo’ in words like ‘book’ and ‘blood’
represent the same sound.
(7) The word ‘see’ ends with a high front vowel.
(8) Vowels in English are produced in one main area,
which is the velum.
(9) The position of the lips while producing the vowel in
the word ‘read’ is rounded.
(10) The words ‘some’ and ‘sum’ have the same
pronunciation.
(11) In producing vowels, there will be no obstruction to
the airflow through the oral cavity.
(12) The word ‘three’ begins with a labiodental, affricate,
and voiceless sound.
(13) The word ‘school’ begins with a voiced sound.
(14) The word ‘shop’ begins with a glide.
(15) The word ‘father’ begins with a stop.
(16) The words ‘done’ and ‘dune’ have the same
pronunciation.
(17) The word ‘she’ ends with a high front vowel.
(18) The letters ‘ou’ in words like ‘country’ and ‘cousin’
represent the same sound.
Exercise 2: Fill in the gaps.
(1) The same sound may be represented by two different letters, as

in ____________ and ____________.
(2) English vowels can be classified into two main types: ____________
and ____________.
(3) To produce vowels, people use their ____________, ____________,
and ____________.
(4) There are three branches of phonetics. They are _________________,
____________, and ____________.
(5) The stages of sound production are ____________, ____________,
____________, and ____________.
(6) To produce the first sound in ‘fan’, the speaker uses ____________
and ____________.
(7) To produce the first sound in ‘trick’, the speaker uses ___________
_ and ____________.
(8) To produce the last sound in the word ‘cook’, the speaker uses
____________ and ____________.
(9) The last sound in ‘teacher’ is characterized by the following: the lips
are______________, and the tongue horizontally is articulated in the
_____________ of the oral cavity and vertically in the ____________
of it.
(10) The vowel in ‘cup’ is characterized by the following: the lips are ______
______, and the tongue horizontally is articulated in the ____________
of the oral cavity and vertically in the ____________ of it.
(11) To produce the first sound in ‘tired’, the speaker uses ___________
_ and ____________.
(12) To produce the first sound in ‘photograph’, the speaker uses
____________ and ____________.
Exercise 3: Classify the first sound in the following words according to

their place of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing.
Place of Manner of
Word Voicing
articulations articulation
Time __________ _____________ _______
Ride __________ _____________ _______
Hope __________ _____________ _______
Character __________ _____________ _______
Exercise 4: Choose the words from the box that begin with a ‘bilabial’,
‘labiodental’, or ‘interdental’ sound:
red –war –light–patient –tear –door –this –check –car–

horse –father –three
Bilabial ________________________________________
Labiodental ________________________________________
Interdental ________________________________________
Exercise 5: Choose the words from the box that contain ‘a high front
vowel’, ‘a high back vowel’ or ‘a mid-back vowel’.
food –snore –book –fruit –call –seat –cut –flood –home –

saw –people –push –rude –sit
a high front vowel ____________________________________

a high back vowel ____________________________________
a mid-back vowel ____________________________________
Exercise 6: The following text is titled ‘As you sow, so shall you reap’
quoted from Almanna (2018: 15). Your task is to:
(a) translate it into any language that you can translate to;
(b) comment on the phonological features that you have paid extra
attention to while translating the text.
One night, three thieves stole a lot of money from a rich man’s house.
They put the money in a bag and went to the forest. They felt very hungry.
So, one of them went to a nearby village to buy food. The other two
remained in the forest to take care of the bag of money.
The thief that went for food had an evil idea. He ate his food at a hotel.
Then he bought food for his two mates in the forest. He mixed a strong
poison with the food. He thought, “Those two will eat this poisoned food
and die. Then I will get all the money for myself”.
Meanwhile, the two wicked men in the forest decided to kill their mate
on his return. They thought that they would divide the money between
the two of them. All the three wicked men carried out their cruel plans.
The thief who wanted all the money for himself came to the forest with
the poisoned food. The two men in the forest hit him and killed him. Then
they ate the poisoned food and died. Thus, these evil people met with
an evil end.

(1) Go through any translated book to identify the main local strategies
opted for by the translator to handle those phonological features
presenting themselves as an important aspect that should be given
serious consideration while translating.
(2) Try to find a poem translated into your language to determine how
the translator dealt with the phonological features.
(3) It is argued that translating verse into verse may require a poet
translator to deal with the phonological features. What is your
opinion?
(4) At the phonological level, intonation is used by speakers, and
then interpreters, to differentiate otherwise identical messages.
How would you act if the speaker pays little or no attention to

the intonation of a certain word with multiple meanings? Imagine
different scenarios.
(5) In English, words like ‘by’, ‘bye’, and ‘buy’, and ‘two’, ‘to’, and ‘too’
are examples of homophones. Translate the following sentence and
then comment on the examples of homophones.
He was sent by his mother to the nearby supermarket to buy two
bottles of water.
(6) Why is Tok Pisin full of examples of homophones?
(7) Some years ago, the Japanese Prime Minister Mori was given some
basic English conversation training before he visited Washington
and met President Barack Obama. The instructor told him: “Start
your conversation with ‘How are you?’. Mr. Obama will say, ‘I am fine,
and you?’ Then, you can say ‘Me too’. Afterwards, the translators
will do the work for you.” When Mori met Obama, he mistakenly
said ‘Who are you?’ in place of ‘How are you?’ Mr. Obama was
a bit shocked but still managed to react with humour: ‘Well, I’m
Michelle’s husband, ha-ha’. Then Mori replied, ‘Me too, ha-ha’. In
such a situation, how would you act as an interpreter should you be
asked to interpret?
References
Almanna, A. (2018). The Nuts and Bolts of Arabic-English Translation:

An Introduction to Applied Contrastive Linguistics. Newcastle upon
Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Crystal, D. (1980/2008). A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics.
Malden, MA/Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Davenport, M. and Hannahs, S. J. (2010). Introducing Phonetics and
Phonology (3rd edn). London/New York: Routledge.
Farghal, M. and Almanna, A. (2015). Contextualizing Translation
Theories: Aspects of Arabic–English Interlingual Communication.
Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Greene, G. (1980). The Bomb Party. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Ladefoged, P. and Johnson, K. (2010). A Course in Phonetics. Boston,
MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Roach, P. (2009). English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Underhill, A. (1994). Sound Foundation: Learning and Teaching
Pronunciation. Oxford: Macmillan.
Wong, D. and Shen, D. (1999). “Factors Influencing the Process of
Translating”, Meta, Vol. 44(1), pp. 78–100.
Morphology 3
In this chapter, the structures of words, the classification of morphemes

(‘free’ or ‘bound’, ‘lexical’ or ‘grammatical’, ‘inflectional’ or ‘derivational’),
the classification of words (‘simple’, ‘compound’, or ‘complex’) and
the units that make up words are introduced and exemplified. Then
an attempt is made to connect the dots by touching on (1) two types
of translation: ‘rank-bound translation’ and ‘unbound translation’ and
(2) types of ‘shift’ that may occur through translation.
After studying this chapter, you should be able to (1) differentiate
morphemes from words; (2) identify the allomorphs of a morpheme;
(3) identify homonymous morphemes; (4) differentiate between roots and
stems; (5) differentiate between simple and complex words; (6) identify
the type of morpheme (‘bound’ versus ‘free’, ‘lexical’ versus ‘grammat-
ical’ and ‘inflectional’ versus ‘derivational’); and (7) differentiate between
‘rank-bound translation’ and ‘unbound translation’.
Morphology, morphemes, and words
‘Morphology’ (from the Greek word ‘morphē’, meaning ‘form’ or ‘shape’)

What is the diffe-
is the study of the structure of words; it is also concerned with word forma- rence between
tion. The term morphology was coined in the nineteenth century by the ‘morphology’ and
German poet, novelist, playwright, and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von ‘syntax’?
Goethe (1749–1832) in a biological context to refer to “the study of the

form and structure of organisms” (Aronoff and Fudeman 2005: 1).
Morphologists study minimal units of meaning, called ‘morphemes’,
and investigate the possible combinations of these units in a language to
form words.
‘Morpheme’ is “the smallest unit of language that has its own meaning,
What is the diffe-
either a word or a part of a word” (www.cambridgedictionary.org). Building rence between
on this, a word can be made up of one morpheme, two morphemes, three a ‘word’ and a
morphemes, or more. Consider these examples: ‘morpheme’?
● ‘friend’: one morpheme {friend}

● ‘friendly’: two morphemes {friend} +{–ly}
● ‘friendliness’: three morphemes {friend} +{–ly} +{–ness}
DOI: 10.4324/9781003228028-4
3 6 M o r ph o lo gy
The first formal definition of the term ‘word’ was proposed by Bloomfield
(1933/5: 178; also discussed in Jackson and Amvela 2000: 58). Bloomfield
“contrasted the word with other significant units: the morpheme or minimal
meaningful unit and syntagme or structure, consisting potentially of more
than one word” (1933/5: 178). The term ‘word’ is defined by Fromkin and
her associates as a “meaningful linguistic unit that can be combined to form
phrases and sentences” (2000: 25). Words can be simple, compound, com�-
How would you plex, or compound complex. When a word is made up of one morpheme,
define ‘simple then it is simple. Simple words cannot be broken down into smaller mean-
words’?
ingful units, as in:
cover, arm, gentle, wash …
When a morpheme is added to these words, as in:
covering, arms, gently, washer …
then they are not simple anymore as they are made up of two morphemes
and can be broken down into smaller meaningful units, as in:
● {cover} +{–ing}
● {arm} +{–s}
● {gentle} +{–ly}
● {wash} +{–er}
Note that the above words are made up of independent morphemes (‘cover’,
How would you
‘arm’, ‘gentle’, ‘wash’) and dependent morphemes (‘–ing’, ‘–s’, ‘–ly’, ‘–
define ‘complex er’); therefore, they are complex words. By contrast, when words are made
words’? up of two independent morphemes, then they are compound words, as in:
How would you hardcover, armchair, gentleman, white board

define ‘compound
words’?
Each compound word contains an independent morpheme. This inde-

pendent morpheme is also called a ‘free morpheme’ as it can stand as a
word on its own (for more details, see the discussion on ‘free morphemes’
versus ‘bound morphemes’ in this chapter).
M o r ph o lo gy 37
Each word should belong to a specific part of speech, such as a noun,

verb, adjective, adverb, or preposition.
Productivity
It is argued by morphologists that the occurrence of the morpheme in

different words can be used as evidence that it is a separate morpheme.
In this regard, Parker and Riley (1994/2010: 80; their emphasis) rightly
What kind of evi-
comment: “The more combinations a morpheme can occur in, the more dence could be
productive it is said to be; the more productive a morpheme is, the stronger used to argue that
the evidence that it is a separate morpheme”. To put this differently, when a ‘-er’ and ‘-s’ in the
word ‘teachers’ are
morphological pattern is considered productive, “we mean that this pattern morphemes?
can be extended to new cases, can be used to form new words” (Booij
2012: 70). As such, the suffixes ‘–er’ and ‘–s’ are productive morphemes as
they occur in different combinations with the same meaning and function,
as shown in the following examples:
–er –s
buyer boys
seller dogs
Find more
reader books examples.
asker friends
interviewer days
founder cars
cleaner doors
analyser windows
consumer girls
What about irregular words, such as the plural form of ‘man’, i.e. ‘men’? Is
it a simple word? How many morphemes are there?
The word ‘men’ is not simple because it has two morphemes: the root
{man} and the inflectional affix PLU (standing for plural). The word ‘men’,
like any plural noun such as ‘boys’ or ‘girls’, can be represented morpho-
logically as a root {man} + {PLU}, regardless of the form of the plural
morpheme.
Homonymous morphemes
The function of the suffix ‘–er’ in ‘bigger’ differs from that of the ‘–er’
in ‘teacher’. While the function of the former is to form a comparative
degree, the function of the latter is to indicate a person who performs the
act of teaching. As these two functions are different and unrelated, these
two morphemes are homonymous. To elaborate, the word ‘bigger’ can be
represented morphologically as a root {big} + {COMP} (standing for the
comparative degree), which is why it is called a comparative morpheme.
However, the word ‘teacher’ can be represented morphologically as a root
{teach} + {AG} (standing for the agent of the act), which is why it is
called an agentive morpheme. Examples of homonymous morphemes in
English (adapted from Almanna 2016: 57) include ‘a– ’, ‘dis–’, ‘–er’, and
‘–ly’, as in:
Meaning Examples
Find some
a– a. not or without amoral, apolitical, asexual, asymmetric,
examples in other atheist, atypical, agnostic, etc.
languages.
b. in the state of ablaze, afloat, asleep, etc.
Meaning Examples
dis– a. not dislike, disbelieve, displeasure, distrust,
disagree, disobey, dishonest, disapprove,
disappear, disconnect, etc.
b. to know some- discover, disclose, etc.
thing or to make it
known
Meaning Examples
–er a. as an agentive writer, reader, designer, farmer, driver,
morpheme diver, teacher, builder, etc.

b. as a comparative taller, shorter, older, smaller, bigger,
morpheme richer, nicer, etc.
Is the word ‘manly’, Meaning Examples

for example, an –ly a. every hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, annually,
adjective or an
adverb? Discuss. yearly, etc.
b. having the quality manly, neighbourly, friendly, scholarly,
of etc.
M o r ph o lo gy 3 9
Allomorphs and conditioning factors
Now, let’s shift our focus of attention to the prefixes ‘a–’ and ‘dis–’ in
words like ‘apolitical’ and ‘dishonest’. As one may observe, these two
morphemes have the same meaning, i.e. ‘not’, as modelled here:
The question that may spring to mind here is: Are these two morphemes
How would you
examples of homonymous morphemes? The answer is ‘No’ as they share the define the term
same meaning and function, but are phonologically different. Morphemes ‘allomorph’?
do not always come in an identical phonological shape, but they sometimes
have variant forms. When we have two or more morphemes that have
the same meaning or function, but are phonologically different, then these
are allomorphs. Consider, for example, the negative prefixes ‘un–’, ‘in–’,
‘im–’, ‘ir–’, ‘il–’, and ‘non–’. These prefixes, in addition to the prefixes
‘a–’ and ‘dis–’ discussed above, are allomorphs as they have the same
meaning and function – they change the word to which they are attached
from affirmative to negative, as modelled below:
Similarly, in Arabic, morphemes like ‫غير‬, ‫ليس‬, ‫مو‬, or ‫ ال‬meaning ‘not’ are Find examples of
examples of allomorphs as they share the same meaning and function: to allomorphs in your
change the meaning from affirmative to negative. The only difference is own language.
that these morphemes in Arabic are free morphemes while their equivalents
as shown above are bound morphemes. Similarly, in Farsi, the morphemes
‫ ن‬and ‫ نا‬meaning ‘not’ are examples of allomorphs, as in these examples:
‫نـ‬ ‫ بردم‬I carried/took it > ‫ نبردم‬I did not take it

‫ خريد‬He bought it > ‫ نخريد‬He did not buy it
‫نا‬ ‫ برابر‬equal > ‫ نابرابر‬unequal
‫ پيدا‬visible > ‫ ناپيدا‬invisible
The same phenomenon can be observed in German, as you can see in the
following examples where the morpheme ‘un–’ meaning ‘not’ changes the
meaning from affirmative to negative:
freundlich (friendly) > unfreundlich (unfriendly)

aufmerksam (attentive) > unaufmerksam (unattentive)
beliebt (popular) > unbeliebt (unpopular)
How would you A question that may arise here is: Which allomorph of a morpheme will the
define ‘conditioning language user use? Is it up to him/her? Actually, the use of a certain allo-
factors’? morph, thus excluding others, is determined by certain factors called con-
ditioning factors (for more details, see McGregor 2009: 68). These factors
can be classified in this book into four factors, namely:
● phonological factors;
● lexical morphological factors;
● regional factors;
● formality-related factors.
To begin with, the indefinite articles ‘a’ (pronounced /ə/) and ‘an’
(pronounced /ən/) are allomorphs as they have the same meaning and
function. However, the choice between them is determined by phono-
logical factors, i.e. whether it is followed by a word that starts with a con-
sonant or a vowel, as in:
Think of some
Secondly, the PP (past participle) morphemes ‘–ed’, ‘–en’, and ‘–t’ are
examples in your examples of allomorphs as they have the same meaning and function.
own language. However, the choice among them is determined by the morpheme to which
the PP morpheme is attached, on the one hand and, on the other hand, by
the area in which the morpheme is used, as in:
Reflect on your own Thirdly, the comparative and superlative morphemes ‘–er’ and ‘–est’ are
language to find attached to some adjectives to indicate the comparative and superlative
similar examples. degrees, respectively. Building on this, can we add these morphemes ‘–er’
and ‘–est’ to adjectives such as ‘good’ to have *‘gooder’ and *‘goodest’
or bad to have *‘bader’ and *‘badest’? The answer is ‘No’.
It is worth noting that some languages do not have verb tenses and aspects
What is the diffe-
to indicate when and how an event or action occurs. Examples of these rence between
languages are Indonesian, Malay, Mandarin Chinese, and many creole ‘tense’ and ‘aspect’.
languages. In these languages, people rely on certain words to indicate Go to Chapter 5 of
this book to learn
periods of time. The verb ‘merokok’ in Malay meaning ‘to smoke’ is a case more about them.
in point. The form of the verb is the same in the past, present, and future,
as shown in these examples:
Saya merokok (meaning ‘I smoke’).

Saya sudah merokok or Saya telah merokok (meaning ‘I smoked
yesterday’).
Saya sedang merokok (meaning ‘I am smoking’).
Saya akan merokok (meaning ‘I will smoke’).
And in Malay the words ‘sudha’ or ‘telah’ meaning ‘already’ can be used
to indicate that the event or action occurred in the past. They are synonyms,
and the only difference between them is that ‘telah’ is more frequently
used in writing (formal) rather than in speaking, while ‘sudah’ is more fre-
quently used in speaking (less formal). Consequently, ‘telah’ and ‘sudah’
in sentences of the following kind ‘Saya sudah merokok’ or ‘Saya telah
merokok’ meaning ‘I smoked’ are examples of allomorphs, as shown below:
In Persian, for instance, to form a tag question in a sentence of the

following kind:
‫ مگه نه؟‬.‫( امروز هوا گرمه‬meaning ‘Today is warm. Isn’t it’?)

people may opt for ‫مگه نه‬, ‫ مگر نه‬or ‫مگر اينطور نيست‬. The choice among these What do we call
this conditioning
allomorphs is determined by the social context in which they are used. In a factor?
formal situation, ‫ مگر نه‬or more formally ‫ مگر اينطور نيست‬is used. However,
in an informal situation, ‫ مگه نه‬is opted for.
Types of morphemes
As stated above, the word ‘teacher’ contains two morphemes, the root
How many
{teach} and the agentive morpheme ‘–er’. morphemes are
While the morpheme ‘teach’ can stand alone as a word as in ‘I teach at there in a sen-
one of the universities’, the morpheme ‘–er’ cannot stand alone, but should tence of the
following kind?
be attached to another morpheme. Morphemes can be classified into two ‘I called my sister
main types, namely ‘free morphemes’ and ‘bound morphemes’. yesterday.’
It is worth noting that what is expressed by a morpheme (be it free or

bound) in one language is not necessarily expressed by a corresponding
morpheme in another. To make what we have in mind here quite clear, con-
sider the following sentences:
Language Example
English I like your car.
German Ich mag dein Auto.
Tok Pisin Mi laikim ka bilong yu.
Malay Saya suka kereta kamu.
While in English and German there are four words and five morphemes,
in Tok Pisin, there are five words and six morphemes, and in Malay
there are four words and four morphemes. Because in Tok Pisin and
Malay verbs are simple and there are no endings to be added to the verb
to indicate periods of time, there is no morpheme to indicate the tense
in the above examples. In English and German, however, there is a
morpheme to indicate the tense, which is present. Further, in Tok Pisin,
the suffix ‘–im’ is added to any transitive verb to indicate transitivity
and flow of energy. However, in English and Malay, there is no need
for such a suffix. To indicate possession in Tok Pisin, the preposition
‘bilong’, derived from the English word ‘belong’, is always used in this
way, i.e. ‘ka bilong yu’, which literally means ‘car belong (to) you’, i.e.
‘your car’, thus increasing the number of the morphemes. To elaborate
on this point, the noun phrase ‘my brother’s house’, which consists of
four morphemes (‘my’, ‘brother’, ‘–s’, and ‘house’) becomes ‘haus
bilong brata bilong mi’, which consists of five morphemes in Tok Pisin.
Had articles been used in Tok Pisin, the number of morphemes would
have been increased, but luckily articles are not used.
Further, what is expressed by a free morpheme in one language is not
necessarily expressed by a free morpheme in another, as shown in the
above example. To reinforce this point, the morpheme ‘she’ in a sentence
of the following kind
She went to school with her dad yesterday.
is a free morpheme as it is used as a word on its own. However, in Arabic,

its equivalent ‫ ت‬cannot be used as a word on its own, but should be attached
to the verb, as in:
.‫ذهبـتْ إلى المدرسة مع أبيها أمس‬
Another difference between English, Arabic, and Farsi is the possessive

How many adjectives (my, ‫ـي‬, ‫ـم‬, etc.) filling a semantic role of possessor. Unlike
morphemes are in
this sentence? ‘I in English, in Arabic and Farsi, they cannot be used as words on their
teach at one of the own, but they have to be attached to a noun filling a semantic role of
universities.’ possessed, as in:
English Arabic Farsi

my
book ‫كتابـي‬ ‫کتابم‬
his
book ُ‫كتابُه‬ ‫کتابش‬
her
book ‫كتابُها‬ ‫کتابش‬
Approached from another perspective, morphemes can be classified into

‘grammatical morphemes’ (prepositions, articles, conjunctions, PLU,
PAST) and ‘lexical morphemes’. By way of example, let us discuss the
following simple sentence:
The teachers asked us to be on time.
Here, while the morphemes ‘teach’, ‘ask’, ‘us’, ‘be’ and ‘time’ in the above
example have meanings in and of themselves, the morphemes ‘the’, ‘–er’,
‘–s’, ‘–ed’, ‘to’, and ‘on’ do not have meanings in and of themselves. As
regards the morphemes ‘–er’, ‘–s’ and ‘–ed’, they are bound, grammat-
ical morphemes. These bound, grammatical morphemes can be further
classified into ‘inflectional morphemes’, as in ‘–s’ and ‘–ed’ and ‘deriv-
ational morphemes’, as in ‘–er’, as summarized below.
Connecting the dots (1): Shift Theory
A ‘shift’, according to Catford (1965: 73) in his book A Linguistic Theory

of Translation, refers to any departure from “formal correspondence” in the
process of translating a text from language A called the source language
to language B called the target language. Therefore, when we translate,
for example, a noun into an adjective, a verb into an adverb, a word into a
phrase, or a grammatical category into a lexical item, to mention but some
cases, a type of shift will occur. Shifts are classified by Catford (1965) into
two main types:
(a) ‘Level shifts’ occur when we translate a grammatical category, such as

tense, aspect, and voice, into lexis due to the differences between the
interfacing languages. For example, to express the past tense in Malay,
which does not have a grammatical category for tense and aspect, one
can opt for lexical items, such as ‘sudah’ or ‘telah’ (depending on
the formality of the social context). As such, to translate the English
sentence ‘I smoked yesterday’ into Malay, one may say ‘Saya sudah
merokok’ or ‘Saya telah merokok’, as shown below:
Try to find examples

of shift that may
occur when you
translate between
other languages.
(b) ‘Category shifts’, on the other hand, occur when we change through
translation the structure (e.g. from passive to active), unit (e.g. from
one word to many), class (e.g. from an adjective to a noun) or system
(e.g. from a corresponding system to a non-corresponding system).
Consider the following examples translated from English into French,
German, Malay, and Arabic, respectively:
ST TT Type of shift
How would you
The teacher sent Plusieurs emails ont été Structure shift
translate these
verbs ‘to email’, ‘to many emails to his envoyés aux étudiants par
text’, ‘to google’, ‘to students yesterday. leur enseignant hier.
hijab’ and ‘to bottle’
into your language? Back translation: Several active > passive
Is there any type emails were sent …
of shift?
He changed the Er änderte die Bedeutung Unit shift
meaning in a dra- dramatisch.
matic way. Back translation: He phrase > word
changed the meaning
dramatic(ally).
In translating the I will give you a ring Saya akan menelefon Class shift
French simple sen- later. kamu nati.
tence ‘Il n’a pas
caché que’ meaning Back translation: I will noun > verb
‘He didn’t hide ring …
that’ into ‘He made
it clear’, there is a Statistics show ‫ت اإلحصائيات أن ما‬
ِ ‫أظهر‬ Intrasystem shift
type of shift. What that about 9 out of ‫ أشخاص من أصل‬9 ‫يقرب من‬
do we call this? 10 tobacco users ‫ يبدأون التدخين قبل سن‬10
start before they’re .‫الثامنة عشر‬
18 years old. Back translation: present > past
Statistics showed …
Here, there are four types of shift. In the first sentence, the translator
changed the voice from active (The teacher sent …) to passive (Plusieurs
emails ont été envoyé … = Many emails were sent …), thus enacting a
structure shift. In the second sentence, the phrase ‘in a dramatic way’
was translated into one word ‘dramatisch’ meaning ‘dramatic’, thereby
resulting in a combination of both a class shift and a unit shift. In the third
sentence, the noun ‘ring’ was translated into the verb ‘menelfon’ meaning
‘to ring’, thus resulting in a class shift. In the fourth sentence, a simple
present ‘show’ was translated into a simple past ‫ أظهرت‬meaning ‘showed’,
thereby leading to an intrasystem shift.
Morphologically speaking, shifts are classified in this book into sev-
eral types:
(1) ‘Level shift’: when a grammatical morpheme lends itself to a lexical

morpheme or the other way round.
(2) ‘Unit shift’: when one morpheme lends itself to more than one
morpheme or the other way round.
(3) ‘Position shift’: when the morpheme changes its position in a
larger unit. Think of any type
of shift that is not
(4) ‘Status shift’: when the morpheme changes its status from free listed here.
to bound.
(5) ‘Word structure shift’: when the word changes its structure, thus
changing its type from, for instance, compound to simple or simple
to complex.
As far as translation is concerned, Catford (1965) distinguishes between

two types of translations, namely ‘rank-bound translation’ and ‘unbound
translation’. In a rank-bound translation, an equivalent is sought in the
target language at a morpheme-level category or word-level category,
thereby usually resulting in an unacceptable translation where the target
text “is either not a normal TL [target language] form at all, or is not
relatable to the same situational substance as the SL [source language]
text” (Catford 1965/2004: 143). In an unbound translation, however, an
equivalent is not tied to a particular rank, but rather is sought at the level
The translation pro-

of phrase, clause, or sentence. To put this differently, translators and
cess at its macro
translation students in the first stage of translation (‘pre-translation’) level is classified
are encouraged to analyse the source text from different perspectives, into three main
stages, namely
including its words along with their morphemes to identify the elements
‘pre-translation’,
of meaning. However, when they embark on the actual act of translating ‘translation’, and
in the second stage (‘translation’), equivalents should not be sought at ‘post-translation’.
the level of morpheme or word, but should be sought at a larger level,
such as a phrase or clause.
Connecting the dots (2): Analytic morphology versus

synthetic morphology
In some languages (e.g. English), words can be easily analysed into smaller
What about your
own language? parts (i.e. morphemes), while in some other languages (e.g. Arabic) words
Does it have an do not lend themselves to such a morphological mechanism. Consider, for
analytic morph-
example, the English word ‘unbelievable’. This complex word represented
ology, synthetic
morphology, or in one orthographic word can be analysed into three smaller units, i.e.
something else? morphemes, namely ‘un-’, ‘believe’, and ‘-able’, as shown here:
Languages with such a concatenative nature (for more details, see the next
chapter) are characterized by having an analytic morphology while others,
which do not have such a concatenative nature, are characterized by having
a synthetic morphology. When we translate from language A to language
B, the elements of meaning associated with the form of the word are given
priority regardless of the form of the word, whether it is represented in
one orthographic word or more. To make this point clear, let’s go back
to the word ‘unbelievable’ to discuss the elements of its meaning across
languages. This complex word represented in one orthographic word in
English lends itself to more than one orthographic word in languages such
as Arabic, German, Malay, and Indonesian. However, it lends itself to one
orthographic word in languages, such as French, Swahili, Persian, Turkish,
and Russian, as shown in this table:
Language Word
English unbelievable
What about your Arabic ‫ ال يمكن تصديقه‬or ‫ال يص ّدق‬
language? How
would you trans- German nicht zu glauben
late the word
Indonesian luar biasa or tidak dapat dipercaya
‘unbelievable’?
Malay sukar dipercayai or tidak dapat dipercaya
Swahili isiyoaminika
Turkish inanılmaz
Persian ‫باورنكردنی‬
Russian hевероятно
French incroyable
Thai ไม่่น่่าเชื่่�อ /mai na chuea/
So, we can see that there is no one-to-one correspondence between the

elements of meaning of a word and its form across languages. This needs
M o r ph o lo gy 47
to be taken into consideration by translators. In addition, when we trans-

late from a language with synthetic morphology, such as Arabic, into a
language with analytic morphology, such as English, serious consider-
ation should be given to the semantically related words as they may well
lend themselves to morphologically unrelated words (for more details, see
Farghal and Almanna 2015: 55). Let us consider, in this connection, the
following example quoted from Almanna (2016: 38):
ST .‫استقتل من أجل أن يتزوجّها إال أنه طلّقها بعد شهرين‬

TT He had made every effort in order to marry her, but divorced her
after two months.
Note that the root ‫ل‬-‫ت‬-‫ق‬, i.e. ‘to kill’, functions as the input for seman-
tically related words, such as ‫قاتل‬, i.e. ‘to fight’ and ‫استقتل‬, ‘to make every
possible effort’. Those semantically related words driven from the root -‫ق‬
‫ل‬-‫ت‬, i.e. ‘to kill’, function as the input for other semantically related words,
which often confuses translators. By way of explanation, let us consider
the following example quoted from Almanna (2016: 39) along with its two
translations:
ST .‫تمارض أحد أصدقائي البارحة كي ال يخرج معنا‬

TT1 One of my friends got sick last night in order not to go out with
us.
TT2 One of my friends pretended to be ill last night in order not to
go out with us.
Here, it seems that the translator in the first translation confused the two
semantically related words ‫‘ مرض‬to feel sick’ and ‫‘ تمارض‬to pretend to be Think of semantic-
ally related words in
ill’ as they share the same root, i.e. ‫ض‬-‫ر‬-‫م‬. Being confused, he mistakenly your own language
rendered the word ‫ تمارض‬into ‘to get sick’. Not only did he change the and how they might
intended meaning, but he also produced an incoherent translation. confuse translators.

Exercise 1: Mark the following statements (T) if they are true and (F) if
they are false.
(1) The word ‘cut’ in ‘I had my hair cut yesterday’ contains

two morphemes.
(2) The word ‘men’s’ in ‘I found the men’s books’ contains
two morphemes.
(3) The suffix ‘–er’ in ‘hotter’ is a derivational morpheme.
(4) While the word ‘come’ in ‘They come early every day’
contains two morphemes, the word ‘come’ in ‘They
have just come’ contains three morphemes.
(5) The word ‘carelessness’ is made up of a root and two

derivational morphemes.
(6) In ‘The men’s shirts were found by the cleaner’, there
are 12 morphemes.
(7) The comparative morpheme COMP is attached to
adjectives.
(8) The plural morpheme PLU is attached to nouns.
(9) The agentive morpheme AG is attached to verbs.
(10) The suffix ‘–er’ in ‘shorter’ is a comparative morpheme.
(11) The word ‘feet’ is made up of two morphemes.
(12) The word ‘sheep’ in ‘There are a lot of sheep in the
picture’ contains one morpheme only.
Exercise 2: Read the following words and follow the instructions in (1) to
(5) below:
achievable –impolite –independent –wireless –imperfection –

translator –co-worker –bigger –carelessness –quickly –books
–unemployment –beautifully –children –childish –activate
(1) Identify the types of morphemes used in the above words, whether
they are ‘free’ or ‘bound’.
(2) Identify the function achieved by each ‘bound morpheme’.
(3) Identify the part of speech of each word.
(4) Use the ‘bound morphemes’ identified by you to create as many
words as you can.
(5) Translate them into your own language to identify if any morphological
shift occurred through the process of translation.
Exercise 3: Read the following sentences and then (1) identify the
number of words and morphemes used in each sentence; (2) divide the
morphemes used in each sentence into ‘free’ and ‘bound’; (3) translate
the sentences into your own language; and then (4) comment on any
shift that might occur.
(1) The teacher asked the students to re-write their homework.

(2) The novel was written by a well-known writer some years ago.
(3) You must switch off the lights before leaving your office.
(4) The mother of the boy and girl are travelling to the UK this summer.
(5) My youngest sister has sent us a great number of emails recently.
Exercise 4: Read the following sentences and (1) identify the number of
words and morphemes used in each sentence; (2) divide the morphemes
used in each sentence into ‘grammatical’ and ‘lexical’; (3) translate the
sentences into your own language; and then (4) comment on any shift
that might occur.
(1) The key was found by the girls’ father.

(2) She decided to live in the city independently.
(3) My youngest brother is taller than me.
(4) This is one of the most beautiful cities that I have visited recently.
(5) I felt very tired last night, so I did not prepare for the quiz.
Exercise 5: Read the following sentences and (1) identify the number
of morphemes used in the following sentences and (2) divide them into
‘free’ and ‘bound’.
(1) I bought it yesterday.

(2) I cooked it yesterday.
(3) My brother bought this gift for me last week.
(4) When will your sister arrive?
(5) Where did your brother travel last month?
Then, reflect on the meaning of the above sentences in your own lan-
guage and answer the following questions:
(1) How many morphemes are used in each sentence?

(2) Is there any example of a ‘free morpheme’ that is changed to a
‘bound morpheme’?
(3) Is there any example of a ‘bound morpheme’ that is changed to a
‘free morpheme’?
(4) Is there any example of morphological addition or morphological
omission?
Exercise 6: Translate the following text adapted from the World Health
Organization (WHO) (www.who.int) into your own language. Then
comment on the types of morphological shifts that may occur.
The world is in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic. As WHO and part-

ners work together on the response – tracking the pandemic, advising
on critical interventions, distributing vital medical supplies to those in
need –they are racing to find a vaccine.
Vaccines save millions of lives each year. Vaccines work by training

and preparing the body’s natural defences – the immune system – to
recognize and fight off the viruses and bacteria they target. If the body is
exposed to those disease-causing germs later, the body is immediately
ready to destroy them, preventing illness.

(1) The following sentence was translated from English into Arabic and
German by changing the voice from passive to active, thus resulting
in two types of shift, namely ‘structure shift’ and ‘intrasystem shift’.
Do you agree with this opinion?
ST I was asked a difficult question by the teacher.

TT1 (Arabic) ً
.‫سؤاال صعبًا‬ ُ‫سألني المدرّس‬
Back translation The teacher asked me a difficult question.
TT2 (German) Der Lehrer stellte mir eine schwierige Frage.
(2) In translating the following sentence from French to English, there

is a kind of shift where the style is modified to live up to the target
language readers’ expectation. Can we consider this a stylistic
shift? Discuss.
ST Il a lu le livre de la première à la dernière page.

Back He read the book from the first page to the last page.
translation
TT He read the book from cover to cover.
(3) Vinay and Darbelnet (1995: 140) have argued that the frequency of
using the passive form in English “arises from an attitude towards
reality. English chooses a certain objectivity, noting a phenomenon or
event either without attributing it to a particular cause or mentioning
the cause or the agent only secondarily”. If you agree with this, how
would you deal with this voice-related issue while translating out of
or into English?
References
Almanna, A. (2016). Semantics for Translation Students: Arabic-English-

Aronoff, M. and Fudeman, K. (2005). What is Morphology?
Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Bloomfield, L. (1933). Language. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Booij, G. (2010). Construction Morphology. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.
Catford, J. C. (1965). A Linguistic Theory of Translation. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Fromkin, V., Rodman, R. and Hyams, N. (2000). An Introduction to
Language. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Jackson, H. and Amvela, E. Z. (2000). Words, Meanings and Vocabulary: An
Introduction to English Lexicology. London/New York: Continuum.
Lieber, R. (2009). Introducing Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
McGregor, W. (2009). Linguistics: An Introduction. London/

New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Vinay, J. P. and Darbelnet, J. (1958/1995). Stylistique comparée du français
et de l’anglais. Méthode de traduction. Paris: Didier. Trans. and ed.
J. C. Sager and M. J. Hamel, Comparative Stylistics of French and
English: A Methodology for Translation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia,
PA: John Benjamins.
Morphological processes 4
This chapter builds on the previous chapter and introduces students to

the higher level of linguistic analysis of morphological processes. In this
chapter, the main morphological processes, such as ‘inflection’, ‘deriv-
ation’, ‘compounding’, and ‘affixation’, are discussed and then linked to
the actual act of translation.
After studying this chapter, you should be able to (1) identify the main
morphological processes; (2) distinguish between declension and con-
jugation on the one hand, and between derivation and compounding on
the other hand; (3) recruit these morphological processes to learn as
many words as you can; and (4) utilize these morphological processes to
overcome certain difficulties while translating interlingually.
Words can be formed by different morphological processes, such as inflec-

Identify the type tion, derivation, compounding, and affixation. It is worth noting that some
and morphological of these morphological processes are more productive than others, because
process of they are, to a certain degree, exceptional processes. In general, morpho-
these words:
‘newspapers’, logical processes can be divided into two main processes (1) inflection
‘undisputable’, and (2) word formation. An inflectional process can be subdivided into
and ‘asked’. (a) declension (an inflectional process applied to nouns and adjectives) and
(b) conjugation (an inflectional process applied to verbs). Similarly, word
formation can be subdivided into two main processes, namely (a) deriv-
ation and (b) compounding, as shown in the following diagram:
DOI: 10.4324/9781003228028-5
M o r ph o lo g ica l p r o c e s s e s 5 3
In what follows, these morphological processes will be introduced and

exemplified.
Inflection
In English, there are eight inflectional morphemes:

What about other
languages that you
(1) PLU (standing for ‘plural’) attached to nouns, as in ‘boys’, ‘girls’, etc. are familiar with?
(2) COMP (standing for ‘comparative degree’) attached to adjectives, as
in ‘bigger’, ‘shorter’, ‘taller’, etc.
(3) SUP (standing for ‘superlative degree’) attached to adjectives, as in
‘biggest’, ‘shortest’, ‘tallest’, etc.
(4) PRES (standing for ‘present’) attached to verbs, as in ‘likes’, ‘eats’, Identify the inflec-
‘teaches’, etc. tional morphemes in
this sentence:
(5) PAST (standing for ‘past’) attached to verbs, as in ‘called’, ‘asked’, ‘She has read
‘played’, etc. his best novels
(6) PAST PART (standing for ‘past participle’) attached to verbs, as in recently’.
‘driven’, ‘given’, etc.
(7) PRES PART (standing for ‘present participle’) attached to verbs, as in
‘writing’, ‘reading’, ‘signing’, etc.
(8) POSS (standing for ‘possessive’) attached to nouns, as in ‘girl’s’,
‘Tom’s’, ‘man’s’, etc.
What about the comparative and superlative degrees ‘better’ and ‘best’?
How shall we treat these? Shall we say they are a root + COMP or SUP?
The answer is ‘Yes’; the word ‘better’, for example, is made up of two
morphemes: the root {good} and the COMP morpheme.
What about ‘like’ in ‘I like to have a cup of tea’: Is it made up of one
morpheme or two morphemes? It is made up of two morphemes: the root
{like} and the PRES morpheme – just change the subject to ‘he’ or ‘she’
to have a clearer picture.
What about ‘bought’ in ‘She bought it two days ago’: Is it made up of
one morpheme or two morphemes? The word ‘bought’ is made up of two
morphemes: the root {buy} and the PAST morpheme.

What about ‘put’ in these two sentences: ‘I have put it somewhere
recently’ and ‘I put it somewhere yesterday’? The word ‘put’ in these
sentences is made up of two morphemes. While the word ‘put’ in the first
sentence is made up of the root {put} and the PAST PART morpheme, the
word ‘put’ in the second sentence is made up of the root {put} and the
PAST morpheme.
What about the word ‘girl’s’ in ‘The girl’s books are clean and tidy’: Is
it made up of one morpheme or more than one morpheme? Here, there are
two morphemes: the root {girl} and the POSS morpheme {–’}.
5 4 M o r ph o lo g ica l p r o c e s s e s
Word formation
Note that in a
sentence of the
following kind ‘The Apart from the eight inflectional morphemes, all other bound, grammat-
girls’ books are ical morphemes are derivational morphemes in English. Unlike inflectional
clean and tidy’,
morphemes, derivational morphemes are not limited in number. They
the word ‘girls’’ is
made up of three come in the form of affixes (‘affixes’ referring to ‘prefixes’ and ‘suffixes’).
morphemes: the Examples of derivational morphemes in the form of prefixes include ‘un–’,
root {girl}, the PLU
‘dis–’, ‘im–’, ‘re–’, and ‘co–’, as in:
morpheme {–s} and
the POSS mor-
pheme {–’}. unkind, dislike, impolite, re-do, co-worker
Examples of derivational morphemes in the form of suffixes include ‘–ful’,

What about your
‘–er’, ‘–ize’, ‘–ness’, and ‘–less’, as in:
own language?
careful, driver, criticize, sadness, wireless
Affixation
Affixation is a morphological process in which a prefix, suffix, or infix (an
‘infix’ means a letter or a group of letters added within the word stem in
some languages, such as Arabic) is added to the root or stem of the word.
To illustrate, the root ‘friend’ can be discussed here.
Paradigm 1 V befriends, befriended, befriending, unfriend,

unfriends, unfriended, unfriending
Paradigm 2 N friend, friends, friend’s, friends’, friendliness,
friendlessness
Paradigm 3 Adj friendly
Can you find

It is worth noting that a prefix and a suffix are sometimes attached to the
an example of root or stem of the word to change, for example, an affirmative word to the
‘circumfixation’ negative. In this case, we have what is called circumfix, which is used in
in your own
language?
some languages such as Malay, Georgian, Chickasaw (a Muskogean lan-
guage spoken in Oklahoma), and German (for more details, see Fromkin
and Rodman 1974/1998: 73). To make this point clear, let us discuss how
the past participle of regular verbs, such as ‘lieben’ meaning ‘to love’ and
‘machen’ meaning ‘to do’ or ‘to make’ in German are formed. With regular
verbs such as ‘lieben’ and ‘machen’, the past participle is formed by adding
the prefix ‘ge–’ and the suffix ‘–t’ to the root, i.e. ‘lieb’ and ‘mach’, respect-
ively, as modelled here:
In Farsi, the paradigm of a word can be changed from, for instance, a noun
to an adjective by adding the prefix ‫با‬, as in ‫باسواد‬, i.e. ‘educated’ or ‫باهنر‬, i.e.
‘artist’. Some suffixes like ‫ مند‬can make changes in the part of speech from
a noun to an adjective, as in ‫هوشمند‬, i.e. ‘intellectual’ or ‫سالمند‬, i.e. ‘old’. If
the suffix ‫ ی‬is added to the end of these words their part of speech becomes
a noun again with a different meaning, as in:
To say ‘I do not
want’ in Maltese,
one can use ‘Ma
Noun Adjective Noun
rridx’, as in ‘Ma
‫ سواد‬education ‫ باسواد‬educated ‫ باسوادى‬the state of being educated rridx noqgħod
hawn’ meaning
‫ هنر‬art ‫ باهنر‬artist ‫ باهنرى‬the state of being an artist ‘I do not want to
sit here’. Can we
consider the use
The use of the prefix ‫ با‬and the suffix ‫ ى‬in words like ‫ باسوادى‬referring to the of ‘ma’ meaning
state of being educated or ‫ باهنرى‬referring to the state of being an artist can ‘not’ and the suffix
‘–x’ attached to the
be considered as examples of circumfixation. Another interesting example verb as an example
of circumfixation in Farsi is the use of the prefix ‫ مى‬indicating progressive of circumfixation?
aspect and the suffix ‫ م‬showing the present tense conjugation together with Discuss
some verbs. Let us here consider the following example:
Farsi .‫من به مدرسه مى روم‬

English I am going to school.
In the above example, the root ‫ رو‬meaning ‘to go’ is used. To indicate the
tense, which is present, the suffix ‫ م‬is attached to the root, and to indicate
the progressive aspect, the prefix ‫ مى‬is attached to the root, thus resulting in
‫مى روم‬, which is an example of circumfixation.
Compounding
In English, compound words are formed by joining two words together to
create a new word with a different meaning. For example, the simple words
‘pass’ and ‘port’ can stand on their own as words, each with a specific
meaning. However, when they are joined together, they form a new word
‘passport’ with a different meaning. Another interesting example is the
compound word ‘brainstorm’. This word is made up of two simple words,
namely ‘brain’ and ‘storm’. Sometime the meaning of the compound
word is somehow related to the meaning of at least one of its components.
Consider the following examples:
● full +moon =full moon

● white +board =whiteboard
● air +port =airport
● police +man =policeman
● dry +cleaning =dry-cleaning
Concatenation versus non-concatenation
Focusing on the morphological process itself, whether the word is formed

by the effect of linking together a base (be it a root or stem) with another
base or linking together two bases as in a chain or not, these morphological
processes can be divided into concatenation and non-concatenation, as
shown in the following diagram:
Concatenation
Concatenation is a morphological process where the root or stem is linked
together with affixes as in a chain. Thus, the word ‘carelessness’ is formed
by linking together the root ‘care’ and the suffix ‘–less’ to form the word
‘careless’, which is, in turn, linked as a stem with the suffix ‘–ness’ to form
the word ‘carelessness’. The following diagram representing its internal
Identify the type
of the words
structure makes this point clear:
‘mindfulness’ and
‘untouchables’ and
then identify the
‘root’ and the ‘stem’

used to form them.
M o r ph o lo g ica l p r o c e s s e s 57
Connecting the dots (1): Non-concatenative processes

of word formation and translation
Within the same language, words are not formed by virtue of concatenating
only; there are also non-concatenative processes where the paradigm of the
word can be changed from, for example, a noun to a verb, a verb to a noun,
an adjective to an adverb, and so on. By way of exemplifying, words like
‘brunch’, ‘hijab’, and ‘flu’ can be examined.
To begin with the word ‘brunch’, it is formed by a non-concatenative Think of some
process called ‘blending’ where the first part of the word ‘breakfast’ and examples in your
the last part of the word ‘lunch’ are used to form ‘brunch’. The word ‘hijab’ own language.
is borrowed from Arabic as a noun to refer to the scarf used by women to
cover their hair, but more recently it has been used as a verb in a phrase
of the following kind ‘To hijab or not to hijab?’. Here we have two non-
concatenative processes, namely ‘borrowing’ and ‘category extension’. How would you
Regarding the word ‘flu’, it is a shortened form of ‘influenza’. In what translate ‘To hijab
follows, these non-concatenative processes are introduced and discussed in or not to hijab?’
into your own
a direct link to translation. language?
(1) Suppletion
In English, to form the past tense of verbs such as ‘play’, ‘walk’, ‘want’,
and ‘talk’, the suffix ‘–ed’ is added, thus resulting in ‘played’, ‘walked’,
‘wanted’, and ‘talked’, respectively. To form the comparative degree from
such adjectives as ‘short’, ‘big’, and ‘small’, the suffix ‘–er’ is added, thus
leading to ‘shorter’, ‘bigger’, and ‘smaller’, respectively. To form the plural Why is the word
form of nouns such as ‘boy’, ‘book’, and ‘friend’, the suffix ‘–s’ is added to ‘boys’ complex?
form ‘boys’, ‘books’, and ‘friends’, respectively. Here, as explained earlier, Discuss.
the root is linked with the suffixes ‘–ed’, ‘–er’, and ‘–s’ as in a chain,
thereby resulting in complex words consisting of two morphemes: a free
morpheme (the root) and a bound morpheme (the suffix).
However, there are many exceptional cases. What about the past tense of
verbs such as ‘to say’ and ‘to go’? Or the comparative degree of ‘good’ and
‘bad’? What about the plural form of ‘man’, ‘teeth’, and ‘sheep’? Here, we
do not add suffixes, but non-concatenative processes are resorted to.

To begin with, to form the past tense of the verb ‘to say’, two processes Analyse the
plural forms of
are used: vowel change, i.e. changing the vowel /eɪ/in ‘say’ to /e/in ‘said’ these words: ‘ox’,
and concatenation, i.e. the addition of the suffix ‘–ed’. However, to form ‘mouse’, ‘thief’, and
the past tense of the verb ‘to go’, the inflected form, i.e. ‘went’, bearing no ‘thesis’.
relationship with the root {go}, is used (for more examples, see Stageberg
1965/1981: 143). To form the comparative degree of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, we
do not add the suffix ‘–er’ to have *‘gooder’ or *‘bader’, but the inflected Is there any diffe-
rence between
forms, i.e. ‘better’ and ‘worse’, bearing no relationship with their roots, ‘sheep’ (singular)
i.e. {good} and {bad}, respectively, are used. As such, they are considered and ‘sheep’
suppletive forms. Similarly, the rule that forms the plural forms from sin- (plural) in terms
of the number of
gular forms cannot be applied to nouns such as ‘man’, ‘tooth’, and ‘sheep’. morphemes?
The plural form of ‘man’ is ‘men’ (vowel change) and the plural form of
‘tooth’ is ‘teeth’ (vowel change). However, the plural form of ‘sheep’ is

‘sheep’ (no change).
As far as translation is concerned, these examples of suppletion are not
problematic at all as languages conceptualize experiences differently. So,
what is considered as an example of suppletion in one language might not
be so in another language. Consider the following example:
I went with my brother to the supermarket yesterday.
Here we have an example of suppletion in the complex word ‘went’

consisting of two morphemes: the root {go}, and the past morpheme. As
explained above, the inflected word ‘went’ bears no relationship with the
root, ‘go’, in English, but what about other languages? Let’s translate it into
some other languages:
German Ich bin gestern mit meinem Bruder in den Supermarkt

gegangen.
Azerbaijani Dünən qardaşımla supermarketə getdim.
Maltese Ilbieraħ mort ma’ ħija s-supermarket.
In German, Azerbaijani, and Maltese, the verbs ‘gegangen’, ‘getdim’,

and ‘mort’ meaning ‘went’ still have relationships with the verbs ‘gehen’,
‘gedirəm’, and ‘mur’, respectively, meaning ‘to go’.
(2) Category extension and transposition

Category extension (also known as ‘conversion’ or ‘functional shift’) is a
morphological process by which a word belonging to a particular word-
level category, such as a noun, is transferred to another word-level cat-
egory, such as a verb, without altering the base in terms of spelling or
pronunciation. Words such as ‘chair’, ‘water’, ‘bottle’, ‘commission’,
What about chan- ‘skype’, ‘text’, ‘google’, and ‘email’ are nouns. However, more recently,
ging a countable
noun to a non- they have been used as verbs, thereby extending their category to be used
countable noun? as nouns and verbs. Similarly, words such as ‘better’, ‘empty’, ‘dirty’, and
Is it an example of ‘wrong’ are adjectives, but more recently they have been transferred to
the category ‘exten-
sion’? Discuss. another word-level category, thus being used as verbs.
To clarify this point, let us discuss the lexical item ‘email’. The word ‘email’
was first used as a noun in English. However, more recently, it has extended its
category to be used as a noun and verb, as in the following diagram:
Here the word ‘email’ as a verb was translated into Maltese as ‘bagħtitli
email’ and into Arabic as ‫إيميال‬ً ‫ بعثت لي‬meaning ‘send an email’, thus
resulting in a combination of two types of shift, namely ‘class shift’ (from
a verb to noun) and ‘unit shift’ (from a word to a phrase).
In translation studies, many scholars (e.g. Vinay and Darbelnet 1958/
1995; Catford 1965; Newmark 1988; Chesterman, 1997/2000) have talked
about this morphological process, i.e. ‘transposition’, that can be used by
translators as a local strategy.
Vinay and Darbelnet (1958/1995) classify the local strategies, or
procedures as they label them, into two main types: ‘direct translation’,
which is subdivided into three types – ‘borrowing’, ‘calque’, and ‘literal
translation’ – and ‘oblique translation’, which is subclassified into four
types – ‘transposition’, ‘modulation’, ‘equivalence’, and ‘adaptation’
(Vinay and Darbelnet 1958/1995: 84–91), as shown below:
So, in the second type, ‘oblique translation’, translators may for many
different reasons opt for transposition, i.e. changing one part of speech for
another without changing the meaning, thus leading to a morphological
shift. However, it is worth mentioning that Vinay and Darbelnet advise
translators to opt for transposition only if “the translation … obtained

fits better into the utterance, or allows a particular nuance of style to be
retained” (89). This is because the transposed materials might have a
different impact on the target-language reader.
Transposition is labelled ‘class shift’ by Catford (1965). Class shift, as
explained in the previous chapter, occurs when the lexical item in the ori-
ginal text is translated into a lexical item belonging to a different gram-
matical class in the target language. Transposition, according to Newmark
(1988), refers to all types of grammatical changes, such as changing the
Changing a noun
singular to plural or changing the word class. In this regard, Chesterman from the singular to
(1997/2000) holds that any local strategy adopted by the translator contains plural through trans-
lation is not a ‘class
a sort of change by default. He classifies those changes into three main
shift’ according to
types: ‘semantic change’, ‘syntactic change’, and ‘pragmatic change’. Catford (1965).
Chesterman labels one of the syntactic changes ‘transposition’, referring to What is it called?
the change that occurs when the word changes its structure (from a noun to
a verb, from an adjective to an adverb, from simple to complex, from com-
pound to simple, etc.), thus resulting in a morphological shift labelled in this
book a ‘word structure shift’ (for more details, see Chapter 3 of this book).
(3) Shortening
Shortening can be classified into two main types: clipping and abbreviation.
Clipping
Clipping (also known as ‘form clipping’, ‘form shortening’, or ‘trunca-
tion’) is another morphological process where a preexisting form of a word
is shortened to form a new word with the same meaning, as in ‘flu’ from
‘influenza’, ‘lab’ from ‘laboratory’, ‘car’ from ‘motorcar’, ‘econ’ from
‘economics’, ‘gym’ from ‘gymnasium’ or ‘gymnastics’, ‘info’ from ‘infor-
mation’, and ‘pop’ from ‘popular music’.
As one may notice, in some of these examples the initial part of the word
is kept while the rest is removed. This is the most common type of clipping
known as ‘final clipping’ or ‘back clipping’. Examples of final clipping in
English include:
• doctor > doc

How would you • advertisement > ad
translate these
terms into your • memorandum > memo
language? • vegetable > veg
• brother > bro
• Professor > Prof
• facsimile > fax
• demonstration > demo
• mathematics > math
• examination > exam
However, when the final part is kept while the beginning part is removed,
this is called ‘initial clipping’, as in:
• omnibus > bus

• motorcar > car
• telephone > phone
• Internet > net
• turnpike > pike
• alligator > gator
How would you
translate these • airplane > plane
terms into your • raccoon > coon
language?
• robot > bot
• parachute > chute
There is another type of clipping which is called ‘medial clipping’ in

which the medial part is kept while the initial part and final part are
removed, as in:
• influenza > flu

• refrigerator > fridge
• detective > tec
Finally, there is a fourth type of clipping called ‘complex clipping’ where a

compound word is shortened, as in:
• optical art > op art What are the main

• navigation certificate > navi cert types of ‘clipping’
in your language,
• microphone > mike if any?
• popular music > pop
• organization man > orgman
• web log > blog
It is worth noting that in some clipped words, the pronunciation might be

changed, as in the shortened form ‘soc’ from ‘society’.
Abbreviation
An abbreviation is another form of shortening in which some letters of
Do you have
the word are left out. There are three types of abbreviations: ‘initialism’, examples of ‘abbre-
‘acronym’, and ‘contraction’. viation’ in your
An initialism is made up of the first letters of a group of words in a language?
phrase, and these letters are pronounced individually with the name of the
letters of the alphabet, as in:
● FBI from ‘Federal Bureau of Investigation’

● VIP from ‘very important person’
● BA from ‘Bachelor of Arts’
CD from ‘compact disc’
●
How would you
● USA from ‘The United States of America’ translate these
● UK from ‘The United Kingdom’ terms into your
language?
● UN from ‘United Nations’
● CEO from ‘Chief Executive Officer’
● MP from ‘member of parliament’
● ASAP from ‘as soon as possible’
Note that if the first letters of the words in a phrase are capital letters, then
the initialism is written in capital letters, as in ‘UN’, ‘USA’, and the like.
Otherwise, it is a style choice as both are acceptable. Consider the word
‘compact disc’; its initialism can be written ‘CD’ or ‘cd’. Further, unlike in
American English where full stops are sometimes used for initialism as in
‘U.S.A.’ or ‘USA’, in British English, the full stops are not usually used for
initialisms, as in ‘USA’.
How would you
Like initialisms, acronyms are made up of the first letters of the words
translate these in a phrase, as in:
terms into your
language? In trans-
lating them, will
● NASA from ‘National Aeronautical and Space Administration’
you follow one ● NATO from ‘North Atlantic Treaty Organization’
procedure? ● PIN from ‘personal identification number’
● RAM from ‘random access memory’
● SIM from ‘subscriber identification module’
● VAT /vat/from ‘value added tax’ (used here as an acronym)
● OPEC from ‘Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’
However, unlike initialisms, acronyms are pronounced as one word. With

this in mind, full stops are not used here as the acronyms are treated as one
word (for more examples, see Jackson and Amvela 2000: 102–3).
Contractions are the third type of abbreviation. There are two types of
contraction:
(1) A contraction of one word where some letters from the middle of a
word are dropped, as in ‘Dr’ from ‘Doctor’, ‘govt’ from ‘government’,
‘Mr’ from ‘Mister’, etc.
(2) A contraction of more than one word, as in ‘he’s’ from ‘he is’, ‘I’ll’
from ‘I will’, ‘they’re’ from ‘they are’, ‘we’re’ from ‘we are’, etc.
As regards translation, this depends on the language that you are translating
to. For example, a contraction of more than one word, as in ‘I’ll’ in a sen-
tence of this kind, ‘I’ll travel to the UK tomorrow’, is lost through transla-
tion when we translate it into Arabic or German as these languages do not
have such a mechanism:
Arabic .‫سأساف ُر إلى المملكة المتّحدة غدًا‬

What about your
own language? Back translation I will travel to the United Kingdom tomorrow.
German Ich werde morgen nach Großbritannien reisen.

