لغويات مقارنة 1703

Introduction to
by
Khaled Tawfik Ali Abdel Aziz
2021
1703 Contrastive Linguistics (7 )

2 Contrastive Linguistics
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Contrastive Linguistics 3
Contents
Subject Page
Introduction …………………..………………………. 5
Part 1: Phonology ……………………………..………… 13

Unit (1) Consonant Sounds ……………..………… 15
Unit (2) Vowel Sounds ……………………..……… 29
Unit (3) Continuous Speech ……………………… 39
Part 2: The Lexicon …………………………...…………. 51

Unit (4) Lexical Facts about Arabic and English .. 55
Unit (5) Neologisms in Arabic and English ……… 89
Unit (6) Loanwords in Arabic and English ….….. 99
Part 3: Morphology & Syntax …………………….……... 123

Unit (7) Morphology ………………………..…….. 125
Unit (8) Syntax …………………………..………… 147
Part 4: Figurative Language …………………………….. 167

Unit (9) Figurative Language across Cultures …... 171
Unit (10) Culture- Specific Images as a Translation
Problem ……………….………………….. 189
For Further Reading ……………………..………….. 223
Part 5: More Exercises & Application …………..…..….. 225
Introduction
Contrastive linguistics can be generally defined as a sub-

discipline of linguistics concerned with the comparison of two
languages, or the same language at two different times of its
history, to determine both differences and similarities.
This course is interested in aspects of contrastive linguistics

as an applied study with the purpose of assisting interlingual
transfer in the process of translating text or discourse from one
language into another, the two languages being Arabic and
English.
Since this course is a part of a Distance Learning Translation

Program, the orientation of the book is more practical than
theoretical with the objective of improving the training of
translators and interpreters.
Contrastive linguistics draws on “general linguistics” which

is the scientific study of language. Depending on the interests of
the students of this discipline, linguistics can be divided into
phonology, morphology, lexicology, syntax, semantics,
pragmatics, and text linguistics or discourse analysis.
This course will compare and contrast some elements needed

for training the student of translation and interpretation at this
level of study concerning the first four of these subfields, i.e.:
Phonology: the study of the sound system of the two

languages, dealing with consonants, vowels and continuous
speech.
Morphology: the study of the structure of words and

meaningful parts of words (morphemes).
Lexicology: the overall study of the vocabulary of the two

languages.
Syntax: the study of sentence structure, comprising the study

of how words combine to form phrases and how phrases combine
to form sentences.
Applied linguistics, in general, has extended the science of

linguistics and related it to other disciplines such as sociology,
psychology, neurology and computation. Sociolinguistics is a
branch where linguistics and sociology meet to discuss such
topics as the effect of geographical location, social class and
education on dialects. Psycholinguistics, the study of language
and psychology, covers such areas as the effect of memory,
motivation, cognition and personality on language learning.
Neurology (i.e. the study of the brain and the nervous system) and
linguistics have produced the science of neurolinguistics which
discusses effects of brain damage on certain linguistic abilities
and deficiencies. Computational linguistics attempts to analyse
language in terms of mathematical equations and formulas with
the aim of producing machine translation where the human

translator can be assisted, if not replaced, by a computer.
Another applied linguistic science is that of contrastive

linguistics. A clarification is in place here as to the difference
between comparative and contrastive linguistics. While the word
"comparison" promises a list of similarities, contrastive studies
usually take place between areas assumed to be similar in order to
explore differences between them, which is the case here.
Comparative linguistics compares different historical phases of
language, comparing for instance, Middle English as used by
Chaucer, to Modern English as used in everyday language
nowadays.
On the other hand, contrastive linguistics assumes that

languages such as English and Arabic are similar, with underlying
language universals, and looks into areas of difference between
them. The argument for language universals common to all
languages is justified by the existence of nouns, verbs, tenses,
plurality, etc. Although all languages have devices to denote
future time, such devices may differ from one language to
another.
Contrastive Linguistics compares specific linguistic

characteristics of two or more languages to explore their
similarities and differences. Such analysis has a number of
objectives. One such objective is to explain problems in foreign
language learning through the analysis of errors made by

language learners. A second objective of contrastive linguistics is
to develop course materials for language teaching in the light of
linguistic differences. A third objective is to help translators
understand those areas where equivalents between different
languages exist and those where they do not.
Contrastive analysis as a method of foreign language teaching

emphasizes differences between languages to help students and
teachers identify the type of mistakes Arab students are liable to
make when learning English, examine such errors in detail to
identify their source, and try to provide extra help. Contrastive
analysis, however, as a method of language teaching through
identifying such differences has lost its appeal, and is now used
from time to time to account for frequent errors made by speakers
of a certain language. It is also used to explain cases of cross-
cultural misunderstanding.
Such contrastive analysis can have various applications to

how languages differ and how such contrasts contribute to error
production due to analogy and interference. Arabic speakers, who
have certain language habits that come from their native language,
transfer such habits. Contrasting the different features of the two
languages can help them know the differences between the two
languages. Sensitivity to these issues can help teachers alert the
students to specific areas deserving attention, promote effective
monitoring and overcome difficulties arising from first-language

interference.
In the case of Arabic and English, they are expected to have

various differences due to belonging to different linguistic
families. Whereas English is a Germanic Indo-European language
similar to Dutch and German, Arabic is a Semitic language
similar to Hebrew, Aramaic and Akkadian. Although they may
share certain language universals, they are expected to have
substantial differences. Figures 1 & 2 show the different origins
of Arabic and English.
Arabic has the further complication of being a diglossic

language. It consists of at least two levels: Modern Standard
Arabic, learnt at school after formal teaching, and colloquial
Arabic, acquired as a first language by all children at home
without formal instruction and before reading and writing.
These two levels have different sounds, vocabulary items, and

sentence structures. However, the course will compare and
contrast Standard English and Modern Standard Arabic with
reference from time to time to some dialectal differences,
especially concerning the regional variety of colloquial Arabic
used in Egypt.
Indo-European
Languages
Germanic Italic Greek Indo-Iranian Slavonic
West Anglo- Latin

Frisian
German Old English Italian French Spanish Portuguese
Middle English
English
Figure 1
A partial diagram of the Indo-European languages

Semitic
Languages
Western Eastern
Southern
Hebrew Aramaic Akkadian
Arabic
Figure 2
A partial diagram of the Semitic languages

Part 1
Phonologgy
Unit (1)
Consonant Sounds
Objectives:
By the end of this unit, the students should be able to:
• Identify the place of consonants within phonology.
• Define and exemplify phonemes and allophones.
• Understand how Arabic conceptualizes consonants and

vowels.
• Differentiate between Arabic and English in conceptualizing

consonants and vowels.
• Determine which consonants are shared by Arabic and

English.
• Identify similar consonants and language-specific consonants

in the two languages.
• Exemplify velarized consonants in Arabic.
• Differentiate between English and Arabic with regard to

consonant clusters.
• Define and exemplify geminate consonants in Arabic.
• Explain and exemplify the concept of syllabic consonants.
Elements:
• Phonology = segmental and suprasegmental components.
• Phonemes and allophones.