Back translation I will travel tomorrow to Great Britain.
The same holds true when we translate examples of initialisms, such as

‘UK’, ‘UN’, and ‘VIP’, into languages such as Arabic or German – we
cannot use the shortened forms, as shown in the above example. To
reinforce this point, let us consider the following translations offered by
the official website of the United Nations:
French Dans le cadre des événements commémoratifs marquant le

75e anniversaire des Nations Unies, l’Assemblée générale
a tenu une réunion le lundi 26 octobre 2020 dans la salle de
l’Assemblée, au Siège des Nations Unies à New York.
Spanish Como parte de los actos conmemorativos del 75º
aniversario de las Naciones Unidas, la Asamblea General
ha celebrado una reunión el lunes 26 de octubre de 2020 en
el Salón de la Asamblea, en la Sede de la ONU en Nueva
York.
Arabic ‫عقدت الجمعية العامة — في إطار االحتفاالت بالذكرى السنوية الخامسة‬
/‫ تشرين األول‬26 ‫والسبعين إلنشاء األمم المتحدة —اجتماعا يوم االثنين‬
.‫ في قاعة الجمعية بمقر األمم المتحدة في نيويورك‬2020 ‫أكتوبر‬
The initialism ‘UN’ was translated into ‘Nations Unies’ in French and
‫األمم المتحدة‬, i.e. the United Nations in Arabic. In Spanish, however, it was
translated into ‘Naciones Unidas’ in the first occurrence and ‘NU’ in the
second occurrence.
(4) Back-formation and coinage

Back-formation
Back-formation is another morphological process by which what is mis-
takenly supposed to be an affix added to a preexisting word is subtracted,
thus creating a new word. To explain, the verbs ‘to edit’, ‘to sculpt’, and
‘to wordprocess’ are formed by deleting the suffix ‘–or’ from ‘editor’,
‘sculptor’, and ‘wordprocessor’, respectively, on the basis of analogy
with word pairs such as ‘act/actor’, ‘translate/translator’, or ‘create/cre-
ator’. By the same token, the verbs ‘to peddle’, ‘to hawk’, ‘to stroke’, ‘to
swindle’, and ‘to buttle’ are formed from ‘peddler’, ‘hawker’, ‘stroker’,
‘swindler’, and ‘butler’, respectively, by deleting the suffix ‘–er’, which,
along with the suffix ‘–or’, is an allomorph of the agentive morpheme, as
discussed in the previous chapter.
Other examples of back-formation include the following verbs (for
more details on back-formation, see, for example, Stageberg, 1965/1981;
Fromkin and Rodman 1974/1998; Parker and Riley 1994/2010; Plag 2002;
Lieber 2009):
● ‘to televise’ from ‘television’

● ‘to resurrect’ from ‘resurrection’
● ‘to orient’ or ‘orientate’ from ‘orientation’
● ‘to escalate’ from ‘escalation’ or ‘escalator’ Find more examples
in English and your
● ‘to donate’ from ‘donation’ own language.
● ‘to enthuse’ from ‘enthusiasm’
● ‘to surveil’ from ‘surveillance’
● ‘to liaise’ from ‘liaison’
● ‘to lase’ from ‘laser’
● ‘housekeep’ from ‘housekeeper’
● ‘baby-sit’ from ‘babysitter’

● ‘typewrite’ from ‘typewriter’
● ‘hedgehop’ from ‘hedgehopper’
Do you agree with It is worth noting that translators, while translating, usually do not spend a
this claim? Discuss. lot of time, effort, and energy on figuring out the morphological process by
which the concerned word is formed. Rather, they do their best to find an
appropriate equivalent that can be used to reflect the intended meaning, on
the one hand, and safeguard acceptability, readability, idiomaticity, authen-
ticity, and well-formedness that feed into naturalness on the other hand. To
make this point clear, the following example that contains the word ‘tele-
vise’ formed by subtracting the suffix ‘-sion’ from the word ‘television’ can
be translated as follows into some other languages:
Don’t worry, it will be televised.
German Keine Sorge, es wird im Fernsehen übertragen.

Indonesian Jangan khawatir itu akan disiarkan di televisi.
French Ne vous inquiétez pas, ce sera télévisé.
Spanish No se preocupe, será televisado.
Thai ไม่่ต้อ้ งกลััวไป มัันจะถ่่ายทอดทางโทรทััศน์์เอง
Turkish Merak etmeyin, Tv’de yayınlanacak.
Arabic .ً ‫ سيت ّم بثه تلفزيونيا‬،‫ال تقلق‬
Farsi .‫ از تلویزیون پخش خواهد شد‬،‫نگران نباش‬
As can be observed, some languages, such as Thai, Turkish, Arabic, and

Farsi, do not have the equivalent of the verb ‘to televise’, thus opting for
‘class shift’ to use Catford’s (1965) term.
Coinage
Coinage is a morphological process by which a word is formed on the basis
of an analogy with word pairs existing in the linguistic system. In English,
for instance, the prefix ‘co–’ can be added to words such as ‘translator’,
Think of examples
‘author’, ‘worker’, etc. to create new words such as ‘co-translator’, ‘co-
of coinage in your author’, and ‘co-worker’, respectively. On the basis of an analogy with
language. these word pairs, a word such as ‘co-wife’ can be coined to be used, for
example, as an equivalent for the Arabic word ‫ ضرة‬or ‫ شريكة‬meaning another
wife that a man has along with his first wife at the same time. Preexisting
words such as ‘ex-wife’ or ‘second wife’ denote different meanings, hence
the need for coining a word to fill such a cultural gap.
(5) Blending
Blending is another morphological process where parts of two words
(or more) are pieced together to form a new word. It is worth noting that
the parts of the preexisting words used in forming the new words are
not themselves morphemes. Words such as ‘smog’, ‘brunch’, ‘motel’,

‘Singlish’, ‘culguage’, ‘chunnel’, ‘splog’, ‘fishburger’, ‘chickenburger’,
‘cheeseburger’, and ‘vegeburger’ are some examples. Words like ‘smog’,
‘brunch’, ‘motel’, ‘Singlish’, ‘culguage’, ‘chunnel’, and ‘splog’ are
formed by utilizing the first part of the words ‘smoke’, ‘breakfast’, ‘motor’,
‘Singapore’, ‘culture’, ‘channel’, and ‘spam’, and the last part of the words
‘fog’, ‘lunch’, ‘hotel’, ‘English’, ‘language’, ‘tunnel’, and ‘blog’, respect-
ively, as shown below: How would you
translate these
● smoke +fog =smog terms into your own
language?
● breakfast +lunch =brunch
● motor +hotel =motel
● Singapore +English =Singlish
● culture +language =culguage
● channel +tunnel =chunnel
● spam +blog =splog
● sheep +people =sheeple Analyze the word
‘frenemy’
However, the words ‘fishburger’, ‘chickenburger’, and ‘cheeseburger’ are
formed by combining the first word without any subtraction and the second What about the
part of the word ‘hamburger’ (for more details on blending, see Jackson word ‘vegeburger’?
and Amvela 2000: 101). Is there any sub-
traction? Discuss.
With respect to translating such examples of blending, the context in
which it is used, text type, purpose of translation, readership, and the
like should be given serious consideration. To explain, let us consider the
following example taken from a conversation between two friends criti-
cizing both the political situation and those who obey authorities like
livestock:
I don’t think that such sheeple [judgement: negative and explicit] will wake up one
day to politically change things [appreciation: negative and explicit].
Here, we have an example of evaluative language where the speaker

expresses his/her attitude towards (1) certain people, thus describing
A translation brief
them as ‘sheeple’ (judgement: negative and explicit) and (2) the polit- can be defined as
ical situation in the country (appreciation: negative and explicit). a set of instructions
or pieces of infor-
This should be reflected in our translations. Different local strategies, mation (e.g. read-
such as paraphrasing, literal translation, functional translation, and ership, purpose
transcreation, to mention but a few, can be used to reflect this, and it of translation,
the medium over
depends on the translation brief, taking into consideration such aspects which the text will
as the readership, text type, genre, and purpose of translation, context. be transmitted,
Opting for a functional translation, for instance, requires the translator and the time and
place of text recep-
to pay extra attention to issues such as acceptability, readability, tion) that would
idiomaticity, authenticity, intelligibility, and well-formedness. The help translators in
translation, as a result, does not strike the target-language reader as adopting a certain
global strategy and
unusual, as shown below: excluding others.
Arabic .‫ت كهوال ِء سيستفيقون ذات يوم ليغيّروا األوضا َع سياسيًّا‬

ٍ ‫ال أظنُّ أن إ َّمعا‬
Back I don’t think that yes-people like those will wake up one
translation day to change situations politically.
German Ich glaube nicht, dass solche Schafe eines Tages
aufwachen werden, um Dinge politisch zu ändern.
Back I don’t think that such sheep will wake up one day to
translation change things politically.
In order to reflect the language user’s negative attitude towards the people
and situations described, on the one hand, and safeguard aspects such as
acceptability, readability, and idiomaticity that feed into naturalness on the
other hand, the translators opted for ‫إ َّمعات‬, i.e. ‘yes-people’ in Arabic, and
‘solche Schafe’, i.e. ‘such sheep’ in German.
Opting for ‫الخرفان‬, i.e. ‘sheep’, in Arabic, for example as a translation
for the blended word ‘sheeple’, reflects the speaker’s attitude towards the
people (judgement: negative and explicit) and the political situation (appre-
ciation: negative and explicit).
(6) Borrowing
Find more examples

Borrowing is a process by which a lexical item is transferred from one lan-
of borrowing out of guage to another because of, for instance, a gap in the linguistic system of
your language or the language to which the word or phrase is transferred. Religious words
into it.
such as ‘Imam’, ‘Jihad’, and ‘hijj’ are transferred from Arabic to English.
On the contrary, sports words such as ‘goal’, ‘corner’, ‘penalty’, ‘offside’,
and ‘linesman’ or technology-related words such as ‘computer’ and
‘mobile’ are transferred from English to Arabic. In Papua New Guinea,
Tok Pisin, one of its official languages, is used as a lingua franca among
the population. Most of the words in this creole are taken from other
languages, such as English, German, Malay, and Portuguese. Below are
some examples:
Tok Pisin Language Meaning

Ka English car
maski German macht nichts meaning ‘it doesn’t matter’.
Susu Malay Susu meaning ‘milk’.
pikinini Portuguese Pequenino meaning ‘child’, ‘little’, etc.
In translation studies, Malone (1988: 15) provides a list of five local strat�
-
egies that can be employed by the translator when dealing with the text
at hand. These are ‘matching’ (‘equation’ versus ‘substitution’), ‘zigzag-
ging’ (‘divergence’ versus ‘convergence’), ‘recrescence’ (‘amplification’
versus ‘reduction’), ‘repackaging’ (‘diffusion’ versus ‘condensation’), and
‘reordering’, as shown below:
M o r ph o lo g ica l p r o c e s s e s 67
In this section and in the next one, the first two local strategies, ‘matching’
An inexperienced
and ‘zigzagging’, are given full consideration. Matching, according to Italian translator
Malone (1988), can be classified into two main types, namely ‘equation’ and may confuse
‘substitution’. Matching (along with carry-over matching, i.e. ‘borrowing’, the Italian word
‘camera’ meaning
and ‘calque’), according to Malone (1988), is somehow similar to Vinay ‘room’ with the
and Darbelnet’s (1958/1995) ‘direct translation’ that covers three main English word
procedures: ‘literal translation’, ‘borrowing’, and ‘calque’. On this subject, ‘camera’. Can
we consider this
Almanna (2016: 65) holds that matching, particularly ‘equation’, is as an example of
one of the common strategies in “dealing with culturally specific words equation? Discuss.
and neologies”. Equation, according to Almanna, can be in the form of
‘borrowing’, ‘calque’, ‘lexical creation’, ‘coinage’, and the like (for more
information, see Almanna 2016: 64). Consider the Arabic word ‫فالفل‬, i.e. a
mixture of ground vegetables, such as chickpeas or fava beans, formed into
balls or patties and then fried, in the following examples where the word
has travelled all over the world by virtue of borrowing:
What would you like to eat? Would you like to have falafel?
German Was möchten Sie essen? Möchten Sie Falafel haben?

Spanish ¿Qué te gustaría comer? ¿te gustaría comer falafel?
French Que voudriez-vous manger? Aimeriez vous avoir du falafel?
Indonesian apa yang ingin kamu makan Anda mau makan falafel?
Maltese Xi trid tiekol? Tixtieq tieħu falafel?

Farsi ‫دوست داری چی بخوری؟ آیا دوست دارید فالفل داشته باشید؟‬
It is worth noting that a ‘calque’ is a type of borrowing whereby an expres-

sion form is borrowed from another language, and then the components
of the borrowed expression are translated literally, as in the following
example that has several calques in different languages:
Here are some more examples:
Language pair Calques Source

English–Arabic The straw that broke the .‫القشة التي قصمت ظهر البعير‬
camel’s back.
German–English Die Schau stehlen. Steal the show.
English–German beer garden Biergarten
English–French Adam’s apple pomme d’Adam
French–English Le mariage est une Matrimony is a fifty-fifty
association à association.
cinquante-cinquante.
Italian–English la Casa Bianca the White House
Vinay and Darbelnet (1958/1995) hold that, like borrowing, many calques
become “an integral part of the language” with time and with some
“semantic change” might also turn into false friends (85), as in the Maltese
word ‘ħażin’ meaning ‘bad’ borrowed from the Arabic word ‫ حزين‬meaning
‘sad’. Now, to translate, for instance, ‘Huwa ħażin’ from Maltese into
Arabic, an inexperienced translator may opt for ‫ إنه حزين‬meaning ‘He is
sad’, thus resulting in an unacceptable semantic shift.
Substitution, on the other hand, refers to a type of rendering that “may
bear little or no morpho-syntactic or semantic relations to the source text”
(Taylor 1998: 52). For example, the of-structure in English is substituted
by the idafa-construction in Arabic, a complex prepositional phrase in Tok
Pison, and the similar structure ‘das Auto meines Bruders’ in German, as
shown below:
English The car of my brother …

Tok Pisin Ka bilong brata bilong mi …
German das Auto meines Bruders …
Arabic ... ‫سيّارةُ أخي‬
Connecting the dots (2): Translating causativity

To be able to iden-
tify the semantic
roles or verb-
Causativity (from the verb ‘to cause’) is an operation where the number of
specific semantic ‘arguments’ (syntactically known as ‘noun phrases’) is increased, thus indi-
roles in any clause, cating that the doer of the action/activity causes somebody or something
you need to be able
to identify the noun
else, to do, or to become, something else. To illustrate, the verb ‘to laugh’
phrases employed. in the following example can be discussed.
For example,
identify the noun
phrases used in the
She laughed a lot yesterday. What made her laugh was his funny
following sentence: haircut.
‘ “I’ll bring it
back tomorrow’,
she says’.
In the first sentence ‘She laughed a lot yesterday’, only one argument, i.e.
a noun phrase, can be identified, which is in the form of a pronoun ‘she’
filling a semantic role of Actor/Behaver and a verb-specific semantic role
of Laugher (for more details on semantic roles, see Chapter 6 of this book).
In the second occurrence, however, through the effect of the analytic causa-
tive ‘to make’, an argument-increasing operation occurs where the source
of laughing is mentioned, i.e. ‘his funny haircut’. In ‘What made her laugh
was his funny haircut’, the interaction between the source of laughing and
the person who laughed is unidirectional where the flow of energy goes
in one direction (for more details on causativity and flow of energy, see
Chapter 12 of this book).
In general, there are three main types of causatives: ‘analytic causatives’,
‘lexical causatives’, and ‘morphological causatives’, as summarized in the
following English examples:
(1) ‘Analytic causatives’ are formed by virtue of verbs, such as ‘to make’,
‘to have’, ‘to get’, and ‘to force’, as in ‘The dean got her to type the
letter’.
(2) ‘Lexical causatives’ are formed by certain verbs, such as ‘to kill’
(causing somebody to die), ‘to send’ (causing somebody to go), and
‘to feed’ (causing somebody to eat), as in ‘He was sent by his father to
the nearest pharmacy’.
(3) ‘Morphological causatives’ are formed by adding certain suffixes,
such as ‘-en’ and ‘-ify’, as in ‘This evidence weakens the case for the
prosecution’.
Now, let’s go back to the sentence ‘She laughed a lot yesterday. What made
her laugh was his funny haircut’ to translate it into some languages, such
as German, French, Malay, Indonesian, Swahili, and Arabic, to see how
causativity is expressed in these languages:
German Sie hat gestern viel gelacht. Was sie zum Lachen brachte, How would you
war sein lustiger Haarschnitt. translate this into
your own lan-
French Elle a beaucoup ri hier. Ce que la faisait rire, c’était sa drôle
guage? What type

coupe de cheveux. of causative would
you normally use
Malay Dia ketawa banyak semalam. Rambutnya yang lucu in your language
membuatnya ketawa. to express this
‘analytic causa-
Maltese Ilbieraħ daħqet ħafna. Dak li għamilha daħka kien il-haircut tive’ expressed in
umoristiċi tiegħu. English by the verb
‘to make’?
Arabic ْ
.‫ ما أضحكها هو قصة شعره المضحكة‬.‫ضحكت كثيرًا أمس‬
As we can see, causativity is reflected in all these languages, but each lan-
guage has its own way to express it. Some of them, like German, French,
and Malay, would rather use analytic causativity, i.e. ‘zum Lachen brachte’,
‘ce que la faisait rire’, and ‘membuatnya ketawa’, respectively, to stand for
‘to make her laugh’, while others, like Arabic, opt for a lexical causative,
which is typically expressed by a lexical item that has implicit causativity.
70 M o r ph o lo g ica l p r o c e s s e s
In Maltese, a structural calque taken from colloquial Arabic ‘għamilha’,

i.e. ‫ عملها‬meaning ‫‘ جعلها‬made her’ is used, thus resulting in an analytic
causative.
How would you
To clarify this point, let us discuss the verb ‘break’. In English, this
translate these two verb can be used as a transitive verb, as in ‘She broke your phone’ and as
sentences into your an intransitive verb, as in ‘The dish fell to the floor and broke’. To translate
language? Can you
think of an example
this lexical item into Arabic, for instance, the translator needs to go
of divergence? through a process of selecting the most appropriate equivalent from a
potential range of alternatives. This process is labelled by Malone (1988)
as ‘divergence’, as opposed to ‘convergence’. Divergence occurs when the
denotative meaning of the lexical item in the source language is wider and
less specific than its counterpart in the target language. Convergence, as
opposed to divergence, occurs when the denotative meaning of the lexical
item in the target language is wider and less specific. Dickins and his
associates (2002) use different terms, namely ‘particularization’ and ‘gen�-
eralization’, to respectively refer to the same ideas. So, when we try to
translate the verb ‘to break’ into Arabic, we have an example of divergence
or particularizing, as shown below:

they are false.
(1) The suffix ‘–ly’ in ‘brotherly’ is an adverbializer.

(2) The word ‘better’ contains two morphemes.

(3) The suffix ‘–er’ in ‘farmer’, the suffix ‘–ee’ in advisee,
and the suffix ‘–or’ in ‘actor’ are examples of
allomorphs.
(4) The suffix ‘–ize’ or ‘–ise’ is a class-maintaining suffix.
(5) The word ‘flu’ is an example of initial clipping.
(6) The suffix ‘–en’ can be added to nouns.
(7) The suffix ‘–er’ is more productive than the suffix ‘–ress’.
(8) The word ‘smog’ is made up of two words, namely
‘smoke’ and ‘fog’.
(9) The root of the word ‘carelessness’ is ‘careless’.
(10) The word ‘sat’ in ‘He sat for the exam yesterday’ has
two morphemes.
Exercise 2: Match the following words on the left with those words on the
right to form as many compound words as you can, and then translate
them into your language:
A B
• back • lash
• heart • brow
• eye • print
• toe • nail
• nail • cap
• finger • drum
• ear • line
• skull • ball
• waist • lobe
• knee • beat
• foot • bone
• jaw • lid
Exercise 3: Make the opposites of the following adjectives by putting the

correct prefix in front of them. Choose from ‘a–’, ‘un–’, ‘in–’, ‘im–’, ‘ir–’,
‘il–’, ‘dis–’, or ‘non–’. Then translate them into your language.
___ healthy ___ regular ___ typical ___ usual

___ polite ___ believable ___ pleasant ___ political
___ correct ___ legal ___ accurate ___ expensive
___ visible ___ fair ___ essential ___ perfect
___ possible ___ successful ___ just ___ literate
Exercise 4: Identify the type of causative (analytic, lexical, or morpho-

logical) in the following sentences before translating them into your lan-
guage. Then comment on any type of shift in causativity.
(1) My father made me wash his car yesterday.

(2) His wife had him sign the contract.
(3) The thief was killed by the police while leaving the house.
(4) Her mother sent her to the nearby supermarket.
(5) Before going to bed, I sent my little girl to bed.
(6) The thought of dying has recently terrified her.
Exercise 5: The following short text is taken together with its translation
into English from My Languages: Maltese Reading. Your task is to:
(1) identify any examples of ‘direct translation’ in the sense that Vinay
and Darbelnet (1958/1995) use the term;
(2) translate the English translation into your own language;
(3) comment on the local strategies you used by referring to Malone’s
(1988) first two strategies, namely ‘matching’ and ‘zigzagging’.
Maltese Kulħadd għandu l-jedd għall-edukazzjoni. L-

edukazzjoni għanda tkun b’xejn, għallinqas fil-gradi
elementari u fondamentali tagħha. L-edukazzjoni
elementari għanda tkun obbligatorja.
English Everyone has the right to education. Education shall
be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental
stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory.

(1) Go through any translated book from English into your own language
to identify the main local strategies opted for by the translator to
translate the English prefixes and suffixes.
(2) Go through any translated text from English into your own language to
identify any type of morphological shift, including shifts in causativity.
(3) Comment on the translation of ‘Valentine Day’ into your language
by referring to the morphological processes discussed in this
chapter.
(4) Reflect on the language pair that you are familiar with to find
examples in which you, as a translator, diverge or converge words.
(5) In translating a phrase of the following kind ‘il-karozza ta’ ħuti’ from
Maltese into English, the translator has two options, namely ‘my
brother’s car’ and ‘the car of my brother’. Can this be considered
an example of divergence? Discuss.
(6) An inexperienced French translator may translate ‘Passe une bonne
journée’ meaning ‘Have a nice day’ into ‘Have a nice journey’.
Comment on this mistake by referring to similar examples between
English and your language.
(7) The English noun phrase ‘tennis player’ has different equivalents, as shown
below. Is there a one-to-one correspondence between orthographic words
and elements of meaning across languages? Discuss.
Tenisçi (Turkish)
Tennisçi (Azerbaijani)
Joueur de tennis (French)

Tennisspieler (German)
Tennis player Tennista (Italy)
Plejer tat-tennis (Maltese)
Jugador de tenis (Spanish, masculine)
Jugadora de tenis (Spanish, feminine)
‫( العب تنس‬Arabic, masculine)
‫( العبة تنس‬Arabic, feminine)
References
Almanna, A. (2016). The Routledge Course in Translation Annotation:

Arabic-English-Arabic. London/New York: Routledge.
University Press.
Chesterman, A. (1997/2000). Memes of Translation: The Spread of Ideas
in Translation Theory. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Dickins, J., Hervey, S., and Higgins, I. (2002). Thinking Arabic Translation.
London/New York: Routledge.
Fromkin, V. and Rodman, R. (1974/1998). An Introduction to Language.
Belmont, CA: Christopher P. Klein.
Jackson, H. and Amvela, E. Z. (2000). Words, Meanings and Vocabulary: An
Introduction to English Lexicology. London/New York: Continuum.
Lieber, R. (2009). Introducing Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Malone, J. L. (1988). The Science of Linguistics in the Art of Translation.
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Newmark, P. (1988). A Textbook of Translation. London/ New York:
Prentice Hall.
Parker, F. and Riley, K. (1994/2010). Linguistics for Non-linguists (4th
edn). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Plag, I. (2002). Word-Formation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Stageberg, N. (1965/1981). An Introductory English Grammar.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Taylor, C. (1998). Language to Language: A Practical and Theoretical
Guide for Italian/English Translators. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Vinay, J. P. and Darbelnet, J. (1958/1995). Stylistique comparée du français
et de l’anglais. Méthode de traduction. Paris: Didier. Trans. and ed.
J. C. Sager and M. J. Hamel, Comparative Stylistics of French and
English: A Methodology for Translation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia,
PA: John Benjamins.
Syntax 5
In this chapter, the structure of phrases, clauses, and sentences are

studied. This involves the identification of word-level categories (nouns,
verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc.) and phrasal categories (noun phrases,
verb phrases, adjective phrases, adverb phrases, etc.). Further, trans-
formation processes and constituent tests are discussed in a direct link
to translation.
After studying this chapter, you should be able to (1) relate traditional
grammar knowledge to modern linguistic approaches; (2) differentiate
word-level categories from phrasal categories; (3) identify parts of
speech, basic grammatical functions, and complex sentence structures;
(4) reorder the elements of the clause without affecting its meaning;
(5) identify whether a group of words function as a unit or not; (6) deal with
translating tense, aspect, voice, gender, and the like across languages;
and (7) disambiguate certain structural ambiguity by resorting to con-
stituent analysis.
The word ‘syntax’ derived from the Greek word ‘syntaxis’ means
In your opinion, will
changing the struc-
‘arrangement’, thus referring to the way in which lexical items (i.e. words)
ture and informa- are arranged in a given clause or sentence. To put this differently, syntax
tion of a sentence is the branch of linguistics that focuses on the study of the structures and
affect the overall
meaning? Discuss
information of sentences along with the relationship of their parts. In
with illustrative English, for instance, in a sentence of the following kind

examples.
The teacher asked the students many questions yesterday.
we have a ‘subject’ and ‘predicate’, to borrow terms from traditional

grammar, as modelled below:
DOI: 10.4324/9781003228028-6
Sy n ta x 7 5
Speakers of some creole languages, such as Tok Pisin, tend to use the letter
What about your
‘i’ as a predicate marker when the subject is a third person, as in: language or the
languages that you
are familiar with?
Is any predicate
marker used?
Now, let us compare the sentence ‘The teacher asked the students many
questions yesterday’ with the following sentence which has the same struc-
ture to see if they have the same meaning or not.
The students asked the teacher many questions yesterday.
Although these two sentences have the same syntactic structures (Subject,
Verb, Indirect Object, Direct Object, and Adverb of Time), they have
different meanings. This is because each noun phrase (known as an ‘argu-
ment’ in semantics) fills a different semantic role (for more details, see
the next chapter). To explain, let us identify the semantic role assigned to
each noun phrase used in the previous sentences by raising the following
questions:
● Who was the Asker in the first sentence?

● Who was the Asker in the second sentence?
● Who was the Addressee in the first sentence?
● Who was the Addressee in the second sentence?
● What was asked in the first sentence?
● What was asked in the second sentence?
(1) The teacher Asker asked the students Addressee many questions something Asked In your opinion, why
yesterday (Adjunct without a semantic role). is the word ‘yes-
(2) The students Asker asked the teacher Addressee many questions terday’ without a
something Asked
semantic role?
yesterday (Adjunct without a semantic role).
The noun phrase ‘the teacher’ in the first sentence fills a verb-specific
semantic role of Asker, while in the second sentence it fills a verb-specific
semantic role of Addressee. The noun phrase ‘the students’ fills a verb-
specific semantic role of Addressee in the first sentence, while it fills a
verb-specific semantic role of Asker in the second sentence. However, the
noun phrase ‘many questions’ fills a verb-specific semantic role of some-
thing Asked in both sentences. Now, let us change the first sentence to the
passive and compare the two versions.
Active: The teacher asked the students many questions yesterday.

Passive: The students were asked many questions yesterday by the
teacher.
76 Sy n ta x
Here, although we have different syntactic structures, we have the same

meaning. This is because the noun phrases ‘the teacher’, ‘the students’,
and ‘many questions’ in both versions fill the semantic roles of Asker,
Addressee, and something Asked, respectively.
We can conclude that in addition to ‘phonological rules’ (how words
are pronounced) and ‘morphological rules’ (how morphemes can be
In your opinion, is
it enough to rely
combined to form words), language users need to fall back on other
on the four rules rules to speak and understand a language, such as ‘syntactic rules’ and
mentioned here to ‘semantic rules’.
speak and under-
stand a language?
Discuss. ● ‘Syntactic rules’ refer to the rules that explain how words can be
combined into sentences, thus telling us that while the sentence ‘The
teacher asked the students many questions yesterday’ is correct, the
sentence *‘The asked many questions teacher the yesterday students’
is not.
● ‘Semantic rules’ refer to the rules that explain how different
combinations give different meanings, as in:
The teacher asked the students many questions yesterday.

The students asked the teacher many questions yesterday.
Syntactic categories
Traditionally, syntactic categories (also known as ‘grammatical categories’)

are classified into two main types:
(1) ‘Word-level categories’ (e.g. noun, verb, adjective, adverb,

preposition).
(2) ‘Phrasal categories’ (e.g. noun phrase, verb phrase, adjective phrase,
adverb phrase, preposition phrase).
Identify the word-
level categories
employed in the Lexical items (i.e. words) are classified into certain categories (also known
following sentence: as ‘parts of speech’), such as noun (N), verb (V), pronoun (Pro), adjective
‘She’ll travel to
Doha with her dad (Adj), adverb (Adv), auxiliary (Aux), preposition (P), determiner (Det),
tomorrow.’ conjunction (Conj), degree word (D), and qualifier (Qual). These lexical
items can be classified into ‘lexical’ and ‘grammatical’. Grammatical
words can be further sub-classified into ‘specifiers’ and ‘non-specifiers’,
as summarized here:
Sy n ta x 77
Specifiers • Determiners, such as ‘the’, ‘a’, ‘an’, ‘this’, ‘that’,

‘no’, ‘many’, and ‘much’, are followed by nouns, thus
functioning as the specifiers of the nouns. Note that a deter-
• Qualifiers, such as ‘often’, ‘never’, ‘seldom’, ‘per- miner can be
followed by an
haps’, and ‘always’, function as the specifiers of the adjective that
verbs. should be followed
by a noun. What
• Degree words, such as ‘very’, ‘almost’, ‘slightly’, about the phrase
‘extremely’, ‘completely’, ‘too’, ‘quite’, ‘more’, and ‘the poor’ in a
‘so’, are normally used before the adjectives, thus sentence of the
following kind?
serving as specifiers of the adjectives. ‘The govern-
ment should help
Word-level categories in any language are categorized according to the poor’.
their shared morphological and syntactic properties, thus having certain
characteristics. For example, nouns in English:
● can be pluralized, as in ‘book’ > ‘books’;

● can be preceded by the definite article ‘the’, as in ‘book’ > ‘the book’;
● can be preceded by the indefinite article ‘a/an’, as in ‘book’ > ‘a book’.
78 Sy n ta x
Similarly, phrases are classified into certain categories, such as noun phrase
What about your
language or the (NP), verb phrase (PV), adjective phrase (AdjP), adverb phrase (AdvP),
languages that you and preposition phrase (PP). It is worth noting that every phrasal category,
are familiar with?
such as a noun phrase, verb phrase, adjective phrase, adverb phrase, or pre-
How would you
distinguish, for position phrase, should contain at least a word-level category of the same
example, nouns or basic type, such as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, or preposition, respect-
verbs? Discuss.
ively. To explain, let us consider the following sentence.
The best teacher left the class early in the morning.

Note that the term
‘phrase’ here may
include just one tiny To begin with, the noun phrase ‘the best teacher’ contains, in addition to
word, such as the a determiner and adjective, a noun, i.e. ‘teacher’. A tree diagram can be
pronoun ‘I’. drawn here to make this point clear:
Regarding the verb phrase ‘left the class early in the morning’, it contains
a verb, a noun phrase, an adverb phrase, and a preposition phrase, as syn-
tactically represented here:
The preposition phrase ‘in the morning’ is made up of a preposition ‘in’

and a noun phrase ‘the morning’, which contains a determiner ‘the’ and a
noun ‘morning’, as shown below:
Phrase structure rules
Phrase structure (PS) rules, which are closely associated with the early stages
of transformational grammar proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1957, are a
type of rewriting rule used to describe the sentence or phrase structure of a
particular language. They are used in syntax to break down sentences into
their constituents, i.e. syntactic categories, including both (1) word-level
Sy n ta x 79
categories (e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, pronouns,

prepositions, determiners, qualifiers, degree words, and auxiliaries) and
(2) phrasal categories (e.g. noun phrase, verb phrase, adjective phrase,
adverb phrase, and preposition phrase). To explain, let us break down the
following sentence into its constituents:
My brother put it on the table. Break down the

following sentence
into its constituents:
‘My eldest brother
bought a new car
two days ago.’
As stated earlier, words cannot be arranged in a random order to make What about
meaningful phrases or sentences. To illustrate, while the noun phrase ‘a languages, such
as Arabic or Farsi?
beautiful girl’ is acceptable in English, *‘girl beautiful a’ is not. This left-
Is it also a left-to-
to-right sequence of the words used in the noun phrase is governed by what right sequence?
is called in the literature ‘phrase structure rules’ (or PC rules for short). Discuss.
According to Parker and Riley (1994/2010: 50), these PC rules specify
three types of information:
(a) Which word-level categories are permitted in a given phrase. It is an

NP which can rewrite as a determiner (Det) followed by an adjective
(Adj), which is, in turn, followed by a noun (N), as in:
a beautiful girl: NP → Det-Adj-N.
(b) The left-to-right ordering of the words used. It is ‘a beautiful girl’ but
not *‘girl beautiful a’ or *‘beautiful a girl’.
(c) Whether any of these words are optional or not. The adjective
‘beautiful’ in this noun phrase is optional as it can be syntactically
deleted. We can say ‘a girl’, as in a sentence of this kind: ‘I saw a girl’.
By so doing, the evaluatively active noun phrase ‘a beautiful girl’

becomes a non-evaluative noun phrase ‘a girl’, thereby modifying the How would you
define the term
language user’s attitude towards the girl (for more details on attitudes ‘attitude’?
see Chapter 9 of this book).
Tree diagram
To figure out the underlying syntactic structures of any phrase or sentence,

a tree diagram can be used to represent these syntactic structures visually.
To put this differently, a tree diagram can be used to represent what is
going on structurally in a sentence or phrase. Unlike normal trees which
are drawn bottom up, a tree diagram is drawn top down, thus expressing
8 0 Sy n ta x
different categories, such as phrasal categories (NP, VP, AdjP, AdvP, and
PP) and word-level categories (N, V, Adj, Adv, P, Det, Pro, Qual, Deg, Aux,
and Conj). To explain, let us consider the following sentence:
My close friend visited me at home yesterday.
Identify the main

phrases of the
following sen-
tence: ‘Visiting
relatives can be
boring’.
This means that every sentence should contain two phrases: a noun phrase
and verb phrase regardless of what is mentioned and what is not.
To finish off this section, let us consider the following sentence:
The rich should help the poor.
As we can see, the adjectives ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ in the above example
function as heads in the noun phrases ‘the rich’ and ‘the poor’, respect-
ively, as there is an implicit noun in these two noun phrases. This should
be given full consideration by the translators as there is an implicit noun
How would you that should be reflected in the target text implicitly or explicitly, depending
translate such a
sentence into your
on the syntax of the target language. In Arabic, for instance, such a sen-
own language? tence lends itself to ‫ على األغنياء أن يساعدوا الفقراء‬where plural nouns reflecting
the same idea are used. A translation of this sentence into German: ‘Die
Reichen sollten den Armen helfen’ also reflects the same idea.
Verb group
Now let us focus on the structure of the verbal elements. To do so, extra
attention is paid to what is called the ‘verb group’ (Vgrp for short). To start
with, consider the following sentences:
Sy n ta x 8 1
(1) The man asked his daughter to close the door. (no Aux +V)
(2) She goes to school by car every day. (no Aux +V)
(3) My youngest brother is working on a new project (Aux +V)
these days.
(4) The wall was painted by my brother some days (Aux +V)
ago.
(5) Many emails have been sent to me by different (Aux +Aux +V)
universities recently.
(6) They might have left it at home. (Aux +Aux +V)
As one may observe, in all these sentences, the verb group (Vgrp) contains
a lexical verb (‘ask’, ‘go’, ‘work’, ‘paint’, ‘sent’, and ‘left’) as a head. These
lexical verbs, which may or may not be preceded by an auxiliary, appear
last in the Vgrp. Building on this, Vgrps can be classified into two groups:
What about your
(1) Simple Vgrps, i.e. a lexical verb without an auxiliary, as in sentences language or the
languages that you
(1) and (2).
know? Can verb
(2) Complex Vgrps, i.e. a lexical verb preceded by one auxiliary or more, groups be classified
as in sentences (3), (4), (5), and (6). into ‘simple’ and
‘complex’?
Added to this, when there is more than one auxiliary, only the first one is
tensed. Otherwise, the lexical verb is tensed. Complex Vgrps in English
can have up to four auxiliaries, which should be in the following order:
(1) Modal verbs, as in ‘can’, ‘could’, ‘may’, ‘might’, etc.

(2) Perfect aspect, as in ‘have’, ‘has’, ‘had’.
(3) Progressive aspect, as in ‘is’, ‘am’, ‘are’, ‘was’, ‘were’, etc.
(4) Passive voice, as in ‘be’, ‘being’, ‘been’, etc.
With this in mind, the sentence ‘My close friend visited me at home yes-
terday’, discussed earlier, can be reconsidered here:
8 2 Sy n ta x
Inflection
As indicated in the previous chapter, there are eight inflectional morphemes

Do you agree that
‘inflection’ varies
in English:
from one language
to another in terms ● Plural ‘–s’ attached to nouns, as in ‘girl’ > ‘girls’.
of importance?
● Possessive ‘–s’ attached to nouns, as in ‘man’ > ‘man’s’.
● Comparative ‘–er’ attached to adjectives, as in ‘big’ > ‘bigger’.
● Superlative ‘–est’ attached to adjectives, as in ‘small’ > ‘smallest’.
● Present ‘–s’ or ‘–es’ attached to verbs, as in ‘like’ > ‘likes’.
● Past ‘– ed’ attached to verbs, as in ‘call’ > ‘called’.
● Past participle ‘–ed’ or ‘–en’ attached to verbs, as in ‘drive’ > ‘driven’.
● Present participle attached to verbs, as in ‘read’ > ‘reading’.
These inflectional affixes are attached to nouns, adjectives, and verbs, as

modelled below:
As any English finite clause should have a tense (past or non-past), aspect
Do you agree that
the definition of (simple, progressive, perfect, or perfect progressive), and voice (active
‘finite verbs’ and or passive), another branching point Infl (short for inflection) is needed
‘finite clauses’ to indicate the tense, aspect, and voice of the clause or sentence. In the
differs from one lan-
guage to another? current widespread practice, there are two ways to represent this in a tree
diagram:
(1) The Infl node is considered as a daughter of the Vgrp, as shown here:
Which tree diagram

do you prefer?
And why?
Sy n ta x 8 3
(2) The Infl node is considered as a daughter of the S, as shown here:
Connecting the dots (1): Syntactic ambiguity and

translation
We have seen that in finite clauses we can indicate the subject of the clause
along with its predicate. Similarly, we can indicate the phrases used to form
such a clause. To illustrate, the following example can be considered here:
The dog ate our lunch last night.
Here, it is not a hard task to identify the subject (‘dog’ modified by the
Analyse this sen-
determiner ‘the’) and the predicate (‘ate our lunch yesterday’). Further, we tence syntactic-
can indicate that the predicate is made up of a verb (‘ate’ in the past tense), ally: ‘It is the dog
direct object (‘lunch’ modified by the determiner ‘our’) and an adverb that ate our lunch
last night’?
of time (‘last night’ answering the question ‘When did the dog eat our
lunch?’). Added to this, several phrases can be identified in the above finite
clause, including ‘the dog’ (a noun phrase) and ‘ate our lunch yesterday’
(a verb phrase). Inside the verb phrase, two phrases can be identified: ‘our
lunch’ (a noun phrase) and ‘last night’ an adverb phrase). However, it is
not always as easy as in the above example. What about a sentence of
the following kind, adapted along with the pictures from Almanna and Al-
Shehari (2019: 10):
The man saw a little girl with the binoculars.
This sentence is ambiguous as it has two interpretations:

(a) The girl was seen by the man with the help of the binoculars. Draw two tree
diagrams to syntac-
tically represent the
two interpretations.
8 4 Sy n ta x
(b) The man saw the girl who was holding the binoculars.
What about trans- Translating this sentence into Arabic, for example, as‫ رأى الرّج ُل الفتاةَ بالنّاظور‬,
lating it into your we have only one interpretation (first interpretation) where the man used
language? the binoculars to see the girl. This indicates that the binoculars are not with
the girl, but with the man. To have the second interpretation in Arabic, one
needs to add a relative clause that contains a process of doing expressed
by the verb ‫‘ حمل‬to carry’, as in ً‫ رأى الرّج ُل الفتاةَ التي كانت تحمل ناظورا‬, i.e. ‘The
man saw the girl who was carrying the binoculars’. This indicates that
what is syntactically ambiguous in one language might not be ambiguous
in another language. However, translators should approach ambiguous
sentences carefully while translating to reflect the intended meaning.
Connecting the dots (2): Reordering sentence

constituents through translation
Words within sentences can be structured into larger syntactic units called
constituents. To illustrate this operation, consider the following sentence:
The woman was speaking very angrily to me.
In the above sentence, there are eight words (‘the’, ‘woman’, ‘was’,
‘speaking’, ‘very’, ‘angrily’, ‘to’, ‘me’). Some of these words, such as

What about your ‘the’ and ‘woman’, ‘very’ and ‘angrily’, and ‘to’ and ‘me’ go together, thus
language? Is it being structured into larger syntactic units. Building on this, ‘the woman’,
acceptable to start ‘very angrily’, and ‘to me’ form some of the sentence constituents. To
with the equivalent
of ‘very angrily’? prove this, constituent tests can be used. To begin with the adverb phrase
‘very angrily’, for instance, it:
● can be fronted, as in ‘Very angrily, the woman was speaking to me’

(transposition: fronting test);
● can be backgrounded, as in ‘The woman was speaking to me very
angrily’ (transposition: backgrounding test);
● can be substituted with the word ‘so’, as in ‘The woman was speaking
so to me’ (replacement/substitution test);
Sy n ta x 8 5
● can be used as an answer to a question of the following kind: ‘How

was the woman speaking to you?’ ‘Very angrily’ (stand-alone test).
Now, let us prove that the noun phrase ‘the woman’ is a larger unit by
applying certain constituent tests. The noun phrase ‘the woman’:
● can be used as an answer to a question of the following kind: ‘Who

was speaking very angrily to you?’ (stand-alone test);
● can be replaced with the pronoun ‘she’, as in ‘She was speaking very
angrily to me’ (substitution test);
● can be inserted in a group of words that functions as a unit in a cleft
structure, as in ‘It is the woman who was speaking very angrily to me’
(movement: clefting test).
As shown above, there are several constituent tests that can be used to prove
that certain words hang together to form a larger unit called ‘constituent’.
The main constituent tests include the ‘movement test’, which can be
sub-classified into ‘fronting’, ‘clefting’, the ‘passive’, and so on, the ‘sub-
stitution/replacement test’, the ‘ellipsis/fragment test’, the ‘co-ordination
test’, the ‘modification test’, and the ‘stand-alone test’, as shown here:
At times, for the sake of readability, acceptability, idiomaticity, authenticity,

and well-formedness, the translator reorders these constituents selected and
ordered in the original text, thus adopting slightly or completely a different
style. To explain, let us translate this English simple sentence into Maltese:
ST I received an email from my sister yesterday.

TT1 Oħti bagħtitli email ilbieraħ.
Back translation My sister sent me an email last night.
TT2 Irċevejt email mingħand oħti lbieraħ.
Back translation I received an email from my sister yesterday.
TT3 Ilbieraħ, oħti bagħtitli email.
Back translation Yesterday, my sister sent me an email.
8 6 Sy n ta x
In the original sentence, there are three noun phrases filling three semantic
roles: Actor/Sender filled by ‘my sister’, Recipient filled by ‘I’, and Theme/
something Sent filled by ‘an email’, as shown here:
Actor/Sender Recipient Theme/something Sent

my sister me an email
Although we have three different translations/styles, the three semantic

roles are accurately reflected in the three translations. In the first trans-
lation, while the Actor/Sender, ‘Oħti’ meaning ‘my sister’, is fronted, the
Recipient is backgrounded. In the second sentence, however, the Recipient
is given a front seat while the Actor/Sender is given a back seat. In the third
translation, the adverb of time ‘Ilbieraħ’ meaning ‘yesterday’ is fronted.
Think of some of
At other times, the translator, for a variety of different reasons, decides
these reasons to opt for ‘mystification’, i.e. hiding the Agent, as shown in this example
that motivate the quoted from Farghal (2023: 31):
translator to hide
the agent.
ST (Arabic) ‫قتلت القوات اإلسرائيلية ثالثة شبان فلسطينيين في القدس الشرقية هذا‬
.‫الصباح‬
Back The Israeli troops killed three Palestinian youths in East
translation Jerusalem this morning.
TT (English) Three Palestinian youths were killed in East Jerusalem
this morning.
Here, as can be observed, the translator opted for a passive construc-

tion where the Agent, i.e. ‘the Israeli troops’, was not mentioned in the
target text.
Connecting the dots (3): Syntactic parsing and

translation
What is the diffe-

Syntactic parsing refers to the act of analysing the units of the original text
(e.g. sentences, clauses, and phrases). Before embarking on translating any
rence between
‘syntactic parsing’ sentence/paragraph/text, the translators need to identify (depending on their
and ‘semantic
parsing’?
level, and the level of the text, of course) the type of each sentence (simple,
compound, complex, or compound complex; nominal versus verbal, etc.),
the type of each clause (finite or non-finite), the subject of each finite clause
(one word or a group of words), the tense of each finite clause (past, present,
or future), the aspect of each finite clause (simple, progressive, perfect, or
perfect progressive), the voice of each finite clause (active or passive), the
adverbs and adjectives used in each clause, and the like.
Syntactic parsing is one of the steps that should be taken by translators
according to a model proposed by Bell (1991). Building on linguistic and
psycholinguistic perspectives, Bell (1991: 20) states that the translation
process mainly happens within ‘memory’ in the sense that the transform-
ation process involves five main phases:
Sy n ta x 87
(1) Visual recognition of the lexical items used in the original text where
the translators identify technical terms, new terms, difficult terms, and
the like.
(2) Syntactic parsing in which translators start analysing the text at hand
syntactically by asking themselves several questions, such as ‘How
many sentences are there?’, ‘What is the type of each sentence? Is it
simple, compound, complex, or compound complex?’, ‘Where is the
subject of each sentence/clause?’, ‘Where is the main verb of each
sentence/clause?’, ‘What is the tense/aspect/voice, etc.?’, and so on.
(3) Mechanisms of lexical search in which translators mentally start Note that Almanna
(2014) modifies the
looking for the equivalent of each lexical item – here the translation fifth step to read
unit is mainly lexical items and occasionally expressions. ‘encoding the draft
(4) Semantic and pragmatic processing in which translators try to activate semantically, prag-
matically, lexico-
semantic and pragmatic processes in order to produce a translation draft. grammatically, and
(5) Encoding the draft semantically, pragmatically and lexico-grammatically stylistically in the
in the target language (for more details, see Almanna 2014: 52–4). target language.
To explain, let us syntactically analyse the following sentence taken along

with its translations from the official website of the United Nations:
The UN subject/noun phrase/determiner + noun has evolved auxiliary + main verb (present, perfect,
active)
over the years time marker indicating the whole period of evolving to keep pace with a
rapidly changing world purpose clause/non-finite clause introduced by ‘to’.
Spanish La ONU ha evolucionado a lo largo de los años para

seguir el ritmo de un mundo que cambia rápidamente.
Arabic .‫وتطورت األمم المتحدة على مر السنين لمواكبة عالم سريع التغير‬
As we can see, the main components of the original sentence were given
full consideration by the translators after having taken into consideration
the differences between the interfacing languages. To elaborate, unlike
English, Arabic, for instance, does not have a grammatical category of
aspect. However, by virtue of the phrase ‫‘ على م ّر السنين‬over years’, the
emphasis is placed on the whole period that started in the past (unspeci-
fied, as we cannot specify the starting point, but predictable as it is based

on our personal knowledge) and is seen as relevant to another point in the
present (specified as we can specify the endpoint, which is the moment of
writing). With this in mind, we have a scene characterized by being par-
tially bounded, and this was reflected in the target text (for more details,
see the next section). In the following example, the translator decided to
change the passive into active without changing the semantic roles assigned
to each noun phrase. By doing so, more emphasis is placed on the Actor/
Asker, and not on the person being asked.
English I was asked a difficult question by the teacher.

German Der Lehrer stellte mir eine schwierige Frage.
8 8 Sy n ta x
In this sentence, we have an example of modulation, i.e. changing the style

by laying more emphasis on the Actor/Sender (my sister):
English I received an email from my sister yesterday.

Maltese Oħti bagħtitli email ilbieraħ.
Back translation My sister sent me an email last night.
Is this modula- Instead of opting for ‘Irċevejt email mingħand oħti lbieraħ’ meaning ‘I
tion optional or received an email from my sister last night’, the translator decided to opt
obligatory? for modulation, but without changing the semantic roles assigned to each
noun phrase, as shown here:
Actor/Sender Recipient Theme/something Sent or Received

my sister me an email
Connecting the dots (4): Translating tense and aspect
Both ‘tense’ and ‘aspect’ refer to time; both of them “convey temporal
information about a described event or state of affairs” (Almanna 2016: 65).
However, tense refers to when an event, situation, or action happens, thus
locating the described event or state of affairs on the timeline: past, present,
or future (Kearns 2000/2011: 176; Almanna 2016: 65). Aspect, by contrast,
refers to how a described event, situation, or action happens. In some
languages, such as English, there are four types of aspect, namely ‘simple’,
Note that ‘simple ‘perfect’, ‘progressive’, and ‘perfect progressive’ (cf. Kreidler 1998;
aspect’ is also Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman 1999; Kearns 2000/2011; Almanna
known as ‘zero
2016; Griffiths 2006). To elaborate, consider the grammatical categories
aspect’.
associated with the verb ‘to teach’ in the following sentences:
Example Tense Aspect

I teach in the morning. Present Simple
I am teaching right now. Present Progressive
Can you identify

the tensed words I have taught at this university for 10 years. Present Perfect
in these four
examples? I have been teaching at this university for 10 years. Present Perfect
progressive
It is worth noting that some languages do not have verb tenses and aspects
to indicate when and how an event or action occurs. Examples of these
languages are Indonesian, Malay, Mandarin Chinese, and many creole
languages. In these languages, people rely on certain words to indicate
Do you know any
periods of time. Some other languages, such as Arabic, have only tenses.
other languages Therefore, translating those grammatical categories from a language that
that do not have has both tense and aspect to a language that does not have or has only one
grammatical cat-
egories of ‘tense’
cannot be achieved without difficulty. To make this point clear, consider the
and ‘aspect’? verb ‘merokok’ in Malay meaning ‘to smoke’. The form of the verb is the
same in the past, present, and future, as shown in the following examples:
Sy n ta x 8 9
Aspect + tense Malay English

simple +present Saya merokok. I smoke.
simple +past Saya sudah merokok. I smoked
Or: Saya telah merokok. yesterday.
progressive + Saya sedang merokok. I am smoking.
present
simple +future Saya akan merokok. I will smoke.
One may observe that in Malay the words ‘sudha’ or ‘telah’ meaning
‘already’ can be used to indicate that the event or action occurred in the
past, thus resulting in a ‘level shift’, to borrow Catford’s (1965) term. In How would you
this regard, Almanna (2018) holds that when we translate from a language define the ‘con-
textual tense’? And
that has only a grammatical category of tense, such as Arabic, to a language how is it identified?
that has both tense and aspect as grammatical categories, such as English,
one needs to understand the ‘contextual tense’ rather than adhering to
the ‘morphological tense’ or ‘structural tense’. To explain, consider the
following three sentences that have almost the same forms:
Example Morphological Structural Contextual

tense tense tense
‫لم أزره أمس‬
Lit. I did not visit him Present Past Past simple
yesterday.
.‫لم أزره لغاية أمس‬
Lit. I did not visit him Present Past Past perfect
till yesterday*.
ُّ ‫لم أزره‬
.‫قط‬
Lit. I never visited Present Past Present perfect
him*.
In these three sentences, the same form, i.e. ‫لم أزره‬, is used. However, the
meaning is different as the emphasis in the first sentence by virtue of the

lexical time ‫‘ أمس‬yesterday’ is placed on the completion of the process
of doing expressed by the verb ‫‘ زار‬to visit’ in the negative; therefore, it
is equivalent to the simple past in English, i.e. ‘I did not visit him yes-
terday’. In the second sentence, by the effect of the phrase ‫‘ لغاية أمس‬till
yesterday’, the emphasis is put on the whole period that started in the past
(unspecified as we cannot specify the starting point) and is seen as relevant
to another point in the past (specified as we can specify the end point, i.e.
yesterday); therefore, it is equivalent to the past perfect in English, i.e. ‘I
had not visited him yesterday’. As regards the third sentence, by virtue of
ُّ i.e. never, the emphasis is placed on the whole period that
the word ‫قط‬,
started in the past (unspecified, but predictable as it is in our scope of pre-
diction) and is seen as relevant to another point in the present; therefore,
it is equivalent to the present perfect, i.e. ‘I have never (ever) visited him’.
9 0 Sy n ta x
On this subject, Almanna (2022) suggests certain cognitive categories that

can be used by translators to help them figure out the contextual tense.
These categories are explained in detail in Chapter 12 of this book, so it here
suffices to mention them briefly. They are ‘point of emphasis’, ‘plexity’,
‘extent of causation’, ‘pace of events’, ‘time lapse’, ‘state of dividedness’,
‘state of boundedness’, and ‘degree of extension’.
Connecting the dots (5): Translating gender
Think of some Following Scott (1986: 1054), Castro (2010: 106) defines the term ‘gender’
examples of gender as “the combination of socio-cultural roles assigned to people in a system-
discrimination. atic and structural way according to their sex”. Therefore, to overcome
gender discrimination, we need to make every possible effort to change
those practices that involve gender discrimination in a particular society.
Linguistic discrimination, as an example of gender discrimination, reflects,
in one way or another, what is going on in a particular society. So, if there
is some kind of discrimination in a given society, this discrimination is
reflected in the language used by those people practising discrimination.
Language, as Castro (Ibid.) puts it, “is not merely a reflection of reality/
society, but a factor that contributes to its construction. The linguistic
Do you agree with
Castro’s definition
representation of men and women therefore has a socio-cognitive dimen-
of language? sion: representation contributes to the construction of social roles”. Building
on this, the way men and women are represented across languages/cultures
becomes a rich site for examining issues such as gender discrimination, in
particular linguistic discrimination.
Over the last four decades, a great number of studies on linguistic
representation have been conducted in different languages (see, for
example, Hellinger and Bussmann 2001; Castro 2010). These studies
conclude that women and men are represented differently in different
languages: more emphasis is placed on men, thus foregrounding them
in the scene and making them visible. In this regard, Castro (2010: 107)
holds that “language is sexist and androcentric, in that it renders women
Building on invisible and in that it stereotypes gender roles, in a way that is presented
Castro’s (2010) as natural, normal and commonsensical”. Such gender discrimination

view that ‘lan-
guage’ is sexist is reflected linguistically on different levels. On the lexical level, it is
and androcentric, reflected by virtue of certain linguistic markers added to certain words,
can we classify thus having (1) a sexist language where women become invisible, i.e. they
translation in gen-
eral into sexist and are backgrounded in a given scene and (2) an androcentric language where
non-sexist, and more emphasis is placed on men, i.e. they are foregrounded in a given
androcentric and scene. On the discoursal level, gender discrimination is reflected through
non-androcentric?
If yes, what ideological stereotypes of men and women. By way of explanation, con-
determines the type sider the following example:
of translation in your
opinion?
The teacher asked some of the students to leave the class yesterday.
Sy n ta x 9 1
Translation Back translation

TT1 ‫بعض‬
ِ ‫طلب ال ُمدرِّسُ من‬
َ The male-teacher asked some of
‫ب أن يغادروا الصّف‬ ِ ‫الطّال‬ the male students to leave the class
.‫أمس‬ yesterday.
TT2 ‫بعض‬
ِ ‫من‬ ُ‫ت ال ُمدرِّ سة‬ ِ َ‫طلب‬ The female-teacher asked some
‫ت أن يغادرن الصّف‬ ِ ‫الطّالبا‬ of the female students to leave the
.‫أمس‬ class yesterday.
TT3 ‫بعض‬
ِ ‫طلب ال ُمدرِّسُ من‬
َ The male-teacher asked some of
‫ت أن يغادرن الصّف‬ ِ ‫الطّالبا‬ the female students to leave the
.‫أمس‬ class yesterday. Provide more than
TT4 ‫بعض‬
ِ ‫ت ال ُمدرِّ سةُ من‬ ِ َ‫طلب‬ The female-teacher asked some of one translation to
the above sen-
‫ب أن يغادروا الصّف‬ ِ ‫الطّال‬ the male students to leave the class tence into your
.‫أمس‬ yesterday. own language.
Then comment on
each type of trans-
Here we have four different translations. In TT1, we have an example of
lation by referring
an ‘androcentric translation’ where more emphasis is placed on men. In the to the classifica-
TT2, by contrast, we have an example of a ‘non-sexist translation’, where tion proposed in
this book.
there is an attempt to include women, thus making them visible – in our
mind’s eye, we can see women. In TT3, despite the translator’s attempt to
include women in his/her translation, we have an example of an ‘androcen-
tric translation’ as men, by virtue of the grammatical form and content spe-
cification used by the translator, are characterized by being-able-to-do, thus
presupposing authority, while women are characterized by being-able-not-
to-do, thereby presupposing submission. By contrast, in TT4, women are
characterized by being-able-to-do while men are characterized by being-
able-not-to-do; therefore, it is an example of a ‘non-androcentric transla-
tion’. In what follows, some of the more frequent problems that arise when
one translates between a language that has a grammatical gender category,
such as Arabic or Spanish, and a language that does not have one or has
many neutrals, such as English, can be summarized.
One of those problems is that the sex of the referent is not made explicit
in the source text while in the target text it should be made explicit. To
explain, a sentence of the following kind ‘My friend called me yesterday’
can be translated into Arabic and Spanish in the following way:
Translation Back translation Note that trans-

lating ‘amigo’,
Spanish Mi amigo me llamó My male friend called me yesterday. for example, into
ayer. ‘friend’ results
in what is called
Arabic .‫ اتّص َل بي صديقي أمس‬My male friend called me yesterday. ‘convergence’ or
‘generalization’.
Here we have an example of a sexist translation where the word ‘friend’
referring to both sexes in English is translated into Arabic as ‫ صديق‬and
into Spanish as ‘amigo’, both referring to a male friend. Semantically, the
denotative meaning of the word ‘friend’ in English is wider and less specific
compared with its counterparts in Arabic and Spanish; therefore, we have
an example of ‘divergence’ (Malone 1988) or ‘particularization’ (Dickins
9 2 Sy n ta x
et al. 2002; for more details, see Chapter 5 of this book). Cognitively,
in our mind’s eye, we can see only a male friend in the target texts, thus
backgrounding females from the scene and laying more emphasis on males.
Another problem arises when we translate from a language that has two
grammatical gender categories (male or female) into a language that has
three (masculine, feminine, or neutral). To explain, the word ‫سيّارة‬, i.e. car,
in Arabic is feminine, but in German it is neutral and, accordingly, the indef-
inite article that precedes its equivalent, i.e. ‘Auto’, should be ‘das’ and
neither ‘die’ nor ‘der’. Consider this example:
Arabic .‫السّيارةُ في حال ٍة جيدة‬

German Das Auto ist in einem gutem Zustand.
English The car is in good condition.
To finish off this section, let us discuss some techniques that can be resorted
What is the diffe-
rence between
to by translators to step away from examples of linguistic discrimination.
‘generalization’ To avoid the use of the forms or specific markers of each gender, thus
used here and avoiding examples of a ‘sexist translation’, translators can opt for what is
‘generalization’
suggested by
called ‘generalization’ (also known as ‘neutralization’) where those forms
Dickins et al. or specific markers assigned to each gender can be eliminated, as shown in
(2002)? the following example:
ST: Arabic .‫ذهبت إلى مركز ال ّشرط ِة أمس ألشتكي ضد أحد رجال ال ّشرطة‬
ُ
Back translation I went to the police office yesterday to complain
against one of the policemen.
TT1: sexist I went to the police office yesterday to complain
translation against one of the policemen.
TT2: non-sexist I went to the police office yesterday to complain
translation against one of the police officers.
Here, by opting for the lexical item ‘officers’ in place of ‘men’, we have
an example of generalization where the specific marker assigned to each
What is the diffe-
rence between gender is eliminated, thus resulting in a ‘non-sexist translation’.
‘particularization’ Another technique that can be opted for by translators is called ‘specifi-
suggested by
cation’, referring to the act of specifying both linguistic genders when
Dickins et al.
(2002) and ‘speci- referring to people, thereby reflecting in the target text the sex of the person
fication’ suggested mentioned (feminine for women, masculine for men, and both linguistic
by Castro (2010)?
genders when referring to both sexes, or when the sex of the referent is
unknown). Castro (2010: 112) believes that the goal of this strategy “is
to counteract the historical and permanent invisibility of women in lan-
guage”. Examples of this strategy may include:
● ‘s/he’ or ‘he/she’ in place of ‘he’;

● ‘female teachers’ or ‘male teachers’ in place of ‘teachers’.
The third technique suggested by Castro is called ‘linguistic disruption’.