• Shared, similar and specific consonants
• Emphatic consonants.
• Geminate consonant and consonant clusters.
Keywords:
• phonology, phoneme, allophone, velarization, clusters,
gemination, syllabic.
Consonant Sounds
Phonology, which is a branch of linguistics, studies the sound

systems of languages. The study of phonology is divided into two
branches: segmental and suprasegmental. The segments of
sounds studied are the consonant phonemes and vowel
phonemes. The suprasegmental branch refers to stress and
intonation.
Phonemes are basic sounds that contrast and lead to meaning

difference. For example, /b/ & /p/ in English are different
phonemes as they contrast the words “bill” / “pill”, “symbol” /
“simple” and “lab” / “lap”. In contrast, in Arabic, these two
sounds are allophones (i.e. variations) of the same phoneme as
they do not lead to meaning difference.
The phoneme /p/ does not exist in Arabic, i.e., it does not
exist as a sound that makes a difference between one word and
another. However, we hear this sound in Arabic as one of the
phonetic variations of the phoneme /b/ in certain contexts as in the
words /al-sapt/ (‫ )السبْت‬and /?eptasam/ )‫(ابتسم‬. The sound /b/ is
turned into /p/ because of the influence of the adjacent /t/ in a
process of assimilation where the voiceless /t/ turns the voiced /b/
into a voiceless /p/.
Arabic and English also differ with view to vowel sounds. In

contrast to its abundance of consonant phonemes, Modern
Standard Arabic has a relatively restricted range of vowels.

Arabic conceptualizes of consonants as the essential units of
words and of vowels as mere “movements” on such consonants.
In contrast, in English, vowels are basic to the structure of a

syllable in addition to the existence of some words that contain
only vowels as in “air”, “ear”, “eye”, “I”. When pronouncing
such words, an Arab would automatically prefix them with an
intrusive glottal stop (a consonant), to manage producing them.
Shared consonants:
The two languages share certain consonants; some English and

Arabic consonants are identical. These common consonants are /m,
n, b, f, dʒ, h, l, j, w, θ, ð/. This is when comparing Standard British
English to Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) as will always be the
standard of comparison and contrast in this book unless reference
to regional dialects is made. For example /m/ in “man” and "‫"مات‬
are the same: voiced bi-labial nasal. If we say that the phoneme /g/
is shared as in “go” and “‫ ”جاء‬as a voiced velar stop, the shared
sound here is found in Standard English and Egyptian colloquial
Arabic. The Egyptian /g/ does not exist in classical Arabic (the
Qureish dialect used in reciting the Quran). However, even the
MSA used formally in Egypt has this phoneme /g/ which is
described by some linguist as the Yemeni /g/ while others consider
it the prototype of the /dʒ/ used in the Qureish dialect.
Similar consonants:
Sounds that are similar (not identical) in the two languages

are such as /t, d, s, z, r/. The sound /t/ is alveolar in English and
dental or alveo-dental in Arabic, but it is the same concerning
manner of articulation and voicing. Thus, in English, the
consonants /s/, /z/, /t/ and /d/ are produced by the tip of the tongue
and the teeth ridge but they are produced by the tip of the
tongue and the upper teeth in Arabic.
Similarly, Arabic /r/ is a flap produced by successive

rapid movements of the tip of the tongue against the upper
front teeth. It is a trill in Arabic (repetitive). In contrast, English
/r/ has no flap but is rather produced by a single movement of the
tongue. Moreover, British /r/ is not pronounced when not
followed by a vowel, hence “four” /fo:/, “four coffees”
/fo:kofiz/, but “four eggs” /fo:regz/. Arab learners, however,
are used to pronouncing all the letters and would not allow
for any silent letters.
Language Specific Consonants:
While there are 24 consonant sounds in English, there are 28

in Arabic. Most such consonants are shared but some are
not, so that learners impose some first language pronunciation
patterns in their production of a foreign language. Arabic-specific
consonant sounds include /ħ/ ‫ﺡ‬, / χ / ‫ﺥ‬, /đ/ ‫ ﺽ‬, / γ / ‫ ﻍ‬, /ε/ ‫ ﻉ‬،
/ś/ ‫ ﺹ‬, /ŧ/ ‫ ﻁ‬, /ź/ ‫ ﻅ‬, /q/ ‫ ﻕ‬, /?/ ‫ﺀ‬. On the other hand, English-
specific sounds not shared by Arabic include: /t/ as in chair”, / ŋ/

as in “sing”, /p/ as in “pet”, and /v/ as in “vile”. Egyptian
colloquial Arabic does not have the English sounds /θ/ as in
“thin”, /ð/ as in “then” /dʒ/ as in “jar”.
Emphatic Sounds
Arabic is unique in having some consonants velarized

producing different phonemes as in ‫ ت‬، ‫ ﻁ‬which contrast as in ‫تين‬
(figs) and ‫( ﻁين‬mud or clay).
Some minimal pair contrasting non-emphatic )‫ ذ‬،‫ د‬،‫ س‬،‫ (ت‬and

their counterpart emphatic phonemes )‫ ﻅ‬،‫ ﺽ‬،‫ ﺹ‬،‫ (ﻁ‬follow:
‫ ﻅل‬،‫| ذل‬ ‫ ضل‬،‫| دل‬ ‫ صد‬،‫| سد‬ ‫ ﻁيار‬،‫تيار‬
In contrast, the English phoneme inventory does not include

these emphatic sounds )‫ ﻅ‬،‫ ﺽ‬،‫ ﺹ‬،‫(ﻁ‬, which means they are not
used in English as phonemes. However, they occur in English as
allophones in certain phonetic contexts as in utter, sun, mud,
mother.
A velarized consonant occurring anywhere in a word may

lead to assimilated velarization in the entire word or in
surrounding syllables. That is to say, emphasis (known in Arabic
as ‫ تفخيم‬or ‫ )إﻁباﻕ‬often spreads to a string of adjacent segments as
in /ixlaaś/ ‫ إخالﺹ‬sincerity and /sauŧ/ voice and whip ‫صوت وسوﻁ‬.
In velarization there is a movement of the back part of the

tongue towards the velum. For instance, the /s/ sound, normally
made in alveolar position, is said to be velarized if during its

articulation the back of the tongue is raised towards the soft
palate. This gives the sound /ś/ ‫ﺹ‬.
In English, velarization is dependent on context, for example

syllable-final /l/, as in doll, while /l/ in late is not velarized. In
simple terms we call the /l/ in late “clear” whereas the /l/ in doll is
dark. In Arabic, we have a similar situation for the two
pronunciations of the sound /l/, but in different phonological
contexts. Consider the sound /l/ in words with different adjacent
sounds: dark in ‫ هللا أكبر‬and clear in ‫بسم هللا‬.
Consonant Clusters
Arabic has no sequence of more than two consonants while

English can have up to four consonants without an intervening
vowel sound, and even up to five consonants across word boundary
as in “banks closed” /bæŋksklәuzd/ containing the sequence /ŋkskl/
across word boundary. Arabic learners of English habitually add an
intrusive vowel to manage such difficult clusters. Moreover, Arabic
does not allow for consonant clusters word initially while English
allows for clusters of two or three consonants in such a position as
in “stay, bring, small, spray, strive, split”. When such clusters do
occur in Arabic words, initial clusters of two require ‫همزة وصل‬
(hamzet wasl) e.g. ‫ استنتج‬/?estantaga/, ‫ انﻁلﻕ‬/?entalaqa/ while non-
clusters require ‫( همزة قﻁع‬hamzet qata) e.g. ‫ أخذ‬/axaða/, ‫ أكل‬/?akala/.
Therefore, Arabic users of English pronounce words like
“standard” and “sprite” as /?es tan dard/ and /?es be rait/ by adding
an initial glottal stop followed by a vowel to approximate the
syllable structure of Arabic.
Geminate consonants
Gemination is a feature of Arabic phonology whereby some

consonants are doubled as in darrasa, xarradʒa, dʒawwada ‫درّ س‬
‫ جوّ د‬،‫خرج‬
َ . This process contributes to the derivation of words from
a lexical root and forms a key component of the derivational
system of Arabic. Along with cases of morphologically
conditioned gemination, there are cases of phonologically
conditioned germination as in as in the assimilation of the letter
laam (‫ )ل‬of the definite article to the first sound of a word
beginning with one of the so-called “sun letters” (‫)الحروف الشمسية‬,
e.g., al-shams (‫ )الشمس‬is pronounced /aʃʃams/.
On the other hand, English words spelt with a double

consonant are pronounced as a single consonant sound as in
“allow”, “embarrass”, and “add”. Arabic learners of English are
likely to pronounce such words with doubled consonant sounds,
e.g. */әl-lau/.
Syllabic consonants
In English, some consonants are lengthened to take the

duration of a whole syllable. These are called syllabic consonants.
The syllabic consonants in English are /l/, /m/ and /n/ as in
“bottle, mortal, bottom, rhythm, button, written”.
In Arabic, however, there are no syllabic consonants. Arab

learners of English, therefore, routinely introduce an intrusive
vowel here, pronouncing them as */mo:rtal/, */botil/, */botom/,
*/leson/.
English Consonants
1. / f / face 13. / d / door
2. / v / valley 14. / k / cake
3. / θ / thumb 15. / g / girl
4. / ð / this 16. / ʧ / chair
5. / s / sun 17. / ʤ/ judge
6. / z / zebra 18. / m / man
7. / ʃ / shoe 19. / n / no
8. / ʒ / measure 20. / ŋ / ring
9. / h / hand 21. / l / leaf
10. / p / pipe 22. / j / yes
11. / b / baby 23. / w / west
12. / t / table 24. / r / river
Manner of Articulation:
Plosives: /p b, t d, k g/
Fricatives: / θ ð, f v, s z, ʃ ʒ, h/
Affricates: tʃ dʒ/
Nasals: /m n ŋ /
Lateral: /l/
Continuant: /r/
Glides: /w j/
Consonants of MSA
Emphatic
P. of Articulation
VL VD VL VD
‫بمو‬ (labial) ‫شفوى‬
‫ف‬ (labio-dental) ‫شفوى أسنانى‬
‫ﻅ‬ ‫ث‬ ‫ذ‬ (inter-dental) ‫أسنانى‬
‫ﺹﻁ‬ ‫ﺽ‬ ‫تس‬ ‫دز‬ (dental) ‫أسنانى لثوى‬
‫لرن‬ (alveolar) ‫لثوى‬
‫ش‬ ‫جى‬ (hard palate) ‫غارى‬
‫ك‬ (soft palate) ‫ﻁبقى‬
‫ﺥﻕ‬ ‫ﻍ‬ (uvular) )‫لهوى (حلقومى‬
‫ﺡ‬ ‫ﻉ‬ (pharyngeal) ‫حلقى‬
‫ء هـ‬ (laryngeal) ‫حنجرى‬

Note:
Arabic phoneme / dʒ /
The phoneme represented by the Arabic letter ǧīm (‫ )ج‬has

many standard pronunciations: /ɡ/ in most of Egypt and some
regions in Yemen and Oman. This is also a characteristic of
colloquial Egyptian and southern Yemeni dialects. In most north
Africa and most of the Syria and Lebanon, the standard is
pronounced /ʒ/, and in certain regions of the Arabian Gulf with /j/,
while it is /dʒ/ in Literary Arabic.
Summary
• Phonemes are contrastive sounds that lead to difference in

meaning (e .g / b/ & / p/). Some English phonemes do not
exist in Arabic; English / p/ is an allophone in Arabic.
• Consonants are the major units of words in Arabic whereas

vowels are only extensions to consonants.
• Consonant phonemes in English are 24, while in Arabic they

are 28. Most consonants are shared in both languages.
• Some sounds are specific to English: /p, v, ŋ, t/ (Note that

there are other things to say about the Egyptian dialect).
• There are others that are specific to Arabic: / ‫ ق‬،‫ خ‬،‫ ح‬،‫ غ‬،‫ع‬/.
• Velarized consonants in Arabic produce different phonemes

as in ‫ ت‬/ ‫ ط‬but English does not distinguish between such
consonants, where they are allophones.
• A consonant cluster in English is a sequence of consonants