It refers to the act of “incorporating into the translated text substantial
Sy n ta x 9 3
changes that include semantic alterations, linguistic innovations, new ways

of spelling words, the use of bold type, capitals, italics and quotation marks
etc. in order to make women visible”. Compensation, as a strategy discussed
by many scholars in translation studies, can be used to avoid examples of
sexism. To make this point clear, let us consider the following example:
Arabic .‫ت ال ُمدرِّسةُ من الطّلب ِة أن يسلّموا الواجب في غضون يومين‬

ِ َ‫طلب‬
Back The female-teacher asked the students to submit their
translation assignments within two days.
TT1: without The teacher asked the students to submit their
compensation assignments within two days.
TT2: with The teacher asked her students to submit their
compensation assignments within two days.
In TT2, by means of the use of the possessive adjective ‘her’, the gender
of the teacher is specified, thus resulting in a ‘non-sexist translation’ where
women become visible.
Finally, if the translator fails to avoid any example of sexism used in
the original text, s/he can draw the reader’s attention to those examples of
sexism by opting for features such as a footnote, endnote, or translator’s
comment.
Connecting the dots (6): Transformation and translation
A transformation can be defined as a process where a word-level category

(e.g. noun, adjective, adverb) or a phrasal category (e.g. noun phrase or
adjective phrase) is moved from one position to another (Parker and Riley
1994/2010: 63). Let us begin with ‘yes–no questions’ in English to make
this point clear. To change a sentence of the following kind ‘He will visit
them soon’ to a ‘yes–no question’, a transformation known as ‘inversion’
is required. By means of this inversion, the auxiliary ‘will’ is moved from
the Infl (short for ‘inflection’) position, i.e. after the subject indicated by the
symbol ‘e’ (short for ‘empty’) to a position to the left of the subject, as in:
Will he visit them soon?
Building on this
discussion, how
would you define
‘inversion’?
9 4 Sy n ta x
Do you agree with

In this connection, Almanna (2018: 45) holds that “in all types of questions
Almanna’s observa- (be it a ‘yes–no question’ or ‘wh-question’), there should be a process of
tion? Discuss. saying/asking”, as modelled here:
He Sayer asked process of saying: “Will he visit them soon?” Content
Syntactically speaking, what is called ‘content’ or ‘verbiage’ is labelled CP

By ‘mode of
narration’, we (short for ‘complementizer phrase’). CPs are usually phrases that start with
refer to the type complementizers, labelled (C), such as ‘that’, ‘if’, or ‘whether’.
of speech: ‘direct When the mode of narration is direct, the auxiliary is moved by applying
speech’ or ‘indirect
speech’. the inversion transformation to occupy the C position (see below). However,
when the mode of narration is indirect, as in:
He asked if she would visit them soon.
there will be no inversion, as the C position is occupied by the comple-

mentizer ‘if’, and the auxiliary remains in its Infl position, as shown in the
following tree:
What about other The question that may arise here is: How do we form ‘yes–no questions’ in
languages that English from sentences that contain no auxiliary?
do not have a
developed system
of auxiliaries? How Do insertion
would they form a

‘yes–no question’? To form ‘yes–no questions’ from sentences that contain no auxiliary, what
is traditionally known as ‘Do-support’ needs to be inserted to make ‘inver-
sion’ possible (O’Grady et al. 1997: 210; Almanna 2018: 55). To illustrate,
the following sentence can be considered:
He read the novel last night.
In this sentence, there is no auxiliary, which carries grammatical properties

such as tense and aspect, and the verb ‘to read’, which is in the past tense,
does not itself permit ‘inversion’, but rather requires what is traditionally
known as ‘Do-support’, i.e. ‘do’, ‘does’, ‘did’, depending on the tense and
subject. As the sentence is in the past tense, ‘did’ is inserted before the verb
(Step 1), thus making ‘inversion’ possible (Step 2), as in:
Sy n ta x 9 5
Wh-movement
In English, a ‘wh-question’ is formed by:
(1) moving the ‘wh-phrase’ from its normal position (indicated by

the symbol e that stands for the word ‘empty’) to a position at the
beginning of the sentence;
(2) moving the auxiliary (if any) from the Infl position to the left of the
subject.
To explain, the following example may be considered:
He can play football very well. (deep structure)
What about your

As we can see, in addition to the inversion transformation that moves the language or the
auxiliary ‘can’ in the above example from the Infl position to the left of the languages that you
know? What do
subject, another transformation called ‘wh-movement’ is used that moves you need to form a
the ‘wh-phrases’ ‘football’ and ‘very well’ from their normal positions ‘wh-question’?
(indicated by the symbol e) to a position at the beginning of the sentence.
However, it is worth mentioning that in some languages, such as Arabic,
Farsi, Indonesian, and some other languages, only the ‘wh-movement’
transformation is needed without the inversion transformation, as shown
below in Arabic, Farsi, and Indonesian, respectively:
9 6 Sy n ta x
Due to this difference between languages such as Arabic, Farsi, and

Indonesian that require only the ‘wh-movement’ transformation and
English that requires an ‘inversion’ transformation in addition to the ‘wh-
movement’ transformation, translation students at an early stage of their
studies face problems in translating interrogative sentences from those
languages into English, often resulting in ungrammatical sentences, such
as ‘When she travelled to France?’ in place of ‘When did she travel to
France?’. This should be given adequate consideration by both students
and instructors.
Connecting the dots (7): Translating voices
Voice is a grammatical category of verbs that is related to what thing or

person is acting (active) and what thing or person is being acted upon
(passive). When a verb is used to describe what an entity (thing or person)
In your opinion,
what are the main is doing, it is active. However, when it is used to describe what is done to
reasons for using an entity (thing or person), it is passive (e.g. Swan 1995; Crystal 1997;
the passive voice?
Almanna 2016). According to Swan, not all verbs can be expressed in the
passive voice. For example, ‘die’, ‘go’, ‘arrive’, and ‘have’ are all inher-
Note that in verbs ently active. This is related to whether a verb is transitive or intransitive. To
like ‘to die’, ‘to dis- explain, in the following sentence
appear’, ‘to arrive’,
etc., there is no
flow of energy from The girl ate the apple yesterday. (deep structure)
one participant
to another; that is there is somebody who ate the apple that can be called ‘Eater’, a verb in
why they are called
‘intransitive’. the past tense where the emphasis is placed on the completion of the act of
eating, and something eaten, i.e. the apple. To change this active sentence
to passive in English, we need to (1) move ‘the apple’, which is something
eaten, from its position to a position at the beginning of the sentence;
(2) either delete or move ‘the girl’, that is, the ‘Eater’, to be grouped with
the verb phrase after being preceded by the preposition ‘by’; (3) insert the
verb ‘to be’ before the main verb; and (4) convert the main verb to the past
participle, as shown here:
The apple (1) was (3) eaten (4) by the girl (2) yesterday.
As such, when the sentence begins with the Actor or Doer of the act (‘the
girl’) followed by the verb (‘ate’) and then the object or person that the
action is performed on (‘the apple’), the sentence is in the active voice.
However, when it begins with the object or the person that the action is
performed on (‘the apple’) followed by the verb group (‘was eaten’), then
it is in the passive voice. Two tree diagrams can be represented here to
show the differences:
Sy n ta x 97
Active: The girl ate the apple yesterday.
Passive: The apple was eaten by the girl yesterday.
In translating from language A to language B, meaning is given a front Do you agree with
seat; therefore, translators need to do their best to maintain the meaning; this claim? Discuss.
only later can they think of other issues, such as style. Building on this,
the semantic roles assigned to each noun phrase should be given prime
consideration by translators to produce an accurate translation and create
a similar mental image in the minds of the target language readers (for
more details, see the next chapter). To make this point clear, the following
English sentence in the active voice can be translated into a French sen-
tence in the passive voice to discuss the semantic roles assigned to each
noun phrase.
9 8 Sy n ta x
English The teacher sent many emails to his students yesterday.

French Plusieurs emails ont été envoyés aux étudiants par leur
enseignant hier.
Back Many emails were sent by the teacher to his students
translation yesterday.
Do you agree that Here, we have three noun phrases, namely ‘the teacher’ filling a semantic
‘meaning’ is related role of Actor and a verb-specific semantic role of Sender; ‘many emails’
to ‘deep structures’ filling a semantic role of Theme and a verb-specific role of something
whereas ‘style’ is
related to ‘surface Sent/Received; and ‘his students’ filling a semantic role of Recipient and
structures’? a verb-specific role of Receiver. In the target text, French, those three noun
phrases fill the same semantic roles; therefore, we have the same meaning,
but a different style. In this regard, Hatim and Mason (1997: 225) rightly
comment that most languages have a variety of potential resources for
constructing different types of clauses, such as active clauses, passive
Do you agree with clauses, and agentless clauses, and these “variations in structure of the
Hatim and Mason’s clause are said to relate to different world views and to relay different
(1997) claim? What
about issues such
ideological slants”. Therefore, in the actual act of translating between
as one’s style, lan- languages/cultures, translators are usually influenced, whether consciously
guage preference, or subconsciously, by their own accumulated value system,
and the like?
beliefs, background, assumption, commitment, sense of belonging, and so
on; hence their employment of certain linguistic devices, such as ‘agency’,
‘transitivity’, ‘cohesive device’, ‘over-lexicalization’, ‘style-shifting’,
‘evaluativeness’, and ‘modality’ (e.g. Hatim and Mason 1997; Farghal
2008; Almanna 2013).
At the syntactic level, ‘agency’, in addition to ‘modality’, can be
Narrativity is employed by translators to superimpose a certain directionality/narrativity
defined here as on the text at hand, thus promoting or elaborating a particular narrative/
directionality
superimposed by
story. Agency refers to whether the Agent of the transitivity process
the language user expressed by a particular action is foregrounded in attention either in
on the text/story an active construction (fronted) or a passive construction (delayed and
at hand.
grouped with the verb phrase) or backgrounded in attention, that is, it is
not mentioned. To show how removing the Agent of the action can twist
the message to varying degrees, the following headlines published by BBC

News (23 October 2017; also discussed in Almanna and Al-Shehari 2019)
may be considered:
English Russian radio presenter Felgengauer stabbed in neck.

Arabic .‫إسرائيلي يطعن مذيعة روسية داخل غرفة أخبار محطة إذاعة إيكو موسكوفي‬
Back An Israeli stabs a Russian broadcaster inside the Echo
translation Muscovy Radio station newsroom.
In the English version, the Agent of the process of doing expressed by the
act of stabbing is backgrounded in attention. By so doing, not only is the
focus of attention shifted towards the Affected Participant (also known as
the ‘Patient’), but we no longer have an indication about the Agent of the
Sy n ta x 9 9
process of doing, which affects informativeness and accessibility. By con-

trast, in the Arabic version, the Agent is foregrounded in attention (fronted),
thus laying more emphasis on the Agent/Stabber. In the Arabic version, the
nationality of the Agent is mentioned (for more details on the translation of
this example, see Chapter 7 of this book).

they are false.
(1) An adjective cannot stand alone; it should be followed

by a noun.
(2) In some languages or creoles, a predicate marker is
used between the subject and the predicate.
(3) To form a ‘yes–no question’ from a sentence that
contains a complex verb group, a ‘Do-support’ needs to
be inserted to make ‘inversion’ possible.
(4) In a sentence of the following kind, ‘The man who
taught me last year resigned two days ago’, the subject
is complex, thus resulting in a complex sentence.
(5) When a verb is used to describe what an entity (thing or
person) is doing, then it is in the passive form.
(6) In a sentence of the following kind, ‘Sign here, please’,
there is only a verb phrase.
(7) Syntactic rules refer to the rules that explain how
different combinations give different meanings.
(8) In the following sentence, ‘I used to play football well’,
there is no specifier.
(9) All languages have a grammatical category of ‘tense’,
but not all of them have a grammatical category of
‘aspect’.
(10) When the lexical verb is preceded by an auxiliary, then

we have a complex verb group.
Exercise 2: Draw tree diagrams for the following sentences before trans-
lating them into your own language.
(1) The blind should be given priority.

(2) Some emails have been received by me lately.
(3) Clean your room.
(4) Ask me if you have a question.
(5) The king delivered an important speech yesterday.
1 0 0 Sy n ta x
Exercise 3: The following sentences are ambiguous. Your task is to

(1) identify their different interpretations, (2) draw a tree diagram for each
interpretation to illustrate the difference in meaning, and then (3) trans-
late them into your own language to see whether they are ambiguous
or not.
(1) Visiting friends can be boring.

(2) Flying planes can be dangerous.
(3) The boy hit the girl with the hat.
(4) The mother of the boy and the girl will visit us soon.
(5) I pushed the car in the garage.
(6) I met the young men and women.
(7) I sent a gift to my friend from Oman.
(8) The thief threatened the man with the knife.
(9) The teacher said on Tuesday he would give us a mock exam.
(10) The chicken is ready to eat.
Exercise 4: Change the following sentences into the passive. Then

draw a tree diagram for each version before translating them into your
language.
(1) Our teacher has sold his car recently.

(2) One of my close friends explained an important topic yesterday.
(3) The company has hired many workers recently.
(4) My eldest brother bought an expensive flat last week.
(5) She has sold her car recently.
Exercise 5: Draw tree diagrams for the following sentences outlining the
CP structure. Then, translate them into your own language.
(1) The teacher said that the exam would be easy.

(2) My wife asked me if I was going to visit my mother that night.
(3) The gentleman told us that he was writing a number of important
essays that night.
(4) The students complained that they had not received their
certificates yet.
(5) I wondered if we could spend the whole night in that wonderful
hotel.
(6) My father said: “I want to visit Egypt one day”.
(7) She wanted to know if I was with her at the university.
(8) Her father asked her whether she had done her homework.
(9) The man assured us that it would be cheap.
(10) My mom explained that she had been extremely busy at that
time.
Sy n ta x 1 0 1
Exercise 6: The following text in five languages is taken from the ‘Universal
Declaration of Human Rights’. Comment on (1) translating tense and
aspect, (2) translating gender, and (3) translating voice after translating it
into your language if it is not one of the languages below.
English Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to

be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to
law in a public trial at which he has had all the guaran-
tees necessary for his defence.
Spanish Toda persona acusada de delito tiene derecho a que
se presuma su inocencia mientras no se pruebe su
culpabilidad, conforme a la ley y en juicio público
en el que se le hayan asegurado todas las garantías
necesarias para su defensa.
French Toute personne accusée d’un acte délictueux est
présumée innocente jusqu’à ce que sa culpabilité ait été
légalement établie au cours d’un procès public où toutes
les garanties nécessaires à sa défense lui auront été
assurées.
Russian Каждый человек, для определения его прав и
обязанностей и для установления обоснованности
предъявленного ему уголовного обвинения, имеет
право, на основе полного равенства, на то, чтобы
его дело было рассмотрено гласно и с соблюдением
всех требований справедливости независимым и
беспристрастным судом.
Arabic ‫كلُّ شخص متَّهم بجريمة يُعتبَر بريئًا إلى أن يثبت ارتكابُه لها قانونًا‬
‫في محاكمة علنية تكون قد ُوفِّرت له فيها جمي ُع الضمانات الالزمة‬
.‫للدفاع عن نفسه‬

(1) Go through any translated text from English into your own language
to identify certain examples where certain sentence constituents
were reordered through translation. Then discuss whether such a

reordering affects the quality of translation.
(2) Select any English text that has some ambiguous sentences and
translate it into your language. Then comment on the local strategies
adopted by you to deal with such ambiguous structures.
(3) Influenced by the American linguist Noam Chomsky (1957), Nida
(1964) stresses that the deep structures of language do not change,
but what changes is only the surface structure. Do you agree?
(4) In your opinion, why do some English learners produce sentences,
such as ‘Where you found it?’ in place of ‘Where did you find it?’?
(5) Will reordering sentence constituents always promote or elaborate
a different narrative/story?
1 0 2 Sy n ta x
References
Almanna, A. (2013). Quality in the Translation of Narrative Fictional Texts

from Arabic into English for the Purposes of Publication: Towards
a Systematic Approach to (Self-)Assessing the Translation Process.
Unpublished PhD thesis. Durham: University of Durham.
Almanna, A. (2014). Translation Theories Exemplified from Cicero to
Pierre Bourdieu. Munich: Lincom Europa Academic Publishers.
Almanna, A. (2018). The Nuts and Bolts of Arabic–English Translation:
Almanna, A. (2022). “A Configurational System-based Approach to
Translating Tenses from Arabic to English”, BJTLL: British Journal
of Translation, Linguistics and Literature, Vol. 2, pp. 1–14.
Almanna, A. and Al-Shehari, K. (2019). The Arabic–English Translator as
Photographer. London/New York: Routledge.
Bell, R. T. (1991). Translation and Translating: Theory and Practice.
London/New York: Longman.
Castro, O. (2010). “Non Sexist-Translation and/in Social Change: Gender
Issues in Translation”. In. Boéri, J. and Maier, C. (eds.), Compromiso
social y traducción/Interpretación Translation/Interpreting and Social
Activism (pp. 106–20). Granada: ECOS.
University Press.
Celce-Murcia, M. and Larsen-Freeman, D. (1999). The Grammar Book: An
ESL/EFL Teacher’s Course (2nd edn). Boston, MA: Heinle and Heinle
Publishers Inc.
Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton.
Crystal, D. (1997). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (2nd edn).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Farghal, M. (2008). “Extrinsic Managing: An Epitaph to Translational

Ideological Move”, STJ: Sayyab Translation Journal, Vol. 1, pp. 1–26.
Farghal, M. (2023). “Extrinsic Managing as Translatorial Censorship”. In
Almanna, A. and House, J. (eds.), Translation Politicised and Politics
Translated (pp. 21–45). Oxford: Peter Lang.
Griffiths, P. (2006). An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Hatim, B. and Mason, I. (1997). The Translator as Communicator. London/
Hellinger, M. and Bußmann, H. (eds.) (2001). Gender across
Languages: The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men, Vol. 1.
. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Kearns, K. (2000/2011). Semantics. Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Sy n ta x 1 0 3
Kreidler, C. W. (1998). Introducing English Semantics. London/New York.

Routledge.
Nida, E. (1964). Towards a Science of Translation, with Special Reference
to Principles and Procedures Involved in Bible Translating. Leiden: E.
J. Brill.
O’Grady, W., Dobrovolsky, M., and Katamba, F. (1997). Contemporary
Linguistics. London: Longman.
Parker, F. and Riley, K. (1994/2010). Linguistics for Non-Linguists. Boston,
MA: Pearson.
Scott, J. W. (1986). “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis”,
The American Historical Review, Vol. 91(5), pp. 1053–75.
Swan, M. (1995). Practical English Usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Semantics 6
This chapter is an introduction to semantics and its main areas and

concepts. It discusses such areas and notions as ‘denotation’ versus
‘connotation’, ‘signifier’ versus ‘signified’, ‘reference’ versus ‘sense’, ‘com-
positional meaning’ versus ‘unitary meaning’, ‘lexical relations’, ‘semantic
roles’, ‘semantic principles’, and ‘frame semantics’ in a direct link to
translation.
After studying this chapter, you should be able to (1) identify
semantic roles and verb-specific semantic roles assigned to each
noun phrase; (2) identify ‘supplementary features’ and ‘diagnostic
features’; (3) identify the different relationships that a word has with
other words; (4) differentiate between ‘compositional meaning’ and
‘unitary meaning’; (5) differentiate between ‘connotative meaning’
and ‘denotative meaning’; and (6) differentiate between ‘generalization’
and ‘particularization’.
Semantics is one of the branches of linguistics that refers to the study of

the meaning of linguistic units, such as morphemes, words, expressions,
phrases, and so on. For example, ‘to buy’ and ‘to purchase’ technic-
ally refer to the same thing, but semanticians try to analyse any shade of
meaning that they might have. Unlike pragmatics, semantics concentrates
on “what the words conventionally mean, rather than on what a speaker
might want the words to mean on a particular occasion” (Yule 1985/

1996: 114). In semantics, several notions can be studied, such as ‘signifier’
versus ‘signified’, ‘reference’ versus ‘sense’, ‘denotation’ versus ‘conno-
tation’, ‘semantic principles’, and ‘semantic roles’ (for more details, see
Almanna 2016)
Signifier versus signified
Each sign is made up of two main components, namely ‘signifier’ and

What is conjured ‘signified’. While the signifier is the physical form of the sign that can be
up in your own seen, smelt, tasted, touched, heard, etc., the signified is what is conjured
mind when you hear
the word ‘Muslim’? up in one’s mind while seeing, touching, hearing, or tasting something (cf.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003228028-7
S e ma n t ic s 1 0 5
Bazzi 2009: 16; Farghal and Almanna 2015: 128; Almanna and Al-Shehari
2019: 16). To explain, the word ‘dog’ is a sign composed of two elem-
ents: the three letters D, O, G in the linguistic system, i.e. the signifier, and
what is conjured up in our mind, i.e. the signified. It is worth mentioning
that people are different in terms of their socio-cultural experiences,
accumulated value systems, orientations, personal knowledge, sense of
belonging, and the like; therefore, what is conjured up in the language
user’s mind, i.e. the signified, is determined by what s/he knows about the
signifier.
In the linguistic system (signifier) In the real world (signified)

Dog (English)
Perro/Perra (Spanish)
Chien/Chienne (French)
Cane/Cagna (Italian)
Hund (German)
Anjing (Indonesian)
Kelb (Maltese)
Köpek (Turkish)
‫) كلب‬Arabic(

As shown above, there is a relationship between the signifier and the thing
that it refers to, i.e. the signified. If the relationship between the signifier
and signified is direct and without any semantic load or overtone, then the
meaning understood is denotative. Otherwise, if the relationship is not
direct or with an overtone, then the meaning understood is connotative. By In your own
way of example, let us discuss the denotative and connotative meanings of words, try to
define ‘denotative
‘butterfly’ and ‘stomach’ in a sentence of the following kind: meaning’ and ‘con-
notative meaning’.
At the beginning of an exam, I always have butterflies in my
stomach.
The lexical item ‘butterfly’ without any semantic load refers to a type of
insect with a long thin body and two wings that flies mostly during the
day. The word ‘stomach’ denotatively refers to that part of the body just
below the chest where food is digested. In the sentence above, however,
the meanings of these two words are not related directly to the denota-
tive meaning of each word. Rather, the relationship between the signifier
and signified in each word in such a sentence is not direct. The phrase ‘to
have butterflies in one’s stomach’ has an overtone, i.e. to be nervous or
worried, that cannot be figured out by relying on the denotative meaning
of each word. Rather, these words should be treated as a unit by acti-
vating the idiom principle (see the discussion on the idiom principle in
this chapter).
1 0 6 S e ma n t ic s
Reference versus sense
Reference refers to the relationship between words or expressions (technic-

When hearing
the word ‘car’, is ally known as ‘referring expressions’) within the linguistic system and
the mental image objects (technically known as ‘referents’) in the real world. When you hear
conjured up in your or read, for instance, the word ‘car’, and you are familiar with its meaning
mind ‘static’ or
‘dynamic’? in English, you will have a mental image of it, representing a road vehicle,
typically with a steering wheel, an engine, four wheels, and seats to carry a
small number of people, as in the following diagram:
This theory (known as ‘naming theory’) does not work with abstract
words that do not refer to anything in the real world, such as ‘happiness’,
‘sadness’, ‘beauty’, ‘courage’, ‘cowardice’, and so on. Hearing or reading
these words does not conjure up any mental image in our mind.
With this in mind, to understand the meaning of the word, ‘happiness’,
for instance, we need to identify its relationships with other words such as
‘sadness’, ‘happy’, and ‘sad’. These relationships are studied in semantics
How would you under what is called ‘sense’, which refers to the relationship that a lexical
define ‘sense’ in
semantics? item has with other lexical items within the linguistic system.
In another area of semantics: ‘lexical semantics’, the focus of attention
is shifted towards the study of word meaning and the lexical relations that
a word has with others. In this area, lexical relations, such as ‘synonymy’,
‘antonymy’, ‘hyponymy’, ‘hyperonymy’, ‘polysemy’, ‘homonymy’, and
‘homophony’ are given full consideration. Consider the following examples:
Provide as many
examples as you
can for these sense ● Synonymy: ‘big’, ‘huge’, ‘large’, etc.
relations in your ● Antonymy: ‘big’ and ‘small’; ‘short’ and ‘tall’, etc.
own language. ● Hyponymy (part-whole): ‘hand’ and ‘body’; ‘room’ and ‘house’, etc.
● Hyperonymy (whole-part): ‘body’ and ‘leg’; ‘room’ and ‘window’, etc.
● Co-hyponymy (part-part): ‘hand’ and ‘leg’; ‘window’ and ‘door’, etc.
● Homophony ‘one’ and ‘won’; ‘two’ and ‘too’; ‘ate’ and ‘eight’, etc.
● Polysemy: the word ‘eye’ that has many meanings, such as ‘an eye of
a person’, ‘an eye of needle’, etc.
S e ma n t ic s 1 07
● Homonymy: the word ‘spring’ in this sentence ‘I saw a spring spring What is the rela-
like a spring near the spring in the spring’. tionship between
‘basketball’ and
‘sport’?
Connecting the dots (1): Lexical relations and

translation
Antonymy and modulation

An antonym is a lexical item that means the opposite of another lexical item,
such as ‘hot’ versus ‘cold’, ‘short’ versus ‘tall’, ‘expensive’ versus ‘cheap’,
and ‘male’ versus ‘female’. Antonyms can be all types of words: verbs,
nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and even prepositions. In modern semantics,
antonymy is divided into the following three main types:
(1) ‘Gradable antonyms’ (also known as ‘non-binary antonyms’) refer

Is there any diffe-
to gradable adjectives and adverbs, such as ‘tall’ versus ‘short’, rence between
‘ugly’ versus ‘beautiful’, or ‘fast’ versus ‘slow’. They are gradable ‘My sister is taller
than me’ and ‘I am
because they can be used in a comparative degree (‘taller than’) or
shorter than my
superlative degree (‘the tallest’). Translating, for example, ‘I am sister’? Discuss
shorter than my sister’ into French as ‘Ma soeur est plus grande
que moi’ meaning ‘My sister is taller than me’ results in an ‘optional
modulation’.
(2) ‘Non-gradable antonyms’ (also known as ‘binary antonyms’ or One way of cap-
‘complementary pairs’) refer to non-gradable adjectives, as in ‘alive’ turing the relation
set up by non-
versus ‘dead’, ‘single’ versus ‘married’, ‘right’ versus ‘wrong’. They
gradable antonyms
“are opposite ends of a scale that do not have various intermediate is to use ‘meaning
terms –somebody is either alive or dead; s/he cannot be alive and dead postulates’, i.e.
using such a for-
at the same time” (Almanna 2016: 106). Opting for the negation of the
mula: ‘if somebody
opposite or the other way round in translation results in an ‘optional is dead, then s/he is
modulation’, as in the following examples: not alive’.
English He did not close the door.

German Er ließ die Tür offen.
Back translation He left the door open.

Maltese ħalla l-bieb miftuħ.
Thai khao poet pratu thing wai.
Turkish Kapıyı açık bıraktı.
Back translation S/he left the door open.
Arabic .‫الباب مفتوحًا‬
َ ‫ترك‬
(3) ‘Relational antonyms’ (also known as ‘converses’ or ‘converseness’)

refer to pairs of words that “share the same/some semantic features,
but the focus or direction is reversed”, as in ‘send’ versus ‘receive’,
‘buy’ versus ‘sell’, ‘husband’ versus ‘wife’, or ‘father’ versus ‘son’
(for more examples see Almanna 2016: 106). Translating the English.
verb ‘to receive’ into Maltese as ‘bagħt’ meaning ‘to send’ without
changing the semantic roles assigned to each noun phrase (see the
section on semantic roles in this chapter) results in an ‘optional
modulation’, as shown in this example:
What about trans- English I received an email from my sister yesterday.

lating this sentence Maltese Oħti bagħtitli email ilbieraħ.
into the passive?
Back translation My sister sent me an email yesterday.
Had the translator opted for a translation of the following kind ‘Irċevejt
email mingħand oħti lbieraħ’ meaning ‘I received an email from my sister
yesterday’, s/he would have avoided this optional modulation.
Hypernymy and hyponymy

Hypernym (also known as ‘superordinate’) is a more general word that
embraces a group of more specific words. Hyponym, by contrast, is a word
whose meaning is included in that of a more general word. Thus, the word
‘sport’ is a more general word that embraces a group of more specific
words, such as ‘football’, ‘tennis’, ‘gymnastics’, ‘boxing’, and ‘marathon’,
as shown below:
What is the relation-

ship between ‘foot- The denotative meaning of the lexical item ‘sport’ is wider and less specific
ball’ and ‘tennis’? because it embraces words whose denotative meanings are narrower and
more specific. The relationship between the words ‘sport’ and ‘tennis’, for
example, is called a hypernymy-hyponymy. This hypernymy-hyponymy
relationship is “so widespread in all languages that one can say the entire
fabric of linguistic reference is built up on such relationships” (Dickins
et al. 2002: 55). Due to the differences between the interfacing languages
How would you
and cultures, translators sometimes find themselves in a situation where
define ‘general-
ization’ in your they opt for generalization (translation by a general word; hypernym) or
own words? particularization (translating by a more specific word; hyponym). To make
this point clear, let us have a look at the following examples:
Language pair Hypernym Hyponym

English–German you du/Sie
German–English kochen cook/boil/simmer
French–English promenade walk/ride/sail
Russian–English рука hand/arm
Tok Pisin–English er he/she
Maltese–Arabic ziju ‫ع ّم‬/‫خال‬
Arabic–English ‫جنين‬ embryo/foetus
English–Arabic cousin ‫بنت‬/‫ابن خالة‬/‫ابن ع ّمة‬/‫ابن خال‬/‫ابن ع ّم‬
‫بنت خالة‬/‫بنت ع ّمة‬/‫بنت خال‬/‫ع ّم‬
In the following example quoted from Baker (1992: 28), the Spanish
translator opted for the lexical item ‘giraba’ meaning ‘to revolve’ whose
denotative meaning is wider and less specific when it is compared with
the verb ‘to orbit’ in English. Here, we have an example of generalization,
involving translating by using a more general word.
English A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand

Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He
described how the earth orbits around the sun and
how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast Translating the verb
‘orbit’ into Arabic as
collection of stars called our galaxy. ‫‘ يدور‬revolve’ results
Spanish Un conocido científico (algunos dicen que fue in an example of
generalization.
Bertrand Russell) daba una vez una conferencia sobre
What about your
astronomía. En ella describía cómo la Tierra giraba own language?
alrededor del Sol y cómo éste, a su vez, giraba
alrededor del centro de una vasta colección de estrellas It is worth noting
concida como nuestra galaxia. that ‘daba’ is not
the correct form of
Back A well-known scientist (some say that it was the verb to be used.
translation Bertrand Russell) once gave a lecture on astronomy. Instead, one can
In it he described how the earth revolved around the use ‘impartió’ (more
formal) or ‘dio’.
sun and how the latter in its turn revolved around
Further, the word

the centre of a vast collection of stars known as our ‘concida’ should be
galaxy. spelt ‘conocida’.
Generalization (or particularization if it is done the other way round) can

be obligatory or optional, as shown in the translation of the following two
examples:
Obligatory generalization Comment on trans-

lating the English
English You need to boil the water first. verb ‘to need’
into German as
German Sie müssen das Wasser zuerst kochen. ‘müssen’, i.e. ‘must’.
Here we have an example of obligatory generalization due to the differences

between English and German. The denotative meaning of the verb ‘to boil’
in English is narrower and more specific when it is compared with the verb
‘kochen’ in German. Cast in more technical terms, the word ‘kochen’ is a
hypernym as it embraces a group of words in English, such as ‘to cook’, ‘to
boil’, and ‘to simmer’.
Optional generalization
English Cybercrimes can be classified into three types,
namely:
(1) Cybercrime targeting persons.
(2) Cybercrimes against property.
(3) Cybercrimes against governments.
Arabic ‫ هي‬،‫يمكن تصنيف الجرائم اإللكترونية إلى ثالثة أنواع‬
.‫) الجريمة التي تستهدف األشخاص‬1(
.‫) الجريمة التي تستهدف األموال‬2(
.‫) الجريمة التي تستهدف الحكومات‬3(
Back translation Cybercrimes can be classified into three types,
namely:
(1) Crimes targeting persons.
(2) Crimes against property.
(3) Crimes against governments.
Here, the translator decided to opt for a more general word, i.e. ‘crime’,
when translating the more specific word ‘cybercrime’, thus resulting in
optional generalization. This optional generalization that can be easily
avoided does not affect the overall meaning as it is clear from the context
and co-text that we are talking about cybercrimes.
Synonymy
Synonymous words are two or more words or expressions of the same lan-
‘Mutual entailment’ guage that have the same, or nearly the same, meaning, in some or all
(or ‘entailment’ senses, such as ‘fall’ and ‘autumn’, ‘get’ and ‘obtain’, and ‘small’ and
for short) refers
to the relationship
‘tiny’. Any synonymous words are examples of both ‘mutual entailment’
between two words and ‘co-hyponyms’. However, they are rarely fully identical in all contexts
or sentences where (cf. Palmer 1976: 60; Kreidler 1998: 97; Almanna 2016: 102). On this sub�-
the meaning of
one word entails
ject, Palmer (1976) holds the view that “no two words have exactly the
the meaning of same meaning” for the following five reasons (pp. 60–4; also discussed in
the other, as in Almanna 2016: 102–3):
‘The man was
assassinated’,
which entails ‘The (1) Some synonymous words and expressions belong to different dialects
man is dead’ and of the language, as in ‘sweater’ and ‘jumper’, ‘cookie’ and ‘biscuit’,
‘The man is not
alive’.
‘period’ and ‘full stop’, ‘flat’ and ‘apartment’, ‘trousers’ and ‘pants’,
‘diaper’ and ‘nappy’, and the like.
(2) Some synonymous words and expressions are used in different styles
or registers, as in ‘find out’ and ‘discover’, ‘get’ and ‘obtain’, ‘go up’
and ‘increase’, ‘say sorry’ and ‘apologize’, ‘so’ and ‘therefore’, and
the like.
(3) Some synonymous words and expressions differ in their evaluative
and/or connotative meanings, as in ‘a stupid student’ and ‘less able
student’, ‘fat’ and ‘overweight’, ‘stateman’ and ‘politician’, ‘strong-
minded’ and ‘stubborn’, ‘slim’ and ‘skinny’, and the like.
(4) Some words and expressions are close in meaning or their meanings
In translating the
overlap, as in, for example, the adjective ‘funny’ and its synonyms, such phrase ‘fast food’
as ‘humorous’, ‘comical’, ‘hilarious’, and ‘hysterical’. Their meanings from English into
overlap since we can have a set of synonyms for each lexical item. Arabic, it lends
itself to ‫وجبة سريعة‬
(5) Some synonymous words and expressions are collocational restricted. ‘fast meal’. What
In English, for instance, the adjectives ‘quick’ and ‘fast’ are synonyms, about your own
but native speakers say a ‘quick shower’, not a ‘fast shower’ and ‘fast language?
food’, not ‘quick food’.
To translate accurately, the translator needs to activate the mechanism of

differentiating between the word used in the original text and its synonyms,
on the one hand, and among the words that can be used in the target text
on the other hand. Let us here discuss the word ‘well-known’ used in the
following example before translating it into Arabic: Think of some
examples of
I received an email from one of the well-known universities some synonyms in English
that require extra
days ago. attention from you
when translating
Firstly, we need to differentiate between the word ‘well-known’ and its them into your
language.
synonyms in English. Is there any difference between ‘well-known’ and
synonyms such as ‘famous’, ‘infamous’, and ‘notorious’? According to the
online Cambridge Dictionary, ‘well-known’ and ‘famous’ are interchange-
able, i.e. known and recognized by many people, while ‘infamous’ and
‘notorious’ mean famous for something bad.
Secondly, we need to activate the mechanism of searching for an equiva-
lent expression by raising the following question: How do Arabs describe
a university known and recognized by many people? Two words emerge

here: ‫ مشهور‬and ‫معروف‬.
Thirdly, we need to find out the differences, if any, between these two
words. While ‫ مشهور‬means known by many people, ‫ معروف‬means known
by one person or many. As such, both can be used here, as shown below:
English I received an email from one of the well-known universities

some days ago.
Arabic .‫أيام‬ ً
ٍ ‫المشهورة قبل‬/‫إيميال من إحدى الجامعات المعروفة‬ ‫تسل ّمت‬
Polysemy and homonymy

Polysemy refers to a lexical item that has two or more related meanings.
The noun ‘head’, for example, has multiple related meanings, such as a
‘head of a person’, ‘head of a department’, ‘head of a lettuce’, ‘head of a
nail’, and so on, so it is an example of a polysemous word. Like polysemy,
homonymy also refers to a word with two or more different meanings.
However, in the case of homonymy, the word has multiple unrelated
meanings. The word ‘bank’, for example, has multiple unrelated meanings.
It means:
(1) a financial institution where money is kept safely for its customers;
(2) the ground along the side of a river or canal;
(3) (as a verb) to expect or trust somebody to do something, or for
something to happen.
Translating a homonymous word, such as ‘bank’, from English into a lan-

Do you have a hom-
guage that makes a distinction between the range of meanings of the hom-
onymous word that
can cover all ranges onymous word used in the original text results in particularization, which
of meanings of the involves translating by using a more specific word, as shown here:
word ‘bank’ in your
own language?
English Once she approached the bank, she called her sister.
Arabic (TT1) ْ
.‫ حتى اتّصلت بأختها‬،‫اقتربت من المصرف‬ ‫ما أن‬
Arabic (TT2) ْ
.‫ حتى اتّصلت بأختها‬،‫اقتربت من ضفة النّهر‬ ‫ما أن‬
How would you

To translate accurately, you, as a translator, need to be fully aware of
define the term these related or unrelated meanings of the lexical item used in the original
‘shift in coherence’ text. In translating the polysemous word ‘glava’ meaning ‘head’ from
in your own words?
Croatian to English, an inexperienced translator might opt for ‘head’,
thus resulting in a ‘shift in coherence’ to use Blum-Kulka’s (1986/2004)
term. By way of example, let us discuss this sentence taken from Tudor
(2017: 24):
Croatian Knjiga je podijeljena u sedam glava.

English The book is divided into seven heads.
Here, the translator was not fully aware of the range of meanings of the
polysemous word ‘glava’ in the target language, thus opting for trans-
lating it literally into ‘head’ in place of ‘chapter’. In this regard, Baker
(1992: 253) rightly comments that a “polysemous item in the source text
will rarely have an equivalent item with the same range of meanings in the
target language”.
In the following example, however, the translator (Arberry 1955/1996)
opted for the word ‘confound’ in place of translating the word ‫تلبسون‬
derived from the verb ‫ ألبس‬or ‫ لبس‬meaning to dress somebody or, literally,
cover somebody with clothes:
Arabic ‫يا أهل الكتاب لِ َم تلبسون الحق بالباطل وتكتمون الحق وأنتم تعلمون (آل‬
71)،‫عمران‬
English People of the Book! Why do you confound the truth with
vanity, and conceal the truth and that wittingly? (Arberry
1955/1996)
In this verse, the polysemous word ‫ تلبسون‬is used by Allah while addressing
the people of the Torah and Bible to mean to mix or to mingle the truth
with falseness. Being fully aware of this, the translator produced a coherent
translation.
Connecting the dots (2): Diagnostic components and

translation
Any lexical item in any language has certain components. These Can you identify
components are classified by Nida (1975) in his book: Componential the ‘diagnostic
Analysis of Meaning into two main types: ‘supplementary components’ and components’
shared by words
‘diagnostic components’. like ‘chair’, ‘arm-
chair’, ‘stool’,
(1) ‘Supplementary components’ refer to all those additional features that ‘wheelchair’, and
‘folding chair’?
a lexical item shares with other semantically related words. These
components, as Nida (1975: 112) explains, “may be very important for
an extensive definition of a meaning but which are not diagnostic in
specifying basic differences”.
(2) ‘Diagnostic components’, on the other hand, refer to those components
that “serve to distinguish the meaning of a certain lexeme from
other lexemes in a particular domain or field”. In other words, these
components are responsible for making a distinction among those
words that are semantically related.
By way of illustration, let us analyse the following lexical items: ‘child’,

‘boy’, ‘girl’, ‘man’, and ‘woman’. These lexical items are semantically
related words as they all are in the same semantic domain: ‘human race’.
[HUMAN] as a supplementary feature is shared by all of them; therefore,

this feature cannot be used to distinguish them. We need other features,
such as [MALE] and [ADULT], to distinguish them from one another, as
shown below:
Lexeme HUMAN MALE ADULT

child + +/– –
boy + + –
girl + – –
man + + +
woman + – +
These diagnostic components should be given full consideration by

translators. In this regard, Almanna (2016: 17) holds:
In the actual act of translating any text from language A to language

B, translators are sometimes required to analyse some lexical items
and contrast them with other semantically related lexical items in an
attempt to be fully aware of the distinctive features of the lexical item
at hand. It also helps the translators draw a comparison between the
lexical item used in the original text and the one to be used in the
target text, thus putting a finger on the similarities and differences
between them.
Now, let us translate the following example from Arabic to English to make
this point clear:
Arabic ‫ هل األمر سي ٌء جدًا؟‬:‫الطبيب بصوت قلق‬

َ ‫سألت األ ُم‬
English The mother asked the doctor with a worried voice: “Is it
very bad?”.
The Arabic word ‫ صوت‬has more than one equivalent word in English,
including ‘sound’, ‘voice’, ‘volume’, and ‘vote’. The diagnostic feature that
distinguishes the lexical item opted for by the translator, i.e. ‘voice’, from
the other semantically related words is that [OF HUMAN BEING]. Being
fully aware of the supplementary and diagnostic features of the lexical
items available, the translator translated the word ‫ صوت‬into ‘voice’, thus
How would you resulting in an example of ‘divergence’ or ‘particularization’, as discussed
define ‘divergence’? in the previous section. Suffice it to say that divergence occurs when the
denotative meaning of the lexical item in the original text is wider and less
specific than its equivalent in the target text. Now, let us do it the other way
round. Let us translate the lexical item ‘voice’, in this example extracted
from the novel The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1994: 3)
into Arabic and German:
ST (English) She saw her mother coming into the garden, with a
Translate this text

into your language. doctor. They did not notice the child, who listened
to their conversation.
“It’s very bad, isn’t it?” her mother asked the
doctor with a worried voice.
TT1 (Arabic) ‫ لم يلحظا الطفلة التي‬.‫رأت أمها قادمة من الحديقة مع طبيب‬
.‫استمعت لحديثهما‬
‫ أليس كذلك؟‬،‫ األم ُر سي ٌء جدًا‬:‫سألت األم الطبيب بصوت قلق‬
Back translation She saw her mother coming from the garden with a
doctor. They did not notice the child who listened
to their conversation.
The mother asked the doctor in a worried voice: “It
is very bad, isn’t it?”
TT2 (German) Sie sah ihre Mutter mit dem Arzt aus dem Garten
kommen. Sie bemerkten das Kind, das ihrem
Gespräch lauschte nicht.
Die Mutter fragte den Arzt mit besorgter
Stimme: “Es ist sehr schlimm, oder?”
Back translation She saw her mother with the doctor from the
garden coming. They noticed the child who listened
to their talk not.
The mother asked the doctor with worried
voice: “It is very bad, or?”
In translating from English into Arabic and German, we have an example Is there any diffe-
of ‘convergence’ as the denotative meaning of the lexical item ‘voice’ rence between
used in the original text is narrower and more specific when compared ‘convergence’ and
‘generalization’?
with its equivalents ‫( صوت‬in Arabic) and ‘Stimme’ (in German). In Arabic,
the word ‫ صوت‬refers to ‘voice’, ‘sound’, ‘vote’, and ‘volume’. In German,
however, the word ‘Stimme’ refers to ‘voice’ and ‘vote’ only as there
are other words, such as ‘Laut’ and ‘Lautstärke’, to refer to ‘sound’ and
‘volume’, respectively.
Connecting the dots (3): Semantic roles and

translation
Semantic roles (also known as ‘thematic roles’, ‘theta roles’, and ‘thematic How would you
cases’) are classified in this section into verb-specific semantic roles, i.e. define ‘semantic
roles’ in your
semantic roles that are derived from the verb itself, as shown here: own words?
Verb-specific semantic role verb Note that adding

the suffix ‘–er’ to
Player from to play the verb may refer
Eater from to eat to something else,
as in ‘liver’ from
Buyer from to buy the verb ‘to live’. In
such a case, you

Sayer from to say can use ‘inhabitant’
Traveller from to travel as a verb-specific
semantic role.
Now, let us identify the verb-specific semantic roles assigned to each noun
phrase in the following example:
The teacher gave one of his students a gift two days ago.
In this sentence, there are three noun phrases, namely ‘the teacher’, ‘one
of his students’, and ‘a gift’, that fill different verb-specific semantic roles,
as follows:
● the teacher fills a verb-specific semantic role of Giver.

● one of his students fills a verb-specific semantic role of Receiver.
● a gift fills a verb-specific semantic role of some-
thing Given.
● two days ago is an adverb of time answering the question
‘when’.
It is worth mentioning that what was given was first with the teacher
and then with the student, as shown in this picture quoted from Almanna
(2018: 11):
We can also notice that what was given was not affected, but it was
What about if the
student had opened moved from the ‘Source’ (the teacher) to the ‘Goal’ (the student).
the gift and used it Now, let us compare these four sentences expressing the same idea to
later? Would it have
answer the following questions:
been affected?
Discuss.
(a) Who was the sender?
(b) Who was the receiver?
(c) What was sent?
I sent an email to my supervisor two days ago.

I sent my supervisor an email two days ago.
My supervisor received an email from me two days ago.

An email was sent by me to my supervisor two days ago.
The sender in all these sentences is the speaker indicated by the pronoun
‘I’ or ‘me’, the receiver is ‘the supervisor’, and the thing that was sent
or received is ‘an email’. This means that these sentences have the same
semantic load although they have different syntactic structures.
Do you agree with
When translating between languages, the first thing that the translator
this claim? Discuss. should think of is to reflect the message intended by the author in the target
text, then s/he comes to think of other issues, such as the style (Almanna
2016: 128). Changing the semantic role assigned to the noun phrase by
accident or on purpose will create slightly or completely different mental
images and messages. By way of example, let us translate the following
sentence into several languages to see if the translators managed to deal
with the verb-specific semantic roles assigned to each noun phrase used in
this simple sentence or not:
The man was killed by the police yesterday morning.
Arabic .‫قتلت ال ّشرطةُ الرّج َل أمس صباحًا‬

Translate this sen-
Back translation The police killed the man yesterday morning. tence into your own
German Die Polizei tötete den Mann gestern morgen. language without
changing the
Back translation The police killed the man yesterday morning. semantic roles.
French La police a tué l’homme hier matin.
Back translation The police killed the man yesterday morning.
Maltese Ir-raġel inqatel mill-pulizija lbieraħ filgħodu.
Back translation The man was killed by the police yesterday
morning.
In the original sentence, there are two noun phrases, namely ‘the man’ and
‘the police’. These two noun phrases fill two different semantic roles and Note that ‘yes-
verb-specific semantic roles. While the first noun phrase ‘the man’ fills the terday morning’ is
semantic role of an ‘Affected Participant’ and a verb-specific semantic role an adverb of time
answering the
of ‘somebody Killed’, the second noun phrase ‘the police’ fills a semantic question ‘when’,
role of an ‘Agent’ and a verb-specific semantic role of ‘Killer’. Having thus having no
taken into consideration language preferences and the differences between semantic role.
the interfacing languages, the translators opted for different styles, but
with the same meaning. It is the same meaning because we have the same
semantic roles assigned to each noun phrase, as shown below:
Killer Process Somebody killed Circumstance

The police killed the man yesterday morning
‫الشرطة‬ ‫قتلت‬ ‫الرّجل‬ ‫أمس صباحًا‬
Die Polizei tötete den Mann Gestern morgen
La police tué l’homme hier matin
Il-pulizija qatlu Ir-raġel lbieraħ filgħodu
Unlike simple and compound sentences, complex sentences can be analysed

at different levels, as shown in the following example:
He said that he would sell his flat and travel to London to live there.
In the above sentence, two main verb-specific semantic roles can be

identified, ‘Sayer’ and ‘something Said’, as shown below:
He (Sayer) said (verbal process) something Said (content)
Inside ‘something Said’ (also known as ‘that-clause’ and ‘complementizer

clause’), there are three clauses, namely:
Is there any diffe-

● he [Seller-to be] would sell his flat [something Sold].
rence between ● (he [Traveller-to be] would) travel to London.
‘Seller’ and ● (he) [Inhabitant-to be] to live there.
‘Seller-to be’ as
verb-specific
semantic roles? It is worth noting here that as it is not asserted that (1) he sold his
flat, (2) he travelled to London, and (3) he lived there, the scope of inten-
tion is greater than the extent of causation (for more details and examples
of these two terms, see Chapter 12 of this book). This should be reflected
when translating between languages, as shown in the translations below:
Arabic .‫قال إنه سيبيع شقته ويسافر إلى لندن ليعيش هناك‬
Back translation He said that he would sell his flat and travel to
London to live there.
German Er sagte dass er seine Wohnung verkaufen und
nach London reisen würde, um dort zu leben.
Translate this com- Back translation He said that he would sell his flat and travel to
plex sentence into London in order to live there.
your own language.
French Il a dit qu’il vendrait son appartement et se
rendrait à Londres pour y vivre.
Back translation He said that he would sell his flat and travel to
Thai เขาว่่าจะขายแฟลตแล้้วเดิินทางไปอยู่่�ที่่�ลอนดอน
khao wa cha khay flaet laew doenthang pai yu thi
London.
Back translation He said [that he] would sell the flat and travel to
stay in London.
Turkish Dairesini satacağını ve orada yaşamak için
Londra’ya gideceğini söyledi.
Back translation S/he said that he would sell his flat and go to
Persian ‫او گفت که آپارتمانش را می‌فروشد و به لندن سفر می‌کند تا‬
.‫آن‌جا زندگی کند‬

Back translation He said he would sell his flat and travel to
Apart from the differences between the interfacing languages in terms

of word order requirements (from English to German) and dealing with
tenses/aspects (from English to Arabic), the semantic roles filled by each
noun phrase along with the scope of intention and extent of causation were
accurately reflected by the translators, thus maintaining the same mental
images in the minds of the target language readers.
To see how changing the semantic roles assigned to any noun phrase
may twist the message to varying degrees, let us have a look at two BBC
News items (28 November 2019) on the same topic (one in English and
one in Arabic):
English The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has

helped repatriate 128 rebels from Saudi Arabia to Yemen.
Arabic ‫ من المتمردين الذين‬128 ‫أعلنت اللجنة الدولية للصليب األحمر عودة‬
.‫كانوا محتجزين في السعودية إلى اليمن‬
Back The International Committee of the Red Cross announced
translation the return of 128 rebels who had been held captive in
Saudi Arabia to Yemen.
Here, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) fills different
verb-specific thematic roles. In English, it fills a verb-specific semantic
role of ‘Helper’ that indicates its involvement as an active participant in
the process. However, in Arabic, there is no reference to such participation
as it fills a verb-specific semantic role of ‘Announcer’ in a verbal process.
Connecting the dots (4): Semantic principles and

translation
In semantics, meaning can be classified into two main types, namely ‘com-
Identify the ‘com-
positional meaning’ and ‘unitary meaning’. Compositional meaning can be positional meaning’
figured out by following an ‘open choice principle’, i.e. by relying on the and ‘unitary
denotative meaning of each smaller unit (e.g. morpheme or word) used to meaning’ in the
following sentence:
form a larger unit (phrase, clause, or sentence), of course, in addition to the ‘Thanks for inviting
way that they are put together to form these phrases, clauses, and so on. me, but ballet
Unitary meaning, on the other hand, cannot be determined by relying on isn’t really my cup
of tea’.
the denotative meaning of each morpheme or word. Rather, the larger unit
should be treated as one unit by following an ‘idiom principle’. As such, in
semantics, there are two main principles that can be followed by language
users (be they writers or speakers) to produce and understand utterances
(Sinclair 1991, 1998): ‘open choice principle’ and ‘idiom principle’.
Translators follow both principles depending on the text at hand. By way
of illustration, let us translate the following short passage adapted from
Almanna (2016: 140) into several languages:
It seems that his brother is a big cheese in one of the major companies
in the country. Have you met him?
Apart from ‘a big cheese’, the translator, in addition to the way in which
they are put together to form larger units, can rely on the denotative and con-
textual meanings of each word. The noun phrase ‘a big cheese’, however, is
an idiomatic expression that should be treated as one unit to be understood
and then translated. It refers to an important or powerful person in a group
or organization. Having understood its overall meaning, now, how would
you translate it? In translating idiomatic expressions, translators try to do
their best to translate accurately and idiomatically, but this is not an easy
task due to the differences between the interfacing languages and cultures.
There are certain local strategies that can be resorted to by translators, at
the forefront of which is an ‘optimal equivalent’ where the same image,

function, and form are used in both languages/cultures, as in the translation
of ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ into Arabic, German, and French,
as shown below:
How would you

translate ‘Birds
of a feather flock
together’ into your
own language?
Find more examples

of ‘optimal
equivalents’.
Failing to reach an optimal translation, the translator can opt for an ‘idea-
tional translation’ (focusing on the idea), ‘functional translation’ (focusing
on the function of the idiomatic expression), ‘idiomatic translation’ (with
another image), ‘literal translation’, ‘translation by paraphrase’, ‘transla-
tion by omission’, or ‘translation by compensation’, as summarized here:
To explain, let us translate the fore-mentioned example to identify the strat-

egies adopted by the translators when they are dealing with the idiomatic
expression used in this sentence:
It seems that his brother is a big cheese in one of the major companies
in the country. Have you met him?
Arabic ‫ هل ألتقيته؟‬.‫يبدو أن أخاه رج ٌل مه ٌم في إحدى ال ّشركات الكبيرة في البالد‬

Back It seems that his brother is an important man in one of How would you
translate this sen-
translation the big companies in the country. Have you met him? tence into your own
Persian ‫به نظر می‌رسد که برادرش آدم مهمی در یکی از شرکت‌های بزرگ‬ language? Which
strategy would
‫ آیا او را مالقات کرده‌ای؟‬.‫کشور باشد‬ you adopt?
Back It seems that his brother is an important person in one of
translation the big companies in the country. Have you met him?
German Sein Bruder scheint ein hohes Tier in einer der
bedeutendsten Firmen im Land zu sein. Hast Du ihn
getroffen?
Back His bother seems a high animal in one of the most
translation important firms in the country. Have you met him?
In Arabic and Persian, as one may notice, the translators opted for an idea-
tional translation where the idea is given a priority. In German, however, to
describe a person in an important position in a company, one may use ‘ein
hohes Tier’, literally meaning ‘a high animal’, thus resulting in a functional
translation.
Connecting the dots (5): Frame semantics and

translation
Frame semantics is a theory proposed and developed by Charles J. Fillmore Do you agree with
(1977, 1982). According to this theory, the meaning of any lexical item this claim? Discuss
is not static, but rather differs from one person to another. To understand with illustrative
examples.
the meaning of a lexical item, the denotative meaning of this lexical item
needs to be linked by virtue of a frame to the socio-cultural experiences
and encyclopaedic knowledge of a particular language user. So, what then
is a ‘frame’?
A frame is defined by Almanna (2016: 24) as “a conceptual structure
that provides background of beliefs, assumptions, practices against which
the meaning of a lexical item can be captured”. So, hearing or reading the
words ‘to die’ and ‘to kill’, for example, invokes in our minds different
frames. The verb ‘to die’ is profiled in a frame where it contrasts with the
verb ‘to kill’. The verb ‘to die’ invokes in our minds an accident-frame
which has nothing to do with issues such as the intention to cause death to
somebody. The verb ‘to kill’, on the other hand, evokes a killing-frame that
has something to do with issues such as the intention to cause somebody to
die – the flow of energy from the Actor to the Patient (for more details on
these two verbs, see Chapter 12 of this book).
Now, let us discuss this example taken from an English documentary

film titled The Fall: Final Days of the Caliphate subtitled by CNN Arabic
as ‫ آخر أيام خالفة داعش المزعومة‬:‫السّقوط‬:
ST As they wait to be trucked to a camp for the displaced

north of here, there is no bombing [PAUSE] there IS
hunger, thirst, and misery.
TT ‫مع انتظار وضعهم على شاحنات تنقلهم إلى مخيّم للمشردين إلى شمال‬
.‫ لكن هناك جوع وعطش ومعاناة‬،‫ فإنه ال يوجد قصف‬،‫المنطقة‬
Back As they wait to be trucked to be taken to a camp for the
translation homeless north of here, there is no bombing, but there is
hunger, thirst, and misery.
In this example, the whole scene is characterized by having a force dynamic

value of forcing those people who are waiting to be trucked and taken to a
camp (see the discussion on force dynamics in Chapter 12 of this book for
more details). The Agent, backgrounded here but predictable as it is in our
scope of attention, is characterized by being-able-to-do (authority) while
the Affected Participant is characterized by being-able-not-do, but to obey
(submission). This force dynamic pattern was reflected by the subtitler, but
s/he opted for the word ‫ المشردين‬that invokes in our minds a homelessness-
frame that has almost nothing to do with wars or dangerous things, whereas
in the original text the term ‘displaced’ is used that invokes in our minds a
war-frame in addition to unwillingly leaving one’s house for another place,
but within the same country. Had the subtitler taken into account these
diagnostic and supplementary components of the lexical item, s/he would
have opted for ‫النازحين‬, i.e. ‘displaced’.
Approached from another perspective, the speaker while describing the
scene decides to pause for a while before countering the previous propos-
ition without using any indicator of counter-expectancy, but he relies on
ideational content that can inform the reader that the proposition ‘there is
hunger, thirst, and misery’ is in a countering relationship with the propos-
Examples of ition ‘there is no bombing’. This let-me-remind-you-frame that is usually
indicators of associated with the use of ‘but’ counters the moment of happiness invoked
counter-expectancy
in English include
in the mind of the reader/listener by virtue of the existing process expressed
‘but’, ‘although’, etc. by ‘there is no bombing’. For the sake of readability, acceptability, authen-
ticity, and well-formedness that feed into naturalness, the subtitler decided
to opt for ‫‘ لكن‬but’ to indicate that these two propositions are in a countering
relationship. By doing so, s/he did not change the speaker’s attitude (for
more details on translating attitudes, see Chapter 9 of this book).

they are false.
(1) In ‘My young daughter ate a lot of rice’, the noun

phrase ‘my young daughter’ fills a verb-specific
semantic role of Eater and ‘a lot of rice’ fills a verb-
specific semantic role of ‘something Eaten’.
(2) While the noun phrase ‘His father’ in ‘His father
bought a new flat’ fills a verb-specific semantic role of
‘Buyer’, ‘a new flat’ fills a verb-specific semantic role of
‘Direct Object’.
(3) The words ‘one’ and ‘win’ are homophones.
(4) The words ‘seen’ and ‘scene’ are homonymous words.
(5) The words ‘nose’ and ‘eye’ are examples of
co-hyponymy.
(6) There is a relationship between the signifier and signi-
fied, and if the relationship between them is direct and
without any semantic load, then the meaning under-
stood is connotative.
(7) When the denotative meaning of a word used in the
original text is wider and less specific than its coun-
terpart in the target text, then we have an example of
‘generalization’.
(8) When the same image, function, and form are used in
both languages when translating, we have an example
of ‘ideational translation’.
(9) To understand the meaning of this idiomatic expression
‘To let the cat out of the bag’, it should be treated as
one unit.
(10) Each sign is made up of two main components, namely
‘signifier’ and ‘signified’. While the signifier is what is
conjured up in one’s mind, the signified is the physical
form of the sign.
Exercise 2: Read the following sentences carefully in order to label their

semantic roles filled by the noun phrases in each clause. Then translate
them into your own language without changing the semantic roles.
(1) I went to London.