(sometimes up to five) without an intervening vowel sound.
• Gemination refers to doubling consonant sounds in Arabic

for phonological and morphological reasons as in ‫ الشَّمس‬،‫جود‬
ّ .
The concept does not exist in English.
Exercises
1. Write an essay of around five paragraphs and 250 words to

compare and contrast the major aspects of the consonant
sounds of English and Arabic. The essay is a summary of the
unit in your own words where the most important points are
mentioned as examples not as an inclusive list of all the pieces
of information given. The essay should also include your own
commentary and personal experience in studying and dealing
with the consonants of the two languages.
2. What is the difference between the sound /r/ in Arabic and

English? That is how is it pronounced, and what are the places
and manners of articulation in the two languages? Is it
pronounced in prevocalic positions in British English? How is
it pronounced in American English? [This last point is not
explained or even mentioned in this first unit. So, do not look it
up here. Look it up elsewhere.]
3. Which of the following sounds are consonant phonemes in

Modern Standard Arabic? And which of them are consonant
phonemes of English?
/m, b, p, f, g, h, l, j, w, v, ŋ, t, d, θ, ð, dʒ, x, /ŧ/ ‫ ﻁ‬/
4. What is velarization?
5. How is the sound /l/ pronounced in two different ways in both

Arabic and English?
6. Why are the emphatic sounds /đ/ ‫ ﺽ‬, /ś/ ‫ ﺹ‬, /ŧ/ ‫ ﻁ‬, /ź/ ‫ﻅ‬
considered phonemes in Arabic but only allophones in
English? Explain and give examples from the two languages.
7. Comment on geminate consonants in Arabic, and contrast them

with English double consonants.
8. Why are consonant clusters a problem for the Arabic-speaking

beginner studying English?
9. Give examples of consonant clusters occurring initially, finally

and across word boundary in English.
10. Comment on the syllabic consonants in the following words:
bottle, button, mortal.

Unit (2)
Vowel Sounds
Objectives:
• Define the phonological term vowel.
• Compare and contrast vowels of Arabic and English.
• Describe the English vowel inventory.
• Classify the English vowels as pure vowels (7 short and 5
long), and 8 diphthongs.
• Describe the long and short vowels of Arabic (6 vowels).
• Describe the two diphthongs of MSA.
• Explain the difficulty faced by Arabic-speaking beginner
learners of English in pronouncing the various English
diphthongs.
• Avoid Lengthening of vowels (as in Egyptian colloquial
Arabic) by turning a diphthong into a long vowel
(monophthongization) e.g., /teɪk/ → /te:k/.
Elements:
• Vowels of English: 7 short + 5 long + 8 diphthongs.
• Vowels of Arabic: 3 short + 3 long + 2 diphthongs.
• Difficulty of English diphthongs
Keywords:
• vowel, diphthong, long and short vowels, lengthening,
monophthongization.
Vowel Sounds
Vowels are part of the sound system (phonology). They are
produced by voiced air passing through the oral cavity with no
impedance (no stop, no friction). To produce the different vowels
the speaker modulates the shape of the oral cavity. The
differences between Arabic and English in this area are greater
than the similarities
In addition to having 24 consonant sounds, English has 12

vowel sounds and eight diphthongs. In contrast, in Arabic, there
are only six vowels; these consist of three long-short pairs.
The twenty vowel phonemes of English are:
Short vowels: ɪ e æ ʌ o u ǝ
sit set sat but pot put never
Long vowels: iː ɑː ɔː uː ɜː
been barn born boon burn
Diphthongs: eɪ ai ɔɪ ǝʊ aʊ ɪǝ eǝ ʊǝ
bay buy boy no now peer pair poor

Diphthongs are gliding vowels, i.e., a diphthong contains a

glide from one vowel quality to another. We start pronouncing a
vowel and end pronouncing another. Thus diphthongs are
classified into three groups according to the place of the vowels
each ends with:
Front: eɪ aɪ ɔɪ
Back: au ǝu
Centre: ɪǝ eǝ uǝ
As for Arabic, it has six pure vowels and two diphthongs. The
six Arabic vowel phonemes are:
Short vowels:
u ‫ـ‬ ; a َ‫ـ‬ ; ɪ ‫ـ‬

‫; قل‬ ‫; َم ْد‬ ْ‫من‬
{The 3 short vowels show in this one word: ‫ب‬

َ ‫ = كت‬u+ ɪ+ a.}
Long vowels:
u: ; a: ; i:
‫سود‬ ; ‫قال‬ ; ‫قيل‬
Diphthongs:
Both MSA and classical Arabic have two diphthongs which

have coalesced in many regional Arabic dialects, including Egyptian
colloquial Arabic, into long vowels. The two diphthongs are:
au ; ai
‫ َق ْوم‬،‫َث ْوم‬ ; ‫ علَيْه‬،‫كتابين‬
These diphthongs existed in classical Arabic and survived in

MSA but almost disappeared in Egyptian colloquial Arabic
where, for instance, ‫ كتابين‬/kita:bain/ (with the diphthong /ai/) has
turned into /kita:be:n/ (with the long vowel /e:/).
Of course these vowels differ from one dialect to another but,

whatever other vowel sounds are produced, they tend to be mainly
allophones of these basic sounds. Because of this small number of
vowels in Arabic, Arab learners usually face difficulties in the
recognition and production of English vowel sounds.
As the English diphthongs are not familiar to speakers of

Arabic, the beginner Arab learners usually replace them by the
closest long vowel (monophthongization).
• /eә/, /ɪә/, /uә/ as in “dare”, “beer”, “tour” are usually

rendered by Arab learners of English as long vowels: /e:/, as
in /de:r/ ( ‫ دير‬monastery), /ɪ:/ as in /bi:r/ ( ‫ بيـر‬well), and /u:/ as
in /du:r/ ( ‫ دور‬houses).
• /ai/, /ei/, /ɔi/ as in “right’, “rain”, “join” are not too

difficult for Arab learners except for /ei/ which is often
replaced by /e:/ as in “bait” being pronounced as /be:t/ ( ‫بيت‬
house).
• /au/, /әu/ as in “now”, “no”. While the first is quite easy

for Arabic speakers as in ‫لو‬, the latter poses some difficulty
and is often replaced with /o:/ as in “rode”, and “coat” so that
it is difficult to distinguish between “bought” and “boat”, and
“coat” and “caught”.
As Arabic short vowels are represented orthographically by

diacritical marks above or below consonants, it is common for
Arabic words to be spelt without vowels. This creates a difficulty
for new learners of Arabic; they have to deduce from context
what the missing vowels should be. Facing a word like ‫كتب‬, the
reader may read it as ‫ب‬ َ ‫ َك َت‬، ْ‫( كتب‬kutiba, kataba, kotob,)
َ ‫ كت‬،‫ب‬
according to context.
In contrast, English includes more vowel variations leading to

production of various minimal pairs as in “beat”, “bet”, “bait”,
“pot”, “bat”, “bought”, “boat”, “put”, “but”, “boot”. Such
variations are only allophonic in Arabic as they do not lead to
meaning differences, and are usually simplified and reduced to
three contrasts: “boot”, “beet”, “bat”.
Another sound that involves contrast between Arabic and

English is the schwa /ә/. In English, the schwa is a common
vowel sound substituting for weak forms of function words as
well as unstressed vowels although it may be represented in
writing by a stronger vowel letter as in:
“How does the computer operate?”
/hau dәz ðә kәmpju:tәr-opәreit/.
This contrasts with Arabic where clear articulation of every

letter is encouraged in both reading and public speaking. Hence,
there is the public saying of how English speakers “eat the words”
in contrast to Arabic speakers. However, this will be considered
with more details in the next unit.
Summary
• Vowels are produced by voiced air passing through the oral

cavity with no impedance.
• English has 12 pure vowels (7 short and 5 long), and 8

diphthongs.
• Short: ɪ e æ ʌ o u ǝ
• Long: iː ɑː ɔː uː ɜː
• Diphthongs:
• Front: eɪ aɪ ɔɪ
• Back: au ǝu
• Centre: ɪǝ eǝ uǝ
• Arabic has 6 vowels in 3 pairs of short and long vowels:
• Short: u ‫ـ‬ ; a َ‫ـ‬ ; ɪ ‫ـ‬

• Long: u: ‫; و‬ a: ‫; ا‬ i: ‫ي‬
• and two diphthongs: /au / ; /ai/
• Beginners facing a difficulty pronouncing the English

diphthongs may lengthen vowels (as in Egyptian colloquial
Arabic) by turning a diphthong into a long vowel
(monophthongization) e.g., /teɪk/ → /te:k/.
Exercises
1. Write an essay of around five paragraphs and 250 words on the

vowels of Arabic and English. The essay is in part a summary
of the unit. However, you can change the details, cancel some
and add others as you wish, but the final essay should be
representative of the unit. Add your own personal opinion in
the last paragraph.
2. What are the three short vowels of Arabic? How are they
represented in the writing system, i.e., what diacritical marks
are used (diacritics = ‫ ?)عالمات التشكيل‬Give examples.
3. Find three English words with different spellings for each of

the following phonemes:
/æ/, /ʌ/, /o/, /i:/, /әu/, /ei/, / u /.
4. Give examples of Arabic words to show how the three Arabic

letters ‫ ى‬،‫ و‬،‫ ا‬can represent consonants and vowels in different
words?
{as consonants representing: (/?a/, /w/, /j/) and as long vowels

representing: (/a:/, /u:/, /i:/).
5. Why does the schwa /ә/ represent a difficulty to the beginner

Arab learner of English? Why is it important and has high
frequency of occurrence in English?
6. Give some examples of words of Modern Standard Arabic

(MSA) or of classical Arabic that include the diphthong /au/
and others including /ai/. Comment on how these words are
pronounced in one of the Arabic regional dialects.
7. Explain the meaning of the following words:
diphthong, monophthongization, diglossia, MSA.
8. What is a vowel sound? How is it produced by the organs of

speech?
9. Does English include any nasal vowel sounds? (Are all the
vowel sounds of English nasal or oral?) What about the
different English dialects? What about French? Arabic?
10. Why do simple words such as go, no, take and tail represent a
difficulty in pronunciation for some Arabic-speaking students
beginning to learn English?
Unit (3)
Continuous Speech
Objectives:
• Realise that the English and Arabic continuous speech

differences are numerous and important.
• Be aware that this affects the skills required in consecutive

and simultaneous interpretation.
• Realise that English sentences have stresses on certain

syllables and a major stress, called sentence stress, which
together formulate the intonation of continuous speech.
• Understand that Arabic has syllable-timed rhythm while

English has stress-timed rhythm.
• Understand and use word stresses effectively.
• Realise how sentence stresses have effects on meaning and

intonation.
• Understand the importance of intonation in perception and

communication.
• Differentiate between English stress-timed rhythm and
Arabic syllable-timed thyme
• Understand the role played by word stress in Arabic

although it is an issue that is not usually discussed in
traditional Arabic studies.
Elements:
• Continuous speech, connected speech, sentence intonation.
• Role of intonation in perception and communication in

languages.
• Word stress and sentence stress creating the rhythm of

English.
• Syllable duration creating the rhythm of Arabic.
Keywords:
• word stress, sentence stress, intonation, syllable-timed,
rhythm.
Stress and Rhythm in Continuous Speech
Continuous speech varies greatly in Arabic and English.

Perhaps the differences in this area are the most noticeable and
unfortunately the most neglected in the context of an educational
system that depends mainly on books and the written word.
Students need to be aware of this fact if they are going to do

any efficient consecutive or simultaneous interpretation. As some
beginners carry over the structures of written Arabic as a source
language (SL) to the English texts they produce, they do the same
with the intonation of English. The problem is not only doing an
inefficient job, but it is also in many cases failing completely to
understand and produce English speech.
If leaners of English ignore the fact that English sentences

have stresses on certain syllables and a major stress, called
sentence stress, and that a whole utterance is pronounced as one
stream with no artificial pauses, the result is that the learners will
not be able to decipher spoken English. Nor will they be able
produce it.
The difficulty faced by Arabic-speaking learners in

attempting to acquire the skill of producing and understanding
spoken English arises from the fact that Arabic has syllable-timed
rhythm while English has stress-timed rhythm.
Stress:
The syllable that is said with greater force has a stress. We

breathe strongly when we pronounce the stressed syllable in
“garden” (gar.den) /’ga: dәn/. The verb “connect” has the second
syllable stressed and the first unstressed /kә ’nekt/. Similarly, the
word “about” has the second syllable stressed and the first
unstressed /ә baut/. This explains the schwa in the weak syllable.
Saying that English has stress-timed rhythm means that each

stress group in English is given the same interval, i.e., the same
amount of time.
The following short sentences have two units of time each

although they have different number of syllables:
Just this. (2 syllables but still 2 units of time)
Let him take it. (4 … … … … …. 2 … … … …..)
Take your hat off. (4 … … … … …. 2 … … … …..)
She’s in the garden. (5 … … … … …. 2 … … … …..)