(2) She sent me an email yesterday.
(3) The harvest has been destroyed by the flood completely.
(4) I spent many hours designing a cover for your book.
(5) My boss wrote a recommendation letter for me.
(6) My brother borrowed some money from his friend.
Exercise 3: What is the relationship between the following pairs?
(1) child – kid _______________

(2) cheap – expensive _______________
(3) whole – hole _______________
(4) mouth – face _______________
(5) mouth – body _______________
(6) mouth – teeth _______________
Exercise 4: Re-write the following sentences without changing the

semantic roles assigned to each noun phrase. Then translate both
versions into your own language.
(1) I bought a new car three days ago.
_____________________________________________
(2) One of my friends received an important letter from a well-known

university.
_____________________________________________
(3) My young daughter ate a lot of rice in the morning.
_____________________________________________
Exercise 5: Change the following sentences into the passive without

changing the semantic roles assigned to each noun phrase. Then trans-
late both versions into your language.
(1) One night, three thieves stole a lot of money from a rich man’s
house.
(2) They put the money in a bag and went to the forest.
(3) The thief ate his food at a hotel. Then he bought food for his two
mates in the forest.
(4) He mixed a strong poison with the food.
(5) The king delivered an important speech this morning.
(6) She could not ask me any questions yesterday.
(7) The enemy launched an attack on our troops some days ago.
(8) Don’t worry, our friend has paid the bill.
(9) She invited all her friends to her birthday party, but no one attended.
(10) She answered all the questions accurately yesterday.
Exercise 6: Decide whether the two lexical items in each of the following
pairs are homophones or not:
(1) son – sun __________

(2) court – caught __________
(3) ate – eight __________
(4) by – bye __________
(5) tail – tale __________
(6) no – know __________
(7) new – knew__________

(8) sea – see __________
(9) meet – meat __________
(10) great – greet __________
Exercise 7: Among the following pairs of antonyms, which are ‘gradable’

and which are ‘non-gradable’?
(1) big – small __________

(2) smart – stupid __________
(3) open – close __________
(4) polite – impolite __________
(5) strong – weak __________
(6) sad – happy __________
(7) alive – dead __________
(8) legal – illegal __________
(9) correct – wrong __________
(10) wide – narrow __________
Exercise 8: Select any political text from BBC News and:
(a) translate it into your own language;

(b) identify any examples of ‘generalization’ or ‘particularization’;
(c) comment on your own translation by referring to such notions as
‘semantic roles’, ‘semantic principles’, and the ‘frames’ conjured up
in your own mind.

to identify examples of ‘generalization’ or ‘particularization’.
(2) Select any English text that has some idiomatic expressions
and translate it into your language. Then comment on your own
translation by referring to the main principles of semantics.
(3) The process of doing expressed by the verb ‘to kill’ was translated
into a process of happening expressed by the verb ‘to die’, thus
hiding the Agent. Comment on such a translation.
ST (English) The man was killed by the police yesterday.

TT (Maltese) Ir-raġel miet ilbieraħ.
Back translation The man died yesterday.
(4) Is there any difference between Malone’s (1988) ‘divergence’ and

‘particularization’ used by Vinay and Darbelnet (1958/1995) and
later Dickins and his colleagues (2002)?
(5) How would you define ‘semantic roles’?
(6) Can you rely on the denotative meaning of each word by activating
the ‘open choice principle’ to figure out the overall meaning of the
following sentence? ‘We are a luxury restaurant and if people have

a bad experience, we have to carry the can.’
(7) Do you have a homonymous word that can cover all ranges of
meanings of the word ‘pupil’ in your own language?
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Kreidler, C. W. (1998). Introducing English Semantics. London/
Nida, E. A. (1975). Componential Analysis of Meaning. The Hague: Mouton.
Palmer, F. R. (1976). Semantics: A New Outline. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Sinclair, J. (1991). Corpus, Concordance and Collocation. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Sinclair, J. (1998). “The Lexical Item”. In Weigand, E. (ed.), Contrastive

Lexical Semantics (pp. 1–24). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John
Benjamins.
Tudor, A. (2017). Machine Translations of Polysemous Croatian
Words in Various Text Genres. Unpublished MA thesis. Rijeka,
Croatia: University of Rijeka.
Vinay, J. P. and Darbelnet, J. (1958/1995). Stylistique comparée du
français et de l’anglais. Méthode de traduction. Paris: Didier.
Trans. and ed. J. C. Sager and M. J. Hamel, Comparative Stylistics
of French and English: A Methodology for Translation. Amsterdam/
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
University Press.
Discourse analysis 7
This chapter introduces a branch of linguistics which is one of the most

relevant fields for students and researchers of translation: usage-based
linguistics. It covers two main related areas, namely ‘discourse analysis’
and ‘pragmatics’. In this chapter, ‘discourse analysis’ is discussed. You
are first given a definition along with its relation to pragmatics. Then
you learn about the main approaches to discourse analysis, namely
(1) ‘social approaches’, such as ‘conversation analysis’ and ‘critical dis-
course analysis’; (2) ‘linguistic approaches’, such as ‘systemic functional
linguistics’, ‘sociolinguistics’, and ‘cognitive discourse analysis’; and
(3) other approaches, such as ‘multi-modal texts’, ‘multi-voiced texts’, and
‘intercultural communication’.
After you have studied this chapter, you should be able to understand
what discourse analysis is as well as its main approaches. In this chapter,
special attention is paid to two main approaches, namely ‘conversation
analysis’ and ‘critical discourse analysis’, which are discussed in a direct
relation to translation.
Usage-based linguistics is a branch of linguistics that covers two main

related areas, namely ‘discourse analysis’ and ‘pragmatics’. Discourse
analysis and pragmatics “have much more in common: they both study
context, text and function” (Cutting 2002: 2). Firstly, they do not rely on
semantic principles, such as the ‘open choice principle’ and ‘idiom prin-
What are ciple’ to arrive at the intended meaning, but rather they rely on context.
the semantic Secondly, they study whether the text (be it spoken or written) at hand is
principles? Explain
them with illustra- meaningful and unified for the language user or not, i.e. whether the text
tive examples. is cohesive and coherent (‘discourse analysis’) or relevant (‘pragmatics’).
Thirdly, they focus on the purpose of communication, i.e. what purpose or
goal is the language user trying to achieve? To make all these points clear,
let us discuss this exchange between son and father:
Son: I went to the supermarket and lost the money.

Father. You lost the money, that’s great.
Why is ‘that’s great’ Here, the finite clause ‘that’s great’ in such a situation cannot be interpreted
a finite clause? out of its context by relying, for instance, on the denotative meaning of
DOI: 10.4324/9781003228028-8
D i s c o u r s e a n a lys i s 1 2 9
each word used by the speaker because it is used sarcastically. Therefore,

the purpose of communication and the context in which it is used should be
given full consideration. One of the interlocutors (father) decided to com-
municate with his son indirectly, thus flouting Grice’s cooperative principle
and its supportive maxims, in particular the maxim of relevance (be rele-
vant) and part of the maxim of manner (i.e. avoid ambiguity). Despite this,
“the process of communication continues uninterrupted, thanks to human
rationality and reasoning, which is based on the cooperative principle
between producer and receiver in communication” (Farghal and Almanna
2015: 112). Had the father said, for instance, ‘That’s terrible’, ‘Oh my God’
or just ‘What?’, he would have been relevant and avoided ambiguity, thus
observing the maxim of relevance and maxim of manner (for more details
on Grice’s cooperative principle, see the next chapter).
Discourse analysis
The word ‘discourse’ comes from the Latin word ‘discursus’ meaning
What is the diffe-
‘conversation’ or ‘speech’. Discourse, in its narrow sense, is seen by
rence between
Crystal as a “continuous stretch of (specially spoken) language larger ‘cohesion’ and
than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argu- ‘coherence’?
ment, joke, or narrative” (1992: 25). Discourse, in its broader sense, can
be defined as a “social practice” (Fairclough and Wodak 1997: 258), thus Can you think of
comprising discourses of social institutions such as science, education, some devices that
politics, business, and religion. Discourse analysis, however, is the branch can be used by
language users to
of linguistics “which deals with the various devices used by speakers and knit their sentences
writers when they knit single sentences together into a coherent and cohe- together into a
sive whole” (Aitchison 1999/2003: 60). It can be defined as “the practice coherent and cohe-
sive whole?
of exploring what kinds of speaking, writing and images are treated as
‘normal’ (and ‘abnormal’) in real situations, and proportions, combinations
and purposes of discourse that are conventionally acceptable (or not) in
these situations” (Hall et al. 2011: 76). Discourse analysis covers a wide
range of different areas, such as ‘cohesion’, ‘coherence’, ‘pragmatics’,
‘functional linguistics’, ‘register’, ‘speech events’, and ‘schema’. It
examines:
(1) issues related to the textual relations appearing on the surface of the What is the diffe-
text (i.e. cohesion); rence between ‘text’
(2) the relation between text and its context (i.e. coherence); and ‘discourse’?
(3) speech acts, cooperative principle, implicature, etc. (pragmatics);
(4) agency, modality, etc. (functional linguistics);
(5) the relation between linguistic features and features of a situation, such
as field of discourse, tenor of discourse, and mode of discourse (i.e.
register);
(6) the relation between the text producer and the text receiver and their
roles (i.e. speech event/social factors and dimensions);
(7) the relation between text interpretation and text participants’
background knowledge (i.e. schema).
1 3 0 D i s c o u r s e a n a lys i s
Approaches to discourse analysis can be classified into three main types:
(1) Social approaches that include ‘conversation analysis’, ‘discursive

psychology’, and ‘critical discourse analysis’.
(2) Linguistic approaches that include, ‘speech act theory’, ‘systemic
functional linguistics’, ‘ethnography of communication’, ‘interactional
sociolinguistics’, ‘contrastive rhetoric’, and ‘cognitive discourse
analysis’.
(3) Other approaches that include ‘multi-modal texts’, ‘multi-voiced
texts’, and ‘intercultural communication’.
In this chapter, only ‘conversation analysis’ and ‘critical discourse ana-

lysis’ are discussed. Others, such as ‘cohesion’, ‘pragmatics’, ‘appraisal’,
‘register’, and ‘cognitive discourse analysis’ are discussed in different
chapters of this book.
Connecting the dots (1): Conversation analysis and

translation
What is meant
Conversation analysis was developed out of a sociological approach to lan-
by ‘ethno- guage and communication called ‘ethnomethodology’ in 1978 by Harold
methodology’? Garfinkel (for more details, see Hall et al. 2011: 87). As an approach to
Try to learn more
about it.
discourse analysis, conversation analysis focuses on “the organizational
structure of spoken interaction” (Ibid.), thus studying such topics as:
(1) the speakers’ decision when to speak, when not to speak, and how to
speak (rules of turn-taking);
(2) the speakers’ utterances and their degree of relatedness (adjacency
pairs);
(3) the description of the structures used by the speakers in a particular
conversation (preference organization or preference structure);
(4) the description of the structures used by the speakers and how they
are related to social roles, status, politeness, intimacy, formality, etc.;
(5) conversational openings, pre-closings, and closings;
(6) discourse markers, fillers, feedback, repair, and response tokens (e.g.
‘mmm’, ‘yeah’, etc.).
Turn-taking is a mechanism by which speakers organize their own conver-

How would you
sation where they try not to speak at the same time, but to speak one at a
translate words
time in alternating turns (Drew and Heritage 1992: xxxiv). To take or give like ‘well’, ‘you’ve
a turn to others, speakers use certain linguistic techniques, such as ‘well’, lost me’, etc. used
by speakers to
‘you’ve lost me’, ‘what do you think?’, and ‘right?’) and non-linguistic
take a turn in a
techniques, such as facial expressions and postures. conversation?
Adjacency pairs used in a conversation (such as in the form of a
greeting, question, offer, or suggestion) are exchanges consisting of two
turns produced by two different speakers in a conversation. By opting for
these adjacency pairs, speakers can organize their conversation in a way
that would help them speak one at a time in alternating turns. Typical
examples of adjacency pairs as mentioned by Thornbury and Slade (2006)
include:
● greeting/greeting;
● question/answer; Think of examples
of these adja-
● complaint/denial; cency pairs in your
● offer/accept; language.
● request/grant;
● compliment/rejection;
● challenge/rejection;
● instruct/receipt.
In this regard, Cutting (2002/2008: 28–9) states that “the utterance of

How would you
one speaker makes a certain response of the next speaker very likely”. define ‘preference
Utterances are then ordered into two parts: first part and second part structure’?
and “categorized as a question-answer, offer-accept, blame-deny, and
so on, with each first part creating an expectation of a particular second
part”. This is called a ‘preference structure’, i.e. “each first part has a
preferred and a dispreferred response” (Ibid.). Consider the following
example:
A: Did you call her last night? (A question that needs an answer) Can ‘Could you
B: No, I didn’t. (An answer that does not require any further sign here, please?’
comment, but A can comment) be considered

a question that
A: Why? (A question that needs an answer) requires an
B: I couldn’t. (An answer that does not require any further comment, answer?
but A can comment)
A: Is she still in London? (A question that requires an answer).
Translate this con-
B: Yes, she’ll travel next week. (This adjacency pair in the form of versation into your
a question with a preferred response of an answer functions as a own language
pre-suggestion). functionally.
A: Why don’t you go to her and say sorry? She’s a nice girl. (A
suggestion that needs either an acceptance or rejection)
B: You really think so? (An indirect acceptance)
The adjacency pair in the form of a question ‘Is she still in London?’
How would you
define ‘expansion’ with a preferred response of an answer ‘Yes, she’ll travel next week’ is
in the sense that inserted in the conversation to “prepare the ground for a further sequence”
Schegloff (2007) (Cutting 2002/2008: 29). A ‘sequence’ is defined by Schegloff (2007: 3) as
uses the term?
a “course of action implemented through talk”. In the above example, one
of the speakers opts for asking a question and the other speaker decides to
cooperate by resorting to what is called a preferred response of an answer.
Such a sequence is called a ‘pre-expansion’, or more accurately a ‘pre-
suggestion’ as it prepares the ground for an adjacency pair in the form of
a suggestion-acceptance/rejection. Schegloff (2007) mentions three types
of expansion, namely (1) ‘pre-expansion’, (2) ‘insert-expansion’, and
(3) ‘post-expansion’, as in the following example:
Pre-expansion Insert-expansion Post-expansion

A: Do you know there A: Would you like a
A: Do you have is a football match piece of cake?
classes today? between Oman and B: No thanks, I’m ok
B: No, I don’t. Kuwait tonight?
How can A: I made it myself.
B: Yes, my close friend
I help you? told me. B: Oh, really, then
A: Could you I must taste it.
A: Would you like to go
please invigilate with me?
my exam? B: What time does
B: With pleasure. it start?
A: I don’t know A: 7:30 p.m.
what to say.
B: That’s great.
B: It’s nothing.
As far as translation is concerned, turn-taking along with the adjacency

Do you agree with
this claim? Discuss. pairs used is usually maintained when translating a conversation from lan-
guage A to language B. However, translators and interpreters may face a
problem while rendering a conversation that contains several discourse
markers. In any language, there are many markers or “language signals

that can be used by speakers or writers like traffic signs to ‘signpost’, or
guide listeners or readers through a text” (Almanna 2018: 297). These dis�-
course markers can be ‘formal’, used in both spoken and written texts, such
Is there any diffi- as ‘actually’, ‘in fact’, ‘to elaborate’, ‘in other words’, and ‘to explain’,
culty in translating
these discourse or ‘informal’, used in spoken texts, such as ‘well’, ‘you know’, ‘a kind
markers into your of’, ‘a sort of’, ‘but anyway’, and ‘oh’. In her book Discourse Markers
own language? in Native and Non-Native English Discourse, Müller (2005) talks of the
Reflect on this.
main reasons behind using discourse markers. They can be summarized
as follows:
● to initiate discourse (‘ok’, ‘now’, etc.);

● to close discourse (‘ok’, ‘right’, etc.);
● to hold the floor (‘um’, ‘eh’, ‘anyhow’, ‘anyway’, etc.);
● to take the floor (‘hold on are you saying …?’, ‘okay so, you mean
Think of other
that …’, ‘by the way’, ‘but’, ‘well’, ‘true’, ‘well’, ‘to be honest with reasons behind the
you’, etc.); use of these dis-
● to shift the focus of attention to another topic (‘okay’, ‘well’, ‘now’, course markers?
etc.);
● to be used as fillers (‘you know’, etc.);
● to be used as backchannels (‘oh, really?’, ‘were they?’, etc.); Try to translate
these discourse
● to be used as delaying tactics (‘well’, ‘you know’, etc.); markers from
● to be used to avoid pausing (‘let me check’, ‘where’s it?’, ‘one second’, English into your
etc.); own language. Is
there any difficulty?
● to repair discourse (‘I mean’, etc.);
● to get the speaker involved in the topic (‘right?’, etc.);
● to seek confirmation (‘right?’, ‘okay?’, etc.);
● to refer to other ideas discussed earlier (‘as I told you’, etc.);
● to sound intelligent and informed (‘you know’, etc.);
● to indicate reactions or show interest (‘oh really’, ‘oh my God’, ‘oh
yeah?’, ‘uh-huh’, ‘really?’, ‘really’, ‘that’s great’, ‘I see’, ‘sounds
nice’, ‘seriously?’, ‘you must be joking’, ‘you’re kidding’, ‘no way!’,
etc.);
● to indicate you agree (‘that’s right’, ‘I couldn’t agree more’, ‘for sure’,
‘absolutely’, etc.);
● to indicate you disagree (‘I’m not so sure about that’, ‘you really think
so?’, ‘I don’t see it that way’, etc.);
● to indicate you didn’t get it (‘you’ve lost me’, ‘sorry’, ‘I didn’t catch
you’, etc.);
● to indicate you understood (‘okay’, ‘I see’, etc.);
● to indicate the language user’s attitude towards a proposition.
In the following exchange adapted from Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye
(1951: 60) and translated by Karimi (2002, cited in Saffari and Hashemian
2012: 75) into Persian, the filler ‘the hell’ is used to indicate that the lan-
guage user is not happy with what is going on.
English What the hell are you doing? How would you
translate the filler

Nothing ‘hell’ into your own
Farsi ‫ داری‌ چكار ميكنی‌؟‬،‫خوب‬ language? Identify
the main strategies
‫هیچی‬ that you may adopt.
Back Well, what are you doing?

translation Nothing.
This exchange consists of two turns produced by two interlocutors in a How would you
conversation where the second utterance ‘Nothing’ depends on the first one define ‘transla-
‘What the hell are you doing?’. In other words, the second utterance is tion brief?
a response to the first one; therefore, they form what is called an adja-
cency pair. Translating this adjacency pair into Persian, as shown in the
example, is no problem at all. However, the suggested translation does not
communicate the intended meaning behind the original sentence whose

interlocutor, by the effect of the filler ‘the hell’, clearly expresses his/her
unhappiness or disgust. The translation brief given to the translator (pur-
pose of translation, text type, genre, readership, etc.) can sometimes cause
the translator to opt for omission as a local strategy, as in the above transla-
tion into Persian where Karimi decided to omit the filler in his translation.
Omitting such a filler without any sort of compensation that would reflect
the language user’s attitude in the target text affects the quality of trans-
lation in terms of accuracy. Another strategy is to change the degree of
formality, thus modifying the register, as in the following translation where
Arabic is very formal to the degree that it is hardly used between friends
or family members.
Arabic ‫ماذا تفعل بحق الجحيم؟‬

.‫ال شيء‬
Back translation What the hell are you doing?
Nothing.
To maintain the degree of formality, one may opt for a functional transla-
tion as in the following translation suggested by a colleague:
Arabic ‫ ماذا تفعل؟‬،‫لخاطر هللا‬

.‫ال شيء‬
Back translation For the sake of God, what are you doing?
Nothing.
Translating such a filler in a similar situation from English to French or

German, for instance, causes no problem, as it lends itself to a sentence of
the following kind where the language user’s attitude is reflected easily by
virtue of what is called the ‘optimal equivalent’:
‘Optimal equivalent’
or ‘full equivalent’
means the same

image, function,
and form are used
in both languages/
cultures, as in
the translation of
‘Necessity is the
mother of inven-
tion’ into French
as ‘La nécessité
est la mère de Connecting the dots (2): Critical discourse analysis
l’invention’.
and translation
Critical discourse analysis is an interdisciplinary approach concerned

with how ‘power’ is exercised through language. It is defined by Coffin
(2001: 99) as an “approach to language analysis which concerns itself
with issues of language, power and ideology”. It “gives attention to the

How would you
dynamic interplay between text production, the text itself, and text inter- define the term
pretation or consumption” (Coffin 2001: 99). Critical discourse analysis ‘ideology’?
is “a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way
social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced,
and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context” (van Dijk Find out the
main differences
2001: 352). Critical discourse analysts take an explicit position with a view between ‘systemic
to understanding, exposing, and, accordingly, challenging social inequality. functional linguis-
Critical discourse analysis relies heavily on (1) Halliday’s systemic tics’ and ‘critical
linguistics’.
functional linguistics and (2) critical linguistics, as shown below:
It is an approach to discourse analysis, which, through close linguistic ana-

lysis, aims at highlighting and/or demystifying any ideological move that
would twist the message to varying degrees, thus producing ‘realities’ dif-
ferently. In this respect, Hart (2013: 404), advocating Fowler (1991, 1996),
holds that the “prevailing methodology in critical linguistics is sourced
from Halliday’s systemic functional grammar”.
Fairclough and Wodak (1997: 271–80; also discussed in Paltridge
2006: 179) talk of four main areas and/or topics that can be studied and
examined by doing critical discourse analysis:
(1) Social and political issues: How certain social and political issues
are constructed and presented in discourse, how these issues are
approached, and from which perspective, etc.
(2) Power relations: Who controls the conversation? Who allows whom to
take part in a conversation? etc. Think of other
areas that can be
(3) Social relations: How people are presented in the media, and how such
examined by doing
a representation establishes a certain relationship between the person ‘critical discourse
and the public or the addressed people. analysis’.
(4) Ideologies: How ideologies are reflected in discourse, how realities are
presented differently, and how the same act may be praised by some
people while it is denounced by others, etc.
Not only does critical discourse analysis cover “the description and
interpretation of the discourse in context”, but it tries to provide us with
explanations for the main reasons behind it as well (Paltridge 2006: 185).
To do so, analysts can study discourse critically by focusing on:
(1) the text to discover (a) what genre (discourse type) the text at
hand belongs to, (b) how the text producer adheres to the generic
conversions, and (c) if not, what effect s/he is trying to achieve;
(2) the perspective from which the text is presented;
(3) the background knowledge, attitude, point of view, etc. that the text
presupposes, reflects, and constructs.
Critical discourse analysis does not confine itself to analyse certain words
or structures used by the text producer, but rather relates these words and
structures to structures of the socio-political context. Several grammatical
categories constituting systemic functional grammar can be used to analyse
discourse critically. These grammatical categories include ‘transitivity’,
Narrativity here is ‘agency’, ‘nominalization’, ‘modality’, ‘attribution’, ‘topicalization’,
defined as the dir-
ectionality that you, ‘selectivity’, and ‘presupposition’. In translation studies, these grammat-
as a language user, ical categories can also be used to explore how texts are manipulated by
superimpose on the translators and trans-editors to superimpose a certain directionality/narra-
text/story at hand.
tivity on the text/story at hand, particularly in the media.
Transitivity
Transitivity is defined by Halliday (1976: 199) from a functional point
Note that ‘transi-
tivity’ in the sense
of view as “the set of options relating to cognitive content, the linguistic
that Halliday uses representation of extralinguistic experience, whether of the phenomena
the term has of the external world or of feelings, thoughts and perceptions”. In tran-
nothing to do with
‘transitive’ and
sitivity, several processes can be identified, such as a process of doing, a
‘intransitive’ verbs. process of happening, a process of behaving, a process of saying, a pro-
cess of sensing, a process of existing, a process of having, and a process
of being. In analysing these processes, one can distinguish three main
Identify the components, namely ‘the process’ itself typically expressed by verbs,
processes in the
‘participants’ typically expressed by noun phrases, and ‘circumstances’
following example
and then translate typically expressed by adverbs (for more details, see Chapter 9 of this
it into your own book). Let us here consider the following example extracted from The
language:
Independent (22 September 2013; also discussed in Aslani and Salmani
‘When I was young,
I used to watch TV 2015: 85) along with its translation into Persian published in Keyhan (23
a lot’. September 2013):
English The Syrians have long claimed that a substantial

amount of Soviet-made weaponry has made its way
from Libya into the hands of rebels in the country’s
civil war with the help of Qatar.
Persian ‫بسیاری از تروریست‌ھای سوری اعتراف کرده‌اند با کمک قطر‬
‫مقادیر زیادی تسلیحات نظامی از لیبی دریافت کرده‌اند که ساخت‬
.‫اتحاد جماھیر شوروی سابق بوده است‬
Back Many Syrian terrorists have admitted that they have
translation received a substantial amount of Soviet-made weap-
onry from Libya with the help of Qatar.
D i s c o u r s e a n a lys i s 1 37
Here we are dealing with a process of saying expressed by the verb ‘to
claim’. The Sayer in the English version is all Syrians (The Syrians have
long claimed …) while in the Persian version the Sayer is ‘many Syrian
terrorists’ (Many Syrian terrorists have admitted …). By virtue of the con-
tent specifications and grammatical forms used in the English version, the
role of some countries, such as Qatar and Libya, in the civil war in Syria is
emphasized, thereby hiding or backgrounding the role played by the Syrian
government in such a civil war.
Moreover, in the English version, the Receiver of the weapons is the
rebels according to the Syrians, while in the Persian version the Receiver
of the weapons is Syrian terrorists according to the translator or trans-editor
who describes them as terrorists.
Further, in the English version, by virtue of the framing verb ‘to claim’,
the editor distances him/herself from the attributed material. However, by
means of the framing verb ‘to admit’ used in the Persian version, there is no
explicit or overt indication as to where the translator or trans-editor stands
concerning the attributed material. This textual restructuring shows how
the translator or trans-editor overtly intervenes in the text to insist upon
the value of the proposition that those fighters are terrorists who received
a substantial amount of Soviet-made weaponry from Libya with the help
of Qatar. This textual restructuring superimposes a certain directionality/
narrativity on the text/story at hand to have it meet the translator’s (or the
organization’s) accumulated value system, sense of belonging, orientation,
commitments, and so on.
Agency
Agency refers to whether the Agent or Actor of the action is mentioned or
Is there any diffe-
suppressed in the text. To observe how removing the Agent of the action rence between
can twist the message to varying degrees, the following headlines published ‘Agent’ and ‘Actor’
by BBC News (23 October 2017; also discussed in Almanna and Al-Shehari as semantic roles?
2019: 127) can be reconsidered:
English Russian radio presenter Felgengauer [Patient]

stabbed in neck
Arabic ‫] داخل غرفة‬Patient[ ‫] يطعن مذيعة روسية‬Agent[ ‫إسرائيلي‬
.‫أخبار محطة إذاعة إيكو موسكوفي‬
Back translation An Israeli stabs a Russian newsreader in the
newsroom of Echo Moscovy radio station.
By virtue of the passive voice employed by the BBC in the English version,
the focus of attention is shifted towards Felgengauer, i.e. the stabbed
person filling the role of Patient (also called ‘Affected Participant’; for
more details on semantic roles, see the previous chapter). By doing so, the
focus of attention is shifted away from the Agent. In the Arabic version,
however, by the effect of the active voice, the focus of attention is shifted
towards the Agent. To create distance and hostility towards the Agent, the
Arabic version resorts to explicitly naming the nationality of the Agent,
thus touching on the feelings of the Arabs. As regards informativeness, the
English version provides us with less information as we no longer have
an indication about the Agent/Killer in the process of doing expressed by
the verb ‘to stab’.
Nominalization
Comment on
the differences Nominalization is the process of converting a verb or another part of speech
between ‘I breathed into a noun, thereby transforming actions or events typically expressed
deeply’ and ‘I took
by verbs or descriptions of nouns and pronouns typically expressed by
a deep breath’,
before translating adjectives into concepts, things, or people typically expressed by nouns.
them into your According to Kress and Hodge (1979: 9), any transformation – a term
language.
borrowed by them from Chomsky but used differently – contains distor-
tion. They argue that transformations “serve two functions, economy and
Do you agree distortion” (Kress and Hodge 1979: 9). If this transformation serves dis�-
with Kress and
tortion, then it is ideological. Juznic, following Halliday and Matthiessen
Hodge (1979)
that any transform- (2004: 636), writes that nominalization can be considered as “a type of
ation serves two grammatical metaphor whereby processes which are congruently realized
functions, namely
by verbs are metaphorically realized by nouns expressing the same pro-
‘economy’ or
‘distortion’? cess as those verbs” (2012: 251). On this subject, Fowler (1991: 80)
comments that nominalization can be used by language users (writers,
speakers, translators, trans-editors, etc.) as a strategy to hide or suppress
the Agent, thus offering prime sites where ideologies can be expressed. By
way of example, the following headlines in both English and Arabic taken
from BBC News (7 April 2012; also discussed in Fattah 2020: 121) can be
considered:
English Hamas hangs Gaza prisoners, including one

‘collaborator’.
Arabic .‫ أحدهم بتهمة التخابر مع إسرائيل‬،‫إعدام ثالثة مدانين بقطاع غزة‬
Back The execution of three convicts in the Gaza Strip, one
translation convicted with collaborating with Israel.
Here, a simple comparison between the two versions shows that the
Agent of the process of doing expressed by the verb ‘to hang’ in English
is suppressed in the Arabic version, where a nominal group without an
Agent is recruited. On this subject, Fattah (2020: 121) comments that the
execution here is “represented as the outcome of a normal judicial pro-
cess where the accused were charged, convicted and then executed by
some competent authorities that are not normally newsworthy in a news
headline”.
Modality
Modality refers to how language users can express their own attitudes,
opinions, or moods towards what happens in the world or towards the truth
of an utterance. Paying little or no attention to the modal verb or modalized In some languages,
particle used in the original text and translating it inaccurately on purpose such as Arabic,
or by accident may well twist the message to varying degrees. To make this ‘modality’ covers
(1) ‘modalized verbs’,
point clear, let us here discuss the following examples quoted from Barnes (2) ‘modalized
(2014: 31): prepositions’,
(3) ‘modalized
particles’, and
English But if she could have looked a little further back, into (4) ‘modalized prep-
the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she ositional phrases’.
would have read there a different incantation. What about your
own language?
French Mais si elle avait pu voir un peu plus loin, dans le
silence et l’obscurité qui précédèrent la nuit des temps,
elle aurait lu là une incantation différente.
Back But if she had been able to see a little further, in the
translation silence and darkness that preceded the dawn of time,
she would have read a different incantation there.
In this example, the instance of lost opportunities is expressed by ‘could have’

followed by a past participle; it is used twice in English. Being fully aware
of the use and function of such modals, the translator opted for ‘avait pu’
and ‘aurait lu’, thereby reflecting such a lost opportunity which presupposes
that the addressee is characterized by being-able-not-to-do (powerlessness).
To reflect this lost opportunity in German, one may opt for a translation
of the following kind:
German Aber wenn sie ein wenig weiter hätte schauen können,
in die Stille und die Dunkelheit bevor der Morgen
dämmert, dann hätte sie hier eine andere Beschwörung
gelesen.
Back But if she had been able to look a little further, into the
translation silence and the darkness before the morning dawned,
she would have read there another incantation.
In the following example quoted from Farghal (2008: 11), there is an

Comment on
example of reproducing the ‘reality’ differently:
the differences
between these
three sentences
English The Head of the International Investigation Commission (1) ‘He said that
in the assassination of the Lebanese former Prime he would send me
Minister Rafiq Al-Hariri said that some Syrian officials an email’, (2) ‘He
confirmed that he
may have been involved in this crime. would send me an
Arabic ‫قال رئيس لجنة التحقيق الدولية في اغتيال رئيس الوزراء اللبناني‬ email’, and (3) ‘He
claimed that he
‫السابق رفيق الحريري إن بعض المسئولين السوريين متورطون في هذه‬ would send me an
.‫الجريمة‬ email’.
Back The Head of the International Investigation Commission
translation in the assassination of the Lebanese former Prime
Minister Rafiq Al-Hariri said that some Syrian officials
are involved in this crime.
Here, the translator managed to handle the source text, apart from dealing
with the modal verb ‘may’. The whole meaning is manipulated by the
effect of not translating this tiny word ‘may’. The use of ‘may’ to express
possibility in the original text excludes the event from known reality, thus
being considered as part of irreality – it invokes in our minds a not-sure-
frame. In the target text, however, by means of the content specification and
grammatical form employed, the possible Syrian involvement becomes an
absolute certainty, thus being part of reality.
Attribution
Attribution refers to the process of opening up space for other voices to be
heard in the text; this can be achieved by virtue of certain framing verbs,
such as ‘to say’, ‘to claim’, and ‘to argue’, certain angle circumstances,
such as ‘according to’, ‘in the words of’, ‘in the opinion of’, and ‘in the view
of’ (for more details, see Chapter 9 of this book). In the following example
quoted along with its translation into French from Barnes (2014: 38), there
is an example of attribution.
English “It is a lovely place, my house,” said the Queen. “I am

sure you would like it”.
French C’est un endroit ravissant, ma maison, poursuivit la
reine. Je suis certaine que vous l’aimerez.
Back “It is a lovely place, my home,” continued the queen.
translation “I’m sure you’ll like it”.
In the above example, there is no explicit or overt indication as to where

the speaker stands concerning the attributed material. This attitude, i.e.
the speaker’s particular stance (acknowledgement) towards the propos-
ition, was reflected by the translator when opting for the verb ‘poursuivit’,
roughly meaning ‘to continue’. In the following example quoted from
Farghal (2008: 4), the acknowledgement expressed by the verb ‘to say’ in
the past was translated as an example of distancing:
ST (English) In an interview with Newsweek yesterday, the Israeli

Defense Minister said that the Palestinian suicide
operations constitute the main cause for the Israeli
troops entering cities in the West Bank.
TT (Arabic) ‫ادعى وزير الحرب الصهيوني في مقابلة مع مجلة النيوزويك أمس أن‬
‫العمليات االستشهادية الفلسطينية هي السبب الرئيس في اجتياح قوات‬
.‫االحتالل اإلسرائيلي للمدن الفلسطينية في الضفة الغربية المحتلة‬
Back In an interview with the Newsweek yesterday, the
translation Zionist War Minister claimed that the Palestinian mar-
tyrdom operations are the main cause for the Zionist
troops storming Palestinian cities in the occupied West
Bank.
Here, by the effect of translating the neutral verb ‘to say’ into ‫‘ ادعى‬to
claim’, the language user’s attitude towards the attributed materials was
completely changed. In the target text, by virtue of the framing verb ‫‘ ادعى‬to
claim’, we have an example of distancing where the speaker was presented
as distancing him/herself from the attributed material. Not only was this
framing verb translated inaccurately, but several words and expressions
(as shown below) were manipulated through this ‘attitudinal translation’ How would you
define ‘attitudinal
to have them meet the translator’s (the translator here refers to all those translation’?
involved in the process of translation at its macro level, such as reviser,
editor, proofreader, translation quality controller, translation manager,
and translation commissioner) accumulated value system, orientation,
commitment, sense of belonging, and so on.
ST TT Back translation
Israeli Defense ‫وزير الحرب الصهيوني‬ Zionist War Minister
Minister
suicide operations ‫العمليات االستشهادية‬ martyrdom operations
Israeli troops ‫قوات االحتالل اإلسرائيلي‬ Zionist troops
entering ‫اجتياح‬ storming
cities ‫المدن الفلسطينية‬ Palestinian cities
West Bank ‫الضفة الغربية المحتلة‬ occupied West Bank
These selections are ideologically significant ideational ones as they

manipulate the language user’s attitude towards the proposition. While
translating a sensitive text loaded with political or religious words and
expressions, two strategies, which are closely related to lexical choices,
rear their ugly heads: ‘name-calling’ and ‘counter-naming’. Name-calling
involves the use of offensive names and phrases as in the use of ‘regime’ Find more
in place of ‘government’. Counter-naming, by contrast, refers to how the examples of
euphemized word or phrase is depreciated, as in ‘Zionist War Minister’ in ‘name-calling’ and
‘counter-naming’
place of the euphemized phrase ‘Israeli Defense Minister’.
Topicalization
Topicalization refers to the process of ordering words in a clause or sen-

tence, thus laying more emphasis on some of them. To explain, let us dis-
cuss the word order of this simple sentence: Translate this sen-
tence into your own
language twice
The man was killed by the police yesterday morning. without changing
the semantic roles.
This sentence can be syntactically reordered in a variety of different ways
without changing the semantic roles assigned to each noun phrase, as
shown here:
● The police
killed the man yesterday morning.
● Yesterday morning
, the man was killed by the police.
● Yesterday morning
, the police killed the man.
● It is the police who killed the man yesterday.

● It is the man who was killed by the police yesterday.
This sentence can lend itself to such translations, but these are just illustra-
tive examples as one may come up with other versions:
Arabic .‫قتلت ال ّشرطةُ الرّج َل أمس صباحًا‬

German Die Polizei tötete den Mann gestern morgen.
French La police a tué l’homme hier matin.
Maltese Ir-raġel inqatel mill-pulizija lbieraħ filgħodu.
Back translation The man was killed by the police yesterday
morning.
Thai เช้้าวานนี้้� ตำำ�รวจฆ่่าคนตาย / chao wanni, tamruat kha khon
tay.
Back translation Yesterday morning, the police killed the man.
Turkish Polis dün sabah adamı öldürdü.
Back translation The police yesterday morning killed the man.
Persian .‫پلیس این مرد را دیروز صبح کشت‬
Back translation The police killed this man yesterday morning.
Do you agree with While translating between any language pair, translators need to consider
this claim? the order of words along with the emphasis that each word carries and what
order the target language prefers in a given genre, text type, and so on. In
translating the complex sentence quoted from Hervey et al. (2006: 159)
from English into German, for example, the translator may opt for TT1 or
TT2 depending on the translation brief and the order that the target language
prefers.
ST What annoys me most is that they never even say

hello.
TT1 Was mich am meisten ärgert, ist, dass sie niemals
grüßen.
Back What annoys me most is that they never greet.
translation
TT2 Am meisten ärgert mich, dass sie niemals grüßen.
Back Most annoying to me is that they never greet.
translation
Here, although TT1 is very close to the English sentence that employs a
‘pseudo-cleft’ structure (also known as a ‘wh-cleft’ structure), native speakers
of German would rather opt for a syntactically simpler structure, as in TT2.
The above occurs at the sentence level. While translating or trans-editing

a text, due to the differences between the interfacing languages/cultures as
well as the conventions of each communicative event, several examples
of re-segmentation can take place. These instances of re-segmentation
include, for example, reordering the clauses and sentences, breaking up
sentences, joining sentences, and re-paragraphing. This results in empha-
sizing what is not emphasized in the original text and de-emphasizing
what is emphasized therein. However, at other times, emphasizing, as
opposed to de-emphasizing, is employed by those involved in the pro-
cess of translation to superimpose a certain directionality/narrativity on Following Somers
and Gibson (1994),
the text at hand, thus promoting or elaborating a different narrative/story/ a narrative can
product. To make this point clear, let us consider these two Reuters News be defined as a
items touching on the same topic (one in English and the other in Arabic; story of a set of
events ordered
7 April 2015): in sequence,
both spatially and
temporarily.
English The United States is speeding up arms supplies
and bolstering intelligence sharing with a Saudi-
led alliance bombing a militia aligned with Iran in
neighboring Yemen, a senior U.S. diplomat said on
Tuesday.
Arabic ‫قال أنتوني بلينكين نائب وزير الخارجية األمريكي يوم الثالثاء‬
‫إن الواليات المتحدة تعجل بإمدادات األسلحة للتحالف الذي تقوده‬
‫السعودية ضد المقاتلين الحوثيين المعارضين للرئيس اليمني عبد ربه‬
.‫منصور هادي‬
Back Anthony Blinken, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State,
translation said on Tuesday that the United States was expediting
arms supplies to the Saudi-led coalition against Houthi
fighters opposed to Yemeni President Abed Rabbo
Mansour Hadi.
Here, a process of saying expressed by the verb ‘to say’ in the past is used
in both versions. Due to the differences between the interfacing languages,
the verb ‫‘ قال‬to say’ is placed at the beginning of the sentence. However, the
speaker in the verbal process is clearly identified in the Arabic version as
‫‘ أنتوني بلينكن‬Antony Blinken’ while it is left implicit in the English version,

‘a senior U.S. diplomat’. Not only this, but the tension between the two
countries (Saudi Arabia and Iran) is explicitly expressed by Reuters in its
English version while it is reduced in its Arabic version. In the phrase ‘a mil-
itia aligned with Iran’, for instance, the word ‘Iran’ in the English version
The term ‘frame’
is given a front seat while in the Arabic version the word is backgrounded
can be defined
in attention. Such reordering, along with some additions and omissions, as a conceptual
promotes a slightly different narrative. structure that
provides back-
ground on beliefs,
Selectivity and presupposition assumptions, and
practices against
Selectivity refers here to the process of selecting a lexical item or expres- which the meaning
sion that is profiled in a given frame where it contrasts with other seman- of a word can be
understood.
tically related words and expressions. Language users (writers, speakers,
translators, trans-editors, etc.) carefully select their own words with the
potential to persuade their readers and cause them to (dis)believe in what
they (dis)believe. To make this point clear, let us consider the following
example taken from BBC News (2 December 2015) and translated into
Arabic and German:
English One of the workers died at the scene, while the other was
rushed to a nearby hospital where he succumbed to his
injuries. Their two colleagues were unharmed.
Arabic ‫وقتل أحد المستخدمين فورا فيما نقل اآلخر إلى مستشفى محلي حيث‬
.‫ ولم يصب الموظفان اآلخران في الحادث‬.‫فارق الحياة‬
Back And one of the workers was killed immediately, while
translation the other one was taken to a local hospital, where he
died. The other two employees were not injured in the
accident.
German Einer der Arbeiter starb noch vor Ort, während der andere
in ein nahe gelegenes Krankenhaus gebracht wurde, wo er
seinen Verletzungen erlag. Ihre beiden Kollegen blieben
unverletzt.
Back One of the workers died at the scene, while the other was
translation taken to a nearby hospital where he succumbed to his
injuries. Their two colleagues remained unharmed.
Here, as one may notice, in English, a process of happening expressed by

the verb ‘to die’ is used. While this process was translated into Arabic as
a process of doing expressed by ‫‘ قتل‬to kill’, it was translated into German
as a process of happening expressed by the verb ‘sterben’, i.e. ‘to die’. It
is worth noting that each verb used here has a certain profile in a given
semantic frame. The verb ‘to die’ is profiled in a frame where it contrasts
with the verb ‘to kill’. While the verb ‘to die’ is characterized by having
a monadic personation type, i.e. it requires only one participant, the
verb ‘to kill’ is characterized by having a dyadic personation type, i.e. it
requires at least two participants: ‘Agent’ and ‘Patient’. The verb ‘to die’,
to elaborate, invokes in our minds an accident-frame that has nothing to

do with issues such as the intention to cause death to somebody. On the
contrary, by resorting to the verb ‘to kill’, a killing-frame is activated
that has something to do with issues such as the intention to cause some-
body to die (causativity) – flow of energy from the Agent to the Patient
(transitivity). In the Arabic version, by virtue of the lexical item ‫فورا‬, i.e.
‘immediately’, the pace of events is sped up, thus indicating that there is
no time lapse between the act of shooting, backgrounded in attention but
it can be predicted as it is in our scope of attention, and passing away,
foregrounded in attention.
Presupposition refers to “an implicit assumption about the world or
background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted
in discourse” (Farghal and Almanna 2015: 104). The following example
extracted from The Independent (22 September 2013; also discussed in

Aslani and Salmani 2015: 84) along with its translation into Persian
published in Keyhan (23 September 2013) can be considered here:
English Assad had a message for the American people that Do you agree that
they should not get involved in another Middle there is an example
of a shift in transi-
Eastern conflict. tivity in the transla-
Persian ‫اسد خطاب به مقامات آمریکایی تأکید کرد˓ پیام من به‬ tion of this example
as the process of
‫آمریکایی‌ھا این است که ورود به ھرگونه جنگ و درگیری در‬ having expressed
.‫خاورمیانه تجربه خوبی برای آنھا نیست‬ by the verb ‘to
have’ a message
Back translation Assad said to American officials, “My message was translated
to Americans is that entering any kind of war and into a process
conflict in the Middle East is not a good experience of saying some-
thing? Does this
for them”. have ideological
implications?
Here, by means of the content specification and grammatical form utilized Discuss.
by the translator, the intended meaning is manipulated: The use of the
lexical item ‘another’ presupposes that they had already got involved
in a conflict, or maybe more than one conflict, in the Middle East, but
this presupposition cannot be retrieved from the Persian translation.
Further, while the addressee in the original text is ‘American people’, the
addressee in the target text is ‫مقامات امریکایی‬, i.e. ‘American officials’. This Identify the presup-
presupposes that Assad’s message is serious, on the one hand, and on the position in these
two sentences ‘I
other hand, that Syria will not be an easy prey, but it will fight fiercely, used to smoke
and that America will suffer the disastrous sequences of such a conflict heavily’ and ‘I’m
against Syria. looking for another
job’. Then translate
Presuppositions are “background assumptions that are pegged to certain the sentences into
lexical items or structures which are called presupposition-triggers (e.g. def- your own language.
inite expressions, iteratives, cleft structures, etc.)” (Farghal and Almanna
2015: 104–5). When one of these presupposition-triggers is used in the ori�-
ginal text, the presupposition can be easily captured. Consider the following
example translated from Arabic into English by Husni and Newman
(2008: 85–6):
ST ‫عاد من جديد يسترق النظر إليها عله يجد شيئا ً في مالمحها يضيء ما‬
.‫اعتراه من حيرة وذهول‬
Back He began sneaking looks at her, hoping to find something
translation in her features that [would] illuminate the bewilderment
and astonishment that he had experienced.
TT Once again he glanced over at her, and noticed some-
thing in her features that shed light on what had baffled
him.
Here, the experienced Arabic translator understood that the in-text par-
ticipant was looking at her, which is presupposed by the presupposition-
trigger ‫‘ من جديد‬once again’. This presupposition was reflected in the
target text. However, the translators failed to deal with the clause of
purpose introduced by ‫ عله‬meaning ‘in the hope of ’ when opting for the
What about if the additive connector ‘and’. To explain, in the source text, it is not asserted
translator identifies that the in-text participant found something in her features; therefore, the
the presupposition,
but decides not scope of intention is greater than the extent of causation (see Chapter 12
to reflect it in the for more details). In the TT, however, by opting for the additive con-
target text? Can nector ‘and’, the translators imposed different specifications on the
it be considered
an example of an scene, thereby emphasizing the completion of the act of noticing at a
‘ideological move’? specific point in the past.
Discuss. Let us finish off this section by discussing the translations of the
following sentence taken from the beginning of Trump’s Speech on
Jerusalem (6 December 2017) to see how not paying extra attention to the
existential presupposition employed by Trump may twist the message to
varying degrees:
Translate this text ST (English) My announcement today marks the beginning of

into your own
language. Then
a new approach to conflict between Israel and the
comment on your Palestinians.
own translation
by referring to the
TT1 (Arabic) ‫إن إعالني اليوم يمثل بداية لنهج جديد تجاه الصراع بين اإلسرائيليين‬
presupposition. .‫والفلسطينيين‬
Back Indeed, my announcement today represents the begin-
translation ning of a new approach to the conflict between the
Israelis and Palestinians.
TT2 Meine heutige Ankündigung markiert den Beginn einer
(German) neuen Herangehensweise an den Konflikt zwischen
Israel und den Palästinensern.
Back My announcement today marks the beginning of a
translation new approach to the conflict between Israel and the
Palestinians.
TT3 Mon annonce d’aujourd’hui marque le début d’une
(French) nouvelle approche du conflit entre Israël et les
Palestiniens.
Back My announcement today marks the beginning of a
translation new approach to the conflict between Israel and the
Palestinians.
TT4 (Thai) คำ �ำ ประกาศในวัันนี้้�ของผม ถืือเป็็ นจุุดเริ่่� มต้้นของแนวทางใหม่่ต่่อความขััดแย้้งระหว่่าง
ขาวอิิสราเอลกัับปาเลสไตน์์ / kham prakat nai wanni khongphom
thuepen chutroemton khong naewthang mai to
khwamkhatyaeng rawang chaw Isarael kap Palestine.
Back My announcement today is accounted for the beginning
translation of a new approach to the conflict between Israel and
Palestinians.
TT5 ‫اطالعیه امروز من نشان‌دهنده آغاز رویکردی جدید به درگیری میان‬
(Persian) .‫اسرائیل و فلسطینیان است‬
D i s c o u r s e a n a lys i s 1 47
Back My announcement today represents the beginning

translation of a new approach to the conflict between Israel and
Palestinians.
In the original text, the phrase ‘Israel and the Palestinians’ presupposes
In your own opinion,
that the conflict is between Israel as a state and the Palestinians as a group what motivates the
of people. This is an example of ‘existential presupposition’, typically Arabic translator to
expressed by a noun phrase that presupposes the existence of the entity manipulate Trump’s
attitude towards the
named by the language user (Yule 1985/1996: 20). This presupposition, conflict?
which was reflected in TT2 (German), TT3 (French), TT4 (Thai), and TT5
(Persian), cannot be retrieved in TT1 (Arabic). In TT1, Trump’s attitude
towards the above-mentioned conflict was manipulated by the translator,
thus presenting both of them as two groups of people.

they are false.
(1) ‘Sociolinguistics’ is one of the social approaches to

discourse analysis.
(2) Adjacency pairs are exchanges consisting of two turns
produced by two different speakers in a conversation.
(3) ‘Could you open the window?’ is a question that
needs an answer.
(4) According to Schegloff (2007), there are three types of
‘expansion’. They are ‘pre-expansion’, ‘insert-expansion’,
and ‘post-expansion’.
(5) ‘Discourse analysis’ is one of the branches of ‘usage-
based linguistics’.
(6) One of the main reasons behind using ‘discourse
markers’ is to change the topic.
(7) Social relations, that is, how people are presented in

media, for example, is one of the areas that can be
examined by doing critical discourse analysis.
(8) Discourse can be studied critically by focusing on, for
example, the issues, attitudes, points of view, and back-
ground knowledge that the text presupposes, reflects,
and constructs.
(9) Transitivity according to Halliday (1976) refers to tran-
sitive and intransitive verbs.
(10) Critical discourse analysis is an interdisciplinary
approach concerned with how people exercise ‘power’
while using language.
Exercise 2: The process of doing expressed by the verb ‘to kill’ was
translated differently from English into Arabic, as shown below. Comment
on the translations by referring to issues such as ‘transitivity’, ‘agency’,
‘topicalization’, ‘selectivity’, and ‘presupposition’.
ST In breaking news by the French News Agency, dozens of

Palestinian civilians were killed in an Israeli air attack on
the Gaza Strip.
TT1 ‫ مات عشرات الفلسطينيين المدنيين‬،‫في خبر عاجل لوكالة األنباء الفرنسية‬
.‫في هجوم جوي إسرائيلي على قطاع غزة‬
Back In breaking news by the French News Agency, tens of
translation Palestinian civilians died in an Israeli air attack on the
Gaza Strip.
TT2 ‫ قتل عشرات الفلسطينيين المدنيين في‬،‫في خبر عاجل لوكالة األنباء الفرنسية‬
.‫هجوم جوي إسرائيلي على قطاع غزة‬
translation Palestinian civilians were killed in an Israeli air attack on
the Gaza Strip.
TT3 ‫ استشهد عشرات الفلسطينيين‬،‫في خبر عاجل لوكالة األنباء الفرنسية‬
.‫المدنيين في هجوم جوي إسرائيلي على قطاع غزة‬
translation Palestinian civilians died as martyrs, in an Israeli air
attack on the Gaza Strip.
Exercise 3: Translate the following conversation between Mark and Allie

into your own language. Then comment on your translation by touching
on issues such as turn-taking, adjacency pairs and their forms, preferred
and dispreferred responses, any examples of expansion along with their
types, and the discourse markers used and their functions.
Allie: Thank you very much, Mark.

Mark: Ah, you’re welcome. I’m really sorry for the coffee.
Allie: That’s ok. It’s late. I’ll have a meeting at 12.30.
Mark: We can take a taxi.
Allie: Ok. Do you like the shirt?

Mark: Well, yeah. It’s exactly the same as the other one.
Allie: The same? It’s completely different.
Mark: Sorry.
Allie: Typical man.
Mark: Allie, can I ask you something?
Allie: Yeah, what?
Mark: Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?
Allie: Tonight?
Mark: Yes, you see, it’s my birthday.
Allie: Oh. Happy Birthday! I’m sorry I can’t have dinner tonight. I’m busy.
Mark: Oh … How about Friday night?
Allie: Friday? Well. Ok.
Mark: Do you know a good restaurant?

Allie: Let me think. Do you like Italian food?
Mark: I love it.
Allie: Well, there is a new Italian restaurant. We can go there.
Mark: Good idea. Taxi.
Exercise 4: Select any journalistic text and:
(a) translate it into your own language;

(b) comment on your translation by referring to such notions as
‘transitivity’, ‘modality’, and ‘attribution’.

(1) Select any conversation and analyse it by referring to:
(a) turn-taking;
(b) adjacency pairs and their forms;
(c) preferred and dispreferred responses;
(d) any examples of expansion along with their types;
(e) the discourse markers used and their functions.
(2) In their book titled Language and Ideology, Kress and Hodge (1979)
hold the view that ideology cannot be separated from language
since, by using language, people express their different viewpoints
which emerge from their ideological backgrounds. Do you agree
with this? Discuss.
to identify examples of ideological moves.
(4) Go through any translated book from your own language into
English to identify examples of ‘name-calling’ and ‘counter-naming’.
(5) Select any English political text and translate it into your language.
Then comment on your own translation by referring to such notions
as ‘agency’, ‘topicalization’, ‘selectivity’, and ‘presupposition’.
References
Aitchison, J. (1999/2003). Linguistics (6th edn). London: Teach

Yourself.
Almanna, A. and Al-Shehari, A. (2019). The Arabic–English Translator as
Photographer. A Linguistic Account. London/New York: Routledge.
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University Press.
Pragmatics 8
This chapter introduces a branch of linguistics which is one of

the most relevant fields for students and researchers of transla-
tion: pragmatics (for an overview of the relation between translation
studies and pragmatics, see House 2018a). You will first be given a
definition of pragmatics and a brief historical description of the devel-
opment of this field. Then, you will learn about the main concepts in
pragmatics: ‘deixis’, ‘reference’ and ‘inference’, ‘conversational implica-
ture’, ‘cooperative principle’ and ‘conversational maxims’, ‘speech acts’,
and ‘cross-cultural pragmatics’.
After you have studied this chapter, you should be able to understand
what ‘pragmatics’ is and how its various components relate to each
other, how people manage to understand one another, how what they
say is often much more complex than meets the eye, how what is NOT
said is often as relevant as what is actually uttered, what speech acts are
and how they can be analysed, and how all these pragmatic areas vary
across different cultures.
In the 1930s, Charles Morris (1938) and Charles Peirce (1931–1958)

Outline the main developed the semiotic trichotomy, which suggests that ‘syntax’ deals with
differences among
‘syntax’, ‘semantics’,
the formal relations of signs to one another, ‘semantics’ with the relation
and ‘pragmatics’ of signs to what they denote, and ‘pragmatics’ with the relation of signs
according to Morris to their users and interpreters. Another important development that led to
and Peirce.
the establishment of something like a pragmatic approach to linguistics
dates back to the late 1960s and early 1970s, starting with the work by
the generatively oriented linguists George Lakoff and John Robert Ross
(1967). These linguists were among the first to recognize the limitation of
the ‘syntactic straitjacket’ and generally the limits of the generative, ‘pan-
syntactic’ approach – whereby all of linguistic science including phon-
ology and semantics were to fit into a syntactic framework –when it came
to explaining language in use by human beings.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003228028-9
P r ag mati c s 1 5 3
A new model slowly emerged, which attacked the old paradigm with
its exclusive emphasis on syntax and structure. We can say that a ‘para-
digm shift’ emerged, and this shift coincided with increasing knowledge
about languages other than English suggesting that certain phenomena
could only be described by referring to contextual concepts. We here
have the beginning of the ‘pragmatic turn’ from the paradigm of theoret-
ical grammar – especially syntax – to the paradigm of the language user,
broadening linguistics to a discipline that caters for meaning and context
as well as the way people actually use language. To invoke Chomsky’s
distinction between ‘competence’ and ‘performance’ (e.g. Chomsky 1965),
What is the diffe-
pragmatics is clearly concerned with performance principles of language rence between
use. It is a theory of language understanding that takes context into account ‘competence’ and
in order to complement the contribution that semantics and syntax can ‘performance’
according to
make to meaning. This implies that –contrary to Chomsky’s assumptions – Chomsky?
language structure may not be independent of the uses to which it is put. In
other words, it may be possible to explain linguistic phenomena function-
ally, i.e. with reference to pragmatic principles and external factors such as
speakers, listeners, and topics.
In a famous paper entitled ‘Out of the pragmatic wastebasket’, Yehoshua
Bar-Hillel (1971) complains that scholars who ignored the nature of certain
linguistic problems tried to force bits and pieces found in the ‘pragmatic
wastebasket’ into their syntactic or semantic theories. The notion
How would you
‘pragmatic wastebasket’ has to date often been quoted to refer to problems
define ‘pragmatic
defying satisfactory syntactic and/or semantic analysis and explanation. wastebasket’?
Apart from this origin of pragmatics, constituting a rebellion against
Chomskyan linguistics, another probably even more important influence
from the early 1960s onwards came from linguistic philosophers (the so-
called ‘Ordinary Language Philosophers’) such as Austin (1962), Searle
(1969), and Grice (1975). Their ideas about the phenomenon of language
have had a lasting impact on the development of the new discipline of
pragmatics. In 1962, Austin’s book How to Do Things with Words was
published – a book about how people communicate with each other by
means of language that shaped further developments of the new discipline
of pragmatics. We will deal more extensively with Austin’s influence in the
section on ‘speech acts’ below.
Context and contextual meaning
Pragmatics is the study of meaning as this meaning is communicated by

What is meant
a speaker (or writer) to an addressee, and how this addressee interprets by ‘context’? And
this meaning. Pragmatics deals more with what human beings mean when how would you
they use language than what the words, phrases, utterances, or texts mean define ‘contextual
meaning’?
on their own. In pragmatics we are not only interested in what people
mean in an abstract sense, but rather what they mean in a particular context,
and how this context impacts on what is said. This means that we
have to consider the context if we want to grasp what people mean, and
1 5 4 P r a g mati c s
this involves looking at how speakers organize and structure what they
What is not said in
‘That’s great’ in this intend to say, considering who they address, and where, when, and under
exchange: which circumstances they say what they say. In short, pragmatics is the
Son: ‘I lost my study of ‘contextual meaning’. Since context involves the addressees of
money.’
Father: ‘That’s an utterance, pragmatics also involves looking at how addressees make
great.’ inferences about what is said, so that they will be able to interpret what the
speaker has intended to say. This interpretation necessarily also touches
upon how things ‘not’ said may be as important as what is actually said.
This means that pragmatics involves exploring how more is frequently said
The meaning of the
sentence ‘Do you
than what is actually uttered. In pragmatics, we focus on people’s intended
know what time it meanings, their assumptions, their purposes or goals, and the kinds of
is? varies according actions or acts (e.g. acts of requesting) they are performing when they
to the context in
which it is uttered.
speak. It goes without saying that this is an extremely difficult task, since
Think of different speakers may imply things and infer others without providing explicit lin-
situations to yield guistic evidence for this. Since pragmatics makes it necessary not only to
as many meanings
as you can.
make sense of what people say, but also of what they have in mind, it also
touches upon psycholinguistic and cognitive issues.
In sum, pragmatics is the study of linguistic acts and the contexts in
which these acts are performed by human beings. Pragmatics involves
context-dependent aspects of meaning which are systematically abstracted
away from the pure semantics of logical form, and which also involves
what goes on in people’s minds.
Cross-cultural pragmatics
A milestone in the field of cross-cultural pragmatics is the well-known

Cross-Cultural Speech Act Analysis Project (CCSARP) (Blum-Kulka et al.
1989) that began its work in the early 1980s. In this project, the realization
of the speech acts ‘request’ and ‘apology’ was examined in seven different
languages and language varieties, namely British, American, Australian
English, German, Canadian French, Danish, and Hebrew. In this research
project, a newly developed data elicitation method, the Discourse Completion
Test (DCT) was used. In this test, subjects were asked to fill in blanks in
a dialogic situational description in which they had to produce a particular

speech act. Requests and Apologies were chosen because both these speech
acts constitute face-threatening acts, i.e. acts that threaten someone’s public
self image, as in asking him/her to do you a favour. One of the major findings
that emerged from this project is that degrees of social distance and power
between participants are among the most important factors determining vari-
ation in the realization of speech acts. And these factors can also interact with
other situational factors and are subject to considerable cultural variation.
Another major result of the CCSARP Project refers to findings about
levels of directness of the realization of speech acts. With respect to the
speech act ‘request’, for instance, nine different request strategies were
distinguished, which are ordered according to decreasing degrees of
directness.
(1) Mood derivable
The grammatical mood of the utterance conventionally determines its illo-

How would you
cutionary force as a ‘request’. But functional equivalents, such as finite
translate these
forms and elliptical sentence structure, also express this directness level, examples into your
as in ‘Leave me alone!’, ‘No smoking in the kitchen’, ‘The menu, please’, own language?
and the like.
(2) Explicit performative

What is the diffe-
rence between ‘I
The speaker’s intention is explicitly named in his/her use of an illocut- am asking you to
ionary verb, as in ‘I am asking you to move your car’. move your car’ and
‘move your car’?
Discuss.
(3) Hedged performative
The illocutionary verb denoting the requestive intent is modified by, for
example, modal verbs or verbs expressing intention, as in ‘I must ask you
to clean the kitchen right now’, ‘I wanted to ask you to present your paper
a week later’, etc.
(4) Locution derivable
The illocutionary intent is directly derivable from the semantic meaning of

the locution, as in ‘Sir, you’ll have to/must/should/ought to move your car’.
(5) Want statement
The utterance expresses the speaker’s desire that the event denoted in the
proposition come about, as in ‘I’d like to borrow this book’.
(6) Suggestory formula

How would you
The illocutionary force is a suggestion couched in a routine formula, as in translate these
examples into your
‘How about cleaning the kitchen?’, ‘Why don’t you shut up?’, etc. own language?
(7) Preparatory
The utterance contains reference to a preparatory condition for the feasi-

bility of the request, typically one of ability, willingness, or possibility
as conventionalized in a given language, as in ‘Can I borrow your car?’,
‘Could you possibly lend me your car?’, etc.
(8) Strong hint
The illocutionary force is not immediately derivable from the locution;

however, the locution contains relevant elements of the intended illo-
cutionary act. Hints are not conventionalized and thus require more
inferencing activity from the hearer, as in ‘Will you be going home now?’
(Intention: Getting a lift home).
(9) Mild hint
The locution contains no elements of immediate relevance to the

intended illocution, thus putting increased demand on context ana-
lysis and knowledge activation on the part of the hearer, as in ‘You’ve
been busy here, haven’t you?’ (Intent: Getting hearer to clean the
kitchen).
In the production of speech acts, the central or head act is often intern-
ally and/or externally modified by syntactic and lexical downgraders
and upgraders and/or so-called supportive moves, as explained in the
table below and the examples that follow, quoted from House and Kádár
(2021: 121ff): Can I borrow your notes?
(1) Syntactic interrogatives, subjunctives, and conditionals.

downgraders
(2) Lexical hedges, downtoners, appealers, etc.
downgraders
(3) Upgraders expletives, intensifiers, repetitions, etc.
(4) Supportive moves grounders, imposition minimizers, getting a
precommitment, etc.
● Interrogative: Can I borrow your notes?

Translate these ● Subjunctive: It might be better if you were to leave now.
sentences into your ● Conditional: I would suggest you leave now.
own language.
● Hedge: It would somehow fit better if you gave your paper next week.
● Downtoner: Could you possibly lend me your notes?
● Appealer: Clean up the kitchen, will you?
● Expletive: Why don’t you clean up that bloody mess!
● Intensifier: The kitchen is in a terrible mess!
● Repetition: Go away, go away!
● Grounder: I missed class yesterday. Can I borrow your notes?

● Imposition minimizer: Can you lend me 10 pounds? I’ll pay you back
tomorrow.
● Getting a precommitment: Can you do me a favour?
The CCSARP Project has had an enormous impact on the field of cross-
cultural pragmatics and both its methodology and the categorial scheme
suggested are still widely used today with many different languages. An
important recent update is provided in House and Kádár’s (2021) book
titled Cross-Cultural Pragmatics.
In what follows, the central topics and phenomena generally treated
in pragmatics, such as ‘deixis’, ‘speech acts’, ‘cooperative principle’,
P r ag mati c s 1 57
‘inference’, and ‘conversational implicature’ are introduced and discussed

in a direct link to translation.
Connecting the dots (1): Translating deixis
This subdomain of pragmatics aims to analyse and describe the

characteristics of elements that vary in meaning, such as expressions like
‘I’, ‘you’, ‘here’, ‘there’, ‘now’, ‘then’, ‘hereby’, or markers of tense/
aspect whose meanings are constant but their referents vary with speakers,
hearers, time and place of an utterance, style or register, or the function of
the speech act in which they occur.
This variation is due to the fact that any use of language always takes
place in a certain situational context at a particular time and at a par-
ticular place by human beings who usually share a lot of the perception
and knowledge of the situation and general knowledge of the world. This
boundness of utterances to the context in which they occur has important
consequences for understanding them, and accordingly does not generally
create problems whenever a minimum of common ground exists. Thus,
utterances like ‘I told him all that yesterday, when he was here’ is clearly
comprehensible when one can identify:
● the speaker (‘I’);

● the time of utterance to identify ‘yesterday’;
● where the utterance took place (‘here’ can be anywhere);
● who the speaker talked to (we only know it is a male person (‘him’
and ‘he’);
● a part of what was said before, i.e. what is meant exactly by ‘all that’.
So, the necessary information for disambiguating utterances like the above
stems from the extralinguistic situational context and/or from the linguistic
co-text.
We can say that ‘contextuality’ is one of the most basic features of
language, and it is one of the important links between language, percep- How would
tion, and cognition. What is meant when something is uttered therefore you define
‘contextuality’?
depends on the linguistic form of the utterance, on features of the situation
as perceived by speaker and hearer (including previous utterances between
them), and on the shared general knowledge of the world.
As the above example shows, one major device for integrating con-
textual information in order to achieve understanding is deixis. Deictic
expressions vary in meaning depending on where, when, and by whom
they are used. Deixis is classified into three main types, namely ‘personal
deixis’ (‘I’, ‘you’, ‘my’, etc.), ‘temporal deixis’ (‘now’, ‘today’, etc.), and
‘local deixis’ (‘here’, ‘there’, ‘left’, etc.), as shown here:
Closer examinations of the deictic systems of different languages have led

to insights into the connections between its various types and its relation to
other phenomena of contextuality.
Deixis can be defined as the relation of language to its point of origin. Of
the three types of deixis described above, it is personal deixis which creates
most problems for translators, mainly because of differences in the systems
of personal deixis across languages. In the case of local and temporal deixis
it is the co-text provided in a text which usually resolves meaning ambigu-
ities, thus facilitating translation. In cases of personal deixis, however, the
translator is often confronted with serious linguistic problems. Consider for
instance the following English sentence:
I hope you’ll learn a lot from reading this chapter.
How is the translator going to translate this sentence into languages

which differentiate between ‘informal’ and ‘formal’ or ‘deferential’ uses
of the second person singular and plural pronoun, e.g. German du/Sie or
French tu/vous? Clearly, in this case the translator has to make a choice
depending on the co-text and the context of this utterance. The translator
also needs to know the socio-pragmatic norms holding in a particular
linguaculture, because these norms determine whether the informal or
the formal personal pronoun is conventionally preferred in a particular
situation. A recent study of translations of the English pronoun ‘you’ in
IKEA catalogues into many different languages (see House and Kádár
2020) has shown how intricate translational decisions can turn out to be
in the case of translating the English personal pronoun ‘you’ used in both
product descriptions and direct address to potential customers into many

different languages. It was shown that the impersonal ‘you’ (brandmark
of the Swedish company IKEA) was translated equally impersonally in
the German, Hungarian, Dutch, Belgian Dutch, Japanese, and Mainland
Mandarin catalogues. However, in the French, Belgian French, and Hong
Kong Mandarin IKEA catalogues and the catalogues for various North
African countries (all former French colonies), the formal/deferential
form of the personal pronoun, i.e. ‘vous’, was invariably used. Here are
some examples from several IKEA catalogues.
ST Have you ever had this irresistible urge to leave the

world behind you and to have a breath, even for a
moment? You are not alone. Not easy to achieve this?
You might be surprised ...
TT (Belgian Vous avez déjà eu cette envie irresistible de laisser

French) l’agitation du monde derrière vous, de souffler et de
respirer, même pour un moment? Vous n’êtes pas seul.
Pas simple d’y parvenir? Vous serez peut-être étonné
…
ST You had that kind of moment, didn’t you? When you

really want to leave the bustling external world, close
out the world outside, have a deep breath, even for a
moment. Probably all people have these moments. You
would think it is not easy to achieve, but it is not neces-
sarily like that.
TT (Chinese 你是否有过那样的瞬间?急切地想要将这个纷乱的
Mandarin) 世界甩在身后，关掉对外的开关，深呼吸，哪怕只
是一会儿? 大概每个人都有吧!想实现却不太容易，
也不尽然。
ST Have you ever felt the need to escape the crowds –

logging out and catching your breath –if only for a
moment? You (je) are not the only one. And it does not
have to be difficult at all to realise this.
TT (Dutch) Heb je wel eens zin om de drukte te ontvluchten –
uitloggen en op adem komen –al is het maar voor
even? Je bent niet de enige. En het hoeft ook helemaal
niet moeilijk te zijn om dit te realiseren.
As shown in these and other examples consulted, due to the differences in

the systems of personal deixis across languages, it is personal deixis that
requires extra effort from the translator.
Connecting the dots (2): References (c)overtly translated

Reference, as explained in Chapter 6 of this book, can be defined as an act

What is the diffe-
in which a speaker uses linguistic forms to enable a hearer to identify some- rence between ‘ref-
thing. These linguistic forms, or referring expressions, can be proper nouns erent’ and ‘referring
(e.g. ‘Europe’), definite or indefinite noun phrases (‘the man’, ‘a man’), expression’?
or pronouns (‘he’, ‘it’). The choice of a particular expression depends on

what the speaker thinks his/her addressees already know, i.e. their common
ground. In shared situational contexts, pronouns functioning as deictic
expressions are generally sufficient for successful reference, but whenever
identification becomes more difficult, more elaborate noun phrases may
become necessary (e.g. ‘That person with the big red nose’ rather than
‘him’). Since there is no direct relationship between entities to which words
refer, a hearer’s task is to ‘infer’ which entity the speaker intends to identify
when s/he employs a particular referring expression. We can say that
successful reference is collaborative in that both speaker and hearer need to

think about what the other has in mind.
Proper names seem to have a pragmatic connection with certain objects
with which they are conventionally associated. If a proper name is used
referentially to identify such an object, addressees will have to make the
necessary inference, for example from the name of a country to a Olympic
What are the other team in the following sentence: ‘Germany won two gold medals today’.
parts of ‘context’? The physical environment as a major part of the context is often crucial
when it comes to inferring how a referring expression has to be understood.
So, for instance, the physical context of a restaurant and the conventional
ways of speaking by the staff working there are crucial for interpreting
utterances such as ‘The cheeseburger just complained about the size of the
bun’. Here, as explained in Chapter 6, we cannot rely on the open choice
principle to arrive at the intended meaning. In other words, we cannot rely
on the denotative meaning of each word used in this sentence to know that
it is not really the cheeseburger who complained, but we need to rely on
the context to infer that it is the customer having ordered the cheeseburger
who complained.
Covert translation versus overt translation

In referring to certain objects, names, institutions, dates, etc., it is neces-
sary to know the particular culturally embedded meanings which these
entities have for members of that linguaculture. More often than not, these
meanings are not valid in other linguacultures, and it is thus up to translators
to make an important choice in their translation as to whether they opt for
an ‘overt translation’ or a ‘covert translation’ (House 2015, 2016, 2018b).
It suffices it to say here that an ‘overt translation’ is one in which the trans-
lator leaves the original text as far intact as possible, respecting the original
and its author, and then engages in cultural transfer, thus informing foreign
readers about culturally embedded phenomena in the original culture. In a
‘covert translation’, however, original texts are not simply transposed from
the source to the target cultural context in the medium of a new language
but are often substantially transformed as they move from one language
into another one. Unlike an overt translation, a covert translation lives up

to the target language’s expectations in terms of readability, accessibility,
authenticity, idiomaticity, and well-formedness that feed into naturalness
(for more details on these two types, see House 2015).
The major difficulty in translating overtly is, of course, finding
linguistic-cultural ‘equivalents’ whenever possible. If it is not possible to
find an equivalent, the translator can leave a particular term untranslated
and explain it in a glossary. Here we deal with overt manifestations of cul-
tural phenomena that are transferred only because they happen to be mani-
fest linguistically in the original. And in these cases, inferencing is left to
the reader of the translation, but s/he can always also immediately consult
a glossary. A good example to exemplify this point is the translation of
the Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini’s novels The Kite Runner
and A Thousand Splendid Suns, where many original Pashto terms are
left untranslated in the German version, such as ‘namoos’, ‘nang’, ‘iftar’,

‘kolba’, ‘Ramadan’, ‘hijab’ and ‘harami’.
The very opposite situation is the case of a ‘covert translation’. Here, the
translator attempts to re-create an equivalent speech event. The function
of a covert translation is to reproduce the function the original has had in
its discourse world, and to reach functional equivalence. The translation
operates only in the world of the new culture, so the translator’s task is to
transform the original with the potential to adapt it to the needs, knowledge,
and competence levels of the target readers. To do this s/he uses a ‘cultural
filter’ (House 2015) as a means of capturing socio-cultural differences in
expectation norms and stylistic conventions between the source and target
cultural context.
In terms of reference to, for instance, important dates in a particular
linguaculture, the translator might choose to translate overtly by leaving
the date and name intact or covertly by changing it in order to accom-
modate towards the feelings and sensitivities of target readers. Thus, for
instance, ‘Columbus Day’ (12 October 1492), triumphantly celebrated
in the United States as the day America was ‘discovered’, is often called
differently in Latin America, where the term ‘Día de la Raza’ (Day of
the Race) has long been in use, thus deliberately avoiding mention of
Columbus. So, in translating a text where ‘Columbus Day’ occurs, the
translator must make a choice between an overt or a covert transla-
tion, depending on their own convictions or the assumed feelings of the
readers of their translation, as well as other factors like the ideology of
their employers.
Another interesting example in which the translator must make a choice
between an overt translation and covert translation is the US English
and Israeli term ‘Terrorist attacks’, often translated very differently by
Palestinian translators and translators who hold a different opinion as
‘Liberation struggle’.
Connecting the dots (3): The cooperative principle and

translation
Do you agree that

In any conversation, we can assume that those involved are generally while ‘speech acts’
cooperating with each other and that for reference to work at all, collabor- focus on conven-
tional forms used
ation is necessary. In many conversations, speakers intend to communi- to express different
cate much more than they explicitly say. For instance, when hearing the illocutionary forces
utterance ‘Business is business’, which at first sight seems to have no com- in a given language,
conversational
municative value, the hearer needs to assume that the speaker is coopera- implicature refers
tive and does want to communicate something. And this ‘something’ to language users’
is more than the words uttered; it is an additionally conveyed meaning ability to figure out
what is not expli-
called an ‘implicature’. Implicatures are prime examples of more being citly said?
communicated than what is actually said. However, we can only under-
stand this ‘more’ when we assume that some basic ‘cooperative principle’
1 6 2 P r ag mati c s
is in operation. The cooperative principle of conversation (followed by

four subprinciples or maxims) as suggested by H. Paul Grice (1975) is
the following:
Make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it

occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in
which you are engaged.
The four maxims of the cooperative principle are as follows:
(1) Quantity
• Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the
current purposes of the exchange).
• Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
Comment on (2) Quality: Try to make your contribution one that is true.
this exchange • Do not say what you believe to be false.
by referring to
the ‘cooperative • Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
principle and its (3) Relation
maxims: • Be relevant.
A: ‘Shall we go out
tonight?’ (4) Manner: Be perspicuous
B: ‘I sold my car’ • Avoid obscurity of expression.
• Avoid ambiguity.
• Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
• Be orderly.
These maxims are implicit assumptions which we hold in conversation,

with the basic assumption in conversation being that – unless otherwise
indicated –all conversationalists adhere to the ‘cooperative principle’ and
the various concomitant maxims. If speakers violate them, they convey
more than they say via a ‘conversational implicature’, and hearers need to
infer what is not explicitly said. By way of illustration, let us consider the
following example:
A: Did you meet my parents?

B: I met your father.
In B’s utterance there is an implicature that she did ‘not’ meet the mother.
Because implicatures are generally part of what is communicated but
not said, a speaker can always deny that s/he had intended to communicate
such a meaning.
As far as translation is concerned, it is important that translators give
adequate consideration to these maxims that are flouted, whereby implicit
messages are conveyed by way of conversational implicature. To explain,
the following example extracted from Mahfouz’s novel (1959/2006: 473)
‫ أوالد حارتنا‬, translated by Peter Theroux (1996: 368) into Children of the
Alley may be considered:
Arabic ‫ وبعدها فإما ترضى‬،‫قمحة منه قبل فنجان شاي قبل “ال مواخذة” بساعتين‬
.‫ أو تطرده من الحارة مشفوعا باللعنات‬،‫عن محسوبك عرفه‬
Back A grain of it before a cup of tea two hours before
translation “excuse me”, and after that either you’ll be pleased with
your servant, Arafa, or you send him out of the neigh-
bourhood accompanied by your curse.
English A grain of that in a cup of tea two hours before, well,
you know, no offence, and after that, either you will be
happy with your servant Arafa or you can kick him out
of the alley with every curse you know.
Here, instead of explicitly referring to the act of having intercourse, the

It is worth noting
author lets one of the in-text characters mention it implicitly, thus flouting that flouting any
Grice’s maxim of quality (speaking the truth) and maxim of quantity maxim on purpose
results in what is
(employing the right amount of language). Being fully aware of this, the
termed by Grice as
translator, as can be seen, decided to maintain the conversational implica- a ‘conversational
ture by opting for ‘well, you know, no offence’. By so doing, he invited his implicature’.
readers to get involved in the interpretation of the text by relying on their
encyclopedic knowledge and socio-cultural experiences.
Cultural filters
According to the Gricean ‘cooperative principle’, speakers’ contributions
to a conversation should contain information that is required at a particular
point and heeding the current goal and direction of the talk. The above-
mentioned maxims of quantity, quality, relation, and manner are unstated
assumptions which speakers are assumed to generally have in a conversa-
tion. However, these maxims are not universally valid; rather, they vary
across cultures and are therefore a challenge for the translator who needs
to have the relevant cross-cultural pragmatic knowledge necessary for
producing a covert translation. For example, as House (2006, 2018a) has
shown in a series of contrastive pragmatic discourse analyses, German
and English speakers tend to vary in their interpretations of the ‘coopera-
tive principle’ and the attendant maxims, which means that translators of
English texts into German and German texts into English need to be aware
of this and to be able to apply a ‘cultural filter’ if necessary. A cultural filter
is a procedure used by a translator in a covert translation in order to make
his/her translation compatible with the target readers’ preferences and dis-
course norms (for more details, see House 2018b: 92ff). To explain, here
are two relevant examples involving English–German translations. The
first example taken from a popular science text about HIV vaccines is in
English, while the second one taken from an instruction for using ovenware
is in German:
English Most vaccines activate what is called the humoral

arm of the immune system.
German Die meisten Vakzine aktivieren den sogenannten
humoralen Arm des Immunsystems (nach
lateinisch humor, Flüssigkeit).
Back translation Most vaccines activate the so-called humoral
arm of the immune system (after Latin ‘humor’,
liquid).
This example shows that the translator applied a cultural filter to the original
sentence expatiating on the content by adding an etymological explanation,
thus violating the maxims of quantity and relevance as interpreted by the
original English writer.
German Kerafour ist in unabhängigen Prüfungsinstituten auf

Ofenfestigkeit und Mikrowellenbeständigkeit getestet
worden. Damit Sie lange Freude an ihm haben, geben
wir Ihnen einige kurze Gebrauchshinweise: (1) Stellen
Sie nie ein leeres, kaltes Gefäß in den erhitzten Ofen (als
leer gilt auch ein nur innen mit Fett bestrichenes Gefäß).
Literal Kerafour has been tested for ovenproofness in inde-
translation pendent testing institutes. So that you can enjoy it for
a long time, we give you some brief instructions for
use: (1) Never put an empty cold vessel into the heated
oven (‘empty’ also refers to a vessel which is only
rubbed with fat).
English Kerafour oven-to-table pieces have been tested for
ovenproofness in independent testing institutes. So that
you can enjoy it for a long time, we give you some brief
instructions for use. (1) Never put an empty cold vessel
into the heated oven.
In this example, the English translator apparently thought the bracket in the
German original is needlessly explicit violating the Anglophone interpret-

ation of the maxims of quantity and relevance, and consequently decided
to leave it out.
Connecting the dots (4): Cross-cultural pragmatics

and translation
In translation, and especially in a covert translation, knowledge about, and

awareness of, cross-cultural differences in the production and reception of
texts is of crucial importance for the practising translator. For example,
in translation involving the languages German and English, the cultural
filter necessary for a covert translation has been given substance through
a series of contrastive discourse analyses (summarized in House 2006),
which resulted in a number of dimensions of cross-cultural differences, as

shown below:
German English
Directness ←→ Indirectness
Orientation towards self ←→ Orientation towards other
Orientation towards ←→ Orientation towards
content addressees
Explicitness ←→ Implicitness
Ad hoc formulation ←→ Routines
Given these differences in German and English cross-cultural discourse

preferences, the translator needs to adapt his/her translation accordingly.
While these dimensions were established for the translation pair Think of some
examples in which
German–English, it is both possible and desirable to undertake empirical cross-cultural com-
contrastive pragmatic research comparing many other language pairs munication fails.
and suggesting specific parameters along which these languages differ
as guidelines for the application of a cultural filter for each of these lan-
guage pairs. The following excerpt is taken from an English commercial
circular by an investment consultancy firm and its German translation,
in which the author informs shareholders about an action they need to
perform.
English In order to avoid the possibility of accidental misdir-

ection of your certificates, your assistance is required.
We have enclosed a ‘Dividend Instruction Form’ for
your completion; this should be returned in the pre-
addressed envelope.
German Um zu vermeiden, dass Ihre Zertifikate versehentlich
fehlgeleitet werden, bitten wir Sie, das beigefügte
Dividendenzustellungsformular auszufüllen und in
dem ebenfalls beigefügten adressierten Umschlag
zurückzuschicken.
Back In order to avoid that your certificates are acciden-
translation tally misdirected, we ask you to fill out the enclosed
Dividend Instruction Form and to return it in the also
enclosed addressed envelope.
The above covert translation into German shows that the author appears
to be much more forceful, active, and direct, while the English original
expresses the action to be performed more abstractly and more indirectly.
The utterance in the English original seems to have the illocutionary force
of a subtle suggestion whereas in the translation, it has been transformed
into a request. And while the original attempts to suggest that it is not the
company that wants something done, but rather that some external neces-
sity proposes a course of action to the shareholder, the translation is much
more direct and explicit in this regard. In the following example quoted
from Mahfouz’s novel (1973: 57 translated into English by
Hutchins and Kenny (1990: 57) as Palace Walk, the author also appears to
be much more forceful, active, and direct.
Arabic :‫وصاحت خديجة في سخرية‬

‫ وماذا تصنع إذا بُلت على نفسك في‬. . . !‫ تتوظف دون الرابعة عشرة‬-
!‫الوظيفة؟‬
Back And Khadija yelled sarcastically,
translation -“You get employed before fourteen! What will you do
if you urinate on yourself at work?”
English Khadija yelled sarcastically, “You want to get a job
before you’re fourteen! What will you do if you wet your
pants at work?”
The question ‫‘ ماذا تفعل إذا بُلت على نفسك في الوظيفة‬What will you do if you urinate
on yourself at work?’ (literal meaning) recruited in the original text
performs an illocution (pragmatic meaning) other than ‘questioning’; it is
the illocution of disapproval. This is an ‘indirect speech act’ where the rela-
tionship between the structure and its function is indirect (for more details,
see the next section). The translators managed to handle this illocution of
disapproval when opting for the question ‘What will you do if you wet your
pants at work?’.
Connecting the dots (5): Speech acts and translation
Utterances perform actions which are generally known in pragmatics as

‘speech acts’. As discussed above, the idea of a ‘speech act’ originates in
the philosophy of language, and in particular in the work of Austin (1962),
Searle (1969), and Grice (1975). Austin was the first to assume that the
minimal units of human communication are not linguistic expressions, but
rather the performance of certain kinds of acts such as making statements,
asking for information, requiring some goods, apologizing, thanking,

greeting, and so on.
In describing such speech acts, Austin (1962: 94) distinguishes between
three types of acts that each utterance has:
It is worth noting (1) ‘Locutionary act’, referring to the actual act of saying something, as
that in this example,
in ‘It’s hot in here’.
there are two types
of meaning: ‘literal (2) ‘Illocutionary act’, referring to the performance of an act in saying
meaning’ (It’s hot something as opposed to an act of saying something, as in ‘Could you
in here) and ‘prag-
please turn on the AC?’.
matic meaning’
(Could you please (3) ‘Perlocutionary act’, referring to the consequential effects of an act, as
turn on the AC?). in, for example, getting the AC turned on.
The most well-known classification of speech acts was suggested by John Do you agree
Searle (1969). Much later, an interaction-based classification of speech that the Sayer
acts was proposed by Edmondson and House (1981), which proved to of a declarative
speech act should
be important for the analysis of speech acts embedded in discourse (see be characterized
also Edmondson et al. 2023). Searle’s speech act classification comprised by being-able-
five types of general functions performed by speech acts. They are to-do something
with words?
explained below:
(1) Declaratives
These are speech acts that change the world via their utterance. In order to
appropriately perform them, the speaker must have a special institutional
role, in a specific context. An example is: ‘I name this ship Queen Elizabeth
II’, uttered by the Queen herself.
(2) Representatives
These are speech acts that state what the speaker believes to be the case
or not. In uttering a representative, speakers make words fit the world as
they believe it is. Representatives comprise statements of facts, assertions,
conclusions, and descriptions, as in ‘The earth is flat’, ‘Searle wrote about
speech acts’, ‘It is raining today’, etc.
(3) Expressives
These are speech acts that state what the speaker feels. They are gener-
ally about the speaker’s experience of psychological states such as pain,
joy, sorrow, and pleasure. In uttering an expressive, speakers make words
fit the world of feeling, as in ‘I am very happy’, ‘My condolences!’,
‘Congratulations!’, ‘That’s wonderful!’, etc.
(4) Directives It is argued that in

directives, if the
speaker does have
These are speech acts which speakers use when they want someone else
an authority, then
to do something. In uttering a directive, speakers make the world fit the the addressee
words. Directives are commands, orders, requests, or suggestions and they has no choice of
performance. Do
can be positive or negative, as in ‘Take me home’, ‘Can you pass the salt, you agree?
please’, ‘Don’t do that again’, etc.
Identify the speech
(5) Commissives act type according
to Edmondson
These are speech acts which speakers use to commit themselves to some et al. in the
following sentence:
future action. They are used by speakers to attempt to make the world fit the ‘Why don’t you call
words. Commissives express what the speaker intends. They can be posi- her now?
tive or negative and comprise promises, pledges, refusals, threats etc., as in
‘I promise to be on time’, ‘I will never let you down again’, etc.
In their Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English, Edmondson
and House (1981, and Edmondson et al. 2023) present an alternative,
newgenrtpdf
interactionally motivated classification of speech acts, as shown in the

above figure.
As shown in the figure, speech acts are classified into two main types: (1)
Identify the speech
‘substantive’, which can be further subclassified into ‘attitudinal’ and act type according
‘informative’; and (2) ‘ritual’, which can be further subclassified into to John Searle
‘opening’ and ‘closing’ (for more details, see Edmondson et al. 2023). (1969) in this
sentence:
‘I sentence you to
Direct and indirect speech acts two years in prison’.
Another classic distinction of speech acts is the one between direct speech
acts and indirect speech acts. Whenever there is a direct relationship
between a structure and a speech act function, we have a ‘direct speech
act’, and whenever there is an indirect relationship between a structure and
a function, we have an ‘indirect speech act’. For example, an utterance
‘It’s cold in here’ can be a direct speech act if it is just a statement and an Reflect on your own
indirect speech act if it is meant as a request to close an open window. And language to find
certain linguistic
an utterance like ‘I am thirsty’ can be interpreted in an appropriate context
forms that are con-
as a remark on the speaker’s situation, as a request for something to drink, ventionally used
or from a child as a request for attention. ‘Can you give me something to to perform certain
speech acts.
drink?’ is a conventionally indirect speech act, and ‘I am thirsty’ is a non-
conventionally indirect speech act. In general, we can say that in uttering
a direct speech act, the speaker says what s/he means, while in uttering an
indirect speech act s/he means more than, or something other than, what
s/he says. It has proved difficult to specify exactly what is meant by the
notion of ‘indirectness’. Some scholars like Searle have linked certain
types of indirectness to certain forms of language through a claim for con-
ventionality, and they suggest that certain linguistic forms are convention-
ally used to perform certain speech acts, such as ‘Would you mind doing X’
as the standard way to realize a request. But other scholars like Sperber and
Wilson (1986) who, in the spirit of Grice and his general conversational
principle and maxims, emphasize the role of general pragmatic principles,
in particular the ‘principle of relevance’, in order to account for the (cog-
nitive) process by which any indirect meaning is encoded or decoded in
context. It is entirely an empirical matter what specific forms of indirect-
ness are used in a particular language for performing a specific speech act.
As we have seen in the above example from a commercial circular, in
‘covert translation’ it is often the case that a certain speech act is changed
into another one. Here is another English–German example which involves
both a speech act change and a concomitant change in politeness. The
example features a German sign in an airport alerting passengers of an
obstruction in their path:
German Damit die Zukunft schneller kommt!

Literal translation Such that the future comes more quickly!
English We apologize for any inconvenience work on
our building site is causing you!
170 P r ag mati c s
Here we see a difference in perspective, i.e. a focus on the content in

German and an interpersonal focus in English zeroing in on the human
beings crossing the path of the building sites and realizing the speech act
of ‘apology’ as opposed to the speech act of a ‘tell’ in the original. This
has important implications for politeness, given the intimate relation of an
apology to politeness.
Another example relates to the translation of an original English science
text and its German translation, again involving cultural filtering, which
here amounts to consistently changing readers’ involvement in the text,
thus creating a stronger distance between writer and reader and between
the text and its readers.
Translate this text English Suppose you are a doctor in an emergency room and
into your own a patient tells you she was raped two hours earlier.
language. Then
She is afraid she may have been exposed to HIV, the
comment on your
own translation virus that causes AIDS but has heard that there is a
by referring to the ‘morning-after pill’ to prevent HIV infection. Can
speech act theory.
you in fact do anything to block the virus from repli-
cating and establishing infection?
German In der Notfallaufnahme eines Krankenhauses
berichtet eine Patientin, sie sei vor zwei Stunden
vergewaltigt worden und nun in Sorge, AIDS-
Erregern ausgesetzt worden zu sein, sie habe gehört
es gebe eine ‚Pille danach‘, die eine HIV-Infektion
verhüte. Kann der Arzt überhaupt etwas tun,
was eventuell vorhandene Viren hindern würde,
sich zu vermehren und sich dauerhaft im Körper
einzunisten?
Back translation In the emergency room of a hospital a patient reports
that she had been raped two hours ago and was now
worrying that she had been exposed to the AIDS-
Virus. She said she had heard that there was an
After-Pill, which might prevent an HIV-Infection.
Can the doctor in fact do anything that might pre-

vent potentially existing viruses from replicating and
establishing themselves permanently in the body?
This covert translation can be understood as being governed by the

translator’s goal to adapt the English original text to the assumed recep-
tion habits of a German target audience. The cultural filtering relates here
in particular to the degree of direct addressee involvement. Readers of the
translated text are no longer asked to imagine themselves as one of the
agents of the scene presented in the text as they are in the English ori-
ginal. Instead, the scene in the hospital so vividly brought to life in the
original text is in the translation presented, as it were, from the outside with
addresses no longer asked to actively engage with what is presented.
What we can here recognize is that cultural filtering in this translation has
led to the production of a very different text through changing the personal
pronoun ‘you’ in the original to third person reference, thus resulting in a
more impersonal, more abstract, more detached, and less persuasive text.

they are false.
(1) T
he term ‘pragmatic wastebasket’ refers to problems
still defying satisfactory syntactic and/or semantic
analysis and explanation.
(2) Austin’s book How to do Things with Words explains
how people communicate with each other by means
of language.
(3) In pragmatics, the interpretation of what is ‘not’ said
can be as important as what is said.
(4) ‘Why don’t you call her?’ is an example of a
suggestory formula.
(5) Pragmatics is concerned with performance principles
of language use rather than competence principles.
(6) According to Searle, ‘representatives’ are speech
acts that change the world via their utterance.
(7) An ‘overt translation’ is one which hides anything that
betrays the foreignness of a source text.
(8) While the lexical item ‘really’ in ‘I’m really sorry’ is an
expletive, the degree word ‘very’ in ‘The exam was
very easy’ is an intensifier.
(9) While ‘now’ is an example of local deixis, and ‘me’ is
an example of personal deixis, ‘there’ is an example of
temporal deixis.
(10) While the lexical item ‘again’ is an example of iterative

items, the verb ‘pretend’ is an example of a counter-
factual verb.
Exercise 2: Before translating the following six sentences into your native
language, how would you describe the following utterances and how
would you rank their directness level?
(a) Read this brochure!

(b) Please read this brochure.
(c) Would it be too much to ask you to read this brochure?
(d) Why don’t you have a look at this brochure?
(e) Would you mind reading this brochure?
(f) Would you be so kind as to read this brochure?
17 2 P r ag mati c s
Exercise 3: Before translating the following sentences into your own lan-
guage, identify the type of speech act according to John Searle’s (1969)
classification:
(a) I thank you for the effort that you have put in thus far.
(b) I promise I’ll bring it tomorrow.
(c) I hereby acknowledge the safe receipt of your email.
(d) I announce you husband and wife.
(e) I advise you not to go with them.
(f) I admit it was my mistake not his.
Exercise 4: Write sentences in your language in which you perform the

act of (a) requesting, (b) threatening, (c) congratulating, (d) thanking, and
(d) advising. Then translate them into English.
Exercise 5: The following conversation between two old friends is
adapted from the British Council: Learn English website (https://learn
english.britishcouncil.org). Your task is to:
(a) translate the conversation into your language, taking into account
the differences between the interfacing languages/cultures;
(b) comment on your translation by adopting a pragmatic approach.
A: Patrick? Is that you?

B: Selina! Hello!
A: Well, well. Patrick Eastwood. How have you been?
B: Good. Great, actually. How are you? I haven’t seen you for ...
how long?
A: It’s been ages. At least fifteen years. Wow.
B: Yeah. Wow.
A & B: So, what are you doing here?
A: Sorry, you go first.
B: OK. What are you doing here? I thought you’d moved to
London.
A: I was in London for a couple of years. But it didn’t work out.
B: Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Are you ... OK?
A: I’m fine! The dream job wasn’t really a dream, you know? Um ...
and London is great but it’s so expensive. I mean, just the rent
on a flat is ... uh … madly expensive.
B: I see.
A: So, I came back. I’ve been back now for almost five months.
Living back home with Mum and Dad. Which is err ...
interesting. Um ... but anyway, what about you?
B: Me? Oh, nothing new. You know me –‘Patrick the predictable’.
I never left here.
A: Oh. And is that ...?
B: Oh, I’m very happy. I’m married now. We’ve just celebrated our
tenth anniversary.
A: No way! You? Married? To …?
B: I don’t think you know her. Her name’s Marigold. And we’ve got
two kids. They’re five and eight years old.
A: Married and with two kids? Wow!

B: Don’t look so surprised!
A: No, no … I’m just amazed how time flies! I’m happy for you.
I really am.
B: Thanks. You should really come round to the house one day.
A: That would be great. Let’s swap numbers and ...

(1) What is the difference between ‘I wanted to ask you about your
friend’ and ‘I want to ask you about your friend’ in terms of
politeness and directness?
(2) Select any short text translated from English into your own language.
Then comment on it by adopting a pragmatic approach.
(3) Do you think that directness in the realization of a speech act,
such as a request, is the same as the politeness with which the
speech act is realized? For example, is the direct speech act of the
utterance ‘Move your car!’ as uttered by a police officer necessarily
impolite? If yes, why, and if not, why not?
(4) How would you define ‘covert translation’ and ‘overt translation’?
Support your answer with examples of texts which need to be
translated covertly and texts that will be standardly translated
overtly?
(5) Explain in your own words how and why ‘pragmatics’ is relevant and
important for translation.
(6) Why is the notion of ‘context’ so important for translation?
(7) What is the difference between ‘direct speech acts’ and ‘indirect
speech acts’? Discuss with illustrative examples.
References
Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.
Bar-Hillel, Y. (1971). “Out of the Pragmatic Wastebasket”, Linguistic

Inquiry, Vol. 2. pp. 401–7.
Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., and Kasper, G. (eds.) (1989). Cross-Cultural
Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
Edmondson, W. J. and House, J. (1981). Let’s Talk and Talk about
It: A Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English. Munich: Urban
& Schwarzenberg.
Edmondson, W. J., House, J., and Kádár, D. (2023). Expressions, Speech
Acts and Discourse: A Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English.
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Grice, H. P. (1975). “Logic and Conversation”. In Cole, P. and Morgan

J. (eds.), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3. Speech Acts (pp. 41–58).
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London: Routledge.
House, J. (2016). Translation as Communication across Languages and
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Norrick, N. (eds.), Pragmatics and its Interfaces (pp. 143– 63).
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Practices: The Case of IKEA Catalogues across Linguacultures”,
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McCawley, J. D. (ed.), Syntax and Semantics: Notes from the Linguistic
Underground (Vol. 7, pp. 159–64). New York: Academic Press.
Mahfouz, N. (1959/2006). ‫أوالد حارتنا‬. Cairo: Dār Al-Shurūq.
Mahfouz, N. (1973). ‫بين القصرين‬. Cairo: Maktabat Misr.
Morris, C. W. (1938). “Foundations of the Theory of Signs”. In Neurath
O., Carnap, R., and Morris, C. W. (eds.), International Encyclopedia
of Unified Science (Vol. 1(2), pp. 1–59). Chicago, IL: The University
of Chicago Press.
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C. and Weiss, P. (eds.), Volumes 7–8: Burks, A. W. (ed.). Cambridge,
MA: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press.
Searle, J. (1969). Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sperber, D. and Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance. London: Blackwell.
Theroux, P. (1996). Children of the Alley (trans., 1st edn). New York:
Anchor Books.
Functional linguistics 9
This chapter introduces another branch of linguistics which is one of the

most relevant fields for translators, as well as students and researchers of
translation: ‘functional linguistics’. The chapter discusses such areas and
notions as ‘register’, ‘cohesion’, ‘attitude’, ‘engagement’, and ‘graduation’.
Register is analysed by referring to three variables: ‘field of discourse’,
‘tenor of discourse’, and ‘mode of discourse’. These three variables are
associated with three types of meanings, namely ‘ideational meaning’, ‘inter-
personal meaning’, and ‘textual meaning’. After introducing these linguistic
areas and notions, they are discussed with a direct link to translation.
After you have studied this chapter, you should be able to (1) distinguish
‘ideational meaning’ from the other two types of meaning; (2) distinguish
evaluative language from non-evaluative language; (3) distinguish between
‘grammatical cohesion’ and ‘lexical cohesion’; (4) conduct a register ana-
lysis of different types of (translated) texts; (5) defend your own transla-
tion by adopting a model of translation quality assessment that uses a
register-based approach to translation evaluation; and (6) comment on
your translation by referring to Halliday’s three types of meanings.
The basic definition of ‘language’, as shown in Chapter 1 of this book, is

Think of the
a system of communication based upon the use of words in a structured communicative
and conventional way. We use language to communicate with others in functions of lan-
order, for instance, to thank them for doing something, promise them to guage. What
are they?
do something, ask them about something, tell them what happened to us,
and express our feelings. As such, we use language to do something with
it (promising, complaining, denying, thanking, asking, telling, etc.) – lan-
guage is used for a particular purpose to get things done. This view is con-
sistent with the notion of systemic functional linguistics (or ‘functional
linguistics’ for short), which was developed by M. A. K. Halliday in the
1960s (e.g. 1964) and developed further by his many disciples, most prom�-
inently by Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen (Matthiessen 1985/2014).
Language and meaning

What is the diffe-
rence between
Halliday (in Matthiessen 1985/2014: 25) holds that we “use language to ‘language’ and
make sense of our experience, and to carry out our interactions with other ‘meaning’?
DOI: 10.4324/9781003228028-10
176 F un ctional lin g ui sti c s
people”. This means that language cannot be used in isolation from what
is going on outside the linguistic system. Rather, there is always some sort
of interaction between the language and what is going on in the context
enveloping it. To transform, as Halliday (Ibid.) puts it, our sociocultural
experiences into wording, there are two steps.
(1) The experiences and interpersonal relationships are transformed into

meaning (semantics).
(2) These experiences and interpersonal relationships transformed into
meaning are further transformed into wording (lexicogrammar), as
shown below:
Meaning is transformed into wording, which is realized through the

Can we say
‘meaning’ in the words, structures, conjunctions, etc. chosen by the language user. Those
sense used by choices are systematically related first to the variety of language which a
Halliday means language user considers appropriate to a specific situation (register) and
‘style’? Discuss.
that is determined by the conventional text type (genre), which is, in turn,
conditioned by the sociocultural environment, as shown in the following
figure.
F un ctional lin g ui s ti c s 17 7
Register, as illustrated in the next section, is analysed by considering three

variables:
(1) ‘Field of discourse’: the content and subject matter of the text.
(2) ‘Tenor of discourse’: the relationship between the participants. Identify the ‘idea-
(3) ‘Mode of discourse’: the form of communication (spoken, written, written tional meaning’,
‘interpersonal
to be read, etc.). meaning’, and
‘textual meaning’ of
These three variables are associated with three strands of meanings (also this sentence:
known as ‘functions’ or ‘metafunctions’): ‘Sadly, the tourism
and money brought
in by the World
(1) ‘Ideational meaning’ associated with the field of discourse. Cup games won’t
(2) ‘Interpersonal meaning’ associated with the tenor of discourse. benefit the people
(3) ‘Textual meaning’ associated with the mode of discourse. who need it most’.
So, when you say, for example, ‘As for the innocent girl, she was brutally Translate this sen-
tence into your
killed by the thief yesterday’, three types of meanings can be identified here: own language by
reflecting the three
(1) ‘Ideational meaning’ realized by the transitivity process used: The strands of meaning.
thief Agent killed process of doing the girl Affected Participant yesterday circumstance.
(2) ‘Interpersonal meaning’ realized by the language user’s negative
attitude towards the act of killing (‘brutally’) and positive attitude
towards the girl (‘innocent’).
(3) ‘Textual meaning’ realized by the use of a transition marker (‘as for’).
Now, translating the above sentence into, for example, German as ‘Das
unschuldige Mädchen wurde gestern von dem Dieb getötet’ meaning
‘The innocent girl was killed by the thief yesterday’, one can notice that
the ideational meaning is certainly reflected in the translation. But is this
enough? In the translation, the interpersonal meaning is only partially
reflected as we do not have information about the language user’s atti-
tude towards the act of killing, although it can be invoked by virtue of
the evaluatively active word ‘unschuldig’ meaning ‘innocent’. However,
the decision of not translating ‘brutally’ results in a clear loss of inter-
personal meaning. Further, the translator paid little or no attention to how
the sentence is organized in a particular communicative event and how it
hangs together as a cohesive whole (textual meaning), thus losing out on
textual meaning in the translation. The example shows how we need to
178 F un ctional lin g ui sti c s
pay attention to all three types of meaning if we want to produce a func-

tionally equivalent translation.
Connecting the dots (1): Register and translation
The term ‘register’ can be defined as a variety of language that language

What is the diffe-
rence between
users (be they writers or speakers) consider appropriate to a specific situ-
‘style’ and ation. In analysing discourse in general and register in particular, Halliday
‘register’? (1994) came up with a comprehensive model for register analysis. In con�-
trast with the traditional grammarians, who view the concept of ‘transi-
tivity’ as a reference to verbs that take objects, Halliday (1976: 199) defines
transitivity from a functional point of view as “the set of options relating
to cognitive content, the linguistic representation of extralinguistic experi-
ence, whether of the phenomena of the external world or of feelings,
thoughts and perceptions”. In analysing registers, full consideration is
given to the following variables that were also mentioned above:
Identify the main (1) ‘Field of discourse’: studying the content by focusing on transitivity
components of
this behavioural processes and the circumstances used with each process, if any.
process: (2) ‘Tenor of discourse’: identifying the participants and their relations.
‘She cried bitterly (3) ‘Mode of discourse’: identifying the channel or medium used to deliver
over her mom last
night’. the message, whether it is spoken, written, or written to be spoken, etc.
Field of discourse
In analysing the ‘field of discourse’, the content or subject matter, i.e. what
has been said by the language users (speakers or writers), is examined. To
this end, transitivity processes are given serious consideration. In studying
these different types of processes, three main components should be
considered: (1) the ‘process’ itself normally expressed by a verbal group;
(2) the ‘participants’ determined in advance by the writer/speaker, which
are typically realized by a nominal group; and (3) the ‘circumstances’
associated with the process, typically expressed by an adverb or a pre-

position phrase, as explained in this example:
Is there any diffe-

My father [participant] travelled [process] to the UK [circumstance: ‘place’ answering the question
rence in ‘meaning’ if
‘where’]
with his colleagues [circumstance: ‘company’ answering the question ‘with whom’] two
we say: weeks ago [circumstance: ‘time’ answering the question ‘when’] to attend a conference there
‘It is my father and
his colleagues who
[circumstance: ‘reason’ answering the question ‘why’]
.
travelled to the UK
two weeks ago to In this chapter, following Almanna (2018), these processes are classified
attend a conference
there’?
into eight processes:
(1) Process of doing (He is eating right now).

(2) Process of happening (The ball disappeared in the corridor).
(3) Process of behaving (She laughed from ear to ear).
F un ctional lin g ui s ti c s 17 9
(4) Process of sensing (My sister saw him in the street). How many
(5) Process of saying (He said that he would travel to the UK soon). processes are there
(6) Process of being (My father is an English teacher). in a sentence of the
following kind?
(7) Process of having (I have three brothers). ‘Some weeks ago,
(8) Process of existing (There are two books on the table). she decided to
travel to the UK to
study law, but yes-
While translating from language A to language B, we might be confronted terday she changed
with transitivity shifts. These shifts occur due to a variety of different her mind?’
reasons, such as the differences between the interfacing languages, the
translation brief, text type preference, or the translator’s competence.
By way of example, let us consider the following article taken from the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 in three languages, namely
English, French, and Arabic, to see if there is any type of shift: How would you
define ‘transitivity
shift’?
English Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere
as a person before law.
French Chacun a le droit à la reconnaissance en tous lieux
de sa personnalité juridique.
Back translation Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere
of their legal personality.
Arabic ُّ ‫ الح‬،‫ في كلِّ مكان‬،‫لكلِّ إنسان‬
‫ق بأن يُعت َرف له بالشخصية‬
.‫القانونية‬
Back translation Every human being, everywhere, has the right to
be recognized as a legal person.
Here, a ‘process of having’ expressed by the verb ‘to have’ is used to

describe people’s right to be recognized as having legal personality. This
was reflected in the three languages. However, in the French transla-
tion, the translator confused the two semantically related French words
‘personnalité’ meaning personality and ‘personne’ meaning ‘person’. So,
in place of using ‘personne juridique’, which is a standardized phrase in
French legal terminology, s/he used ‘personnalité juridique’, thus skewing
the coherence of the text.
Sometimes while translating between languages, the process itself along

with its components is reflected, but its content is manipulated on purpose
or by accident, as in the following example quoted from Casablanca by
Michael Curtiz (1942):
ST (English) Rick: The problems of the world are not in my

department. I’m a saloonkeeper.
TT (Spanish) Rick: Los problemas del mundo no son de mi
incumbencia. Regento un cabaret.
Back translation Rick: The world’s problems are none of my
business. I run a cabaret.
1 8 0 F un c tional lin g ui sti c s
In this example, there are two processes of being in the original

text. However, in the target text, the second process of being, ‘I’m a
saloonkeeper’, becomes a process of doing, ‘Regento un cabaret’, meaning
‘I run a cabaret’. As can be seen, in addition to this shift in the type of
the process from a process of being to a process of doing, the content of
this short passage is manipulated, thus weakening the relationship between
the source text and target text – this is one of the norms proposed by
Chesterman 1997, which is called a ‘relation norm’, i.e. there should be a
relationship between the source text and the target text; otherwise, it is not
a translation.
Tenor of discourse
‘Tenor’, as mentioned above, refers to the relationship between the
participants; it can be realized through evaluative words, modality, mood,
and the like. According to House’s (1977/1981, 1997, 2015) translation
evaluation model, tenor covers “the addresser’s temporal, geographical
and social provenance as well as his intellectual, emotional or affective
stance (his ‘personal viewpoint’)” (1997: 109). Bayar (2007: 140),
echoing Halliday’s (1978) views, states that tenor “regulates the degree
of formality between participants in the text or between the text sender
and the text receiver or both”. At this level, the reader, according to Bayar
(2007), “can infer the social status and/or relations obtaining between in-
text participants and between the text sender and receiver”. She (Ibid.)
emphasizes: “Selections in the text are thus made consistently with such
status and relations”. By analysing the tenor of the text, one can infer
what the author and the audience of the text is like, as well as the rela-
tionship between the author and his/her audience. So, the tenor of a given
text, according to Bell (1991: 186–8) can be signalled along four overlap�-
ping categories: (1) ‘personalization’ as opposed to ‘impersonalization’,
(2) ‘accessibility’ as opposed to ‘inaccessibility’, (3) ‘social distance’ as
opposed to ‘standing’, and (4) ‘formality’ as opposed to ‘informality’.
(Im)personalization
‘Personalization’ refers to the presence of the speaker/writer, on the one

hand, and listener/reader, on the other hand, in the text. To create a feeling
of solidarity and/or intimacy, to provoke the intended reader and get them
involved in the situation by letting them feel they are, as it were, physically
present in that situation, writers opt for personalization. Such personaliza-
tion can be achieved via many techniques, including the use of:
● the first person pronoun ‘I’, referring to the writer;

● the second person pronoun ‘you’, referring to the reader;
● the pronoun ‘we’, referring to both the writer and the reader;
● directives, for instance, ‘see the next section’;
● rhetorical questions;
● other questions put in the mouth of the reader or an imagined
participant.
F un c tional lin g ui sti c s 1 8 1
‘Impersonalization’, on the other hand, is related to objectivity whereby

writers try to distance themselves from their readers, laying more emphasis
on the message itself, rather than the participants (Bell 1991: 187).
Impersonalization can be achieved by opting for:
● the pronoun ‘it’ as a subject instead of ‘I’;

● passive structures in place of active structures;
● abstract nouns, among others.
In a similar vein, House (1981: 73–4) writes that impersonalization can be

detected by tracing certain syntactic means, such as:
● the complexity of noun phrases;

● presence of over-correctness;
● absence of contractions and elliptical clauses.
(In)accessibility
‘Accessibility’, as opposed to ‘inaccessibility’, refers to the amount
of information that is presumably shared by the writer and the intended
reader. So when writers assume that the information in their minds is uni-
versally known and thus supposedly shared by a great number of readers,
they feel that less needs to be expressed explicitly in the text, and thus the
text becomes less accessible (cf. Bell 1991: 188). So, the notion of acces�-
sibility versus inaccessibility is very much related to explicitness versus
implicitness.
Politeness: Social distance versus standing

‘Politeness’ is defined here as a means utilized by participants to show
their awareness of others’ face, whether negative or positive. Showing
awareness of the public self-image of another person who is “socially dis-
tant is often described in terms of respect or deference”, whereas showing
awareness of the face of another person who is “socially close is often
described in terms of friendliness, camaraderie, or solidarity” (Yule 1985/
1996: 60). In touching on the tenor of discourse, Bell (1991: 187) holds that
politeness can be studied in two different ways:
● One is horizontal, measuring “the distance between the social groups”

(i.e. social distance).
● The other is vertical, reflecting a “power relationship connected with
status, seniority and authority” (i.e. standing).
(In)formality
‘Formality’, as opposed to ‘informality’, refers to the attention the lan-
guage user pays to “the structuring of the message” (Bell 1991: 186). Extra
attention, as Bell (Ibid.) elaborates, “leads to more care in writing and this
1 8 2 F un ctional lin g ui s ti c s
marks the text as possessing a higher degree of formality and signals a

more distant relationship between sender and receiver(s)”.
How the register of a text might be changed through translation can be
seen in the following example quoted from Gu and Wang (2021: 388):
Chinese 我也深知中国的稳定和发展来之不易 … 13年来, 中

国所取得的巨大成就说明稳定是至关重要。
Back I too deeply know that China’s stability and develop-
translation ment didn’t come easy … 13 years on, China’s massive
achievements indicate that stability is vital.
English I know so well the stability and development of this
country have not come by easily … The tremendous
achievements we have scored over the past 13 years
have fully proven that stability is of vital importance.
Here, the writer opted for impersonalizing the second part of the passage
‘13 years on, China’s massive achievements indicate that stability
is vital’, thereby emphasizing the distance between him/her and the
intended readers. By contrast, the translator decided to personalize it by
opting for the inclusive plural pronoun ‘we’, thus reducing the distance
between the text producer and text receiver, on the one hand, and creating
solidarity and intimacy between them on the other hand. But not only
this, the translator also added the evaluatively active word ‘fully’ before
the verb ‘to prove’, which is an example of ‘endorsement’ that indicates
that the translator decided to intervene in the text so as to insist upon
the value of the proposition ‘stability is of vital importance’. The result
is that the writer’s attitude is changed through translation, which also
contributes to shifting the register. To reinforce this point, let us consider
how the following sign used in a public swimming pool in Liverpool is
translated into German:
ST Please vacate the swimming pool

TT1 Die Badezeit ist zu Ende
Back translation Bath time is over

TT2 (literal) Bitte verlassen Sie das Schwimmbad
Back translation Please vacate the swimming pool
The above example shows how the attention is shifted from focusing on
actions performed by human beings, as in the process of doing expressed
by the verb ‘to vacate’ that requires people to do something, towards the
message itself expressed by ‘Bath time is over’. This results in shifting the
register, in particular its tenor and the interpersonal meaning. In the English
original, to elaborate, the distance between the text producer and text
receiver is reduced, thus creating solidarity and intimacy between them.
In the German translation (TT1), however, the distance between them is
emphasized by impersonalizing the text.
Mode of discourse
‘Mode of discourse’ refers to the channel used by language users to carry
their message in a particular medium. The medium can be written or
spoken. The spoken mode can be subdivided into spontaneous versus non-
spontaneous, while the written one can be subdivided into written to be
spoken, written to be spoken as if not written, and written not necessarily
to be spoken (e.g. to be read, to be read as if heard or as if overheard) (cf.
Gregory and Carroll 1978: 37–47; Bell 1991: 191; Al-Rubai’i 1996: 69).
However, writers, in particular literary writers, sometimes tend to mix
written and spoken modes of discourse in their writing in an attempt to
bring about a realistic illusion. In this regard, Leech and Short (1981; also
discussed in Al-Rubai’i 2005: 10–12) stress that there are five notions of
realism that may help in bringing out such a realistic illusion: verisimilitude,
credibility, authenticity, objectivity, and vividness. Al-Rubai’i (1996: 68)
states that writers can relate written modes of discourse to spoken ones by:
● making use of dialectal features;

● utilizing the features of spoken language, e.g. elisions, fillers, and
corrections;
● indicating the character’s way of speaking, e.g. ‘she said in a low
voice’;
● using graphological devices, such as italics, capitalization, dashes,
dots, or quotation marks.
Consider the following short passage taken from Mahfouz’s novel ‫أوالد حارتنا‬
(1959/1986: 126–7) translated by Philip Stewart (1997: 110) into English
as Children of Gebelawi:
Arabic ‫ فقالت هدى هانم بصوت متهدج من‬.‫كوني محضر خير يا ست هانم‬
.‫ قطع الطرق ال يكون بالنهار والشمس طالعة‬:‫الغضب‬
:‫فقالت تمر حنة بامتعاض‬
.‫ الحق على جدنا الذي أغلق على نفسه األبواب‬،‫هللا يسامحك يا ست هانم‬
Back Contribute positively, madam. Madam Hudaa said in a
translation voice that was trembling with anger: “Banditry cannot

happen during the day and the sun is rising”.
Tamerhinna said wryly:
“May God forgive you, Madam. Blame is on our
grandfather who closed the doors on himself”.
English Use your good influence, madam. Hudaa spoke in a
voice that trembled with rage: You aren’t going to get
away with daylight robbery. Henna said angrily:
God forgive you, madam! The truth is with our
Ancestor who has locked the gates on himself.
Here, Mahfouz tries to indicate the character’s way of speaking by using

certain phrases, such as ‫‘ بصوت متهدج من الغضب‬in a voice trembling with
anger’ and ‫‘ بامتعاض‬wryly’, in addition to employing dialectal features,
such as ‫ هانم‬as well as culture-specific expressions, such as ‫‘ هللا يسامحك‬May
God forgive you’. As such, the mode of discourse here is written to be
spoken. This should be reflected in the target text should you wish to main-
tain the register.
Connecting the dots (2): Appraisal and translation
According to Martin and White (2005: 33), ‘appraisal’ can be defined as

the “interpersonal system at the level of discourse semantics”. The inter-
personal system gives issues such as “mood, modality, forms of address,
pronoun choice and ‘evaluative epithets’” full consideration with a view to
identifying the meaning that can be expressed by these grammatical and lex-
ical categories (Munday 2012: 14). However, it is worth noting that “much
of appraisal is expressed by lexical choices and there are few grammatical
structures that can be seen as having evolved with a primarily evaluative
function” (Thompson 2004: 75). Although appraisal theory belongs to the
interpersonal metafunction of Halliday’s systemic functional grammar,
Note that the word
‘metafunction’
these three metafunctions –ideational metafunction (a function for relating
can be replaced experience), interpersonal metafunction (a function for creating interper-
with ‘meaning’ or sonal relationships), and textual metafunction (a function for organizing
‘function’.
information) – work hand in hand in creating certain patterns of meaning
(Eggins 1994/2004: 111; Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 599). The
three metafunctions construct three types of meanings: ‘representations’,
‘exchange’, and ‘messages’ (Thompson 2004: 30). However, the relation� -
ship between participants, whether characterized by solidarity (intimate
or distant), status (superior, inferior, or equal), or formality (formal or
informal), and so on, is determined by the superordinate effect of the inter-
personal metafunction.
Appraisal theory has been developed by Martin (1992a, 1992b, 1995a,
1995b) and White (1998, 2000, 2003) since the early 1990s; its cat� -
egories “have been put to the test in numerous contexts and, as a con-
sequence, modifications (an ongoing process) have been made” (Coffin
and O’Halloran 2006: 84). Appraisal theory comprises three main sematic
systems, as shown and explained below:
(1) ‘Attitude’, referring to one’s feeling and opinion about something or

somebody (e.g. ‘Your email pleased me’).
(2) ‘Engagement’, referring to the sources of an attitude and how

language users position themselves concerning the attributed material,
whether acknowledging it (e.g. ‘Somebody said …’), endorsing it (e.g.
‘Somebody made it clear …’), or distancing themselves from it (e.g.
‘Somebody claimed …’).
(3) ‘Graduation’, referring to how an attitude is graded (e.g. ‘She is a very
clever girl’).
Attitude
‘Attitude’ refers to one’s feeling or opinion about something or somebody.
If it is about something, then we have an example of ‘appreciation’ that can
be subdivided according to Martin and White (2005) into ‘reaction’, ‘com�-
position’, or ‘valuation’. However, if it is about somebody, then we have an
example of ‘judgement’, which has something to do with such notions as
ethical versus unethical, honest versus dishonest, normal versus abnormal,
and so on. Judgement is categorized by Martin and White (2005) into two
main groups: ‘social esteem’ and ‘social sanction’. Social esteem, i.e. how
special (normality), capable (capacity), and resolute (tenacity) people are, Identify the type of
involves admiration or criticism. Social sanction, i.e. how truthful people ‘judgement’ in this
sentence:
are (veracity) or how ethical people are (propriety), however, involves ‘She is naughty’.
praise or condemnation. Below are illustrative examples.
However, when the attitudinal assessment is concerned with emotions

such as happiness versus unhappiness (emotions that have something to
do with ‘affairs of the heart’, such as happiness, sadness, love, and hate),
satisfaction versus dissatisfaction (feelings of peace, fear, confidence,
and trust), or security versus insecurity (feelings that have something to
do with achievement and frustration, whose source is the activities we are

engaged in), then we have an example of ‘affect’, as shown in the following
three sentences:
I feel tired. (by virtue of the process of sensing expressed by the verb
‘to feel’ we have an example of ‘affect’ as we are talking about our
feelings)
She is a strong girl. (by virtue of the evaluative word ‘strong’ we have an
example of ‘judgement’ as we are evaluating somebody’s character)
It is a boring lecture. (by virtue of the evaluative word ‘boring’ we have
an example of ‘appreciation’ as we are evaluating something, i.e. the
lecture)
To translate appropriately, that is, reflecting the language user’s attitude,

evaluatively active words should be paid extra attention in translating from
language A to language B. To explain, let us translate the following simple
sentence into German, French, Turkish, Arabic, and Persian.
English His lecture was terribly boring.