You are the suspect. (5 … … … … …. 2 … … … …..)
Thus it is the stress that determines the speed of the flow of an

utterance not the number of syllables. Each stress group in
English is given the same amount of time (the same interval). The
number of syllables and words does not matter; it is the number of
stresses that matters. As each stress group in English is given the
same amount of time, we say English has stress-timed rhythm.
Patterns of stress are important in English because they

distinguish one word from another. These patterns of stressed vs.
unstressed syllables create rhythm which is determined largely by
strong “beats” falling on the stressed syllables of phrases and
sentences.
English has a stress-timed rhythm so that the stressed

syllables of an utterance tend to be produced at equal intervals;
i.e. the time between one stressed syllable and the next is almost
equal regardless of the number of unstressed syllables between
them (which speakers tend to “eat”!).
To manage such a system, only content words are stressed

(i.e. nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs) while function
words tend to be unstressed and reduced.
For example, in a sentence like “I’d LIKE to GO to the SEA,

if this is POSSible”, only the capitalized syllables are stressed and
made more prominent while the others are reduced and said very
quickly to manage the rhythm of the sentence. As a rule, the most
important word to the meaning of the sentence is the one that
receives primary stress. That is why function words like
prepositions (at, for), pronouns (you, they), articles (a, an, the),
conjunctions (and, but, or), auxiliary verbs (am, is) are usually
unstressed and have their vowels weakened.
In addition to sentence stress (i.e. rhythm), word stress has its

own rules. In pronouncing two-syllable words, the first syllable is
usually stressed if the word is a noun while the second is stressed

when it is a verb. (e.g. `sub-ject (n.), sub-`ject (v.), òb-ject (n.),
ob-`ject (v.), `pro-duce (n.), pro-`duce (v.)). In words of three or
more syllables, there could be two stresses, one primary and the
other secondary e.g. `discon`nect, ìnsin`cere, `civilizàtion. As
for compound words, they usually receive primary stress on the
first word as in `breakfast, `bluebird, `babysit, and ìce-cream.
Sentence stress:
There is one major stress in every utterance. A sentence stress

falls on the stressed syllable of the most significant word in the
sentence.
Examples:
1. What did you do THAT for?
2. MARy is the one you’re searching for.
3. The brand your after is SONy.
4. I’d like to visit ROME one of these days.
What determines the sentence stress is meaning. That is the

intended meaning of the speaker and what piece of information
the interlocutor is seeking or expecting. Thus any word in the
following sentence could carry the sentence stress according to
the context:
• JACK killed the rat in the basement. [It was jack who did
it; nobody else.]
• Jack KILLED the rat in the basement. [He killed it not

frightened it off.]
• Jack killed THE rat in the basement. [It was this particular
rat not the others we know about.]
• Jack killed the RAT in the basement. [It was the rat not the
cat.]
• etc.
Intonation:
The intonation of speech has additional important aspect

concerning perception and communication. It affects
communicating the message to the listener. Therefore, ignoring
this aspect affects the ability of the learner of English as a second
or foreign language to communicate through speaking and
listening.
Linguists distinguish several patterns of English intonation of

which the basic two are:
The falling intonation (the Glide-down) [↘];
The rising intonation (the Glide-Up) [↗];
The falling intonation is the most common in English; it is

used in statements, wh-questions, commands and exclamatory
sentences.
The rising intonation expresses Yes/No questions and various

emotions such as non-finality, surprise, doubt, interest, politeness,
lack of confidence
Peter Roach (2009) comments on the importance of

intonation saying, “if the word ‘right’ is said with the pitch of the
voice rising, it is likely to be heard as a question or as an
invitation to a speaker to continue, while falling pitch is more
likely to be heard as confirmation or agreement”.
Arabic syllable-timed rhythm:
In contrast, Arabic is syllable-timed which means that it is the

syllables (as opposed to the stresses) that occur at regular
intervals. There is no strong pattern of stresses. In syllable-timed
rhythm, the total duration of a word or an utterance is therefore
dependent more on the number of syllables it contains than on the
number and position of stressed syllables.
In other words, in Arabic all syllables in an utterance tend to

come at equivalent intervals so that all vowels are clearly
articulated as speakers pronounce each syllable. Arabic word
stress is much more predictable than the relatively complicated
English stress system.
Although the classical Arab grammarians do not mention

word stress, it is generally accepted that Classical Arabic had it.
In addition modern Arabic dialects have word stress: one syllable
in a word is prominent as compared to other syllables.
However, word stress is not distinctive in Arabic, that is, it

does not serve to distinguish meanings, although the
morphological structure of words often affects stress.
Generally speaking, stress falls on long vowels. A word of

one syllable takes a primary stress; a word of two or three short
syllables (without a long vowel, or a short vowel + 2 consonants)
takes a primary stress on the first syllable e.g. ‫ أب ًدا‬/`?abadan/, and a
multi-syllabic word takes primary stress on the last long syllable,
e.g. ‫ ﻁاووس‬/Ta`wuus/, ‫ سجّ ادة‬/sig`gaada/, ‫ كاتب‬/`kaatib/,
‫انتشار‬/?inti`∫aar/.
With the possessive or genitive, primary stress usually falls

on the second word e.g. ‫ جامعة القاهرة‬/gaamεet el`qaahira/, ‫كراسة‬
‫ الحساب‬/korraaset elħe`saab/. However, what distinguishes Arabic
from English is that in Arabic every vowel tends to retain its
value as clear articulation is the norm leading to a staccato beat of
Arabic due to the greater abundance of primary stresses.
Linguists reconstruct the stress pattern of Classical Arabic

while the old tradition does not deal with this issue. Therefore
Current accentuations in use for reciting the Quran verses are
influenced by native stress patterns of modern dialects.
Students should keep in mind that Modern Standard Arabic
(MSA) is a modernized form of classical Arabic. There are two
varieties of formal Arabic: the classical Arabic (CA) (‫)الفصحى التراثية‬
of the Quran and early Islamic (7th to 9th centuries) literature, and
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) (‫ )اللغة العربية المعيارية الحديثة‬which is
the standard language in use today or modernized Classical Arabic.