German Sein Vortrag war furchtbar langweilig.
Back translation His lecture was terribly boring.
French Son cours était terriblement ennuyeux.
Back translation His class was terribly boring.
Turkish Onun dersi çok sıkıcıydı.
Back translation His/her lecturer was very boring.
Arabic .‫كانت محاضرته مملة‬
Back translation His lecture was boring.
Persian .‫سخنرانی‌اش به‌شدت کسل‌کننده بود‬
Back translation His lecture was extremely boring.
In English, due to the presence of the evaluatively active word ‘boring’, the
language user’s negative attitude towards the lecture can be easily figured out.
This negative attitude is further emphasized through the use of the adverb ‘ter-
ribly’. This negative attitude was also reflected in the German, French, Turkish,
and Persian translations. However, in Arabic, the translator decided not to
translate ‘terribly’, thus scaling down the language user’s attitude. Had s/he
opted for a translation like ‫‘ كانت محاضرته مملة جدًا‬His lecture was very boring’,
s/he would have produced an accurate translation. To reinforce this point, let
us discuss the following authentic example quoted from Gu (2020: 183) where
the Chinese premier refuted what had been hinted by the journalist that the
cause of the widespread corruption in China is one-party rule.
ST 我看不出这个反腐败的问题一个党执政，多党轮流
(Chinese) 执政有什么太大的关系[…]关键是法制，尤其要坚决
地执法，- 中国在这方面已经取得了很大的成绩。
Back I don’t see that this anti-corruption issue has anything

translation significant to do with one-party rule or multi-party rule
… the key is the rule of law, especially to strictly enforce
the law. China has in this respect achieved great results.
TT (English) I do not see a very significant link or clear logic between
fighting corruption on the one hand and exercising
one-party rule or multi-party rule … in my view the
key is for us to work to build our legal system and also
to exercise very strict law enforcement in our country.
So in fact, we have already made significant result and
accomplishment.
F un ctional lin g ui sti c s 1 87
In this example, as the back translation shows, the hint that the cause of
the widespread corruption in China is the one-party rule is denied by the
Chinese premier who holds the view that this anti-corruption issue has
nothing significant to do with one-party rule or multi-party rule. In the
target text, however, the Chinese premier’s attitude towards the attributed
material was scaled up by the interpreter when adding the noun phrase
‘clear logic’. Further, the emphatic ‘in fact’ and the noun ‘accomplish-
ment’ were added by the interpreter, thereby “foregrounding (Fairclough
1995) China’s positive achievements made in the enforcement of law as
‘fact’ that is irrefutable and praiseworthy. Such metadiscursive (re)framing
leads to a more favourable presentation of the self, in this case the Chinese
government” (Gu 2020: 183).
Attitudinal assessment
Attitudinal assessment whether ‘affect’, ‘judgement’, or ‘appreciation’ Identify the type
of attitudinal
can be classified into positive or negative attitudes. Further, they can be assessment,
classified into ‘inscribed’ (i.e. explicit regardless of the context, as in whether it is an
‘ugly’) or ‘invoked’ (i.e. implicit and contextually based, as in ‘big’), as ‘affect’, ‘judgement’,
or ‘appreciation’
summarized below: in the following
sentence:
‘The film made me
cry last night’.
Invoked attitudes (also known as ‘invocations’) can be further subclassified

into two main types: ‘evocations’ and ‘provocations’, as shown below:
Identify the type
of attitudinal
assessment,
whether it is
‘inscribed’ or
‘invoked’, in this
sentence:
‘The man with
the red hair is
Evocations refer to informational content, which is content that invokes handsome’.
an attitudinal response by the text recipient (be it negative or positive)
not because of the attitudinal qualities that they have, but because the
text producer, with the intention to trigger an attitudinal response in the
text recipient, decides to (1) select those evaluatively inactive elements,
(2) place them beside evaluatively active elements, and then (3) impli-
citly invite the text recipient to make a connection among the evaluative
and non-evaluative elements. So, the text producer triggers the
attitudinal response in the text recipient only if they share the same
assumption.
Provocation, on the other hand, is a mechanism employed by language users

(be they writers or speakers) to trigger/provoke in their readers/listeners’
minds a particular attitudinal response (negative or positive). According to
Martin and White (2005), provocations can be realized by virtue of certain
techniques, such as ‘intensification through non-core lexis’, ‘metaphor’,
‘counter-expectancy’, ‘distancing formulations’, and so on. Accordingly,
provocations are not of themselves evaluative, but are rather contextually
based, standing somewhere between ‘inscribed’, i.e. explicit attitudes, and
‘evoked’, i.e. implicit attitudes (Martin and White 2005: 67). To explain,
let us consider the following example taken from a documentary film titled
The Fall: Final Days of the Caliphate subtitled by CNN Arabic as‫ السّقوط‬:
‫آخر أيام خالفة داعش المزعومة‬:
Will the language

English In defeat, the men of the so-called Islamic State bow their
user’s attitude heads and cover their faces.
be changed if we
remove the distan-
Arabic .‫ أحنى مقاتلو ما تسمى بالدولة اإلسالمية رؤوسهم وغطوا وجوههم‬،‫بانهزام‬
cing formulation ‘so Back In defeat, the fighters of the so-called Islamic State bowed
called’? Discuss.
translation their heads and covered their faces.
In this example, there are certain evaluatively inactive materials, i.e. they
are not evaluative in themselves, such as ‘the men of the Islamic State’,
‘bow their heads’, and ‘cover their faces’. However, by placing them with
evaluatively active materials, such as the preposition phrase functioning as
a comment adjunct ‘in defeat’ and the distancing formulation ‘so-called’,
the speaker invites his readers/listeners to make connections among those
evaluative and non-evaluative materials with the potential to reinforce
the negative response in his audience towards the men of ISIS and ISIS
itself. These examples of inscribed attitude (‘in defeat’), provoked attitude
expressed by the distancing formulation ‘so-called’, and evoked
Can we consider
the translation
attitude expressed by the evaluatively inactive materials ‘the men of the
of ‘men’ into Islamic State’, ‘bow their heads’, and ‘cover their faces’ were accurately
‫‘ مقاتلو‬fighters’ as reflected by the translator apart from changing ‘men’ into ‫‘ مقاتلو‬fighters’. It
an example of
‘particularization’?
is worth noting that placing the lexical item ‫‘ مقاتلو‬fighters’ whose denota-
tive meaning is narrower and less specific compared with ‘men’ beside ‫أحنى‬
‘bowed’ scales up the speaker’s attitude towards those men of ISIS. As

such, this can be considered as an example of intervention by the translator.
However, we are not sure whether the translator intervened on purpose or
by accident.
Engagement
Engagement, as a semantic system, deals with the sources of the attitude.
According to Bakhtin (1981), discourses can be classified into two main
types: ‘monoglossic’, one voice, and ‘heteroglossic’, more than one voice,
as shown below:
F un ctional lin g ui s ti c s 1 8 9
When a discourse is monoglossic, there is no reference to any external

viewpoint other than the author’s. However, when the discourse is hetero-
glossic, the source of voice refers to different voices, not only the author’s.
Martin (2003) holds that language users can “position one opinion in
relation to another” in a variety of ways, such as “quoting or reporting,
acknowledging a possibility, denying, countering, affirming and so on” (174).
As regards heteroglossic discourses, they are classified by Martin and
White (2005) into two main types: ‘expansion’ (in the form of ‘attribution’
or ‘entertainment’) and ‘contraction’ (in the form of ‘proclaiming’ or
‘disclaiming’), as shown below:
Note that ‘entertain-

ment’ refers to the
use of those words
and structures
(e.g. ‘may’, ‘I think’,
‘possibly’, etc.)
that would indicate
there are other pos-
sible positions other
than the author’s,
thus making
dialogic space
for them.
To begin with ‘contraction’, it refers to the act of contracting the dialogic
space instead of opening it up. Contraction is classified by Martin and
White (2005) into two main types, namely ‘proclaiming’ and ‘disclaiming’,
as shown below:
(1) ‘Proclaiming’ can be achieved by:

(a) ‘concurrence’: using formulations that explicitly show the language
Identify the type of

‘contraction’ in the
user’s agreement with a projected dialogic partner. Concurrence
following sentence:
can be realized by certain words and expressions, including ‘of ‘Although she felt
course’, ‘naturally’, ‘certainly’, and ‘admittedly’ (122); tired yesterday,
she carried on
(b) ‘pronouncement’: using a formulation that “involves authorial
teaching’.
emphases or explicit authorial interventions” as in the use of ‘I
contend …’, ‘the facts of the matter are …’, ‘the truth of the matter
is …’, etc. (127).
(2) ‘Disclaiming’ refers to the act of condensing the dialogic space
instead of opening it up. This can be achieved by denying the current
proposition (denial) or representing “the current proposition as
replacing or supplanting, and thereby ‘countering’, a proposition
which would have been expected in its place” (Martin and White
2005: 120).
As regards ‘expansion’, the language user allows other voices to be heard

in the form of ‘attribution’ or ‘entertainment’, i.e. it leaves good space
for “dialogically alternative positions and voices” (Martin and White
2005: 102). Let us consider the following example quoted from Götz
(2021: 157) to see how the interpreter managed to maintain the same dia-
logical space opened up by the effect of ‘azt gondolom’ meaning ‘I think’.
ST (Hungarian) … azt gondolom, hogy új nemzetközi jogi keretet

kell kialakítani.
Back translation … I think that a new international legal framework
needs to be created.
TT (English) … I think that a new international legal framework
needs to be established.
In the following example, however, the translators acted differently, as

shown here:
English I think she has already travelled.

German Sie ist schon gereist.
Back translation She has already travelled.
French Je pense qu’elle a déjà voyagé.
Back translation I think she has already travelled.
Thai เดาว่่าหล่่อนคงเดิินทางไปแล้้ว / dao wa lon khong doenthang

pai laew.
Back translation I guess [that] she has travelled already.
Arabic .‫بالطبع أنها سافرت‬
Back translation Of course she has travelled.
In this example, by means of the process of sensing expressed by the verb ‘to
think’, we have a case of engagement (expansion: entertainment). This was
reflected in French and Thai when opting for ‘Je pense’ meaning ‘I think’
and เดาว่า (dao wa) meaning ‘I guess’, respectively. However, in German,
no space is opened up for alternative voices to be heard, thus changing the
text type from a heteroglossic to a monoglossic one. In Arabic, however, by
virtue of ‫‘ بالطبع‬of course’, the shared belief, i.e. ‘she has already travelled’,
is represented as very widely held in the current communicative context,

thereby excluding any dialogistic alternatives from the ongoing colloquy.
To put it differently, in Arabic through the use of ‫‘ بالطبع‬of course’, we have
an example of contraction, more accurately concurrence. Below is another
example:
English She claimed that he had attended yesterday’s meeting.

French Elle a dit qu’il avait assisté à la réunion d’hier.
German Sie behauptete, er habe am gestrigen Treffen
teilgenommen.
Spanish Ella dijo que él había asistido a la reunión de ayer.
Thai เธออ้้างว่่าเขาเข้้าประชุุมเมื่่�อวาน
thoe ang wa khao khao prachum mueawan
Turkish Dünkü toplantıya katıldığını söyledi.
By virtue of the framing verb ‘to claim’, we here have an example of

engagement (expansion: attribution), where an external voice can be heard
alongside the authorial voice. It is an example of ‘distancing’ where the
writer explicitly distances him/herself from the attributed material. This
was reflected in German and Thai, respectively, when the translators opted
for ‘behauptete’ and อ้างว่า meaning ‘claimed’. However, in the French,
Spanish, and Turkish translations, the translators translated it into ‘dit’,
‘dijo’, and ‘söyledi’, respectively, meaning ‘said’, thereby changing the
type of attribution from ‘distancing’ to ‘acknowledging’. To reinforce
this point, let us reconsider the following example adopted from Farghal
(2008: 4) and discussed in Chapter 7:
ST (English) In an interview with Newsweek yesterday, the Israeli

Defense Minister said that the Palestinian suicide
operations constitute the main cause for the Israeli
troops entering cities in the West Bank.
TT (Arabic) ‫ادعى وزير الحرب الصهيوني في مقابلة مع مجلة النيوزويك أمس أن‬
‫العمليات االستشهادية الفلسطينية هي السبب الرئيس في اجتياح قوات‬

.‫االحتالل اإلسرائيلي للمدن الفلسطينية في الضفة الغربية المحتلة‬
Back In an interview with the Newsweek yesterday, the
translation Zionist War Minister claimed that the Palestinian mar-
tyrdom operations are the main cause for the Zionist
troops storming Palestinian cities in the occupied West
Bank.
Here, as discussed in Chapter 7, the text is heteroglossic, i.e. there is

more than one voice: the authorial voice and the Sayer of the process
of saying expressed by the verb ‘to say’. This neutral verb ‘to say’ was
translated into ‫‘ ادعى‬to claim’, thus changing the language user’s attitude
towards the attributed material. In the original text, it is an example of
‘acknowledgement’, where there is no explicit indication as to where the

language user stands concerning the proposition. However, in the target
text, by means of the framing verb ‫‘ ادعى‬to claim’, we have a case of ‘dis-
tancing’ where the language user was presented as distancing him/herself
from the attributed material.
Graduation
‘Graduation’, as a semantic system, is concerned with how the degree of
appraisal, i.e. attitude or engagement, is adjusted; it deals with the main
resources of grading that can be used by writers and speakers to scale up or
scale down the strength of their attitude or engagement (Martin and White
2005: 135). Graduation resources are divided by Martin and White (2005)
into two main types, ‘force’ and ‘focus’, as shown below:
Identify the type

of ‘graduation’,
whether it is ‘force’
or ‘focus’ in the
following sentence: While the first type, ‘force’, is based on “grading according to intensity or
‘He has helped us
a great deal’. amount”, as in the use of ‘extremely’, ‘fairly’, ‘a bit’, ‘somehow’, ‘fairly’,
‘very’, ‘utterly’, etc., the second type, ‘focus’, is based on “grading according
to prototypicality and the preciseness”, as in the use of words and expressions
like ‘true’, ‘a kind of’, and ‘a sort of’ (Martin and White 2005: 137).
So, through the resources of graduation, the writer/speaker can add a
personal meaning to the text that s/he is trying to produce, as shown in the
following example:
Here, without relying on the context, facial expressions, and so on, the
simple sentence ‘She is a girl’ is a non-evaluative sentence. However, by
the effect of the evaluative words used, namely ‘aggressive’, ‘a little bit’,
and ‘very’, in addition to adjusting the degree of the appraisal and chan-
ging a non-gradable word ‘girl’ to a gradable one, a personal meaning is
added that can help us figure out the language user’s attitude towards the
girl, whether negative or positive. This personal meaning along with the
degree of appraisal should be given adequate consideration by translators.

By way of illustration, let us consider the following example taken from a
documentary film titled The Fall: Final Days of the Caliphate subtitled by
CNN Arabic as ‫ آخر أيام خالفة داعش المزعومة‬:‫السّقوط‬:
ST (English) Syrian Democratic Forces have made good progress

within the town, but they are encountering some resist-
ance from the ISIS fighters. This despite the constant
heavy coalition airstrikes on the town.
TT (Arabic) ‫ لكنها تواجه‬،‫قوات سوريا الديمقراطية حققت تقدما ً جيداً في المدينة‬
‫ هذا رغم القصف الجوي الكثيف للتحالف على‬.‫مقاومة من مقاتلي داعش‬
.‫البلدة‬
Back Syrian Democratic Forces have made good progress
translation within the city, but they are encountering resistance
from the ISIS fighters. This despite the heavy coalition
airstrikes on the town.
Here, the evaluatively active words ‘good’ and ‘heavy’ were taken into
account by the translator when opting for ‫‘ جيدًا‬good’ and ‫‘ كثيف‬heavy’.
Further, the lexical item ‘town’, which is a scaled-down version of the lex-
ical item ‘city’, was given adequate consideration by the translator when
opting for ‫‘ بلدة‬town’ rather than ‫‘ مدينة‬city’. However, the evaluatively inert
word ‘constant’ was ignored. By virtue of the lexical item ‘constant’, the
process of doing expressed implicitly through the compound complex word
‘airstrikes’ is drawn out over a period of time. However, the translator
decided not to translate it at all, thus weakening the relationship between the
source text and the target text. Had s/he opted for the lexical item ‫المتواصل‬
‘constant’ in a rendering of the following kind ‫هذا رغم القصف الجوي الكثيف‬
‫ والمتواصل للتحالف على البلدة‬, s/he would have created a similar mental image.
Without the lexical item ‫‘ المتواصل‬constant’, we are not sure if the process of
doing is characterized by having breaks and interruptions or not. As regards
the speaker’s attitude towards these propositions, here the ideational con-
tent can guide the reader to the stance adopted by the speaker. However,
the speaker decided to use indicators of counter-expectancy, such as ‘but’
and ‘despite’, to further “alert the reader that attitudinal values” are there
(Martin and White 2005: 67). So, the whole scene here is not dynamically
neutral, but rather characterized by a ‘force dynamic’ value of forcing the
Syrian Democratic Forces, who tend to carry on making more progress, not
to make that progress (for more details on ‘force dynamics’, see Chapter 12).
Connecting the dots (3): Cohesion and translation
Any text, according to de Beaugrande and Dressler (1981), should include

seven criteria:
(1) ‘Cohesion’, referring to the surface relationships among the

components of the text.
(2) ‘Coherence’, referring to how the text hangs conceptually.

(3) ‘Intentionality’, referring to the language user’s goals.
(4) ‘Acceptability’, referring to the relevancy and importance of the text
to the reader.
(5) ‘Informativity’, referring to the amount of new information the text
contains.
(6) ‘Situationality’, referring to the relevancy of the text to its context of
situation.
(7) ‘Intertextuality’, referring to the relationship of the text with, and its
dependency on, other texts.
The first two criteria (cohesion and coherence) can be defined as ‘text
internal’, which make the text hang together cohesively and coherently,
whereas other five criteria are ‘text external’ (cf. Titscher et al. 2000: 22;
Almanna 2016: 126).
Cohesion is divided by Halliday and Hasan (1976) into two main types:
(1) ‘Grammatical cohesion’ that includes ‘reference’, ‘substitution’,

‘ellipsis’, and ‘conjunction’.
(2) ‘Lexical cohesion’ that covers ‘reiteration’ and ‘collocation’.
However, there are several cohesive devices that do not fall under any of
these headings, such as thematic progression, parallel structures, and con-
tinuity of tense, aspect, and mood (cf. Hall 2008: 171), as explained below.
Reference
‘Reference’ refers to the use of pronouns, articles, or adverbs to refer back-
ward or forward to an item in the text, thereby creating an anaphoric (refer-
ring backward to an item within the text) or cataphoric (referring forward
to an item within the text) cohesive relation within the text, as in:
Look at the girl. She is very tall. (the pronoun ‘she’ refers back to the
noun phrase ‘the girl’, thus creating an anaphoric reference)
In addition to his visit to Kuwait, the prime minister visited Iraq. (the
possessive adjective ‘his’ refers forward to the noun phrase ‘the prime
minister’, thus creating a cataphoric reference)
Substitution
‘Substitution’ refers to the act of replacing one lexical item or expression
with another. In English, substitution is achieved by certain words, such as
‘one’, ‘ones’, ‘same’, ‘do’, ‘does’, ‘did’, ‘so’, and ‘not’, as in:
This bottle of water isn’t cold. Can you give me another one? (here
the phrase ‘this bottle of water’ is replaced with the pronoun ‘one’)
Ellipsis
‘Ellipsis’ refers to the omission of some elements from the text without
affecting the overall meaning, as in:
Last year, Tom published a book, but Suzan Ø an article. (here, the
finite verb ‘published’ is omitted, thus creating a cohesive relation
within the text)
Conjunction
‘Conjunction’ makes the segments of a given passage hang together as a
cohesive text. The relationship between the cojoined segments is marked
when a conjunct is used, i.e. explicit conjunction; otherwise, it is unmarked
when no conjunct is used, i.e. implicit conjunction, as shown in the
following example:
She invited all her friends to her birthday party, but nobody came.
(here, these two finite clauses are in a countering relationship marked
by virtue of the linking word ‘but’)
Reiteration
‘Reiteration’ refers to the process of making a passage hang together
as a cohesive text by recruiting the different relations the lexical items
have in a given language, such as ‘synonymy’ (as in ‘child’ and ‘kid’),
‘antonymy’ (as in ‘big’ and ‘small’), ‘whole–part’ (as in ‘body’ and
‘leg’), ‘part–whole’ (as in ‘window’ and ‘room’), ‘part–part’ (as in ‘eye’
and ‘nose’), ‘homophony’ (as in ‘buy’ and ‘bye’), ‘polysemy’ (as in the
word ‘eye’), ‘homonymy’ (as in the word ‘spring’), and ‘general words’
(as in ‘burger’ and ‘hamburger’). For more information, see Chapter 6
of this book.
Collocation
‘Collocation’ refers to the tendency of some words to collocate with others,
thereby contributing to text connectivity. The word ‘heavy’ collocates

well with lexical items such as ‘rain’, ‘meal’, and ‘smoker’, and the word
‘smart’ collocates well with lexical items such as ‘boy’ and ‘phone’.
Repetition
‘Repetition’ refers to a repetition of the syntactic and semantic configur-
ation so as to balance ideas of equal importance, as in this example quoted
from Greene’s (1980: 9–10) The Bomb Party:
I think that I used to detest Doctor Fischer more than any other
man I have known just as I loved his daughter more than any
other woman.
Parallelism
‘Parallelism’, labelled ‘iconic linkage’ by House (1997: 45), refers to
repeated occurrence of a particular syntactic and semantic configuration in
juxtaposition, thereby contributing to text connectivity, as in:
The boy was in the living room, reading a novel, while the girl was in
the kitchen, preparing the lunch.
Thematic progression
‘Thematic progression’ refers to such features as the organization of the
themes and rhemes and how they stay the same or change over the course
of the text. In terms of markedness, themes (what the clauses are concerned
with) are classified by Baker (1992) into two types: ‘marked themes’, i.e.
unusual or atypical, and ‘unmarked themes’, i.e. usual or typical. When
translating between languages, the issue of markedness should be given
full consideration. Consider the following example:
English It was the girl who helped the injured boy.

German Das Mädchen half dem verletzten Jungen.
Back translation The girl helped the injured boy.
Arabic .‫ساعدت الفتاةُ الولد المجروح‬
Back translation The girl helped the injured boy.
Here, the noun phrase ‘the girl’ in English is a marked theme created by
using a cleft structure. However, in German and Arabic, the theme becomes
unmarked. This is an example of a shift in thematic progression.
Continuity of tense, aspect, mood, etc.

This refers to the use of the same combination of tense and aspect or mood
in a passage, thus creating cohesive relations within the text, as in this
example:
One night, three thieves stole a lot of money from a rich man’s house.
They put the money in a bag and went to the forest. They felt very
hungry. So, one of them went to a nearby village to buy food. The
other two remained in the forest to take care of the bag of money.
Here, the events occurred in the past (tense) and the emphasis is placed
on the completion of the actions (aspect). Combining tense and aspect in
this passage in addition to other cohesive devices makes the passage hang
together as a cohesive text.
Studies on cohesion shifts that occur while translating from language A
to language B (cf. Blum-Kulka 1986/2004; Hoey 1991; Baker 1992; House
2004, 2006; Almanna 2016; among others) demonstrate that languages
have different textual conventions and preferences in the use of certain
F un ctional lin g ui sti c s 1 97
patterns of cohesion, in particular with regard to lexical repetition, refer-

ence, substitution, and conjunction. Blum-Kulka (1986/2004) hypothesizes
that translators tend to explicate what is implicitly expressed in the source
text, thereby increasing the cohesive ties in the target language. But the
question that arises here is related to the issue of directionality.
Using a corpus of translations of children’s books from English into
German and vice versa, House (2004) concludes that directionality
should be given full consideration when the issue of explicitation is
discussed. This is because procedures of explicitation which are common
in translations from English into German are not traceable in the other
translational direction (for more details, see the discussion on ‘transla-
tion universals’ in the first chapter of this book). The same holds true
for Arabic–English translation. In translating a narrative text from
English into Arabic, translators tend to add certain linking words, thus
explicitating what is implicitly expressed in the source text. However,
when translating from Arabic into English, translators tend to omit some
of those linking words, in particular the additive connector ‫‘ و‬and’ and
‫‘ فـ‬so’, etc. To explain, let us consider the into-Arabic translation of
this short text extracted from Mary Ali’s text titled Women’s Liberation
through Islam (published on 24 June 2013):
ST Today people think that women are liberated in the West

and that the women’s liberation movement began in the
20th century. [Implicit connector] Actually, the women’s lib-
eration movement was not begun by women, but was
revealed by God to a man in the seventh century by the
name of Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of
God be upon him, the last Prophet of God. [Implicit connector]
The Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet are the sources
from which every Muslim woman derives her rights and
duties.
TT ‫يشيع اليو َم بين الناس اعتقاد بأن نساء الغرب ينعمن بالحرية وأن بداية‬
‫ أن‬،‫ في الحقيقة‬،‫ ولكن‬.‫حركة تحرير المرأة تعود إلى القرن العشرين‬
‫ بل أوحى بها هللا‬،‫النساء لم يكن لهن يد في إطالق شرارة هذه الحركة‬
‫سبحانه وتعالى على نبيه محمد (صلى هللا عليه وسلم) خاتم األنبياء والرّسل‬
‫ فـالقرآن الكريم والسّنة النّبوية هما المصدران‬.ّ‫في القرن السابع الميالدي‬
.‫اللذان يحددان للمرأة حقوقها وواجباتها‬
Back Today, it is widely believed that women in the West
translation enjoy freedom and that the beginning of the women’s
liberation movement dates back to the twentieth century.
But, in fact, the women did not have a hand in sparking
this movement. Rather, God Almighty revealed it to
His Prophet Mohammad (may God bless him and grant
him peace), the Seal of the Prophets and Messengers in
the seventh century AD. And the Holy Qur’an and the
Sunnah are the two sources that determine women’s
rights and duties.
Here, the translator explicated the relationship between the first two
sentences by opting for the linking word ‘but’, thus indicating that these
two sentences are in a countering relation. Similarly, he added the linking
word ‫‘ فـ‬so’ to connect the last two sentences. Added to this, he opted for
increasing other cohesive ties, such as collocation when resorting to words
and expressions that collocate well in Arabic, such as ‫‘ يشيع اعتقاد‬to be widely
believed’, ‫‘ ينعمن بالحرية‬to enjoy freedom’, ‫‘ ليس لهن يد‬having no hand’, ‫إطالق‬
‫‘ شرارة‬to spark’, ‫‘ األنبياء والرّسل‬prophets and messengers’, and the like.
Connecting the dots (4): Translation assessment
In her original translation assessment model (1977/1981) and her revised

models (1997, 2015, 2018a), House characterizes her approach as one in
which translation is viewed as an act of ‘re-contextualization’, emphasizing
the crucial importance of the contextual embeddedness of any text. Without
acknowledging the importance of context for a text, its meaning cannot be
determined (House 2006). Another important concept underlying House’s
model is ‘functional equivalence’ and the question of whether such equiva-
lence can be achieved in translation. Given such a view of translation,
Hallidayan register analysis (see above) offered itself as an appropriate
methodology for constructing a model for translation quality assessment.
House modified and extended register analysis to include notions from
discourse analysis, pragmatics, and corpus linguistics to provide a work-
able procedure for in-depth analysis of the source and the translation texts,
facilitating a systematic comparison of the resultant textual ‘profiles’ and a
final statement of the translation quality.
In House’s view, ‘field’ refers to the subject matter and social action,
covering the specificity of lexical items. Tenor refers to “the addresser’s
temporal, geographical and social provenance as well as his/her intellectual,
emotional or affective stance (his/her) ‘personal viewpoint’)” (1997: 109;
2015: 64) and ‘social attitude’, referring to formal, consultative, or informal
style. Mode refers to the channel of communication (spoken/written, etc.)
and the degree of participation between addresser and addressee (mono-
logue, dialogue, etc.).
The procedure suggested by House’s model consists of the following steps:
(1) A detailed linguistic analysis of the source text is conducted using the
register categories provided in the model. The outcome of this analysis
is a textual profile of the source text.
(2) The source text’s genre and the translation text’s genre are
compared.
(3) Then, a ‘statement of function’ of the source text is made.This
function consists of ideational and interpersonal components. While
the ideational component relates to what information is conveyed
and how it is conveyed, the interpersonal function relates to what the
relationship is like between the text’s author and his/her audience.
F un ctional lin g ui s ti c s 1 9 9
(4) The same descriptive process is then carried out for the target text.
(5) The textual profiles of the source and target texts are compared,
resulting in a statement of ‘mismatches’ or errors. These are
categorized according to the situational dimensions of register and
genre used in House’s model. Such dimensional errors are referred to
as ‘covertly erroneous errors’ (House 1997: 45) to distinguish them
from ‘overtly erroneous errors’, which are ‘denotative mismatches’
(i.e. errors that give an incorrect semantic meaning compared to
the source text) or ‘target system errors’ (i.e. errors which do not
conform to the formal grammatical or lexical requirements of the
target language).
(6) Then a ‘statement of quality’ is made of the translation.
(7) Finally, there is one of two types of translation: ‘overt translation’ or
‘covert translation’.
Here is a diagram showing the parts of the model and how they are
connected:

According to House (2018a:89), an overt translation, as explained in
Chapter 8 of this book, is a type of translation in which functional equiva� -
lence cannot be achieved because of the singularity of the text as a source
culture event (e.g. a speech at a certain time and place given by a prom-
inent person). In an overt translation, the source text is, as far as possible,
preserved such that the linguistic forms and structures often ‘shine through’
in the translation text. The translation is ‘overt’ because it is quite overtly a
translation, not an original text.
A covert translation, on the other hand, is a type of translation in
which the function of the source text can be maintained, such that the
translation enjoys the status of an original source text in the target cul-
ture. The translation is covert because it is not marked pragmatically as
a translation of a source text but may, conceivably, have been created
in its own right as an independent text. In order to keep the function

Think of any trans- of the source text equivalent in the translation text, a so-called ‘cul-
lation in which the tural filter’ needs to be inserted between the source text and its transla-
translator inserted a
‘cultural filter’? tion. The cultural filter is an instrument by means of which a translator
makes the translation compatible with target culture discourse norms
and preferences.
In evaluating a translation, it is essential that the fundamental
differences between these two types of translation be taken into account.
Overt and covert translations clearly make very different demands on
translation evaluation. The difficulty of evaluating an overt translation is
reduced in that considerations of cultural filtering can be omitted. Overt
translations are “more straightforward”, the originals being taken over
“unfiltered” and “simply” transposed from the source to the target cul-
ture in the medium of a new language. The major difficulty in trans-
lating overtly is, of course, finding linguistic-cultural ‘equivalents’,
particularly along the dimension of tenor and its characterizations of the
author’s temporal, social, and geographical provenance. However, here
we deal with overt manifestations of cultural phenomena which must be
transferred only because they happen to be manifest linguistically in the
original.
In translation quality assessment, it is important to be maximally aware
of the difference between scientifically based linguistic analysis and social
judgement (relating to values, ideology, identity, gender issues etc.) in
evaluating any translation. In this volume we clearly prioritize linguistic
analysis as a more reliable and valid path to assessing the quality of a
translation.
To exemplify, consider the following text taken from House (2018b:
156).
ST Suppose you are a doctor in an emergency room and

(English) a patient tells you she was raped two hours earlier.
She is afraid she may have been exposed to HIV, the
virus that causes AIDS but has heard that there is a
“morning-after pill” to prevent HIV infection. Can you
in fact do anything to block the virus from replicating

and establishing infection?
TT In der Notfallaufnahme eines Krankenhauses berichtet
(German) eine Patientin, sie sei vor zwei Stunden vergewaltigt
worden und nun in Sorge, AIDS-Erregern ausgesetzt zu
sein, sie habe gehört, es gebe eine „Pille danach“, die
eine HIV-Infektion verhüte. Kann der Arzt überhaupt
etwas tun, was eventuell vorhandene Viren hindern
würde, sich zu vermehren und sich dauerhaft im
Körper einzunisten?
Back In the emergency room of a hospital a patient reports

translation that she had been raped two hours ago and was now
worrying that she had been exposed to the AIDS-Virus.
She said she had heard that there was an “After-Pill”,
which might prevent an HIV-Infection. Can the doctor
in fact do anything which might prevent potentially
existing viruses from replicating and establishing them-
selves permanently in the body?
In this example, we can see how in the English source text an effort is
made to ‘draw the reader into the text’ by simulating interaction between
the writer and reader. The reader is addressed directly (‘you’) and asked
questions. In the German translation, however, this is not the case: there
is no interaction, just a sober description. The translation can be under-
stood as governed by an attempt to adapt the text to the preferences of the
German target audience, a clear case of the operation of a cultural filter.
Note that the changes made in the translation mostly concern the tenor of
the text. The scene in the hospital in the German translation is presented,
as it were, ‘from the outside’, readers not being asked to actively engage
with what is presented.

they are false.
(1) Transitivity is defined by Halliday (1976) from a functional

point of view as a set of transitive verbs that requires
objects.
(2) In the sentence ‘My sister called me yesterday’, there is
one participant expressed by the noun phrase ‘my sister’.
(3) Grammatical cohesion is classified by Halliday and
Hasan (1976) into four types: ‘reference’, ‘reiteration’,

‘ellipsis’, and ‘substitution’.
(4) Written modes of discourse and spoken ones can be
related by utilizing, for instance, dialectal features.
(5) According to Halliday (1985), to transform our
experiences in life into wording, we need first to trans-
form them into meaning, which is, in turn, transformed
into wording.
(6) To create a feeling of solidarity and/or intimacy, writers
usually emphasize the distance between them and their
readers.
(7) In ‘He mentioned this to me yesterday’, the text is
monoglossic.
(8) Appraisal theory proposed by Martin and White (2005)

is made up of three main sematic systems: ‘affect’,
‘judgement’, and ‘appreciation’.
(9) According to Bell (1991), the mode of a given dis�-
course can be signalled via four overlapping scales
of level. These are (1) ‘personalization’ as opposed
to ‘impersonalization’, (2) ‘accessibility’ as opposed
to ‘inaccessibility’, (3) ‘social distance’ as opposed to
‘standing’, and (4) ‘formality’ as opposed to ‘informality’.
(10) The language in the sentence ‘She is a kind of mother’
is not evaluative.
Exercise 2: Select any literary text to conduct a simple register analysis

before translating it into your own language.
Exercise 3: Before translating the following sentences into your own lan-
guage, identify (1) the type of language (‘evaluative’ or ‘non-evaluative’)
and (2) the type of attitudinal assessment (‘affect’, ‘judgement’, or
‘appreciation’).
(1) I feel tired.

(2) The film made me cry.
(3) The film was lovely.
(4) The lecture was boring.
(5) The paragraph was inconsistent.
(6) The essay is creative.
(7) The proposal is strong.
(8) The girl is strong.
(9) She is a girl.
(10) Your email pleased me.
Exercise 4: Select any journalistic text and:

(1) translate it into your language, by assuming that your translation will
be published by a newspaper in your country;
(2) comment on your translation by using Martin and White’s (2005)
appraisal theory.

(1) In your opinion, what are the main criteria that can be used for
judging one translation as appropriate or inappropriate for a
particular situation?
(2) Is there any difference between ‘provocations’ and ‘evocations’ in
the sense Martin and White (2005) use these terms? Discuss.
(3) Do you agree with Hatim and Munday (2004: 187) who view
‘register theory’ as “one of the most significant contributions to
our understanding of the interaction between translation and

linguistics”?
(4) Go through any translated text from English into your own language
and carry out a register analysis using House’s (2015) model.
(5) Go through any translated book from your own language into
English and identify some examples where the translator explicitly
interpolates him/ herself in the target text, thereby twisting the
original message to varying degrees.
(6) Select any English text and translate it into your language. Then
comment on your own translation by referring to such notions as
‘reference’, ‘ellipsis’, ‘substitution’, ‘conjunction’, ‘collocation’, and
‘reiteration’.
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University Press.
Sociolinguistics 10
In this chapter, you are introduced to several sociolinguistic concepts,

including ‘social identity’, ‘social factors’, ‘social dimensions’, ‘code-
switching’, ‘convergence’, and ‘divergence’. These concepts are also
discussed in a direct link to translation.
After studying this chapter, readers should be able to find answers
to such sociolinguistic questions as ‘What is sociolinguistics?’, ‘What is
social identity?’, ‘What are the main social factors and dimensions that
should be taken into account while analysing and translating a text?’,
‘What is code-switching?’, ‘Why do people code-switch?’, ‘What are the
main types of code-switching?’, and ‘How do translators deal with texts
loaded with examples of code-switching?’.
Sociolinguistics is one of the branches of linguistics that utilizes the theories

and approaches of sociology and linguistics to understand the relationship Why is
between ‘society’ and ‘language’. Put at its simplest, sociolinguistics is an sociolinguistics an
interdisciplinary
interdisciplinary subject where the primary focus is on studying the rela- subject?
tionship between ‘society’ and ‘language’. As shown in this chapter and the
next one, sociolinguistics examines why people sometimes switch codes
while communicating with each other and how their linguistic choices are
influenced by aspects such as the social setting, social standing and rank, How does your
sense of belonging
and the relations that they have with each other. Further, sociolinguistics
influence your
explores the language variation that may occur at all levels (phonological, behaviour?
syntactic, semantic, etc.). Consider, for instance, the word ‘advertise- Discuss.
ment’. When you overhear a conversation between people talking about

different types of advertisements, you might find that they pronounce it in
a slightly different way. While some might pronounce it /əd’vɜː.tɪs.mənt/,
others might pronounce it /æd.vɝː’taɪz.mənt/. Similarly, for the word 和,
i.e. ‘and’, as in ‘you and I’, the standardized Mandarin version in mainland
China is pronounced as /he/, whereas the same word tends to be pronounced
as /han/in Taiwan. Sociolinguists are interested in such language variation.
They try to determine who are the people who use one pronunciation rather
than another. But why should sociolinguists be interested in analysing this
language variation? Because they are keen to find out why people use lan-
guage as they do, how they pronounce words, why they opt for particular
DOI: 10.4324/9781003228028-11
2 0 8 So c iolin g ui sti c s
words or structures, and why and how they contribute to determining their
social identity (for more details, see the next chapter).
Social Identity Theory
It is worth noting that people have “multiple identities, some of which are
Why do you
support your more personal and idiosyncratic and some of which are group identifications”
national football (Meyerhoff 2006/2011: 73). This theory, called Social Identity Theory, was
team when they
developed from what is called in the literature mini-group studies, led by
play against other
teams? Discuss. Henri Tajfel and his associates in the 1970s. In experiments conducted by
this group, it was found that “people readily see contrasts between groups
in terms of competition, and seek to find means of favouring” the in-group
How would over the out-group.
you define
The aim of this theory is to identify the circumstances under which
Social Identity
Theory (SIT)? people think of themselves as members of one group rather than another,
thus defining their place in society. Three psychological processes are
given full consideration while studying people’s social identity: ‘social cat-
egorization’, ‘social comparison’, and ‘social identification’.
Social categorization
Social categorization is a psychological process that refers to the tendency
Think of people
around you, identi- of people to think of themselves and others according to certain social cat-
fying their place in egories. For example, one may think of oneself as a schoolteacher, a father,
society according an activist, or a football fan.
to certain social
categories.
Social comparison
Think of different Social comparison is the second psychological process by which people
groups in your
society, including
divide society into different groups; each group has a certain social
their social standing and consists of certain members. Taxi drivers, for instance,
standing and group may be seen by themselves and others as having a lower social standing
members.
compared with engineers. When people from a group with a lower social
standing try to become members of a group with a higher social standing,
they need to increase their cultural capital, among other things. Pierre
Bourdieu (1986) holds that apart from economic capital, there are other
types of capital, such as symbolic, cultural, and social capital. Here,
What are the main
types of ‘capital’
Bourdieu adopts a broad perspective to reintroduce capital “in all its
according to Pierre forms and not only in the one form which is recognized by economic
Bourdieu? theory” (1986: 242). It thus becomes possible to outline the practice
of the social world as directed not only towards the acquisition of eco-
nomic capital but of all forms of capital. Cultural capital, according to
Bourdieu, takes one of three forms: (1) embodied, (2) objectified, and
(3) institutionalized, as shown below:
So c iolin g ui sti c s 2 0 9
In its embodied form, cultural capital consists of dispositions embodied in Why do people
the mind and body of the individual agent (Bourdieu 1986: 243), such as join schools and
competences, skills, knowledge, and capacities that people develop delib- universities?
erately through training and education or spontaneously through the uncon-
scious processes of socialization. In its objectified form, cultural capital
consists of human-created objects, such as pictures, books, instruments, or
machines. In its institutionalized form, cultural capital includes certificates
and degrees.
Social identification
Social identification is the third psychological process through which
people, while observing other individuals and groups, take into account
their sense of who they are and how they identify themselves in relation
to others based on what they have in common or what they do not have in
common. Identifying themselves in relation to others according to what
they have in common motivates them to make every possible effort to
achieve positive distinctiveness. Further, this sense of belonging motivates
people to favour some people over others on the basis of whether they How would you
define ‘in-group
are from their own group or not, thus resulting in what is called ‘in-group favouritism’?
favouritism’ or ‘in-group bias’ (Tajfel and Turner 1979).
To summarize, someone’s social identity can be defined as their
awareness of belonging to a particular group, involving (1) thinking of
oneself and others according to certain social categories (social categoriza-
tion), (2) comparing oneself with others in terms of having a higher social
standing or a lower social standing (social comparison), and (3) identifying
oneself in relation to other people based on shared characteristics (social

identification).
Connecting the dots (1): Social identity and translation

Social identity, as hinted at above, refers to how we identify ourselves in
Can your social
relation to others based on what we have in common. The way we use the identity be identified
language “provides clues to others about who we are, where we come from, in relation to others
according to what
and perhaps what kind of social experiences we have had” (Holmes 1992/
you do not have in
2013: 2). To elaborate, we can identify ourselves according to: common?
● our relationships with others: mother and son, father and daughter,
teacher and student, doctor and patient, lawyer and client, etc.;
2 1 0 So c iolin g ui s ti c s
● our religion: Muslim, Christian, Jewish, etc.;

● our occupation: teacher, mechanic, engineer, designer, artist, singer,
actor, etc.;
● our nationality: Japanese, Chinese, English, etc.;
Identify your social ● our city: Basra, Hamburg, London, New York, etc.;
identity according ● gender: female or male;
to your relation-
ship with others by ● sexual orientation: straight, homosexual, bisexual, etc.
touching on reli-
gion, occupation, However, identities are not always positive as sometimes some identities
nationality, city, and
gender. have negative overtones. In some countries in the Arab world, for
instance, there is a huge number of people who are called ‫بدون‬, which
literally means ‘without’, referring to people who were born in a country
and spent most of their life in it, but who do not have the nationality cer-
tificate of that country. Such identities are stigmatized, causing people
Think of other social who possess them to feel annoyed when they hear others labelling them
identities which are
stigmatized in your with these identities, even though they do actually embrace such iden-
society. tities. Similarly, illegal immigrants who came from African colonies or
the Middle East and North Africa to France, for instance, in the hope
of finding a good job or being granted asylum are identified in relation
to others on the basis of what they do not have in common – they are
less likely speak French or to speak it not according to the established
conventions and norms, and others look upon them as a threat to the sup-
posedly refined manners and culture of the French. Again, such identities
are stigmatized.
Why do you prefer
Such social identities give people a sense of belonging to one group
to socialize with rather than another. Not only does this provide them with a framework for
one group of socializing, but it also influences their behaviour. In experiments carried
people rather than
another?
out by Henri Tajfel and his associates in the early 1970s, it was found that
people tend to support the members of their group. This explains why
the same act performed by different people is sometimes praised and at
some other times denounced. In this regard, van Dijk (1998: 33; emphasis
his own) states that when we talk about good acts, “OUR people tend to
appear primarily as the actors” of these acts. However, when bad acts
are being talked of, they are assigned to THEIR people. This is because
we identify ourselves in relation with others based on what we have in

common.
Translation at its macro level is a complex activity as it involves more
than one agent. According to Nord (2002: 35), translation is seen as an
intercultural communicative interaction involving at least four social
agents: (1) source culture sender, (2) commissioner of translation, (3) trans-
lator, and (4) target culture receiver. Each agent has his/her own identity
(personal, social, or cultural), thus resulting in conflicting identities. As
mediators, Nord (2002: 33) holds that translators “have a special responsi�-
bility” towards other agents, such as the author, commissioner, and target
language readers as well as “themselves, precisely in those cases where
there are differing views as to what a ‘good’ translation is or should be”.
This responsibility, termed ‘loyalty’ by Nord, can be considered as an
“interpersonal category referring to a social relationship between people
who expect not to be cheated in the process” (2002: 33). As such, it is

the translator who has to prevent or reduce any ‘communicative suffering’
that “arises from not understanding something that you want to understand,
from misunderstanding or inadequate understanding, and from not being
able to get your own message across. It also arises from a lack of com-
munication at all” (Chesterman 2001: 151). By way of example, let us
consider the three translations of this passage extracted from BBC News
(11 September 2021) and translated by three MA students:
Four of the six Palestinian inmates who escaped from a high-security

jail earlier this week have been captured, Israeli police say.
TT1 ‫قالت الشرطة اإلسرائيلية إنها ألقت القبض في مطلع األسبوع على أربعة من‬
.‫األسرى الفلسطينيين الستة الذين تمكنوا من الهروب من سجن شديد الحراسة‬
Back The Israeli police said that at the beginning of the week, they
transla- arrested four of the six Palestinian prisoners who managed to
tion escape from a high-security jail.
TT2 ‫ادعت شرطة االحتالل اإلسرائيلي بأنه تم إلقاء القبض على أربعة من األسرى‬
‫الفلسطينيين الستة الذين تمكنوا من الفرار من سجن شديد الحراسة في مطلع هذا‬
.‫األسبوع‬
Back The Israeli occupation police claimed that four of the six
transla- Palestinian prisoners who managed to escape from high-
tion security jail earlier this week were arrested.
TT3 ‫زعمت شرطة الكيان الصهيوني إنها ألقت القبض على أربعة من أصل ستة أسرى‬
.‫فلسطينيين هربوا من سجن شديد الحراسة في وقت سابق هذا األسبوع‬
Back The police of Zionist entity said it had arrested four out of six
transla- Palestinian prisoners who escaped from a high-security jail
tion earlier this week.
The second and third translators, being influenced by their own accumulated
value systems, sense of belonging, commitment, orientation, and the like,
opted for changing the author’s attitude towards the attributed material (for
more details, see the previous chapter). In TT2 and TT3, the verb ‘to say’
(acknowledging) was translated into ‫ ادعت‬and ‫زعمت‬, literally meaning ‘to
claim’ (distancing), and ‘Israeli police’ (−ideologically motivated) was
translated into ‫‘ شرطة االحتالل اإلسرائيلي‬the Israeli occupation police’ and
‫‘ شرطة الكيان الصهيوني‬the police of Zionist entity’ (+ideologically motivated),
respectively. In the original text, by means of the verb ‘to say’ and the noun
phrase ‘Israeli police’, there is no explicit indication as to where the author
stands concerning the attributed material. In TT2 and TT3, however, the
translators decided to interpolate themselves into the text by presenting
the author as (1) distancing him/herself from the attributed material and
(2) having a negative attitude towards ‘Israel’ (see the previous chapter for
more details). So, here, the translators decided not to prevent or reduce any
‘communicative suffering’. Rather, they inflicted suffering on the target
language readers.
Connecting the dots (2): Social dimensions and

translation
In any situation, there are certain social factors which are relevant in
accounting for the particular variety used in any interaction. While some of
these factors are related to the language users (i.e. the participants), others
are related to language uses (i.e. the social setting and function of the inter-
action). In analysing any interaction, who is talking to whom (e.g. a father
to a son, a wife to a husband, a customer to a shopkeeper, a worker to a
boss, a student to a teacher, a patient to a doctor, a policeman to a crim-
inal, a lawyer to a client) is an important factor. The setting or social con-
text (e.g. at home in the morning, at the university in the afternoon, at a
nightclub) is also a relevant factor. In some cases, the topic itself has an
influence on people’s linguistic choices. For instance, English teachers who
are native speakers of another language find it easier to explain, discuss,
or present their language-related ideas in English when participating in a
conference. The main reason behind communicating with others may well
be an important social factor that influences the language used. As such,
there are four social factors that need to be taken into consideration when
analysing any interaction:
(1) ‘Participants’ (who is talking to whom?).

(2) ‘Setting’ (where and when do they use the language?).
(3) ‘Topic’ (what is being talked about?).
(4) ‘Purpose’ of the interaction (why do they use the language?).
Closely related to the aforementioned social factors are social dimensions.

Notions such as ‘social distance’, ‘status’, ‘formality’, and ‘functional
scale’ are considered as indicators emphasizing the four social factors. In
analysing an interaction between, for example, a mother and her daughter
(participants) at home in the morning (setting) discussing a shopping list
(topic and purpose), notions such as ‘solidarity’ (how intimate or distant
they are), ‘status’ (who is superior to the other), ‘formality’ (how formal
they are), and ‘functional scale’ (whether they are informative or expres-
sive) should be taken into consideration. The main social dimensions can
be summarized as follows:
(1) ‘Solidarity’ (intimate versus distant): our linguistic choices are

influenced by the relationship that we have with other people and how
well we know them.
(2) ‘Status’ (superior versus subordinate): our linguistic choices are
influenced by our social standing and rank compared with that of our
addressee. The choice of ‘Sir’ or ‘Miss’ by students, for instance, when
addressing their teacher indicates their awareness that their teacher is
of higher status and entitled to a term of respect.
(3) ‘Formality’ (formal versus informal): our linguistic choices are
influenced by the social setting, i.e. where and when we are
communicating. In a formal situation, such as one with the university

chancellor in his/her office, the language used will be influenced by the
formality of the setting.
(4) ‘Functional scale’ (informative versus expressive): not only
can language convey objective information of a referential kind
(informative or referential), but it can express how someone is feeling
(expressive or affective).
To maintain the register of the original text, the translator needs to give the
social factors and dimensions full consideration. By way of explanation, let
us consider the following extract, quoted along with its Arabic translation
from the Air Wick: Oud ‫ العود‬product label:
English Do not spray or place on painted or polished surfaces.

Keep out of reach of children.
Arabic ‫ يحفظ بعيدًا عن‬.‫ال يرش أو يوضع على األسطح المطلية أو الملمعة‬
.‫متناول األطفال‬
Back It should not be sprayed or placed on painted or
translation polished surfaces. It should be kept out of reach of
children.
By opting for the use of the imperative form in the original text ‘do not
spray’ and ‘keep’, the language user reduced the distance, thus creating a
feeling of solidarity and/or intimacy. This should be reflected in the target
text. However, the translator resorted to passivization, thereby emphasizing
the distance as a social dimension on the one hand and, on the other hand,
failing to reflect the degree of personalization (see Chapter 9 for more
details).
Convergence versus divergence

When people communicate with each other, they sometimes become very
close to each other, while at other times they move away from each other.
When they become very close to each other, they are likely to converge
their speech to be in line with the speech of their interlocutor. They do so by

adjusting their way of speaking to be similar, to a certain degree, to that of
their interlocutor, thus reducing the social distance between them. However,
when speakers move away from each other, they may well adjust their way
of speaking to differ, to a certain degree, from their interlocutors, thereby
emphasizing the social distance between them (for more details, see, for
example, Yule 1985/2014: 261; Holmes 1992/2013: 245–7; Spolsky 1998/
2003: 41–3; Meyerhoff 2006/2011: 75–81).
Speakers can use two main strategies to adjust their way of speaking, How would you
namely ‘convergence’ and ‘divergence’. Convergence involves speakers define ‘con-
adjusting their way of talking to be very close to their interlocutors’ way of vergence’ and
‘divergence’?
speaking, thus increasing the similarities between them. By contrast, diver-
gence involves speakers adjusting their way of talking to move away from
their interlocutors’ way of speaking, thereby increasing the differences
between them. These are straightforward examples. But what happens

when a speaker converges and his/her addressee diverges? Communication
Accommodation Theory (CAT), which was developed out of research led
by Howard Giles, is about when, how, and why people adjust their way
of speaking (e.g. lexical choices, grammatical forms, pronunciation), and
allows for the possibility of such cases. This theory shows “how complicated
and important people’s attitudes towards others are and how these attitudes
can be played out in language use” (Meyerhoff 2006/2011: 77).
According to Le Page (1997: 28), people sometimes accommodate to
their addressee’s way of speaking to have a positive influence on them,
thus creating a positive image, i.e. the image that they wish to project in a
particular social context. Giles and Ogay (2006) maintained that people do
not accommodate to what the addressee actually is, but rather to what they
believe s/he is. When people misjudge the situation or accommodate to
what they believe their interlocutor is (rather than to what their interlocutor
actually is), they may well fail to achieve their communicative goal. The
main reason behind this could be “because they do not have the necessary
resources or skills to reach their goal accurately” (78).
There are many different ways in which speakers may accommodate
to the speech of the person with whom they communicate, and the trans-
lator/interpreter needs to pay extra attention to this. People may converge
or adapt:
● their speed of speech (e.g. slowing down when talking to foreigners

or children);
● the length of their utterances (e.g. opting for simple sentences when
talking to others);
● the frequency of their pauses;
● the structures used (e.g. simplifying their grammar when talking to
others);
● the vocabulary used (simplifying their vocabularies when talking to
others);
● their use of verbal fillers or pragmatic particles, such as ‘sort of’, ‘you
know’, ‘you see’, etc., used by the addressee;
● their pronunciation (e.g. trying to use a similar pronunciation to that

used by the addressee).
In addition, code-switching is also a common practice in certain coun-

What is the diffe- tries, such as India where Hindi, for instance, is used along with the
rence between
‘code-switching’
former colonial language, English. Another example is the Philippines
and ‘style shifting’? where people sometimes code-switch from Tagalog to English or the
other way round.
In the actual act of translating, the translator needs to give these two
strategies, i.e. convergence and divergence, full consideration. By way of
example, let us consider the following example extracted from Husni and
Newman (2008: 44–5):
ST (Arabic) .”‫ “إذن تريدين أن يرجع إليك زوجك؟‬:‫يقول الشيخ سعيد‬

.”‫ “أريد أن يرجع إل ّي‬:‫أجابت عزيزة بتر ّدد‬
‫ “أهله يريدون تزوجيه مرة‬:‫فابتسم الشيخ سعيد بينما أردفت قائلة باكتئاب‬
.”‫ثانية‬
ً
‫ “سيعود إليك‬:‫قال الشيخ سعيد وهو يرمي في وعاء الجمر نتفا من البخور‬
.”‫ ولن يتزوج مرة ثانية‬،‫زوجك‬
Back Sheikh Said says: “So, you want your husband to return
translation to you?”
Aziza replied, hesitantly: “I want him to return to me”.
Sheikh Said smiled as she went to say, mournfully: “His
family wants him to get married again”.
Sheikh Said while throwing bits of incense into the dish
filled with live coal: “Your husband will return to you,
and he will not marry again”.
TT (English) Sheikh Said said: “So, you want your husband to return
to you?”
“I want him to return to me,” Aziza replied, hesitantly.
Sheikh Said smiled as he added, mournfully: “His
family wants him to get married again”. He threw
bits of incense into the dish filled with live coal, and
said: “Your husband will return to you, and he will not
take another wife”.
Here, as the back translation shows, Sheikh Said opts for certain lexical
items and structures with the potential to reduce the distance between him
and Aziza. This was reflected in the target text by the translators when
selecting simple words and structures. However, they superimposed a cer-
tain directionality/narrativity when mistranslating ‫فابتسم الشيخ سعيد بينما أردفت‬
”‫ قائلة باكتئاب“أهله يريدون تزوجيه مرة ثانية‬into ‘Sheikh Said smiled as he added,
mournfully: “His family wants him to get married again” ’, thereby chan-
ging the Sayer from Aziza to Sheikh Said. Further, in the original text, there
is no time lapse between the process of saying expressed by the verb ‫‘ قال‬to
say’ and the process of doing expressed by the verb ‫‘ يرمي‬to throw’. In the
target text, however, the process of saying occurred shortly after the pro-
cess of doing, which is reduced, by the effect of the grammatical form and
content specification, to be seen as a point on the timeline (for more details
on this, see Chapter 12 of this book).
Connecting the dots (3): Code-switching and translation
Code-switching can be defined as the practice of moving back and forth

between two codes, i.e. between two languages or between two dialects
or registers. Bilingual speakers (speaking two languages) and multilingual
speakers (speaking more than two languages) can switch from one lan-
guage to another while communicating with each other. This is clear. But
what about monolingual speakers (speaking one language only)? Can they
Switching from one
level to another in also code-switch? Although monolingual speakers are not able to use more
the same language than one language, they can code-switch intralingually, i.e. within the
may lead to what
same language; they move from one dialect to another or from one level to
is called ‘style
shifting’, rather than another, and so on.
‘code-switching’. Code-switching occurs far more often in conversation than in writing.
Discuss.
However, this does not exclude the possibility of having it in writing or in
multi-modal texts. It is common among immigrant families. Imagine, for
example, an Egyptian family who moved from Egypt to the UK and the
children grew up speaking the Egyptian dialect as their mother tongue and
English as a second language outside the family domain, such as with their
schoolmates. In such a situation, when the children talk to their parents, for
example, they may well code-switch from Arabic (low level) to English and
vice versa. By way of example, the following interview with an Egyptian–
Scottish duo called the Ayoub Sisters can be considered:
Speaker: other ‫ احنا االثنين ابتدينا بيانو بنفس الوقت وبعدين گربنا‬...
‫ وبعدين رحنا مدرسة‬... )‫ أنا الكمنگا (احنا االثنين الكمنگا‬instruments
... (music school) specific to music
Gloss: … we both started piano at the same time, then we tried
other instruments: I [tried] a violin [actually] we both
[tried] violin. After that we joined a school specific to
music [i.e.] a music school …
Personally, I (the first author of this book) remember when I moved to

How would you
the UK, and I met many Arabs there. When we communicated with each
define the ‘matrix
language’? other, the dominant language, technically called the matrix language,
was Arabic. However, when we came across words such as ‘home office’
and‘underground’, we switched to English, which is called the additional
language in such a situation.
People code-switch for a variety of different reasons, including:
● when there is a change in the situation, such as the arrival of a new

person who does not have access to the code used by the participants
before his/her arrival. Here, the newly arrived person might be included
or excluded from the conversation, depending on the interlocutors’
attitudes towards him/her;
● when there is a change in the topic;
● when there is a perceived gap in the code used;
● when there is a difficulty in expressing one’s ideas. Sometimes people
are not able to express their ideas easily; therefore, they code-switch to
another language to express their ideas more easily and clearly;
● when there is a change in the function of the code, for example, from
informative to expressive or the other way round. People sometimes
code-switch from one language to another to better express their
feelings, opinions, or sense of identity;
So c iolin g ui sti c s 2 17
● to indicate social-group membership, in particular when they live

in another country speaking a different language from their mother
tongue;
● to show their solidarity, in particular when they switch to a code
understood by the person who has joined them;
● to show distance when they switch to a code which is not shared by the
new person who has joined them;
● to make their messages clear or emphasize it. People sometimes code-
switch from one language to another or repeat the same idea in both
languages to clarify or emphasize it;
● to emphasize their social class;
● to indicate that their relationship has become strong or the other
way round; Think of other
● to comment on something. When people hear or say something in one reasons for
language, sometimes they switch to another language to comment on it; ‘code-switching’.
● to make jokes. People sometimes embed some words into the matrix
language to make jokes;
● to quote a person.
There are three main types of code-switching: (1) ‘inter-sentential code-

switching’, (2) ‘intra-sentential code-switching’, and (3) ‘tag code-
switching’ or ‘extra-sentential code-switching’, as shown below:
Inter-sentential code-switching
Inter-sentential code-switching is a kind of code-switching in which the
language user code-switches from one language to another at the level of

clause or sentence, as in the following two examples:
English to It seems that you are thirsty. Was wollen Sie trinken?
German [What do you want to drink?]
English to Some people start their sentences in English y las
Spanish terminan en español [and finish in Spanish]
The matrix language in the above two examples is English. The embedded How would
language in the first example is German where the language user embedded you define the
‘embedded
the interrogative sentence ‘Was wollen Sie trinken?’ (What do you want to language’?
drink?) into the matrix language, thus resulting in inter-sentential code-
switching. The embedded language in the second example is Spanish,
where the language user embedded ‘y las terminan en español’ (and finish
in Spanish) into the matrix language.
Intra-sentential code-switching
Intra-sentential code-switching, by contrast, occurs when the language user
switches within the same clause or sentence, as in:
English to Arabic I’m really ‫مشغول‬

[I’m really busy].
In the above sentence, the matrix language is English, and the embedded
language is Arabic. The language user embedded the word ‫‘ مشغول‬busy’
into the matrix language, thus resulting in code-switching. As this word
is embedded within the same sentence, it is a case of intra-sentential
code-switching.
Tag code-switching
The last type of code-switching is tag code-switching (also called ‘extra-
sentential code-switching’). It is a type of code-switching where a tag
question from another language is embedded into the matrix language, as
in the following examples:
English to She is beautiful, n’est-ce pas?

French [She is beautiful, isn’t she?]
German to Das Wetter ist schön, isn’t it?
English [The weather is lovely, isn’t it?]
In the first example, the tag question (in French) is inserted into the matrix
language (English). In the second example, the tag question (in English) is
inserted into the matrix language (German).
A question that may arise is, ‘How do translators deal with texts loaded
with examples of code-switching?’ Following Cincotta (1996), we can
suggest five strategies that can be used by translators depending on the text
type, genre, purpose of translation, readership, interfacing languages, and

so on. They are:
(1) making the target text monolingual;

(2) keeping the embedded language without translation;
(3) transliterating the embedded language;
(4) using a colloquial variety, thus causing a style shift;
(5) using another dialect or language, if possible.
By way of explanation, let us consider the following example quoted

from Ahmed (2018: 19–20), who discusses many examples of code-
switching taken from a Hebrew novel written in 2005 by Eli Amir (2005)
and translated into four languages, namely English, German, Italian, and
Arabic:
ST ‫”מה אתה מחפס ברדיו של הערבים? כּוס אמם! ואני הסברתי‬

(Hebrew) .‫רצון‬-‫ עד שנענה באי‬,‫והפצרתי‬
Back “What are you listening to on the radio of the Arabs?
translation [Insulting expression in Arabic].” And I explained and
pleaded, until he reluctantly complied.
TT1 “What the hell do you want the Arabic station for? Screw
(English) them!” I explained and pleaded and finally he relented.
TT2 “Was suchst du im Radio der Araber?” Und er fügte
(German) einen unflätigen Fluch hinzu. Ich erklärte und bettelte,
bis er unwillig nachgab.
TT3 Ma cosa cerchi nelle transmissioni delgi Arabi?
(Italian) Che vadano all’inferno! –Io insistetti finché lui, di
malavoglia, mi accontentò.
TT4 ‫(ما الذي تبحث عنه في راديو العرب) فأخذت أشرح له وأناشده إلى أن‬
(Arabic) .‫استجاب عن غير رضا‬
In the above example, we have a case of code-switching from Hebrew

(matrix language) to Arabic (embedded language), but it is transliterated
into Hebrew. In all these translations, the translators opted for keeping the
target text monolingual. By contrast, in the following example quoted from
Ahmed (2018: 9), the translators decided to keep the embedded language,
thereby reflecting the code-switching used in the original text.
ST ‫“ אמר המושל‬,‫ ְת ַפ ַד‘ל‬,‫ כבוד ראש העיר‬,‫ ”אהלן‬.‫שוב צלצל הטלפון‬,

(Hebrew) ‫ משחק בעט המונח על שולחנו‬,‫והאזין‬
Back The phone rang again. “Hello, Mr Mayor, tafaddal” said
translation the governor and listened, playing with the pen on his
desk.
TT1 The phone rang again. “Ahlan, Mr Mayor go ahead.” As
(English) he listened, the governor fiddled with a pen on his desk.

TT2 Wieder klingelte das Telefon. “Ahlan, verehrter Herr
(German) Bürgermeister, tafadal, bitte”, sagte der Gouverneur und
lauschte, während er mit dem Stift spielte.
TT3 Il telefono squillò ancora. –Ahlan, signor sindaco,
(Italian) tafaddal –. Il governatore rimase in ascolto
giocherellando nervosamente con una pe.
Here, we have two examples of code-switching from Hebrew to

Arabic: ‘Ahlan’ meaning ‘hello’ and ‘tafaddal’ meaning ‘Yes, sir/madam’.
Guided partially by the ‘initial acceptability norm’ (Toury 1995) and
‘expectancy norm’ (Chesterman 1997/2000), the first translator decided to
keep ‘Ahlan’ and to translate ‘tafaddal’ into its equivalent, i.e. ‘go ahead’.
In German and Italian, however, the translators, guided by the ‘initial
adequacy norm’ (Toury 1995) and ‘relation norm’ (Chesterman 1997/

2000), decided to keep both examples of code-switching (for more details
on ‘norms’, see the next chapter).

they are false.
(1) Code-switching refers to switching from written to

spoken codes only.
(2) When we have typical participants in a typical setting
discussing typical issues, then we will have what is
called a ‘social dimension’.
(3) When speakers try to reduce the social distance, they
are likely to diverge their speech to be in line with that
of the other speaker.
(4) To converge is to change, for instance, your pronunci-
ation, thus pronouncing words clearly.
(5) People sometimes code-switch to indicate that their
relationship has become strong or the other way round.
(6) In a sentence of the following kind, ‫إن شاء هللا‬, I’ll call
her later, we have an example of what is called ‘intra-
sentential code-switching’.
(7) Social identity refers to how people identify themselves
in relation to others based on what they do not have in
common.
(8) Social identities are always positive as it is difficult to
have negative identities.
(9) In social psychology, Social Identity Theory (SIT) is a
social-psychological theory stating that people can be
identified as having many identities, not just one.
(10) Social Identity Theory (SIT) developed from what is

called in the literature ‘mini-group studies’, led by Henri
Tajfel and his colleagues in the early 1970s.
(11) Cultural capital, according to Bourdieu, takes one
of three forms: (1) embodied, (2) objectified, and
(3) institutionalized.
(12) People’s sense of belonging motivates them to be
in favour of some people over others on the basis of
whether they are from their group or not, thus resulting
in what is called ‘in-group favouritism’.
(13) Code-switching is common among emigrant families.
(14) In a sentence of the following kind, That’s kind of you.

Vielen Dank, the embedded language is English and
the dominant language is German.
(15) When people accommodate to what they believe their
addressee is (rather than to what their interlocutor
actually is), they may well fail to achieve their goal.
(16) Code-switching is also a common practice in certain
countries, such as India or the Philippines.
Exercise 2: Identify the type of code-switching in the following examples:
Example Type
(1) Das Wetter ist schön [the weather is nice], isn’t it? _________
(2) Excuse me, ‫[ وين مكتب العميد‬Where is the dean’s office?] _________
(3) You did your homework. n’est-ce pas [didn’t you]? _________
(4) Have you finished tes devoirs [your homework]? _________
(5) Mon dieu [oh my God]! It has been broken. _________
(6) Please, ‫[ كتابت را به من قرض بده‬give me your book]. _________
(7) No problem! 我现在就去做, 做完了告诉 _________
你。(Wo xianzai jiu qu zuo, zuo wan le gaosu ni)
[I am going to do it now. I will let you know when I finish.]
(8) ‫[ من‬I am] not only ‫[ خسته هستم‬tired] but also ‫هم هستم گشنه‬ _________
[hungry]
.
Exercise 3: Read the following conversation between a teacher and one

of his students, who is multilingual. Then, analyse the text by touching on:
(a) the ‘social factors’ relevant in accounting for the particular variety
used by the participants;
(b) the ‘social dimensions’ that are related, in one way or another, to
social factors;
(c) examples of ‘code-switching’, if any, along with their types;
(d) examples of ‘convergence’ or ‘divergence’, if any.
Student: May I come in, ‫?أستاذ‬

Teacher: Why do you always come late?
Student: Je suis désolé Monsieur, it is the bus which makes me late.
Teacher: What time do you leave home?
Student: Je te jure Monsieur, I always leave home at ‫سبعة ونص‬.
Teacher: In English, please. How far is your home from here?
Student: Trois kilometres, sorry three kilometres, from here.
Teacher: My dear. It is a bad habit. Change your routine. Always get
up early in the morning.
Exercise 4: The short story titled “Two Nights at Neempani” written by

Arnaba Saha can be accessed using this link: www.americanliterature.
com. Your task is:
(a) to translate the text into your own language;

(b) to comment on your translation by adopting a sociolinguistic
approach.

(1) Why do people code-switch while communicating with each other?
(2) Why do people sometimes spend time, money, and energy to
achieve something for free, such as translating a book?
(3) It is argued in this chapter that translation is a complex activity. Do
you agree? Discuss.
to identify any examples of ‘communicative suffering’ arising from
the translator’s failure to understand what is meant by the original
writer.
(5) Select any English text that has some examples of code-switching
and translate it into your language. Then comment on your own
translation by referring to the main strategies you adopted to handle
examples of code-switching.

References
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University Press.
Language variation 11
The previous chapter considered some sociolinguistic concepts and

notions, such as ‘social identity’, ‘social factors’, ‘social dimensions’, ‘code-
switching’, ‘convergence’, and ‘divergence’. This chapter completes the
introduction to these sociolinguistic concepts and notions by touching
on language variation, including ‘regional variation’, ‘social variation’, ‘styl-
istic variation’, ‘diglossia’, ‘polyglossia’, ‘pidgins’, and ‘creoles’. Dialects,
accents, and styles as examples of language variation are discussed in a
direct link to translation.
After studying this chapter, readers should be able to analyse texts
and discourses in terms of the type of variation they exhibit, and they
should be able to define the notions of diglossia and polyglossia, as well
as pidgins and creoles. Readers should also be knowledgeable about
the difficulties of translating styles, dialects, and accents into different
languages.
As stated in the previous chapter, sociolinguistics explores, among other

How would you issues, the different forms of language that may occur at all levels (phono-
define ‘language logical, syntactic, semantic, etc.). When we ask Arabs from different coun-
variation’? tries, for instance, how they are, we might hear words such as ‫زين‬, ‫بخير‬,
‫كويّس‬, ‫باهي‬, and ‫امنيح‬, all meaning ‘fine’. Although these are very simple
utterances, they do reveal information about the language user, such as his/
her country and wish to be friendly and informal. Similarly, to say ‘very’
as in ‘very good’ in Chinese, you might hear native speakers from different
dialectal regions say 很 (hen), 非常 (fei chang), 特别 (te bie), 挺 (ting),
蛮 (man), 忒 (tei), 贼 (zei), and 几 (gei). This is similar in English where
speakers, for example from Scotland or Northern England, might say ‘aye’
for ‘yes’ and some speakers from certain geographical and socio-ethnic
backgrounds tend to say ‘innit’ and ‘eh’ for ‘right’ or ‘isn’t it’. In France,
for example, a lexical item such as ‘vingt’ meaning ‘twenty’ is pronounced
differently in the northeast compared to the south, northwest, and southeast.
Similarly, to refer to chocolate bread, people from the north use ‘pain au
chocolat’, while people from the south use ‘chocolatine’. Again, although
these are fairly simple utterances, they reveal information about their users.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003228028-12
L an g uag e va r iation 2 2 5
Types of language variation
These different forms of language, technically known as ‘language vari-

ation’, are used in sociolinguistics to refer to “the study of those features
of a language that differ systematically as we compare different groups of
speakers or the same speaker in different situations” (Parker and Riley 1994/
2010: 148). There are three main types of language variation: ‘regional
variation’, ‘social variation’, and ‘stylistic variation’.
Regional variation
The geographical areas that language users come from are given full
consideration when features of pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar
are studied. With this in mind, we could have regional dialects, such as
‘American dialect’ versus ‘British dialect’. It is worth noting that there are
sub-regional dialects within each regional dialect, thus having ‘Northern’,
‘Midlands’, and ‘Southern’ as sub-regional dialects within American
English. The line that demarcates these regional varieties or dialects is
called an ‘isogloss’. An isogloss “represents the boundary of any linguistic
feature or set of features which separate one speech variety from another”
(Romaine 1994/2000: 136).
Social variation
Here, the social group of the language users, which is usually evaluated on
the basis of a range of scales, such as education, occupation, social class,
and income level, is given serious consideration. Building on this, features
of pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar according to the social group
of the speakers are studied to identify social varieties, which are also called
‘social dialects’. Examples of social dialects include a ‘standard dialect’
versus a ‘non-standard dialect’. The use of ‘ain’t’, ‘bɒ?əl’, and ‘eh eh man’,
for instance, which are referred to as socially marked forms, might cause
the addressee “to form a negative social judgment of the speaker” as being
an uneducated person or a person who might come from a lower social
class (Parker and Riley 1994/2010: 161). Living in the UK, you might hear
sentences of the following kind uttered by native speakers:
‘Her flat messed up’ in place of ‘Her flat is messed up’

‘I have not seen her in place of ‘I did not see her yesterday’
yesterday’
‘She watching TV in place of ‘She is watching TV right
right now’ now’
‘Where it is?’ in place of ‘Where is it?’
‘Did you receive the in place of ‘Did you receive the letter?’
le?ə?’
2 2 6 L an g ua g e va r iation
These sentences are examples of socially marked variation. These non-

standard varieties can be classified, following Parker and Riley 1994/
2010: 163–73), into three main types:
(1) Non-standard syntactic variation, as in:

I have not seen her yesterday.
What is wrong with Where it is?
these sentences? She watching TV right now.
Discuss.
(2) Non-standard morphological variation, as in:
She watching TV right now.
Her flat messed up.
Can you guess the (3) Non-standard phonological variation, as in:
dialect? Did you receive the le?ə?
Hearing or reading such sentences uttered by native speakers might cause

the addressee to form a negative social judgement of the language user as
being, for instance, uneducated. This is why some literary writers inject
their texts with ungrammatical or non-standard sentences. The main
reason behind this is to inject the text with vividness and credibility, thus
letting their audience form a particular social judgement by identifying the
character’s social identity, including aspects such as his/her education, age,
and gender. Consider in this connection the following example extracted
from a short story titled ‫ طبلية من السماء‬by Yusuf Idris translated into English
by Husni and Newman (2008: 276–7) as A Tray from Heaven:
ST :‫ كان يقول موجها ً كالمه إلى السماء‬...

‫ تقدر تقول لي أنت عايز مني ايه؟‬.‫ أنت عايز مني ايه‬-
Back He was saying addressing the sky:
translation -You want what from me? Can you tell me what you
want from me?
TT He said, addressing the sky: “What do you want from me?
Can you tell me what is it that you want from me?”
Here, the use of ‫‘ عايز‬want’ and ‫‘ ايه‬what’ in place of the standard words,
such as ‫ تريد‬and ‫ماذا‬, gives us some extra information about the language
user, such as his country (Egypt).
Stylistic variation
Stylistic variation refers to the study of those varieties of language that
range from extremely formal to quite informal. As stated in the previous
chapter, in a formal social context (setting), native speakers of English may
well be more likely to pay extra attention to their way of using the language
than they would in an informal social context. For example, they may opt
How would you for pronouncing words ending in ‘–ing’ with a velar nasal instead of an
define ‘stylistic
variation’?
alveolar nasal (e.g. ‘walking’, not ‘walkin’). They may choose more formal
words, such as ‘father’ instead of ‘dad’, ‘child’ instead of ‘kid’, or‘mother’
L an g uag e va r iation 2 27
instead of ‘mom’. They may well tend to avoid the use of certain words What are the main
which are considered non-standard, such as ‘ain’t’. types of ‘stylistic
Different stylistic varieties can be identified by studying different types variation?
of stylistic variation, such as (1) stylistic lexical variation (e.g. ‘children’
versus ‘kids’), (2) stylistic phonological variation (e.g. ‘walking’ versus
‘walkin’), (3) ‘stylistic morphological variation (e.g. ‘I will’ versus ‘I’ll’),
and (4) stylistic syntactic variation (e.g. ‘Do you want another cup of tea?’
versus ‘You want another cup of tea?’).
Diglossia and polyglossia
‘Diglossia’ is a Greek term used in sociolinguistics to describe a situation Why is the term
where two distinct codes or varieties are used for clearly distinct purposes ‘diglossia’ modelled
in certain situations (for more details, see Holmes 1992/2013: 27; on the word ‘bilin-
gualism’? Discuss.
Spolsky 1998/2003: 63). Diglossia is close to bilingualism, rather than
monolingualism or multilingualism. In some languages, such as Arabic,
two distinct varieties are used by native speakers; one is regarded as a
high variety and the other is considered a low variety. Each variety is
used for a quite distinct function, and the two varieties complement each
other. It is worth noting that native speakers do not use the high variety in
everyday conversations; they use the low variety instead. When
there are two codes or varieties, then we have a diglossic community;
however, when there are more than two distinct codes or varieties, we
have a polyglossic community. The term ‘polyglossia’ is related to multi-
lingualism rather than to monolingualism or bilingualism. An example Why is the term
‘polyglossia’ mod-
of polyglossia is the distinct varieties used in Singapore. Two distinct elled on the word
varieties, namely Mandarin and formal Singapore English, are used in ‘multilingualism’?
Singapore in formal situations, and they are considered to be high var- Discuss.
ieties. Further, three distinct varieties, namely Hokkien, Cantonese, and

Singapore English, are regarded as informal or low varieties and they are
used in informal situations.
Pidgin and creole
Pidgin
A pidgin can be defined as a code which comes into existence when people
who do not have a common language come into contact with each other.
A pidgin is not a particular group’s native language; rather, it evolves “as
a means of communication between people who do not have a common
language” (Holmes 1992/2013: 85). Imagine that you find yourself in
another country working with another person and you both do not have
a common language. In such a situation, both of you may work without
uttering a single word. However, if you have to work on a daily basis and
for a longer period of time, then you need to communicate. One of the
solutions is to resort to what is called a ‘lingua franca’, i.e. a language
used by people when they need to communicate with each other, but their
languages are not mutually intelligible. But what happens if you do not
How would you
have any common language and there is an urgent need for interacting?
define the term
‘lingua franca’? The only solution that you may have is to develop a means of communi-
cating from your languages and some other existing languages, such
as English or French. The resulting language is what is called a ‘pidgin’.
In this respect, Parker and Riley (1994/2010: 327) state that a pidgin is a
“mixture of two existing languages brought into contact by trade or colon-
ization”. It is worth mentioning that people start using a pidgin developed
by them for certain purposes, such as work-related activities. However,
over time, people may start using such a pidgin in different domains, such
Can a ‘pidgin’ be as the family domain. Such an expanded pidgin will then be passed from
used as a lingua one generation to another as a non-native lingua franca among people who
franca? Discuss. speak different languages.
Creole
What are the When a pidgin develops over time in a certain way into a more complex
main differences linguistic system in terms of sound system, vocabulary, structures, and so
between a ‘pidgin’ on, and it is then adopted by later generations as their own native language,
and a ‘creole’?
it becomes a ‘creole’. From this one may well conclude that a creole differs
from a pidgin in terms of having native speakers, having increased lists of
vocabulary, sound systems, and structures, and being used in a wide range
of domains.
Tok Pisin, the English-based creole of Papua New Guinea, can be
considered as an example of a creole language. In Papua New Guinea, Tok
Pisin, one of the official languages, is used as a lingua franca among the
people living there. Most of the words in this creole are taken from English,
but they are used in different domains and pronounced quite differently, as
shown below:
Tok Pisin English Meaning

brata brother the same meaning, brother
inap enough the same meaning, enough
bepo before the same meaning, before

sak shark the same meaning, shark
ples place meaning hometown
The words in the above table are derived from English. However, there
some words which are derived from other languages, as shown below:
Tok Pisin German Meaning

rausim raus meaning out
gumi gummi meaning rubber
maski macht nichts meaning it does not matter
Tok Pisin Malay Meaning

susu susu meaning milk
Tok Pisin Portuguese Meaning

save saber meaning to know
pikinini pequenino meaning child, little, and the like
Connecting the dots (1) Translating dialects and

accents
The term ‘dialect’ has been used by linguists, and occasionally by lay
Some people
people, to refer to “a subordinate variety of a language” (Romaine 1994/ assume that a
2000: 2). If two people speak different varieties of the same language, ‘dialect’ is a subor-
say Arabic, and they can understand each other, then we talk about two dinate variety of a
language. So, can
different dialects. However, if they do not understand each other, then, in we say that a lan-
theory, they speak two different languages. To determine whether people guage is a super-
speak the same language or different languages, some linguists rely on ordinate variety of a
dialect? Discuss.
what is called ‘mutual intelligibility’, i.e. the criterion of understanding
each other or not (for more details, see van Herk 2012: 13). These two
simple sentences written in the language used by people who live in a tiny
village called Kumzar in the northern tip of Oman were given to 30 native
speakers of Arabic to see whether they are understood by other Arabs,
including Omanis, or not.
.‫تاتم سوالتتكم بي امتحاناتتو‬

Literal meaning: I want to ask a question about your exams.
.‫نواز سيارت نو تخيرمخو‬
Literal meaning: I will buy a new car tomorrow.
All of the speakers failed to understand the entire meanings of these

sentences, apart from the words ‫ امتحاناتتو‬and ‫سيارت‬, which are somewhat
similar to their equivalents in Arabic, i.e. ‫ امتحان‬meaning ‘exam’ and ‫سيارة‬

meaning ‘car’. Building on the mutual intelligibility criterion, it suggests
that this variety is a different language because it is not understood by
Arabs. However, most people in Oman still consider it to be a dialect. It
seems that the border that divides a language from a dialect is not always
clear. To illustrate this further, let us consider Mandarin and Cantonese.
Although these are two different dialects of Chinese, the speakers of
these two dialects do not have mutual intelligibility as they are not able
to understand each other. By way of explanation, consider the following
two Mandarin and Cantonese sentences meaning ‘I don’t have time now’
in English:
Mandarin: 我 (wo) 现在 (xian zai)没有 (mei you) 时间 (shi

jian)
Literal meaning I now don’t have time.
Cantonese: 我 (ngo) 而家 (yi gaa) 冇 (mou) 时间 (si gaan)
Literal meaning I now don’t have time.
Although both Mandarin and Cantonese are written in Chinese characters

and share general structures, there is next to zero mutual intelligibility
between them. This is evidenced in the different use of vocabulary and
pronunciation, among other things. For example, consider in the two var-
ieties, i.e. Mandarin and Cantonese, the words for ‘now’ are 现在 (xian
zai) and 而家 (yi gaa), respectively and the words for ‘don’t have’ are 没有
(mei you) and 冇 (mou), respectively. Even for the words shared in
both varieties in the written form, the pronunciations are very different.
What are the cri-
teria that can be For instance, the personal pronoun ‘I’ 我 is /wo/ in Mandarin but /ngo/
used to distinguish in Cantonese. Similarly, the word ‘time’ 时间 is pronounced as /shi jian/
a language from a in Mandarin and /si gaan/ in Cantonese. A combination of these factors
dialect?
explains the lack of mutual intelligibility between the two varieties of the
Chinese language.
By contrast, Urdu and Hindi are considered to be two different languages,
although the speakers of these two languages have mutual intelligibility as
they are able to understand each other.
It seems we cannot rely on mutual intelligibility as the sole criterion to
determine whether people speak different languages or different dialects
of the same language. Instead, other sociopolitical issues should be taken
into consideration as well. The often social, political, and even ideological
dimensions in determining what is a language and what is a dialect are
aptly illustrated in the oft-quoted saying among linguists that ‘a language
is a dialect with an army and navy’.
What is the diffe- Dialect differs from ‘accent’ in the sense that while the former refers to
rence between a the differences among varieties of the same language in terms of three main
‘dialect’ and an levels, namely pronunciation, structure, and vocabulary, the latter refers to
‘accent’?
the differences in terms of pronunciation only, as shown below:
British American
Is RP (Received
Pronunciation), Vocabulary I’m looking for a small I’m looking for a
which you may hear flat. small apartment.
when you watch
BBC News, an
Structure I don’t have friends in I haven’t friends in
accent or dialect? this city. this city.
Discuss.
Pronunciation /əd’vɜː.tɪs.mənt/ /æd.vɝː’taɪz.mənt/
Consider the word ‘cut’. In England, the word ‘cut’ is used by people from
different geographical areas to talk about their haircut in a structure of the
following kind ‘I had my hair cut’. However, it can be pronounced differ-
ently. In cities such as Durham, Sunderland, or Newcastle, the vowel in the
middle of the word is a high back vowel where the tongue is articulated
in the back of the oral cavity (horizontally) and in the high part of the
mouth (vertically), thus being pronounced /ʊ/, rhyming with words like
‘good’ or ‘push’. In some other cities, however, it is a low central vowel
where the tongue is articulated in the centre of the oral cavity (horizontally)
and in the low part of the mouth (vertically), thus being pronounced /ʌ/,
rhyming with words like ‘blood’ or ‘flood’ in Southern Standard British
English. As the difference here is in terms of pronunciation only, we talk
about an accent, rather than a dialect or sub-dialect. Another interesting
example is the word ‘three’, which is pronounced in most parts of the
English-speaking countries as /θriː/. However, this word is pronounced by
Londoners with a cockney accent /friː/, thus resulting in what is linguistic-
Are the words ‘thin’
ally called a ‘homophone’, i.e. two words (‘free’ and ‘three’), which have and ‘fin’ examples
different spelling and meaning, are pronounced in exactly the same way. of homophones
It is worth mentioning that Londoners with a cockney accent conflate the in the cockney
accent?
interdental /θ/with a labiodental sound /f/not only in this word.
Now the question that might be raised here is: How can a text made up
of different variations of language be translated? To show the difficulty Can we consider
of answering such a question, let us consider this example extracted from the words that
a short story titled ‫‘ صورة ياسمين‬Yasmine Picture’ by Hanan al-Shaykh are used in a cer-
tain area local
translated by and cited in Husni and Newman (2008: 152–3): words? And can
these local words
ST ،‫ يفتح الخزائن‬،‫ يكتفي بالنظر‬.‫ يدخل ك ّل الغرف‬،‫يتمشى في البيت‬ be considered
as examples of
‫ رد‬.‫ ولو شو صاير لك‬:‫ وزوجته تقول له وهي تبتسم‬،‫األدراج‬ dialects? Discuss.
.”... ‫ “بفتش على كتاب‬:‫كاذبًا‬
Back He (was) walking around the house, going into every
translation room. He was content with just looking; he (was)
opening cupboards and drawers. His wife said to
him while smiling: “So, what happened to you?” He
answered with a lie: “I am looking for a book …”.
TT He walked around the house, going into every
room. He was content with just looking; he opened
cupboards and drawers. His wife smiled and told
him: “So, what are you up to?” He answered with a
lie: “I am looking for a book …”.
In the above example, as Arabic speakers may notice, there is an example

of intralingual code-switching from standard Arabic into non-standard
Arabic: ‫‘ ولو شو صاير لك‬So, what happened to you’ and ‫‘ بفتش على كتاب‬I’m
looking for a book’. Here, the author, presumably intending to inject her
text with vividness and credibility, opts for code-switching, thereby impli-
citly revealing some information about the speaker. The translators, as can What about opting
be seen, opted for ‘So, what are you up to?’ and ‘I am looking for a book for a non-standard
…’, respectively, thereby failing to maintain this dialectal feature. Their variety, as in ‘Tha mi
a ’coimhead airson
failure has nothing to do with their translation competence, but rather has leabhar’ (Scottish
something to do with the notion of the ‘untranslatability’ of such dialectal English) or ‘Táim ag
features. Untranslatability, as defined by Cui (2012: 826), refers to “a prop�
- lorg leabhar’ (Irish
English). Discuss.
erty of a text, or of any utterance in one language, for which no equivalent
text or utterance can be found in another language”. Examining what the

translators did in the above example, in particular in ‫ بفتش على كتاب‬, which
was translated somewhat formally into ‘I am looking for a book’, one can
readily see that the dynamics created by the mode of discourse in the ori-
ginal text is largely lost in the target text (see also the chapter on untrans-
latability in House 2018). Translators can use a variety of different local
strategies when facing any difficulty; however, in translating dialects and
accents, the story is different. This clearly shows how translators suffer
when dealing with a text made up of different varieties of language. To
reinforce this point, let us consider this example quoted from Al-Rubai’i
(2005: 37) and translated in two different ways:
ST “Listen at you, now”, Luster said. “Ain’t you something,

thirty-three years old, going on that way …”.
TT1 ‫ أليس عجيبًا أنك في‬.‫اسمع أنينك اآلن‬:[‫قال لستر]بالعامية التي يتحدثها السود‬
‫الثالثة والثالثين من عمرك وتستمر على هذا النحو؟‬
Back Luster said [in a vernacular spoken by black
translation people]: “Listen to yourself now. Isn’t it strange that you
thirty-three years in your age, and you continue in this
way.”
TT2 ‫ مش غريب أنك ثالث وثالثين ولسا بعدك عهلحال؟‬.‫اطلّ ّع عنفسك هسا‬
Back Look at yourself now. Isn’t it strange that you are thirty-
translation three and you are still like this?
In the first translation, the translator added between square brackets ‫بالعامية‬
‫التي يتحدثها السود‬, i.e. ‘in a vernacular spoken by black people’ to reflect the
speaker’s way of using language. Further, she misunderstood the Black
American English expression ‘Listen at you, now’, which means ‘look at
yourself now’, thus mistranslating it into ‫‘ اسمع أنينك اآلن‬Listen to yourself
now’. In the second translation, the translator opted for Levantine Arabic.
However, a question that may arise here is: ‘Is this variety of language
equivalent to what is used in the original text?’ The answer is ‘No’. This
leads us again to the issue of ‘untranslatability’.
Connecting the dots (2): Translating styles and

style shifts
Style (derived from the Latin word ‘stylus’ meaning stake or pointed
instrument for writing), obviously, is the object of study for stylistics.
Within any language, the same idea can be communicated in various
linguistic forms, thus resulting in different styles. Leech and Short
(1981: 10–11) define style as “the linguistic habits of a particular writer
..., genre, period, school”. Style is seen by other stylisticians as “the dress
of thought” (Hough 1969: 3). However, it is defined by formalists as “a
deviation from language norms”. Nida and Taber (1969) in their defin�-
ition of style touch on the patterning of choices, as well as the generic
constraints that play crucial roles in determining an author’s style. Style,

according to Yule (1985/2014: 259), is defined as “a social feature of
language”. When you, as a speaker, pay extra attention to your way of
using language in terms of structure, lexical choices, pronunciation,
etc., then your style is ‘formal’ or ‘careful’. However, when you do the
opposite, i.e. you pay less attention to how you are speaking, then your
style is ‘informal’ or ‘casual’. Building on this, when you change your
style while communicating from a ‘formal style’ to an ‘informal style’,
there will be a ‘style shift’. In place of having only two styles, ‘formal’
How would you
and ‘informal’, Martin Joos, in his book The Five Clocks: A Linguistic classify ‘style’
Excursion into the Five Styles of English Usage (1962), talks of five styles according to
in spoken English. They are ‘frozen’, ‘formal’, ‘consultative’, ‘casual’, Martin Joos?
and ‘intimate’ (see here House 1977/1981, where Joos’ classification is
used in her model of translation assessment).
Frozen style
This is also known as ‘static register’. This style, referring to printed How many styles
are there which
unchanging language, is characterized by the use of archaic expressions,
are one-way
such as the use of some quotations from the Quran or the Bible. participation?
Formal style
This style is characterized by a one-way participation, as is the case in the
use of technical words. As it involves a one-way participation, this means
there is no interruption and feedback.
Consultative style
Unlike the ‘formal style’, this style is characterized by a two-way partici-
pation where background information is provided, and prior knowledge
is not assumed. Further, verbal fillers, such as ‘I see’, are common. As we
have here a two-way participation, interruptions are allowed in this style.
A good example of this style is that used, for instance, between a teacher
and student, a doctor and patient, etc., where interruptions are allowed to
seek clarification or further information.
Casual style
This style is used among friends and acquaintances where background
What are the
information need not be provided, and prior knowledge is not always
differences
assumed. As it is not a one-way participation, interruptions, ellipsis, and between a ‘casual
slang are common among friends and acquaintances in an informal setting. style’ and an
‘intimate style’?
Intimate style
This style is characterized by a two-way participation. Like the ‘casual
style’, it is used among family members, close friends, and acquaintances.
In this style, intonation and non-verbal messages are given a front seat,
while wording or grammar is given a back seat.
When you change your style from an ‘intimate style’ to a ‘consultative

Think of some situ-
ations where style style’ while communicating with one of your family members, for instance,
shifting may occur. there will be a style shift. Similarly, changing your style as a doctor while
communicating with your patient, from a ‘consultative style’ to a ‘casual
style’, for instance, will result in a style shift.
The questions that arise here are: ‘Shall we cater for style while trans-
lating?’ and ‘How can a style shift be translated?’ Priority should be given
to the meaning as the translator’s role is to translate the meaning first,
and only then style (Nida and Taber 1969/1974: 12). However, this does
not mean that the author’s way of using the language, or any style shift,
should be completely ignored. Rather, the translator needs to make use
of the potential sources available to reflect the author’s style and/or any
style shift. To explain, let us consider the following example extracted
from Mahmūd Saīd’s story ‫‘ البدیلة‬The Stand-in’ (cited in Almanna and Al-
Rubai’i 2009: 67):
Arabic ”‫أصبح العالم قریة صغیرة یشرب فیھا الكل الكوكاكوال ویأكلون “الهم‬
‫ ونحن‬..‫بركر ویلبسون نفس الزي ویحلقون رؤوسھم بنفس الطریقة وو‬
..‫ یا ویلي علینا‬..‫ما زلنا متخلفین‬
Back The world has become a small village in which
translation everyone drinks Coca-Cola, eats ‘ham’ burgers, wears
the same clothes, and has the same haircut, and (and)
… we are still lagging behind. Oh my God.
Here, certain rhetorical devices are employed by the author:
(1) ‘Alliteration’ in the repetition of the sound-cluster ‫ الكلـ‬at the beginning

of the words ‫ الكل‬and ‫الكوكاكوال‬.
(2) ‘Assonance’ in the repetition of the letters ‫ ك‬,‫و‬, and ‫لـ‬.
(3) ‘Pun’ on the words ‫‘ ھم‬grief’ and ‫‘ ھمبركر‬hamburger’.
In addition to these rhetorical devices, there is a style shift from formal to

casual, as shown below:
‫أصبح العالم قریة صغیرة یشرب فیھا الكل الكوكاكوال ویأكلون “الهم” بركر ویلبسون‬
‫] يا‬formal[ ..‫ ونحن ما زلنا متخلفين‬..‫نفس الزي ويحلقون رؤوسهم بنفس الطريقة وو‬
]casual[
‫ويلي علينا‬
Returning to the question raised earlier, can we reflect some of the style
shifts, if not all of them, in the target text? Due to (1) the differences
between the interfacing languages and (2) the fact that each language has
its own preferences, we might fail. It would be advisable for the target text
to retain as much as possible of such an effect. To convey the character’s
tone of indignation, one may opt for the addition of an adjectival expletive,
such as ‘damn’ or ‘bloody’. To reflect the style shift, however, one may use
expressions such as ‘O gosh’, ‘Holy moly’, and ‘Holy crap’.
The world has become a small village where everybody drinks Coca-
Cola and eats the bloody hamburger, wears the same clothes and has
the same haircut, and we are still lagging behind. O gosh.
In the following example quoted from Strikauskaitė (2016: 73), style is

given a back seat due to the differences between the interfacing languages.
English Grievers, we call ‘em.

Lithuanian Mes juos vadiname grizais.
Back translation We call them grievers.
With the potential to lay more emphasis on the lexical item ‘grievers’, the
author decides to foreground it. This becomes a stylistic feature that needs
to be given full consideration after reflecting the meaning, i.e. ‘We call
them grievers’. Guided by the ‘initial acceptability norm’ (Toury 1995)
and ‘expectancy norm’ (Chesterman 1997/2000; for more details, see the
next section), the translator decided not to translate this stylistic inver-
sion as translating it would strike the Lithuanian reader as very unusual
(Strikauskaitė 2016). Due to the flexibility that Arabic has in word order,
such a stylistic feature can be easily reflected without striking the target
language readers as unusual.
Arabic .‫ نسميهم‬،‫تعساء‬
Back translation Grievers, we call them.
In German with its similar word order flexibility, inversion is also pos-
sible: ‘Trauernde nennen wir sie’.
To finish off this section, let us translate the following example extracted
from Greene (1980: 9–10; also discussed after being translated to other
languages in Chapter 2 of this book) into Thai:
English I think that I used to detest Doctor Fischer more than

any other man I have known just as I loved his daughter
more than any other woman.

Thai ผ มคิิดว่่าผมเคยเกลีียดหมอฟิิ สเชอร์์มากกว่่าที่่�เคยเกลีียดใครคนไหนที่่�ผมได้้รู้้�จักั มา ใน
แบบเดีียวกัับที่่�ผมรัักลููกสาวของเขามากกว่่าผู้้ห� ญิิงคนไหน
phom kit wa phom koei kliat mo Fischer mak-kwa thi
kliat khai-khon-nai thi phom dai ru-chak ma nai baep
diaw kap thi phom rak luk-sao khong kao mak-kwa phu-
ying khon-nai.
Back I think I used to hate Doctor Fischer more than I hate
translation any other person I have known in the same way as
I loved his daughter more than any other woman.
In the original text, parallelism is used, as shown below:
I used to detest Doctor Fischer more than any other man

I loved his daughter more than any other woman
Added to this, two antonyms, i.e. ‘detest’ versus ‘love’ and ‘man’ versus
‘woman’, are employed by the author. These antonyms acquire stylistic
features that need to be reflected in the target text, providing that such a
reflection would not distort the linguistic and stylistic norms of the target
language.
Having paid attention to the style used by the author, the translator
managed to reflect the parallel structures in his translation into Thai.
Further, an experienced Thai translator may use assonance to create a
literary effect in addition to the phonological features that emerge from
the repetition of the terms ‘kliat’ meaning ‘hate’ and ‘mak-kwa’ meaning
‘more than’. Assonance is created by the choice of the /ai/ sound, as in
‘khai-khon-nai’ meaning ‘any other person’, ‘dai’ which is a lexis-based
aspect for the past perfect, ‘nai’ meaning ‘in’, and ‘khon-nai’ meaning
‘any other’. This rendition compensates for the loss of alliteration in
‘detest’ and ‘doctor’, which sound entirely different in Thai: ‘kliat’ and
‘mo’, respectively.
Connecting the dots (3): Audience type and

translation
Language users in general and speakers in particular modify their way of

Try to reflect on a using language when they know for sure who they are talking to. Talking
situation in which
you changed your
to a professor of English while discussing a linguistic issue is different
way of speaking from talking to a level-one student to discuss the same topic. Added to this,
because of your talking to a person when you are sure that there is nobody lurking around
audience.
is different from talking to a person when you know that there are some
people around you listening in to your speech. In this regard, Allan Bell
(1984) distinguishes between four types of audience, namely (1) addressee,
(2) auditor, (3) over-hearer, and (4) eavesdropper. The addressee has more
impact on the speaker’s way of using the language compared with other
types of audience. This is because the addressee is the person who the
speaker is talking to directly, while the auditor, over-hearer, and eaves-
dropper are not addressed directly by the speaker. Bell (Ibid.) proposes
three criteria through which these types of audience can be distinguished:
(1) ‘Known’ (this is the wider circle covering all people that are part of the
speech context, such as speaker, addressee, auditor, and over-hearer).
(2) ‘Ratified’ (this is the second largest circle covering the speaker,
addressee, and auditor, indicating that the speaker is aware of the
auditor’s presence without addressing him/her).
(3) ‘Addressed’ (this is the smallest circle covering only the speaker along
with the addressee).
L an g uag e va r iation 2 37
These different types of audience according to their relationship with the

speaker can be modelled here (adapted from Bell 1984: 160):
known ratified addressed

Addressee ✓ ✓ ✓
Auditor ✓ ✓ X
Over-hearer ✓ X X
Eavesdropper X X X
To make this point clear, let us imagine a situation in which a head of

department is talking to a teacher in an official meeting in front of the
other teachers when he suddenly realizes that someone is lurking around.
Here, the head of department (the speaker) is talking to one of the teachers
(addressee) in front of the other teachers (auditors who are ‘known’, ‘rati-
fied’, but not ‘addressed’) and realizes that someone is lurking around
(over-hearer who is ‘known’, but neither ‘ratified’ nor ‘addressed’). In such

a situation, the head of department, being influenced by (1) the presence of How would you
the other teachers and (2) the realization of someone lurking around, may define ‘intra-
well influence his way of using language, thus resulting in what is called speaker style
shifting’?
‘intra-speaker style shifting’.
Building on this, we can imagine an interpreting situation in which the
How would you
interpreter, being influenced by the audience type or the presence of other define ‘intra-
people who are experts in the field, modifies his/her way of using language, interpreter style
thus resulting in what is called in this book ‘intra-interpreter style shifting’. shifting’?
As far as translation is concerned, audience type can be discussed

from a different perspective. To achieve effective communication, Hall
(2008: 23) states that “the translator needs to take account of the cognitive
and cultural environment of the targeted language community and its

likely expectations of the transmitted text and make his/her translation
as informative and accessible as possible”. However, it is worth noting
that translators, as special readers, do not have direct access to the cog-
nitive environment of their target readers, but they rely on certain beliefs
and assumptions as well as their own intuitions (Gutt 1991: 112). Before
translating the text at hand, the translator needs to take into account the
target language readers’ expectations, as well as their level of education,
familiarity with the topic discussed, event narrated, entities referred to,
structures and lexical items used, and so on. To this end, s/he needs to take
into consideration several fundamental decisions regarding such notions
as acceptability, readability, idiomaticity, authenticity, accessibility, and
well-formedness that feed into naturalness. Almanna (2016: 41) expresses
this situation as follows:
Through careful reading and analysis, translators can make some

guesses as to the degree of formality as opposed to informality, gen-
erality as opposed to specificity, accessibility as opposed to inaccess-
ibility, explicitness as opposed to implicitness, and so on.
Acceptability, as Baker (1992: 219) states, has almost nothing to do

Norms, in general, with “how closely it corresponds to some state in the world”. Rather,
are conventional,
social, behavioural
it depends on how the target language readers access the target text and
routines, according decide on its reality, “whether believable, homogenous or relevant”
to which members (Ibid.). Acceptability, according to Toury (1995), is one of the social
of a certain culture
behave when they
regulation mechanisms, i.e. norms, that make certain choices more likely
find themselves than others. Toury (1995: 56–9; also discussed in Almanna 2014: 119–
under particular 20; Farghal and Almanna 2015: 34) distinguishes three types of norms,
circumstances.
namely:
(1) ‘Preliminary norms’ referring to the ‘translation policy’ and ‘directness

of translation’.
(a) ‘Translation policy’ referring to the factors that determine the
selection of the original text for translation.
(b) ‘Directness of translation’ dealing with the question of whether

the target text is directly translated from the source language or
through another language.
(2) ‘Initial norms’ referring to the general choices made by translators
when they make decisions to either pay attention to the norms of the
source language, thus guaranteeing adequacy, or to take into account
the norms of the target language, thereby achieving the acceptability
of the original text in the target language.
(3) ‘Operational norms’ covering both ‘matricial norms’ and ‘textual-
linguistic norms’.
(a) ‘Matricial norms’ referring to the completeness of the target

text, thereby questioning issues such as omission, addition, and
relocation.
(b) ‘Textual-linguistic norms’ referring to linguistic materials, such as
lexical items, phrases, and stylistic features.
Chesterman (1997/2000: 68–9) classifies translation norms into four types:
(1) ‘Expectancy norm’ referring to the translator’s decisions to make the

target text grammatical, acceptable, appropriate, and so on in a certain
text type.
(2) ‘Accountability norm’ referring to how translators consider tricky
points and complex, sophisticated, and sometimes confusing language
by double-checking their translation and/or asking professionals for
their opinion.
(3) ‘Relation norm’ referring to the relationship between the components
of the original text and those of the target text.
(4) ‘Communication norm’ referring to the communicative maxims in
terms of quantity, quality, relevance, and manner (see Chapter 8 of this
book for more details).
In order to see how these norms put pressure on the translator, thus deter-
mining, among other factors, the final shape of the target text, let us con-
sider the following example quoted from a short story titled ‫حكاية القنديل‬
‘The Tale of the Lamp’ by ‘Izz al-Dīn al-Madanī, translated by and cited in
Husni and Newman (2008: 26–7):
ST .)‫ (نعم يا موالي السلطان إنه وهللا قنديل من النحاس‬:‫فقال الرجل‬

Back So the man said: Yes, O my lord, the Sultan; it is by
translation God a lamp made of copper.
TT Yes, my lord –a lamp made out of copper.
Here, the translators, guided by the initial acceptability norm (Toury 1995)
and the expectancy and communication norms (Chesterman 1997/2000),
decided not to translate the lexical items ‫‘ سلطان‬Sultan’ and ‫‘ وهللا‬and by

God’ (an operational norm/matricial norm). Such decisions affect the com-
munication norm in terms of quantity. In this regard, Farghal and Almanna
(2015: 35) hold that this “kind of tug of war between conflicting norms
sometimes results in one winning over the other … or, alternatively, a
balance being struck or a compromise being reached between them”.
To reinforce this point, the following example extracted from Haddon
(2003: 1; also discussed in Pillière 2018: 234) and translated by Demange
(2004: 13) into French can be considered:
ST There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog. The

points of the fork must have gone all the way through the
dog and into the ground because the fork had not fallen
over. I decided that the dog was probably killed with the
fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog
and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a
dog after it had died.
TT Il avait une fourche plantée dans le ventre. Les dents
avaient dû le traverser de part en part et s’enfoncer dans
le sol, parce qu’elle n’était pas tombée. Je me suis dit que
le chien avait sans doute été tué avec la fourche, parce
que je ne voyais pas d’autres blessures. Et je ne pense pas
que quelqu’un irait planter une fourche dans un chien qui
serait mort.
Back There was a garden fork sticking out of its stomach. The
translation points Ø must have gone through it and into the ground
because it had not fallen over. I decided that the dog was
probably killed with the fork because I could not see any
other wounds Ø and I do not think you would stick a
garden fork into a dog after it had died.
As the back translation shows, the translator, guided by the initial accept-
ability norm (Toury 1995) and the expectancy and communication norms
(Chesterman 1997/2000), decided to:
(1) omit the lexical items ‘fork’ in ‘the points of the fork’ and ‘dog’ in ‘I
could not see any other wounds in the dog’ when opting for ‘les dents
avaient dû le traverser meaning’ meaning ‘the points must have gone
through it’ and ‘je ne voyais pas d’autres blessures’ meaning ‘I didn’t
see any wounds/injuries’ respectively;
(2) replace the lexical items ‘fork’ and ‘dog’ with pronouns when
translating ‘the fork had not fallen over’ into ‘elle n’était pas tombée’
literally meaning ‘she did not fall’ and ‘the fork must have gone all the
way through the dog’ into ‘les dents avaient dû le traverser’ literally
meaning ‘the points must have gone through it’.
Omitting these two lexical items and substituting them on other occasions
with pronouns do not affect the initial adequacy norm (Toury 1995)
and relation norm (Chesterman 1997/2000), as is the case with the pre� -
vious example. Rather, the translation hangs together as a cohesive and
coherent text.
These examples and other examples consulted show the amount
of pressure put on translators in their attempt to reach an adequate
decision.

they are false.
(1) When you communicate with your teacher in front

of your classmates, your classmates, in such a
situation, are ‘known’, ‘ratified’, and ‘addressed’
according to the criteria proposed by Allan Bell
(1984).
(2) ‘Intra-interpreter style shifting’ occurs when the
interpreter, influenced by the audience type or
presence of other people who are experts in the
field, modifies his/her way of using language.
(3) ‘Translation policy’, according to Toury (1995),
refers to the factors that determine the global
strategy that should be adopted by the translator.
(4) To determine whether people speak different
languages or different dialects of the same
language, one can rely on the mutual intelligibility
criterion.
(5) The line that demarcates regional varieties, i.e.
dialects, within a given language is called an
‘isogloss’.
(6) The use of ‘to seek’ in place of ‘to look for’ can be
considered as an example of regional variation.
(7) Consultative style according to Martin Joos (1962)
is characterized by a one-way participation and
thus by a heavy use of fillers.
(8) ‘Polyglossia’ is very close to bilingualism, rather
than monolingualism or multilingualism.
(9) Dialectal features can be easily translated by
experienced translators.
(10) A ‘pidgin’ is different from a ‘creole’ in the sense

that the former has native speakers.
Exercise 2: In the following sentences, different figures of speech are

used. Identify them before translating the sentences into your own
language:
Example Type
(1) “All animals are equal, but some animals are more
equal than others” —George Orwell, Animal Farm.
(2) My brother won the lottery, so he’s a bit excited.
(3) The famous chef said people should live to eat, not
eat to live.
Example Type
(4) Recently, he has lost his wife, his house, and his
car.
(5) I have told you a million times not to touch my
laptop!
(6) Opportunity seldom knocks twice, dude. You’ll
always regret it if you don’t go for it”.
(7) Her husband is an onion; to understand him, she
has to peel back the layers.
(8) The strawberry cake made by your mom was
awfully good.
(9) The burning fire warmed the whole house.
(10) Speech is silver, but silence is golden.
Exercise 3: Try to search for Earnest Hemingway’s short story titled ‘Very
Short Story’ (1942) and:
(1) translate it into your language, assuming that your translation will be
published by a literary magazine in your country;
(2) comment on your own translation by adopting a stylistic approach.

(1) What is the difference between ‘intralingual code-switching’ and
‘intra-sentential code-switching’? Discuss with illustrative examples.
(2) Find out the main differences between ‘dialect’ and ‘idiolect’.
(3) How would you define a ‘reader-oriented translation’?
(4) Think of the main local strategies that a translator can resort to while
dealing with translating certain dialectal features.
(5) Select any English text and translate it into your own language. Then
comment on your translation by referring to Toury’s (1995) norms.
References
Almanna, A. (2014). Translation Theories Exemplified from Cicero to

Pierre Bourdieu. Munich: Lincom Europa Academic Publishers.
Almanna, A. (2016). The Routledge Course in Translation
Annotation: Arabic-English-Arabic. London/New York: Routledge.
Almanna, A. and Al-Rubai’i, A. (2009). Modern Iraqi Short Stories: A
Bilingual Reader. London: Sayyab Books Ltd.
Al-Rubai’i, A. (2005). Translation Criticism. Durham Modern Languages
Series. Durham: Durham University.
Bell, A. (1984). “Language Style as Audience Design”, Language in

Society, Vol. 13, pp. 145–204.
Chesterman, A. (1997/2000). Memes of Translation: The Spread of
Ideas in Translation Theory. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John
Benjamins.
Cui, J. (2012). “Untranslatability and the Method of Compensation”,
Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 2(4), pp. 826–30.
Demange, O. (2004). Le bizarre incident du chien pendant la nuit. (trans.).
Paris: Pocket jeunesse.
Gutt, E-A. (1991). Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Haddon, M. (2003). The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
London: Jonathan Cape.
Hall, M. F. (2008). Discourse Analysis of Fictional Dialogue in Arabic to
English Translation. Unpublished PhD thesis. London: University of
London.
Hemingway, E. (1942). “Very Short Story”. Retrieved on 11 February
2023 from http://ouallinator.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/
A-Very-Short-Story.pdf.
Holmes, J. (1992/2013). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (4th edn).
Hough, G. (1969). Style and Stylistics. London: Routledge/Kegan Paul.
House, J. (1977/1981). A Model for Translation Quality Assessment.
Tübingen: Narr.
House, J. (2018). Translation. The Basics. London/New York: Routledge.
Joos, M. (1962). The Five Clocks: A Linguistic Excursion into the Five
Styles of English Usage. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Leech, G. and Short, M. (1981). Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction
to English Fictional Prose. London: Longman.

Nida, E. and Taber, C. R. (1969). The Theory and Practice of Translation.
Leiden: Brill.
Parker, F. and Riley, K. (1994/2010). Linguistics for Non-Linguists. Boston,
MA: Pearson.
Pillière, L. (2018). “Style and Voice: Lost in Translation?” Études de
stylistique anglaise, Vol. 40(12), pp. 225–52.
Romaine, S. (1994/2000). Language in Society. An Introduction to
Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Spolsky, B. (1998). Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Strikauskaitė, R. (2016). “Translation of Stylistic Devices in Contemporary
Young Adult Fiction”, Jaunųjų mokslininkų darbai, Vol. 2(46),
pp. 71–7.
Toury, G. (1995). Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond.

Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Van Herk, G. (2012). What is Sociolinguistics? Hoboken, NJ:
Wiley-Blackwell.
University Press.
Cognitive linguistics 12
In this chapter, you will learn about the main theories and approaches
of cognitive linguistics. In particular, you will become aware of the
difference between cognitive grammar and cognitive semantics and
about fundamental commitments in cognitive linguistics and imaging
systems and its components. You will further learn about translation and
its relations to the configurational, attentional, perspectival, and force
dynamic systems.
After studying this chapter, you will be in a position to apply the above
theoretical concepts to the process of translation, thus managing to
make your own translation more in line with the underlying cognitive
systems of the original text.
Cognitive linguistics was first developed in the late 1970s out of dissatis-
faction with strictly formal approaches to language and with the aim Ronald Langacker,
George Lakoff, and
of providing a holistic account of language by focusing on such cognitive Leonard Talmy are
abilities as distribution of attention, image schemas, viewing frames, the founders of
scope of intention, extent of causation, memory, and perception (Evans and cognitive linguistics.
Do you agree?
Green 2006: 3). Since the mid-1970s, several scholars have contributed
to the development of cognitive linguistics, such as Charles Fillmore and
Paul Kay (Construction Grammar), William Croft (Radical Construction
Grammar), Adele Goldberg (Cognitive Construction Grammar), Benjamin
Bergen and Nancy Chang (Embodied Construction Grammar), Eleanor

Rosch (Prototype Theory), Gilles Fauconnier (Mental Spaces Theory),
Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner (Conceptual Blending Theory), Charles
Fillmore (Frame Semantics), Ronald Langacker (Theory of Domain),
Mark Johnson (Image Schema Theory), George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
(Conceptual Metaphor Theory), and Leonard Talmy (Imaging Systems
Theory) (for more details, see Evans and Green 2006; Abdulkareem 2021).
Cognitive linguistics can be divided into two main areas: ‘cognitive
grammar’ and ‘cognitive semantics’; the former depends on the latter
as it “assumes a cognitive semantics” (Evans and Green 2006: 48), as
explained below:
DOI: 10.4324/9781003228028-13
2 4 6 Co g niti v e lin g ui sti c s
Cognitive grammar
Unlike the traditional approaches to grammar, cognitive grammar

“attempts to model the cognitive mechanisms and principles that motivate
and license the formation and use of linguistic units of varying degrees of
complexity” (Evans 2007: 20). In cognitive linguistics, cognitive grammar
is viewed as an image-based approach to grammar, and thus grammatical
universals need to be “flexible enough to accommodate the variability actu-
ally encountered” (Langacker 1987: 47). Surface structures, as Langacker
argues, do not “conceal a ‘truer’, deeper level of grammatical organiza-
tion; rather, it itself embodies the conventional means a language employs
for the structuring and symbolization of semantic content” (1987: 46–7).
Consider the following two sentences:
She goes to school with her dad in the morning.