Most Arabic speakers consider the two varieties to be two registers
of one language, although the two registers can be referred to in
Arabic as ‫( فصحى العصر‬MSA) and ‫( فصحى التراث‬CA).
Professor al-Said Muhammad Badawi mentions five systems,

or levels, of Arabic. The first two are mentioned above, but the
remaining three can be considered informal Arabic and go under
the classification of colloquial and slang.
In the Arab world, including Egypt, there is a problem of

diglossia where the difference between the standard dialect of the
language (usually written) and its colloquial variety (usually
spoken) is so large.
Summary
• English and Arabic continuous speech differences are

numerous and important, but this area has been neglected in
the public education system.
• Good skills of continuous speech positively affect students’

performance in consecutive and simultaneous interpretation.
• English sentences have stresses on certain syllables and a

major stress, sentence stress, which together formulate the
intonation of continuous speech.
• Spoken Arabic depends on syllable-timed rhythm while

English has stress-timed rhythm.
• Sentence stresses have an effect on both meaning and

intonation.
• Intonation is also essential for oral language perception and

communication.
• English stress-timed rhythm is determined by the number of

stresses in an utterance while Arabic syllable-timed rhythm
is determined by the number of vowels included.
• Word stress plays a role in Arabic although it is an issue that

is not usually discussed in traditional Arabic studies.
Exercises
1. Write an essay of comparison and contrast dealing with the

major aspects of the continuous speech of English and Arabic.
The essay is a summary of the unit in your own words where
the most important points are mentioned as examples not as an
inclusive list of all the pieces of information given. The essay
should also include your own commentary and personal
experience in studying and dealing with the continuous speech
of the two languages.
2. How does neglecting English stress and intonation affect the

Arabic-speaking learner of English?
3. What is stress-timed rhythm?
4. What is syllable-timed rhythm?
5. Comment on the rhythm of two songs, one English and the

other Arabic. Consider both the lyrics, especially if it is a
classical Arabic poem, and the tune or music of the song.
6. Which words in an English sentence are stressed and which are

not?
7. Identify the stressed syllables in the following words:
river, apple, subject (n.), subject (v.),

education, dictionary, canal, police, hotel,
assume, dishonest, television.
Part 2
The Lexicon
Part 2
The Lexicon
Objectives:
By the end of this part, the students should be able to:
• Realise that Arabic is a Semitic language while English is

Indo-European (Germanic).
• Recognise the fact of language change and expansion.
• Know what euphemism is and why we use it.
• Realise the need to learn about the flood of new terms.
• Know about politicizing lexis and how seemingly innocent

terms can carry political views.
• Use paraphrase, coinage, cultural substitution to overcome

lexical barriers.
• Learn the meaning of lexical ambiguity.
• Be aware that many words undergo semantic change and as

translators always choose the correct sense of the word that
suits the context and time of the text.
• Learn how to deal with problematic words.
• Know when there is wordplay (pun).
• Recognise the importance of idioms.

• Learn how to deal with neologism (new words introduced

into a language to indicate a new state of affairs) and lexical
innovations.
• Know some of the loan words that Arabic and English

borrowed from each other.
Elements:
• Language classification.
• Language change and the wealth of new words.
• Language lexical items are highly charged cultural issues.
Keywords:
• Germanic, Semitic, change, neologism, euphemism,
amelioration, pejoration, ambiguity, wordplay, idioms,
loanwords.
Unit (4)
Lexical Facts about Arabic and English
Introduction:
Before talking about lexis in Arabic and English, it is of

prime importance to know how linguists classify both languages.
This is meant to explain many of the linguistic and cultural
differences between them.
Linguistic Classification of Both Languages:
There are two major classifications of languages: typological

and genetic (or genealogical). The former is based “on a
comparison of the formal similarities which exist between
languages” (David Crystal. The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of
Language. Cambridge University press, 1987: 293). In other
words, it is an attempt “to group languages into structural types,
on the basis of phonology, grammar or vocabulary, rather than in
terms of any real, or assumed historical relationship”(ibid: 293).
According to this classification, the world's languages are
classified into four types: isolating (Chinese), agglutinative
(Turkish), incorporative (Eskimo), and inflective (Latin).
According to this classification, Arabic is a clear case of inflective
languages, where “grammatical relationships are expressed by
changing the internal structure of the words – typically by the use
of inflectional endings” (ibid: 293). English, on the other hand, is
a confusing and borderline case, that is, linguists believe that

English can be classified under more than one category. As a
consequence, Crystal tries to reach a kind of middle ground and
classify it as "three-in-one":
Isolating: The boy will ask the girl.
The girl will ask the boy.
Inflecting: the biggest boys have been asking.
Agglutinating: anti-dis-establish-ment-arian- ism. (ibid: 293)
The genetic classification, on the other hand, is based on “the

assumption that languages have diverged from a common
ancestor” (ibid: 293). That is to say, it tries to explore what can be
called the ‘familial’ relationships between languages. This
approach has been widely used since it was introduced at the end
of the 18th century.
According to this classification, Arabic is classified as a non-

Indo-European language, more specifically a Semitic language.
The importance of this group of languages is that “two of the
world's most important religious documents are written in Semitic
languages – the Old Testament in Hebrew…and the Koran in
Arabic” (Thomas Pyles and John Algeo. The Origins and
Development of the English Language. Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich INC, 1982: 67). English, on the other hand, is
classified as an Indo-European language, more specifically
a Germanic language: a group which includes other languages

such as Dutch, German, Danish …etc.
The Changing and Expanding Nature of Words:
Metaphorically speaking, language is like a human being that

is born, grows, changes, develops and sometimes dies. The
meanings of well-established words sometimes “change” or
“expand” to match the rapid changes that take place in today's
world. An able and alert translator should be aware of the ever-
changing nature of terms and realize that an agreed-upon
translation may change to accurately express the new changes
introduced into the concept in question. In other words, s/he should
not be satisfied with the equivalents s/he has at the back of his/her
mind because the rapid pace of change affects all fields of life.
For example, in the past, translators satisfactorily rendered