She went to school with her dad in the morning.
In the second sen- In these two simple sentences, we have a process of doing expressed by the
tence, an open path verb ‘to go’ that invokes in our mind a moving-frame as well as an open path
with windowing, where the starting point and endpoint are not the same. But is the same mental
i.e. emphasis, over
the final portion is image conjured up in our mind by virtue of these two sentences? The answer
recruited. is ‘No’. In the first sentence, the process of doing expressed by the verb ‘to
go’ is characterized by multiplexity, i.e. the quantity of the action is made
up of more than one action, while in the second sentence it is characterized
by uniplexity, i.e. the quantity is made up of one action that occurred in the
morning. In the first sentence, we talk about a series of actions. Not only is
the action of going to school drawn out over a long period of time in the first
sentence, but it is characterized by having breaks or intervals.
Cognitive semantics
In cognitive semantics, the focus of attention is shifted towards the

relationships among a certain sociocultural experience, the conceptual
system, and the semantic structure encoded by language. Approached from
this perspective, linguistic units utilized by language users to conceptualize
Co g niti v e lin g ui sti c s 2 47
a certain sociocultural experience are used by cognitive linguists to study

the cognitive phenomena evoked in their minds. To make this point clear,
let us consider the following simple sentence:
Discuss the diffe-
The girl is digging a hole in the sand. rence between
‘The girl is digging
a hole in the sand’
In this sentence, we have two noun phrases: ‘the girl’ and ‘a hole in the
and ‘The girl is
sand’. While the first noun phrase, i.e. ‘the girl’, fills a semantic role of digging a hole in
Actor and a verb-specific semantic role of Digger, the second noun phrase, the sand with a
spade’.
i.e. ‘a hole in the sand’, fills a semantic role of Affected Participant and a
verb-specific semantic role of something Dug.
Now, hearing or reading such a sentence conjures up in our mind an

image where a girl is digging a hole in the sand with something, such as
a spade, garden fork, mattock, crowbar, or auger. This spade, for instance, Identify the
semantic and visual
used by the girl fills a semantic role of Instrument. However, it is worth
roles assigned to
mentioning that the language user decides not to mention it while com- each noun phrase
municating, thus backgrounding it in attention. In the above sentence, we used in this simple
sentence: ‘The man
have two semantic roles, while there are three visual roles, as shown in
is painting the wall
the following table which summarizes the relationships among syntactic, right now’.
semantic, and visual roles:
Syntactic The girl Subject is digging the sand Predicate.

roles
Semantic The girl Actor is digging process of doing the sand Affected Participant.
roles
Visual The girl Actor is digging process of doing the sand Affected Participant
roles (with something Instrument).
Commitments of cognitive linguistics
George Lakoff (1990), one of the pioneering figures in cognitive lin� -

guistics, argues that cognitive linguistics is based on two fundamental
commitments: ‘the generalization commitment’ and ‘the cognitive
commitment’, as shown below:
The generalization commitment is a commitment adopted to characterize

regular and irregular structuring principles that account for all aspects of
human language (Evans and Green 2006: 28). In English, for instance, there
are a number of suffixes, such as ‘–er’, ‘–or’, ‘–ress’, ‘–ant’, and ‘–ist’, that
can be added to verbs or nouns in order to denote the agent or doer of the
actions. The verb ‘to teach’, for example, can be changed to a noun referring
to the doer of the act of teaching by virtue of the suffix ‘–er’. The same holds
true for the word ‘artist’, which is made up of two morphemes: the root,
‘art’, and the suffix ‘–ist’. These suffixes function as agentive morphemes,
as modelled below (for more details, see Chapters 3 and 4 of this book):
Co g niti v e lin g ui sti c s 2 4 9
This grammatical category contains certain members, and those members Find out in your lan-
are representative of this category having almost the same function. As guage a grammat-
such, these members share common structuring principles, thus forming a ical category that
contains certain
family. In this respect, Evans and Green (2006: 43) hold that those common members that have
structuring principles result in “a set of members related by family resem- almost the same
blance rather than a single criterial feature, or a limited set of criterial function.
features possessed by every member of the category”.
In Italian, for example, the diminutive suffixes, such as ‘–ino’, ‘–etto’,
and ‘–ello’ can be added to nouns, adjectives, or verbs to convey different
but related meanings, thereby forming a category with a family resem-
blance, as shown in the following examples quoted from Evans and Green
(2006: 30–1):
paese (village) → paesano (small village)

cena (supper) → cenetta (light supper)
bene (well) → benino (quite well)
lavorare (to work) → lavoricciare (to work half-heartedly)
In Arabic, morphological causatives are created by the process of affixation,

as shown in the following examples quoted from Almanna (2016: 41):
As we can see, these verbs and similar ones (for more details, see Almanna
2016: 40–1) can be changed from intransitive verbs to transitive ones,
and then act as morphological causatives through the same process, thus
forming a family.
Cognitive commitment, on the other hand, is a “commitment to pro-
What does the
viding a characterization of general principles for language that accords word ‘buy’ mean?
with what is known about the mind and brain from other disciplines” Can you tell us its
(Evans and Green 2006: 27–8). As such, our knowledge of language should meaning without
imagining a par-
not be separated from other types of knowledge and experience that we ticular situation?
have acquired and developed over time. Approached from such a perspec- Discuss.
tive, decoding the meaning of any linguistic unit relies on (1) the concep-
tual content that a linguistic unit has, and (2) a certain construal that
a language user may adopt “to conceive and portray the same situation in
alternate ways” (Langacker 2008: 43). To make this point clear, consider
the following three sentences:
The man raised his hand and pressed the bell.

The man raised his hand to press the bell.
The bell was pressed by the man.
In the first sentence, which is a compound one, two tensed clauses,

Note that in this
book, terms such as
expressing two processes of doing, are used. The emphasis is here placed
‘tensed clause’ and on the completion of the two actions, i.e. raising his hand and pressing
its opposite ‘non- the bell.
tensed clause’ are
used as synonyms
for such terms as
‘finite clause’ and
‘non-finite clause’,
respectively.
Cognitively speaking, as it is asserted that he raised his hand and

pressed the bell, the extent of causation is greater than the scope of
How would you intention. We can see in our mind’s eye that there is no distance between
translate the above
his finger and the bell should we take the picture at the moment of
three sentences
into your language pressing the bell.
without changing In the second sentence, however, there are two clauses where two
the mental images
that might be processes of doing are utilized. However, only one clause is tensed, that is,
conjured up in your ‘The man raised his hand’ where the emphasis is placed on the completion
readers’ minds? of the act of raising his hand.
In the second clause, which is a non-tensed clause, the scope of intention

is greater than the extent of causation as it is not asserted that he pressed the
bell –he might change his mind at any moment and for any reason.
In the third sentence, the language user decided not to mention that
the man had raised his hand with the potential to press the bell, thus
backgrounding it in attention, but it can be predicted as it is still in the
scope of prediction. To put it differently, while in the first two examples,
the language user decided to profile the entire scope of prediction, in the
third sentence, s/he decided not to profile the first part, thereby providing
us with less details.
Main theories and approaches
Cognitive linguistics is not one single theory or approach; rather, it covers

several theories and approaches that share certain fundamental theoret-
ical principles and hypotheses, such as (1) meaning is conceptualization,

(2) meaning is encyclopedic, (3) meaning is based on usage and experiences,
(4) language has a symbolic function, and (5) language structures invoke
conceptual structures characterized by universality (for more details, see
Evans and Green 2006). These theories and approaches are classified
into two main groups, as already hinted at above. They are (1) cogni-
tive approaches to grammar, such as ‘Construction Grammar’ by Charles
Fillmore and Paul Kay, ‘Radical Construction Grammar’ by William Croft,
‘Cognitive Construction Grammar’ by Adele Goldberg, and ‘Embodied
Construction Grammar’ by Benjamin Bergen and Nancy Chang; and
(2) cognitive semantics, such as ‘Frame Semantics’ by Charles Fillmore,
2 5 2 Co g niti v e lin g ui s ti c s
‘Mental Spaces Theory’ by Gilles Fauconnier, ‘Theory of Domain’ by Ron

Langacker, ‘Prototype Theory’ by Eleanor Rosch, ‘Conceptual Blending
Theory’ by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, ‘Image Schema Theory’
by Mark Johnson, ‘Conceptual Metaphor Theory’ by George Lakoff and
Mark Johnson, and ‘Imaging Systems Theory’ by Leonard Talmy (for more
details, see Evans and Green 2006; Abdulkareem 2021).
In this chapter, we look at Leonard Talmy’s ‘Imaging Systems Theory’ in
which he describes imaging systems (also known as ‘schematic systems’).
By employing certain grammatical forms and content specifications, a
given scene may turn out to be of paramount importance for the actual
work of translators. ‘Frame Semantics’ by Charles Fillmore is another
important theory, and is explained in Chapter 6 of this book.
Imaging systems
A scene, according to Leonard Talmy (2000), which is expressed by lan�-

guage is structured by a kind of collaboration among the imaging systems
(also known as ‘schematic systems’) which each and every person has.
Each imaging system “contributes different structural aspects of the scene,
resulting in the overall delineation of the scene’s skeletal framework”
(Evans and Green 2006: 194). These imaging systems explained by Talmy
in several academic papers were later republished in his book titled Toward
a Cognitive Semantics (2000) in two volumes.
Imaging systems are divided, following Talmy (2000), into four systems:
(1) ‘Configurational system’ referring to all forms of conceptualization

of quantity or relations between quantities, in dimensions like TIME
According to and SPACE.
Evans and (2) ‘Attentional system’ referring to the distribution of attention over the
Green (2006: 199), aspects of the scene along with its participants.
while the first three
imaging systems (3) ‘Perspectival system’ referring to how people fix their mind’s eye to
focus on visual look upon a scene and its participants.
perception, force (4) ‘Force dynamic system’ dealing with the forces that each element in
dynamics “derives
from kinaesthesia, the scene may exert on another element.
i.e. our bodily
experience of These imaging systems, as hinted at above, work hand in hand to structure
muscular effort
or motion and a given scene, which is, in turn, expressed by virtue of certain grammatical
somesthesia, i.e. forms (grammar) and content specifications (semantics). It is worth
our bodily experi- mentioning that each imaging system has certain features and categories
ence of sensations
such as pressure that can be used to study the mental image(s) conjured up in the minds of
and pain”. the target language readers when we talk about translating from language A
to language B, as shown in what follows.
Connecting the dots (1): Configurational system and

translation
The configurational system refers to all forms of conceptualization of

quantity or relations between quantities, in dimensions like TIME and
SPACE. According to Talmy (2000), this imaging system is made up of
eight schematic categories, namely ‘plexity’, ‘state of dividedness’, ‘state
of boundedness’, ‘disposition of quantity’, ‘degree of extension’, ‘pattern
of distribution’, ‘axiality’, and ‘scene partitioning’. Almanna (2022), in an
attempt to link them to the actual work of translators, has modified them
slightly, thus suggesting seven categories, as explained in this chapter.
(1) Plexity
‘Plexity’ refers to the quantity of the action expressed by the verb or

matter expressed by the noun phrase, whether it is made up of one element
(uniplex) or more than one element (multiplex).
(2) State of boundedness
‘State of boundedness’ refers to the matter or action, whether it has bound-

aries (bounded) or not (unbounded).
(3) State of dividedness
‘State of dividedness’ refers to the internal segmentations that the quantity

of the matter or action has. So, if the quantity has some kinds of breaks What is the diffe-
or interruptions through the process of composition, then it is internally rence between
these two
‘discrete’. Otherwise, it is internally ‘continuous’ if it has no breaks or
sentences in terms
interruptions. of ‘plexity’, ‘state of
dividedness’, ‘state
of boundedness’,
(4) Degree of extension
and ‘degree of
extension’?
‘Degree of extension’ refers to the quantity of the matter or action, in terms ‘He travelled to the
UK last week’ and

of whether it is reduced to a single point or drawn out over a period or
‘He has travelled to
space. When it is drawn out over a period or space, it could be bounded (for the UK many times
boundaries, see ‘state of boundedness’) or unbounded. recently’.
(5) Scene partitioning Identify the person-

ation type, parts,
and noun phrases
‘Scene partitioning’ refers to how the whole scene along with its main parts used in this simple
and participants is conceptualized. ‘Part’ here refers to the process itself sentence:
typically expressed by the verb and the noun phrases used. ‘Participant’, ‘I received a text
message from her
however, refers to the personation type in terms of whether there is one yesterday’.
participant (monadic) or two participants (dyadic).
(6) Point of emphasis
‘Point of emphasis’ refers to the aspect of the action which the sentence
focuses on. This emphasis can be on completion, duration, continuity,
habituality, regularity, frequency, and the like.
(7) Pace of events and time lapse
‘Pace of events’ and ‘time lapse’ refer to the quality of actions immediately
following one another, with a time gap to separate them or not.
Let us discuss the process of behaving expressed by the verb ‘to watch’
in these two sentences:
I was watching TV when my friend came to visit me last night.

I used to watch TV when I was young.
Profile of the process in the first sentence:
• Plexity: the process of behaving is characterized by uniplexity

as the quantity of the process is made up of one element.
• State of boundedness: as we are not able to determine the
starting point and endpoint, it is unbounded.
• State of dividedness: according to the grammatical form
and content specification used, it is without breaks or
interruptions.
• Degree of extension: it is drawn out over a short period
of time.
• Scene partitioning: it is made up of three parts (the process
itself expressed by the verb and two noun phrases, namely ‘I’
and ‘TV’), and one participant (monadic).
• Pace of events and time lapse: there is no time lapse between
the process of behaving and the process of doing as the latter
occurred in the middle of the former.

• Point of emphasis: the emphasis is shifted from the begin-
ning and end of the action towards the middle phase, thus
presenting the action as an ongoing activity that occurred in
the past.
Profile of the process in the second sentence:
• Plexity: the process of behaving is characterized by multiplexity

as the quantity of the process is made up of more than one
element.
• State of boundedness: it is unbounded as no boundaries can be
determined.
• State of dividedness: it is not internally continuous, but it has
many breaks and interruptions.
• Degree of extension: it is drawn out over a long period of
time –we are talking about years here.
• Scene partitioning: the whole scene is made up of three parts
(the process itself and two noun phrases, namely ‘I’ and ‘TV’)
and one participant (monadic).
• Pace of events and time lapse: not applicable
• Point of emphasis: the emphasis is placed on the habituality of
the action in the past.
Now, to produce a similar mental image in the mind of the target language How would you
readers, these details should be given serious consideration by the trans- translate these
lator. Translating them into German, for instance, an experienced translator two sentences
into your language
might opt for: accurately?
ST (English) TT (German)
I was watching TV when my friend Ich sah fern, als mein Freund
came to visit me last night. mich letzte Nacht besuchte.
I used to watch TV when I was Ich habe in meiner Jugend immer
young. ferngesehen.
Translating these sentences into Arabic, we might use the same grammat-
ical form and content specification in the first part of the above sentences,
i.e. ‫كنت أشاه ُد التّلفا َز‬

ُ , literally meaning ‘I was watching TV’, as shown below:
Does that mean we failed to translate accurately, thereby producing a

different mental image in the mind of the target language reader? The
answer is ‘No’, simply because we managed to reflect all categories of the
configurational system despite the use of the same grammatical form and
content specification.
To reinforce this point, let us translate this sentence into different

languages:
Translate this sen-
tence into your lan-
I have told him several times not to wear this shirt.
guage to produce
a similar mental
image in the mind Arabic .‫أخبرته أال يرتدي هذا القميص‬
of the target lan-
guage reader. Back translation I (have) told him not to wear this shirt.
German Ich habe ihm mehrmals gesagt, dass er dieses
Hemd nicht tragen soll.
Back translation I have told him several times that he should not
wear this shirt.
French Je lui ai dit plusieurs fois de ne pas porter cette
chemise.
Back translation I told him many times not to wear that shirt.
Chinese 我已经告诉他几次不要穿这件衬衫。
Back translation I already told him several times not to wear this
shirt.
All the above translations reflect a similar mental image in the minds of
the target language readers, except for the translation into Arabic where
the translator decided not to translate ‘several times’. In the original text,
by virtue of the grammatical form (present perfect) and content specifica-
tion (several times), the verbal process expressed by the verb ‘to tell’ is
characterized by multiplexity, i.e. the quantity of the action is made up of
more than one element with breaks or intervals (state of dividedness) and
without boundaries (state of boundedness) because we are not able to deter-
mine its starting point and endpoint. The emphasis is placed on the duration
of the process that started in the past (unspecified) and is seen as relevant to
the present (specified: the moment of speaking), so it is partially bounded
(degree of extension and state of boundedness). The scene is made up of
four parts (the process itself, two noun phrases ‘I’ and ‘him’, and verbiage/
content) and a dyadic personation type (Sayer and Addressee).
In Arabic, however, the verbal process expressed by the verb ‫‘ أخبر‬to
tell’ is characterized by uniplexity, i.e. the quantity of the action is made

up of one element without breaks or intervals (state of dividedness). The
emphasis by the effect of the grammatical form and content specification
used by the translator is placed on the completion of the action (point of
emphasis), thus reducing the process, which is now seen as a single point
on the timeline (degree of extension and state of boundedness).
Connecting the dots (2): Attentional system and

translation
In this imaging system, the distribution of attention over the aspects of the
scene is given adequate consideration by concentrating on issues such as
scope of attention, profile selection, foregrounding versus backgrounding

in attention, windowing of attention, and strength of attention, whether it
is placed on the extent of causation or the scope of intention (Almanna and
Al-Shehari 2019: 122). By way of illustration, let us go back to one of the
examples discussed earlier in this chapter with the potential to translate it
to several languages:
The man raised his hand and pressed the bell.
Arabic .‫ب‬
ِ ‫جرس البا‬
َ َ‫رفع الرّج ُل ي َدهُ وضغط‬ What about opting
for translating the
Back translation The man raised his hand and pressed the doorbell. additive connector
German Der Mann hob seine Hand und drückte auf die into a full stop, thus
having two simple
Klingel. sentences, particu-
Back translation The man raised his hand and pressed on the bell. larly in literary trans-
lation? Discuss.
French L’homme a levé la main et a appuyé sur la
sonnette.
Back translation The man raised his hand and pressed the
doorbell.
Chinese 这个男的抬起他的手，按了下门铃。
Back translation This man raised his hand, (and) pressed the
doorbell.
Spanish Levantó la mano y apretó la campana.
Back translation He raised the hand and pressed the bell.
In the original sentence, a compound sentence is used with two processes of

doing expressed by two finite verbs: ‘to raise’ and ‘to press’. The emphasis
in the two processes is placed on the completion of the actions, thus being
reduced to being seen as points on the timeline. Each process, to elaborate,
is made up of one element (uniplex) and without breaks or interruptions
(state of dividedness) or boundaries (state of boundedness). In both of them,
it is asserted that the man raised his hand and pressed the bell, so they are
past oriented, i.e. part of reality. By means of the additive connector ‘and’,
there is no time lapse between the two processes, and the pace of events is
sped up. In the translations suggested above, as one may notice, all these
cognitive categories were given serious consideration, thereby producing a
similar mental image in the target language readers’ minds.
To reinforce this point, let us consider the following example taken from
BBC News (2 December 2015) and translated into Arabic and German:
English One of the workers died at the scene, while the other was Translate this text
rushed to a nearby hospital where he succumbed to his into your language
to produce a similar
injuries. Their two colleagues were unharmed.
mental image in the
Arabic ‫وقتل أحد المستخدمين فورا فيما نقل اآلخر إلى مستشفى محلي حيث فارق‬ mind of the target
.‫ ولم يصب الموظفان اآلخران في الحادث‬.‫الحياة‬ language reader.
Back And one of the workers was killed immediately, while

translation the other one was taken to a local hospital, where he died.
The other two employees were not injured in the accident.
German Einer der Arbeiter starb noch vor Ort, während der andere
in ein nahe gelegenes Krankenhaus gebracht wurde, wo er
seinen Verletzungen erlag. Ihre beiden Kollegen blieben
unverletzt.
Back One of the workers died at the scene, while the other was
translation taken to a nearby hospital where he succumbed to his
injuries. Their two colleagues remained unharmed.
In the English example above, a process of happening expressed by the

verb ‘to die’ is used. While this process was translated into Arabic as a
process of doing expressed by ‫‘ قتل‬to kill’, it was translated into German
as a process of happening expressed by the verb ‘sterben’, i.e. ‘to die’. It
is worth noting that each verb used here has a certain profile in a given
semantic frame. The verb ‘to die’ is profiled in a frame where it contrasts
with the verb ‘to kill’. While the verb ‘to die’ is characterized by having a
monadic personation type, i.e. it requires only one participant, the verb ‘to
kill’ is characterized by having a dyadic personation type, i.e. it requires
at least two participants: ‘Agent’ and ‘Patient’. The verb ‘to die’ invokes
in our minds an accident-frame which has nothing to do with issues such
as the intention to cause death to somebody. By contrast, by resorting to
the verb ‘to kill’, a killing-frame is activated that has something to do
with issues such as the intention to cause somebody to die (causativity) –
flow of energy from the Agent to the Patient (transitivity). In the Arabic
version, by virtue of the lexical item ‫فورا‬, i.e. ‘immediately’, the pace of
events is sped up, thus indicating that there is no time lapse between the
act of shooting, backgrounded in attention, but it can be predicted as it is
in our scope of attention. This was not reflected in the German transla-
tion where the translator opted for ‘gebracht wurde’ meaning ‘was taken/
brought’.
Connecting the dots (3): Perspectival system and

translation
This imaging system is concerned with “how people fix their mind’s eye
to look out upon a scene and its participants” (Almanna and Al-Shehari
2019: 132). To translate accurately, thus producing a similar mental image,
four schematic categories need to be given adequate consideration by
translators. They are ‘location’, ‘distance’, ‘mode’, and ‘direction’, as
explained below with a direct link to translation.
Location
‘Location’ refers to how the text readers, as observers, are invited by the
author, and later supposedly by the translator, to locate their perspective
point somewhere inside or outside the depicted place in the scene (Talmy Identify the loca-
2000: 69; Almanna and Al-Shehari 2019: 132). There are two main tion and distance
as schematic
perspective points: ‘interior’ (from inside) and ‘exterior’ (from outside).
categories in a
sentence of the
Distance following kind:
‘The man entered
‘Distance’, as a schematic category, refers to the distance between the the shop and
bought a bottle of
reader as an observer and the scene with its various elements. By virtue of
water’.
certain grammatical forms and content specifications, the author, and later
supposedly the translator, invite the reader to adopt a particular perspective
to view the scene. This perspective can be ‘proximal’, resulting in a
restricted frame, or ‘distal’, resulting in a less restricted frame (Evans and
Green 2006; Evans 2007; Almanna and Al-Shehari 2019: 134). Closely
related to distance as a schematic category is ‘zooming’, with its two cog-
nitive operations, namely ‘zooming in’ and ‘zooming out’ (Almanna and
Al-Shehari 2019: 134).
Mode
‘Mode’ in the sense used by Talmy (2000: 70) refers to the motion of the
perspective point. If it is in motion, then it is in a sequential mode, and
the perspective adopted by the reader is proximal with a restricted frame.
Otherwise, it is a synoptic mode, and the perspective adopted by the reader
Identify the ‘mode’
is distal with a less restricted frame. and ‘direction’
as schematic
Direction categories in a
sentence of the
‘Direction’, as the name suggests, refers to the direction from which the following kind:
‘After her husband
scene at hand is viewed. Two directions are suggested by Talmy (2000; also died, she travelled
discussed in Evans and Green 2006; Evans 2007; Almanna and Al-Shehari to the UK to live
2019: 136), namely ‘prospective’ (forward) and ‘retrospective’ (backward). there’.
By way of illustration, let us consider the translation of the following
example quoted from “Mix War, Art, and Dancing” by Ernest Hemingway
(www.americanliterature.com):
English After the last car had gone, the woman walked along
the wet sidewalk through the sleet and looked up at
the dark windows of the sixth floor.
Arabic ‫ مشت المرأة على الرصيف المغطى‬،‫بعد أن اختفت السيارة األخيرة‬
.‫بالجليد ونظرت عاليًا إلى النوافذ المظلم ِة في الطابق السادس‬
Back translation After the last car disappeared, the woman walked
down the pavement covered with ice and looked up
at the dark windows on the sixth floor.
In the original text, by means of the grammatical forms and content

specifications used by the author, readers as observers are invited to locate
their perspective point outside the building, thus being able to see the
woman walking down the wet pavement looking up at the dark windows
of the sixth floor. To have a less restricted frame, readers are invited to
adopt a somewhat distal perspective. Further, readers as viewers are
induced to place their perspective point on the finite clause ‘the last car
had gone’ from which a line of viewing in a prospective direction goes
forward to the process of doing expressed by the verb ‘to walk’ and then
to the process of behaving expressed by the phrasal verb ‘to look up at’.
All these schematic categories were given adequate consideration by the
translator.
To reinforce this point, let us translate the following sentence into sev-
eral languages:
Having cleaned her flat, she sat with her kids watching cartoons.
Arabic .‫ جلست مع أطفالها تشاهد أفالم الكرتون‬،‫بعد أن نظفت الشقة‬

Back translation After she had cleaned the flat, she sat with her
children watching cartoons.
German Nachdem sie ihre Wohnung sauber gemacht
hatte, saß sie bei ihren Kindern und schaute
Cartoons an.
Back translation After she had cleaned her flat, she sat with her
children and watched cartoons.
French Après avoir nettoyé son appartement, elle s’est
assise avec ses enfants en regardant des dessins
animés.
Back translation After cleaning her apartment, she sat with her
children watching cartoons.
Spanish Después de limpiar su piso, se sentó con sus hijos
a ver dibujos animados.
Back translation After cleaning her flat she sat with her children to
watch cartoons.
Chinese 打扫完公寓之后，她和她的孩子们坐在一起
看卡通。
Back translation After cleaning the flat, she and her children sat
together to watch cartoons.
As can be observed, the translators managed to produce similar mental

images in the minds of their targeted readers by considering such schematic
categories as ‘location’, ‘distance’, ‘mode’, and ‘direction’, in addition to
other cognitive categories.
Connecting the dots (4): Force dynamic system and

translation
This imaging system is concerned with the forces that the elements of a
given scene may have and then exercise over one another. These forces
can take different forms, such as forcing an entity to act in a certain way,
resisting such a force, overcoming such a resistance, blocking such a
force or resistance, or removing such a blockage (for more details, see
Talmy 2000; Almanna and Al-Shehari 2019: 128). In discussing the force
dynamic patterns, we assume two entities: ‘agonist’ and ‘antagonist’
(Talmy 2000: 413; also discussed in Evans 2007: 83; Almanna and Al-
Shehari 2019: 128). The agonist, to begin with, refers to “the entity that
receives focal attention”. The antagonist, however, refers to “the entity that
opposes the agonist, either overcoming the force of the agonist or failing
to overcome it” (Evans 2007: 83). Let us translate the following example
quoted from Almanna (2018: 264) into several languages:
No sooner had the lecture begun than the professor left the class due to Is there any time
the bad behaviour of one of the students. lapse between
the beginning of
the lecture and
TT1 ‫ما إن بدأت المحاضرة حتى غادر األستاذ الصّف بسبب سوء تصرّف أحد‬ the act of leaving
(Arabic) .‫الطلبة‬ the class?
Back No sooner had the lecture begun than the professor left the
translation class due to the misbehaviour of one of the students.
Kaum hatte der Unterricht begonnen, da verließ der
TT2
Professor auch schon den Unterricht aufgrund des
(German)
schlechten Benehmens eines Studenten.
Back The lesson had hardly started when the professor already
translation left the class due to the misbehaviour of one student.
TT3 Dès que le cours a commencé, le professeur a quitté la
(French) classe en raison de la mauvaise conduite d’un des élèves. Translate this text
into your language
Back As soon as class started, the teacher left the class due to to produce a similar
translation the misbehaviour of one of the students.
mental image in
the minds of your
TT4 讲座刚刚开始，那个教授便因为一个学生的不正当行 readers.
(Chinese) 为离开了教室。
Back The lecture just began, the professor due to a student’s
translation misbehaviour left the classroom.
TT5 เลคเชอร์์ไม่่ทันั จะเริ่่� ม อาจารย์์ก็เ็ ดิินหนีีจากชั้้�นเรีี ยน เพราะนัักเรีี ยนคนหนึ่่�งแสดงกิิริิยาแย่่
(Thai)
The lecture had not properly begun, the professor walked
Back
away from the class because one student showed bad
translation
behaviour.
TT6 Ders başladıktan hemen sonra, öğrencilerden birinin
(Turkish) yaramazlığı nedeniyle öğretmen sınıftan ayrıldı.
2 6 2 Co g niti v e lin g ui s ti c s
Immediately after the lesson began, the teacher left the

Back
classroom because of the misbehaviour of one of the
translation
students.
TT7 ‫ استاد به‌دلیل رفتار بد یکی از دانشجویان کالس را‬،‫به محض شروع درس‬
(Persian) .‫ترک کرد‬
Back As soon as the lecture started, the professor left the class
translation due to the bad behaviour of one of the students.
In the original text, the scene is not dynamically neutral; rather, it is

characterized by having a force dynamic value of forcing the professor –
who tends, in normal circumstances, to stay in the class –to leave the class.
To elaborate, the finite cause ‘the professor left the class’ is an expected
result of the non-finite clause ‘the bad behaviour of one of the students’.
This force dynamic framework enables us to capture the causing (the bad
behaviour of one of the students) of the result (the professor left the class),
as modelled here:
This force dynamic pattern was given serious consideration by all the
translators, thereby producing similar mental images in their targeted readers.
In the following example, the whole scene is not force-dynamically neu-
tral; rather, it is characterized by having a force dynamic value of forcing
the experiencer/enjoyer, expressed by the pronoun ‘he’, not to enjoy his
work due to the fact that he does not earn much money. However, in this
example, by means of the counter indicator ‘but’, the experiencer/enjoyer
overcomes this force, thus continuing enjoying his work.
He doesn’t earn much, but he does enjoy his work.

TT1 Guadagna poco, ma in compenso il lavoro gli piace.

(Italian)
Back Earn little, but, on the other hand, he likes work.
translation
Translate this sen- TT2 Er verdient nicht viel, aber er genießt seine Arbeit.
tence into your lan- (German)
guage to produce
a similar mental Back He does not earn much, but he enjoys his work.
image in the minds translation
of your readers.
TT3 .‫ فهو مستمتع به‬،‫على الرغم من أنه ال يكسب كثيرًا من عمله‬
(Arabic)
Back Although he does not earn much from his work, he
translation enjoys it.
TT4 他挣的不多，但却享受他的工作。
(Chinese)
Back He doesn’t earn much but enjoys his work.
translation
TT5 (Thai) ถึึงเขาได้้เงิินน้้อย แต่่ก็มี็ ีความสุุ ขกัับงาน
Back Although he earns less, [but he] is happy with his job.
translation
TT6 Çok kazanmasa da işine severek yapıyor.
(Turkish)
Back Although s/he does not earn much, s/he loves his/her
translation job.
TT7 .‫درآمد زیادی ندارد اما از کارش لذت می‌برد‬
(Persian)
Back (He) does not have much earnings, but enjoys his work.
translation
This force dynamic pattern was reflected by the translators. In TT1 (Italy),
the translator, guided by the initial acceptability norm (Toury 1995) and
expectancy norm (Chesterman 1997/2000), decided to change the conjunc�-
tion but without changing the force dynamic pattern. In TT2 (German), the
translator opted for a translation which is close to the original text, apart
from the emphasis put on the verb ‘enjoy’ in English by virtue of the verb
‘does’ that could have been reflected had the translator opted for an adverb
like ‘wirklich’ to emphasize the enjoyment expressed by ‘does’ in English.
In TT3 (Arabic), the translator changed the structure without changing the
force dynamic pattern. It cannot be argued that the Arabic translator, for
the sake for acceptability, readability, authenticity, idiomaticity, and other
issues that would feed into naturalness, decided to change the structure as
having one very close to the original text, such as ‫ لكنه يستمتع‬،‫ال يكسب كثيرًا‬
‫‘ بعمله‬he does not earn much, but he enjoys his work’, will not strike the
target language readers as unusual.
To finish off this section, let us consider the following example quoted
from Gu and Wang (2021: 387):
ST 我说要向雾霾等污染宣战, 这是因为这是社会关注的
(Chinese) 焦点问题。
Back I said (I) will declare war against pollution like smog.
translation This is because this is a focal issue that the society
focuses on.
TT I said the government will declare war against smog
(English) pollution as a whole, because this has become a serious
issue on the top of minds of our people.
As the back translation shows, the Sayer/Declarer in the original text is

我, i.e. ‘I’. So, by virtue of the grammatical form and content specification
employed by the language user in the original text, the Sayer is presented
as being characterized by being-able-to-do, thus presupposing authority.
In the target text, however, the Declarer is the government. As such, the
speaker’s authority is lost through translation. In the original text, the
scene is not dynamically neutral; rather, it is characterized by having a
force dynamic value of forcing the Sayer/Declarer –who tends, in normal
circumstances, not to declare war against smog pollution – to declare it.
The clause ‘I will declare war against smog pollution’ is an expected result
of ‘a focal issue that society focuses on’. This force dynamic framework
enables us to capture the causing (a focal issue that society focuses on) of
the result (I will declare war against smog pollution). However, one may
argue that ‘a focal issue that society focuses on’ is different from ‘a serious
issue on the top of minds of our people’ as the experiencer is different in
these two versions. While the experiencer in the original text is ‘society’,
in the target text, it is assigned to ‘people’.

they are false.
(1) In a sentence of the following kind, ‘He is reading

right now’, there is one sematic role and two visual
roles.
(2) By employing certain grammatical forms and content
specifications, language users can structure a given
scene.
(3) Cognitive linguistics is a single theory that first
developed in the late 1970s out of dissatisfaction
with strictly formal approaches to language and with
the aim of providing a holistic account of language.
(4) Cognitive linguistics, according to Lakoff (1990), is
based on two fundamental commitments: the ‘gener-
alization commitment’ and the ‘cognitive commitment’.

(5) In the second clause, which is non-finite, of the
following sentence, ‘She went to the mall to buy a
new laptop’, the scope of intention is greater than the
extent of causation.
(6) According to Talmy (2000), there are four imaging
systems: the ‘configurational system’, ‘attentional
system’, ‘perspectival system’, and ‘force dynamic
system’.
(7) In a sentence of the following kind, ‘She led him by
the hand to his room’, the whole scene is not dynam-
ically neutral, but is characterized by having a force
dynamic value.
(8) In a sentence of the following kind, ‘I used to

smoke when I was young’, the action of smoking is
characterized by having breaks and interruption.
(9) In a sentence of the following kind, ‘She is stirring
the coffee’, there are three semantic roles and three
visual roles.
(10) The action in ‘She kept smiling’ is characterized by
‘multiplexity’, i.e. it consists of more than one smile.
Exercise 2: In the following sentences, a process of doing expressed

by the verb ‘to visit’ is used. Your task is to analyse them cognitively by
referring to such notions and categories as ‘plexity’, ‘state of dividedness’,
‘state of boundedness’, ‘degree of extension’, ‘scene partitioning’, and
‘point of emphasis’ before translating them into your own language.
(1) He has been visiting his close friend for many years.
(2) He has been visiting his close friend since morning.
(3) He visited his close friend yesterday morning.
(4) He had not visited his close friend till yesterday morning.
(5) He used to visit his friend when he was young.
Exercise 3: The following short text is extracted from BBC News (1

November 2017).
Carles Puigdemont triggered a crisis in Spain by holding an inde-

pendence referendum in early October in the semi-autonomous
region despite Madrid’s opposition and the Constitutional Court
declaring the vote illegal.
Before translating it into your own language, read it carefully to identify

whether the scene is construed as having a force dynamic value or not.
Exercise 4: Translate the following text quoted from Almanna (2018: 40–
1) into your own language, and then comment on your translation by

referring to the imaging systems discussed in this chapter.
There was a man. The man was illiterate. He did not know how
to read and write. He often saw people wearing spectacles
for reading books or papers. So, he decided to buy a pair of
spectacles for himself.
One day he went to the town. There, he entered a spectacles
shop and asked the shopkeeper for a pair of spectacles for reading.
The shopkeeper gave him various pairs of spectacles and a book.
The man tried all the spectacles one by one, but he could not read
anything. He told the shopkeeper that all those spectacles were
useless for him as he wasn’t able to read. The shopkeeper didn’t
understand him. Then he looked at the book. It was upside down!

(1) Select any English text where the scenes are not dynamically
neutral and translate it into your language. Then comment on your
own translation by referring to the force dynamic system.
(2) Go through any translated text from your own language into English
and comment on the translation by referring to the attentional
system.
(3) Select any English text and translate it into your language. Then
comment on your own translation by referring to the configurational
system.
References
Abdulkareem, M. A. (2021). Viewing Arrangement in Dan Brown’s

Works: A Cognitive Semantic Study. Unpublished PhD thesis.
Babylon: University of Babylon.
Almanna, A. (2022). “A Configurational System-based Approach to
Translating Tenses from Arabic to English”, BJTLL: British Journal
of Translation, Linguistics and Literature, Vol. 2, pp. 1–14.
Almanna, A. and Al-Shehari, A. (2019). The Arabic–English
Translator as Photographer: A Linguistic Account. London/
Evans, V. (2007). A Glossary of Cognitive Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Evans, V. and Green, M. (2006). Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Gu, C. and Wang, B. (2021). “Interpreter-Mediated Discourse as a Vital
Source of Meaning Potential in Intercultural Communication: The
Case of the Interpreted Premier-Meets-the-Press Conferences in
China”, Language and Intercultural Communication, Vol. 21(3), pp.
379–94.
Lakoff, G. (1990). “The Invariance Hypothesis: Is Abstract Reason Based
on Image-Schemas?” Cognitive Linguistics, Vol. 1(1), pp. 39–74.
Langacker, R. (1987). Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Volume I.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Langacker, R. (2008). Cognitive Grammar: A Basic Introduction.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a Cognitive Semantics: Vol. 1: Concept

Structuring Systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Toury, G. (1995). Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.
Index
abbreviation 61–3 assonance 234, 237

absolute and implicational universals attentional system 256–8
11–12 attitude and attitudinal assessment
accents 230–1 185–8
accessibility vs inaccessibility 181 ‘attitudinal translation’ 141
‘acoustic phonetics’ 19 attribution 140–1
acronyms 62 audience type and language variation
active and passive voice 96–8 236–40
adjacency pairs 131–2 ‘auditory phonetics’ 19
affirmative to negative meaning 39–40, Austin, J. L. 153, 166
54–5
affixation 54–5 back-formation and coinage 63–4
affricatives 23 Baker, E. A. and Hengeveld, M. 5
Agent/Agency 98–9, 137–8, 144, 258 Baker, M. 3, 109, 196, 238
Ahmed, M.A.H. 218–19 Bakhtin, M. M. 188–9
Aitchison, J. 6, 129 Bar-Hillel, Y. 153
Akmajian, A. et al. 6 Barnes, M. 139, 140
Al-Rubai’i, A. 183 Baumgarten, N. 14
alliteration 234, 237; and antonymy Bayar, M. 180
28–30 Bell, A. 236–7
allomorphs and conditioning factors Bell, R. T. 86–7, 180, 181–2
39–41 Bergen, B. and Chang, N. 251
allophone 20 bilingualism and multilingualism 227
Almanna, A. 7, 47, 67, 88, 89, 90, 94, ‘binary antonyms’/‘non-gradable
114, 116, 119, 121, 132, 178–9, 238, antonyms’ 107
253, 261; and Al-Rubai’i, A. 234; blending 64–6
and Al-Shehari, A. 257, 258, 259; Bloomfield, L. 36
Farghal, M. and 28, 144, 145, 238–9 Blum-Kulka, S. 112; et al. 154–7, 197
ambiguity 83–4 borrowing 66–8

Amir, E. 218–19 bound morphemes: and ‘free’
analytical causatives 69, 70 morphemes 36, 41–2; grammatical
analytical vs synthetic morphology 43
46–7 boundedness: ‘rank-bound translation’
androcentric and sexist translation, and ‘unbound translation’ 45; state
avoiding 90–3 of 253, 255, 256
antonymy: and alliteration 28–30; and Bourdieu, P. 208–9
modulation 107–8
‘apologies’ 154; and politeness 169–70 calques 67–8
appraisal 184–93 capital, forms of 208–9
appreciation and judgement 65–6, 187 Castro, O. 90, 92–3
approximants 23 casual style 233; see also formality and
Aronoff, M. and Fudeman, K. 35 informality
articulation: manner of 22–3; place of category extension and transposition
21–2 58–60
‘articulatory phonetics’ 19 ‘category shifts’ 44
I N DEX 269
Catford, J. C. 43–4, 45, 59, 64, 89 convergence vs divergence 70, 114–15,

causativity 68–70 213–15
Chesterman, A. 59–60, 180, 211, conversation analysis 130–4
219–20, 235, 239, 240, 263 cooperative principle 161–4
Chomsky, N. 78, 138, 153; Greenberg, covert vs overt translation 160–1,
J. and 12 199–200
Cincotta, M. S. 218 creole 228–9
circumfix 54–5 critical discourse analysis 134–47
‘class shift’ 59–60, 64 critical linguistics 135
clipping 60–1 Croft, W. 251
co-hyponymy 106 cross-cultural pragmatics 154–7, 164–6
code-switching 214, 215–20 Cross-Cultural Speech Act Analysis
Coffin, C. 134–5, 184 Project (CCSARP) 154–6
cognitive grammar 246 Crystal, D. 19, 20, 129
cognitive linguistics 245–6; attentional Cui, J. 231–2
system and translation 256–8; cultural capital 208–9
cognitive grammar 246; cognitive cultural filters 163–5, 170–1, 200,
semantics 246–8; commitments 201
of 248–51; configuration and Cutting, J. 128, 131, 132
translation 253–6; force dynamic
system and translation 261–4; Davenport, M. and Hannahs, S. J. 23
imaging systems 252; perspectival de Beaugrande, R. and Dressler, W.
system and translation 258–60; 193–4
theories and approaches 251–2 declaratives 167
cognitive semantics 246–8 declension and conjugation 52
cohesion 193–8 degree of extension 253, 255, 256
coinage 64 deixis 157–9
collocation 195 Demange, O. 239–40
commissives 167–8 ‘derivational morphemes’ 54
communication, linguistic and non- diagnostic components 113–16
linguistic 5–6 dialects: and accents 229–32; regional
Communication Accommodation 225; social 225–6
Theory (CAT) 214 Dickins, J. et al. 70, 108
‘communication norm’ 239–40 diglossia and polyglossia 227
‘communicative suffering’ 211 diphthongs 25, 26
compensation 93 direct and indirect speech acts 169–71
compositional and unitary meanings ‘direct translation’ 59
119 direction, ‘prospective’ and
compounding 55 ‘retrospective’ 259–60
Comrie, B. 12 directionality and explicitation 14,
concatenation vs non-concatenation 56 197–8
conditioning factors and allomorphs directives 167

39–41 disclaiming and proclaiming 189
configuration system 253–6 discourse analysis 129–30;
conjugation and declension 52 conversation analysis and translation
conjunction 195 130–4; critical discourse analysis
consonants, voiced and voiceless 23 and translation 134–47; user-based
consultative styles 233 linguistics 128–9
context: and contextual meaning Discourse Completion Test (DCT)
153–4; information see deixis; and 154
re-contextualization 198; social see discourse markers 132–3
formality and informality; user-based distance: perspective 259; social 181
linguistics 128–9 distancing 140–1, 188, 191–2, 211
continuity (of tense, aspect, mood, etc) divergence vs convergence 70, 114–15,
196 213–15
contraction: abbreviation 62; and dividedness, state of 253, 255, 256
expansion 189–92 do–insertion 94–5
270 I N D E X
Edmondson, W. J. and House, J. 167–9 ‘neutralization’ 92; obligatory and

ellipsis 195 optional 109–10; vs particularization
engagement 188–92 70
‘ethnomethodology’ 130 generalized and cognitive commitments
evaluative language see entries 248–51
beginning negative; positive and genre specificity 15
negative Giles, H. 214; and Ogay, T. 214
Evans, V. 246, 261; and Green, M. 245, Goethe, J.W von 35
249, 252 Goldberg, A. 251
evocations 187 Götz, A. 190
expansion: and contraction 189–92; ‘gradable antonyms’/‘non-binary
types of 132 antonyms’ 107
‘expectancy norm’ 219, 235, 239–40 graduation 192–3
explicit performative request 155 ‘grammatical categories’ see syntactic
explicitation and directionality 14, categories
197–8 ‘grammatical morphemes’ 43
expressives 167 Greenberg, J. and Chomsky, N. 12
extra-sentential code-switching 218 Greene, G. 28, 195, 236–7
Grice, H.P. 162, 163, 169
Fairclough, N. and Wodak, R. 129, 135 Gu, C. 186–7; and Wang, B. 263
Farghal, M. 139, 140; and Almanna, A.
28, 144, 145, 238–9 Haddon, M. 239–40
Fattah, A. 138 Hall, C. J. et al. 129
Fauconnier, G. 252; and Turner, M. 252 Hall, M. F. 237–8
field, tenor and mode 198–9 Halliday, M. A. K. 12, 135, 136, 175–6,
field of discourse 178–80 178, 184; and Hasan, R. 13, 194
fillers 133–4 Hart, C. 135
Fillmore, C. 121, 251–2; and Kay, P. Hatim, B. and Mason, I. 98
251 hedged performative request 155
force dynamic system 261–4 heteroglossic and monoglossic
force and focus 192 discourses 188–9
formal linguistics 7–8 Hodgson Burnett, F 114–15
formality and informality 212–13, 233; Holmes, J. 209, 227
formality-related conditioning 41; homonymous morphemes 38, 39
personal pronouns 158–9; stylistic homonymy 107; and polysemy 112–13
variation 226–7; tenor of discourse homophones/homophony 27, 106
181–2 Hosseini, K. 160–1
Fowler, R. 135, 138 Hough, G. 232
frame semantics 121–2 House, J. 14, 17, 152, 160–1, 163–4,
‘free’ morphemes 36, 41–2 173–4, 180, 181, 196–201, 203–5,
fricatives 22 232–3; Edmondson, W. J. and
Fromkin, V. et al. 36 167–9; and Kádár, D. 156, 158

front, central and back vowels 25–6 Husni, R. and Newman, D. 214–15,
frozen style 233 226, 231, 239
functional equivalence 198, 199 Hutchins, W. and Kenny, O. 166
functional linguistics 175; appraisal hypermymy and hyponymy 108–9
and translation 184–93; cohesion hyperonymy 106
and translation 193–8; language
and meaning 175–8; register and ideational metafunction/meaning
translation 178–84; translation 12–13, 177
assessment 198–201 idioms 119–21
functional universals 12–15 imaging systems 252
impersonalization 181
Garfinkel, H. 130 implicational and absolute universals
gender 90–3 11–12
generalization: convergence vs implicatures 161–3
divergence 70, 114–15, 213–15; inaccessibility vs accessibility 181
I N D E X 27 1
indirect and direct speech acts 169–71 location 259

infix 54 locution derivable request 155
inflection/‘inflectional morphemes’ 53, long and short vowels 24–5
82–3
informality see formality and Mahfouz, N. 162–3, 166, 183–4
informality Malone, J. L. 66–7, 70, 91
‘initial acceptability norm’ 219, 235, manner: cooperative principle 162
239–40 marked and unmarked themes 196
‘initial adequacy norm’ 219–20, 240 Martin, J. R. 184, 189; and White, P. R.
‘initial norms’ 238 184, 185, 188, 189, 190, 192, 193
initialisms 61–3 ‘matricial norms’ 239
inter-sentential code-switching 217–18 meaning: compositional and unitary
interdisciplinary linguistics 8 119; contextual 153–4; and language
interference, law of 13 175–8
interpersonal metafunction/meaning ‘metafunctions’ 12–13, 177
12–13, 177 Meyerhoff, M. 208, 214
intimate style 233 mild hint request 156
intra-sentential code-switching 218 modality 138–40
inversion transformation 11–12 mode 259; field, tenor and 198–9
invocations 187–8 mode of discourse 183–4
modulation and antonymy 107–8
Johnson, M. 252 monoglossic and heteroglossic
Joos, M. 233 discourses 188–9
judgement and appreciation 65–6, 187 monophthongs/pure vowels 25–6
Juznic, T. M. 138 mood derivable request 155
morphemes: allomorphs and
Kress, G. and Hodge, R. 138 conditioning factors 39–41;
definition of 35; homonymous 38,
Lakoff, G. 248; and Ross, J.R. 152 39; productivity 37; types of 41–3;
Langacker, R. 246, 250, 252 and words 35–7
language: and communication 5–6; morphological causatives 69
and meaning 175–8 morphological processes 52–3;
language variation 224; audience type concatenation vs non-concatenation
and translation 236–40; diglossia 56; inflection 53; non-concatenative
and polyglossia 227; pidgin and processes of word formation and
creole 227–9; translating dialects translation 57–68; translating
and accents 229–32; translating causativity 68–70; word formation
styles and style shifts 232–6; types 54–5
of 225–7 morphology 7; analytical vs synthetic
language-pair specificity 14 46–7; definition of 35; shift theory
law of growing standardization 13 43–5
law of interference 13 Morris, C. and Peirce, C. 152

Le Page, R. B. 214 Müller, S. 132–3
Leech, G. and Short, M. 183, 232 multilingualism 227
‘level shifts’ 44, 45, 89 Munday, J. 184
lexical causatives 69
lexical conditioning 40 ‘name-calling’ and ‘counter-naming’
‘lexical morphemes’ 43 strategies 141
lexical relations 107–13 ‘naming theory’ 106
lexical semantics 106–7 nasal stops 22
‘linguistic disruption’ 92–3 negative judgement: and appreciation
linguistic and non-linguistic 65–6; social 225–6
communication 5–6 negative meaning, affirmative to
linguistic universals 9–12; and translation 39–40, 54–5
universals 12–15; types of 11–12 negative social identities and relations
linguistics: definition of 6; formal 7–8; 210, 211
interdisciplinary 8; scope of 6–7 ‘neutralization’ 92
27 2 I N D E X
Nida, E. A. 113 positive and negative functions of

Nida, E. and Taber, C. R. 232–3, 234 speech acts 167
nominalization 138 pragmatics 152–3; context and
‘non-binary antonyms’/‘gradable contextual meaning 153–4;
antonyms’ 107 cooperative principle and translation
non-concatenative processes of word 161–4; cross-cultural 154–7, 164–6;
formation 57–68 references (c)overtly translated
‘non-gradable antonyms’/‘binary 159–61; speech acts and translation
antonyms’ 107 166–71; translating deixis 157–9
non-standard dialect 225–6 ‘preference structure’ 131–2
Nord, C. 210–11 prefixes 38, 39–40; see also affixation
norms: code-switching 219–20; types ‘prelimary norms’ 238
of 238–40 preparatory request 155
presuppositions 145–7
obligatory generalization 109–10 proclaiming and disclaiming 189
‘oblique translation’ 59 productivity of morphemes 37
‘open choice principle’ 119 proper nouns 159–60
‘operational norms’ 238 ‘prospective’ and ‘retrospective’
‘optimal equivalent’ 119–20, 134 direction 259–60
optional generalization 110 provocations 187, 188
oral stops 22 ‘proximal’ and ‘distal’ perspective 259
overt vs covert translation 160–1, pure vowels/monophthongs 25–6
199–200
quality and quantity: cooperative
pace of events and time lapse 254 principles 162
Palmer, F. R. 110
Paltridge, B. 135 ‘rank-bound translation’ 45
parallelism 196 re-contextualization 198
Parker, F. and Riley, K. 9, 225, 226, reference: cohesion 194; vs sense
228 106–7
particularization: divergence vs regional conditioning 40
convergence 70, 114–15, 213–15; vs regional variation 225
generalization 70 register 176, 177; and translation
passive and active voice 96–8 178–84
Patient/Affected Participant 98–9, 137, reiteration 195
144, 258 relation: cooperative principle 162
personal deixis 158–9 ‘relation norm’ 180, 219–20, 239
personalization vs impersonalization ‘relational antonyms’ 108
180–1 reordering sentence constituents 84–6
perspectival system 258–60 repetition 195
phone, phoneme and allophone 20 representatives 167
phonetics and phonology 7, 19–27 ‘request’ strategies 154–6

phonological conditioning 40 ‘retrospective’ and ‘prospective’
phonological features and translation direction 259–60
27–30 Romaine, S. 225, 229
phrasal categories 76, 78 Rosch, E. 252
phrase structure rules 78–9
pidgin and creole 227–9 scene partitioning 253, 255
plexity 253, 255, 256 Schegloff, E. 132
point of emphasis 254, 255, 256 ‘schematic systems’/imaging systems
politeness 169–70; social distance vs 252
standing 181 Searle, J. 167, 169
polyglossia 227 selectivity and presupposition 143–7
polysemy and homonymy 112–13 semantic principles 119–21
‘position shift’ 45 semantic roles 115–19; syntax 76, 86,
positive and negative attitudinal 87–8, 97–8
assessment 186–8, 192–3 ‘semantic rules’ 76
I N D E X 27 3
semantics 8, 104; cognitive 246–8; syntax 8, 74–6; ambiguity and

diagnostic components and translation 83–4; inflection
translation 113–16; frame semantics 82–3; phrase structure rules 78–9;
and translation 121–2; lexical reordering sentence constituents
relations and translation 107–13; through translation 84–6; syntactic
reference vs sense 106–7; signifier parsing and translation 86–8;
vs signified 104–5 transformation and translation 93–6;
semiotic trichotomy 152 translating gender 90–3; translating
sexist translation, avoiding 90–3 tense and aspect 88–90; translating
shift theory 43–5 voices 96–9; tree diagram 79–80;
short and long vowels 24–5 verb group 80–1
shortening 60–3 synthetic vs analytical morphology
signifier vs signified 104–5 46–7
social categorization 208 systemic functional linguistics 12, 135,
social comparison 208–9 136, 184
social dimensions 212–15
social distance vs standing 181 tag code-switching 218
social identification 209 Tajfel, H.et al. 208, 210; and Turner,
social identity: theory 208–9; and J. C. 209
translation 209–11 Talmy, L. 252, 253, 259
social variation 225–6 Taylor, C. 68
sociolinguistics 207–8; code-switching tenor, field and mode 198–9
and translation 215–20; see also tenor of discourse 180–2
entries beginning social tense and aspect 88–90
sound production 20–1 textual metafunction/meaning 12–13,
sound system of English 20 177
‘specification’ 92 ‘textual-linguistic norms’ 239
speech acts: CCSARP 154–7; and thematic progression 196
translation 166–71 ‘thematic roles’ see semantic roles
speech sounds 23 Theroux, P. 162–3
Sperber, D. and Wilson, D. 169 Thompson, G. 184
standard and non-standard dialect Thornbury, S. and Slade, D. 131
225–6 time and space dimensions 253–6
Standard Southern British English topicalization 141–3
vowels 25–6 Toury, G. 13, 219–20, 235, 238, 240,
standardization, law of growing 13 263
state of boundedness 253, 255, 256 transformation 93–6
state of dividedness 253, 255, 256 transitivity 136–7, 178
‘status shift’ 45 translation assessment 198–201
Stewart, P. 183–4 translation universals 12–15
Strikauskaite, R. 235 transposition/‘class shift’ 59–60, 64
strong hint request 155–6 tree diagram: syntactical structures

styles and style shifts 232–6 79–80
stylistic variation 226–7 turn-taking 131
substitution 68, 194
suffixes 37, 38; deletion (back- ‘unbound translation’ 45
formation) 63–4; see also ‘unit shift’ 45
affixation unitary and compositional meanings
suggestory formula request 155 119
‘supplementary components’ unmarked themes 196
113 untranslatability 231–2
suppletion 57–8 user-based linguistics 129–30
Swan, M. 96
synonymy 110–11 van Dijk, T. 135, 210
syntactic categories 76–8 verb group 80–1
syntactic parsing 86–8 verb-specific semantic roles 115–19
‘syntactic rules’ 76 verbs, back-formation of 63–4
274 I N D E X
Vinay, J. P. and Darbelnet, J. 59, 68 word formation 54–5; non-

voices, translating 96–9 concatenative processes of 57–68
voicing 23 word ordering 141–3
vowels 23–7 ‘word structure shift’ 45
word-level categories 76–7, 78–9
want statement request 155
wh-question/wh-movement 11–12, ‘yes–no questions’ 11, 93–4
95–6 Yule, G. 8, 104, 147, 233
Wong, D. and Shen, D. 28
word, definitions of 36 ‘zooming’ 259

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Copyright © 2023. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

“Linguistics for Translators is a valuable addition to a field where

“Almanna and House adopt a perspective in their Linguistics for

“Linguistics for Translators by Almanna and House provides a ground-​

breaking contribution to translation studies. It reinstates linguistics to

This engaging and accessible textbook, by two leading experts, is a care-

Ali Almanna is Associate Professor of Translation Studies at Hamad Bin

Juliane House is Professor Emeritus, Hamburg University, Germany;

Hellenic American University. Her translation-​relevant publications include

Ali Almanna and Juliane House

1 Setting the scene 5

2 Phonetics and phonology 19

Allomorphs and conditioning factors 39

Antonymy and modulation 107

7 Discourse analysis 128

Connecting the dots (3): The cooperative principle and

9 Functional linguistics 175

Mode of discourse 183

11 Language variation 224

Frozen style 233

12 Cognitive linguistics 245

Our deep indebtedness and sincere appreciation naturally go to Basil

This book arrives at a time when investigations of translation as a socio-​

carefully designed to be reader friendly. Its 12 chapters offer the reader

Chapter 2 focuses on the areas of phonetics and phonology. We begin by

brief history of the discipline. Then we discuss key concepts, such as

Chapter 11 of the book complements the sociolinguistic focus addressed

When it comes to teaching linguistics to translation students at the univer-

This approach tailors the curriculum to the needs of translation students

includes French, German, Arabic, Spanish, Italian, Persian, Chinese, Tok

Baker, M. (1992). In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation. London/​

Language and communication

In order to express your opinions or feelings, tell somebody about some-

Using a natural language, humans can in principle communicate with

or disrespect, and so on. These are examples of non-​linguistic communica-

Linguistics can be defined as the scientific study of language. It is

Linguistics covers a wide range of areas, such as ‘phonetics’, ‘phonology’,

‘grammar’. As for ‘pragmatics’ and ‘discourse analysis’, they are outside

Formal linguistics, as hinted at above, focuses on studying the structures

Why is Interdisciplinary linguistics, like any other interdisciplinary subject,

● ‘sociolinguistics’ (studying the relationship between language and

● ‘psycholinguistics’ (studying the relationship between language and

Linguistic universals (also known as ‘language universals’) are “those

● all languages have the categories ‘noun’ and ‘verb’;

In French or German, as can be noticed, ‘status’ as a social dimension is

a person who is superior to us, such as a boss.

Language Noun Verb Pronoun Tense If languages do not

Language Noun Verb Pronoun Tense

As we mentioned above, all languages have nouns, verbs, and pronouns,

Gusto ko ang koste mu (I like your car).

Language Noun phrase

Types of linguistic universals

He will travel to France soon.

This ‘yes–​no question’ is formed by applying the inversion transformation

He will travel to France soon.

As shown above, in English, ‘wh-questions’ cannot be formed without

Connecting the dots: Translation universals

From a functional-​linguistic perspective, ‘universals’ can be defined as

language learners and users as personal and collective beings. Textually,

“Linguistics for Translators by Almanna and House provides a ground-

Hellenic American University. Her translation-relevant publications include

1 Setting the scene 5

2 Phonetics and phonology 19

Allomorphs and conditioning factors 39

Antonymy and modulation 107

7 Discourse analysis 128

9 Functional linguistics 175

Mode of discourse 183

11 Language variation 224

Frozen style 233

12 Cognitive linguistics 245

This book arrives at a time when investigations of translation as a socio-

Baker, M. (1992). In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation. London/

or disrespect, and so on. These are examples of non-linguistic communica-

This ‘yes–no question’ is formed by applying the inversion transformation

From a functional-linguistic perspective, ‘universals’ can be defined as

Laviosa-Braithwaite 1998; Toury 2012); see also the contributions to

(1) ‘All languages have pronouns’ is an example of an

(7) All languages have a grammatical category of ‘duality’.

Aitchison, J. (1999/2003). Linguistics (6th edn). London: Teach Yourself.

Traduction: An International Handbook (pp. 683–97). Berlin: Mouton

Laviosa-Braithwaite, S. (1998). “Universals of Translation”. In Baker,

tion, and transcription” (Crystal 1980/2008: 363).

/iː/as in ‘he’, ‘we’, etc. /ɒ/as in ‘water’, ‘watch’, etc.

●low front /æ/ as in ‘cap’, ‘bad’, etc.

(1) /ɪə/as in ‘beer’, ‘fear’, ‘here’, ‘idea’, ‘beard’, etc.

• from /θ/to /t/or /s/

the alliteration formed by virtue of the sound /d/in English.

(1) The word ‘brother’ begins with a stop.

red –war –light–patient –tear –door –this –check –car–

food –snore –book –fruit –call –seat –cut –flood –home –

a high front vowel ____________________________________

Almanna, A. (2018). The Nuts and Bolts of Arabic-English Translation:

Goethe (1749–1832) in a biological context to refer to “the study of the