“merging” as ‫ اندماج‬, but in the last two decades, and as an indirect
aspect of globalization and with the appearance of new economic
blocs, it has become more accurate to forsake the one-to-one
equivalent and paraphrase it as ‫اندماج الكيانات االقتصادية فى كيانات أكبر‬
e.g. the merging of Nissan and Renault, B.M.W and Rover,
Mercedes and Crysler … etc. Also, the competition between huge
firms and companies created new terms like “mind hunting”,
recently translated as ‫ اصطياد الكفاءات‬.
Euphemism is one of the linguistic factors that change the

meaning of terms and alleviate or eradicate their negative
connotations. Euphemism refers to “the use of lexical, and in a

few cases grammatical, devices by speakers to be more demure
and polite in human interaction” (Nagwa El-Zeiny. “Translating
Euphemism in Prophetic Hadith”. Cairo Studies (January 2005):
217). For example, “mongolism” was commonly used in English
to refer to a mental disease and was translated into Arabic as ‫البله‬
‫ المنغولى‬, but when Mongolia objected to the term in the UN, it
became offensive and there was an urgent need to use an
alternative term. The New Shorter Oxford refers to this fact: “the
use of mongol and related words to refer to Down’s Syndrome is
increasingly regarded as offensive” (Vol. I: 1814). Thus, “Down's
Syndrome” was used instead and was later translated into Arabic
as ‫متالزمة داون‬. The New Shorter Oxford again refers to this change
in usage: “the term is much preferred in medical circles to the
older mongolism which is now increasingly considered offensive”
(Vol. I: 739). This required replacing terms like “mentally-
retarded” or “mentally-handicapped” (commonly translated into
Arabic as ‫ )معاق عقليا‬with more euphemistic terms like “slow
learners” or the more recent one “Children with SN (special
needs)”; translators could opt for translations like ‫ بطيئى التعلم‬and
‫الخاصة‬ ‫االحتياجات‬ ‫ذوى‬ ‫من‬ ‫األطفال‬. Along the same lines,
“handicapped” became “physically challenged” and ‫ معاق‬was
replaced by ‫ … متحدى اإلعاقة‬etc.
There are two fields whose sub-fields and different branches

created a flood of new terms that required accurate translation,
namely, management and education. As for management, this

field has enormously developed in the last two decades and
branched into many sub-fields. This led to the creation of new
terms explaining the new concepts, orientations, objectives … etc.
of such sub-fields. At the beginning, translators faced minor
problems such as having “management” and “administration”
within the same name, title or sentence: each term is separately
translated as ‫إدارة‬, but when they exist together as “management
and administration”, they can be safely translated as “‫”التنظيم واإلدارة‬
(management can also be translated as‫)تصريف أو تدبير األمور‬.
Translators could also deal with new terms like “crisis

management” and successfully rendered it as ‫ إدارة األزمة‬, but it
was hard to grasp and then render a term like “management by
crisis”: a term which refers to a strategy adopted by managers,
bosses or people in authority in general to create a crisis to
distract others’ attention from another issue e.g. some managers
create crises to distract their employees' attention from asking to
raise their salaries. Therefore, this term can be translated as ‫اإلدارة‬
‫بخلق األزمات‬. The difficulty increased with the appearance of a new
branch of management called “chaos management” referring to
some managers' ability to organize inescapable chaos. It has been
translated into ‫ إدارة الفوضى‬and led to the emergence of a new term,
“creative chaos”, ‫الفوضى الخالقة‬.
The field of education represents another challenging area in

terms of producing new terminology. This field has witnessed
massive and rapid changes in the last two decades. At the
beginning, translators could deal with the new terms introduced
into the field e.g. “workshop” was translated as ‫ حلقة عمل‬or ‫ورشة‬
‫ عمل‬, “case study” as ‫ دراسة حالة‬, “brain-storming” as ‫ العصف الذهنى‬,
“professional development” as ‫تطوير القدرات المهنية‬, “pilot study” as
‫دراسة استطالعية‬, “credit hours” as ‫ نظام الساعات المعتمدة‬, “enhancement
sessions” as ‫حلقات تدريبية‬, “feedback” as ‫ مردود‬or ‫ … رجع الصدى‬etc.
However, complication increased with the appearance of self-

learning that has recently branched into different types: D-
learning, e-learning and recently m-learning. D-learning (Distance
Learning) was successfully translated as ‫ التعلم عن بعد‬. E-learning
(Electronic Learning) is a new branch that represents a drastic
change in the field of education resulting in a number of
problematic terms. It is actually a new type of education that gives
the student, while sitting at home and through the internet, the
access to attend “virtual” classes, e-classes, enter libraries, e-
libraries …etc. Therefore, a number of up-to-date translations are
needed to match this state-of-the-art technology including ‫المكتبة‬
‫ التعلم اإللكتروني‬، ‫ الفصل اإللكتروني‬، ‫اإللكترونية‬ ...etc. However,
translators should be ready for a new type of learning that
involves totally new terms, that is, m-learning (Mobile Learning)
‫ التعلم عن طريق التليفون المحمول‬: it is a new type of self-learning that is
now spreading in Japan and some advanced countries where
the student, through his/her mobile phone, can have access to m-

classes, m-libraries, m-researches, etc.! As a shorthand, translators
will be responsible for grasping these new terms and translating
them in a way that the layman can understand.
It is equally important to refer to a special type of

terminology, namely, what can be called “elastic terms”: terms
that undergo semantic changes as a result of the new economic,
social and political changes that take place in our contemporary
life. This necessitates full awareness on the part of translators who
should pay heed to such changes. For example, when “axis of
evil”, translated as ‫ محور الشر‬, appeared in politics after the 9/11
Attacks, it was used by George Bush to refer to Cuba, North
Korea and Iran. Nevertheless, in the course of time and due to the
frequent clashes between the U.S Administration and other
countries, the term expanded to involve other countries such as
Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and the Sudan. Other examples
include “rogue states”, “new world order”, “international
legitimacy” … etc.
Politicizing Lexis:
Some people might not realize the interrelationship between

politics and translation. When “politics” is mentioned in relation
to translation, some people may think of the translation of
political texts or how translators caused a political
misunderstanding by making translation mistakes. There are
terms and expressions that are mistranslated or new semantic

changes are introduced into their well-established translations to
serve political issues, orientations, stances … etc.
In other words, translators sometimes offer “new”

translations of already-existing ones that do not serve certain
political purposes. For example, jihad has been politicized to
serve anti-Islam stance and spread Islamophobia, especially after
the 9/11 Attacks. The meaning of jihad has been limited to
waging a holy war, although the meaning of ‫ جهاد‬in Arabic is
more general than this limited, narrow-minded meaning. For
example, in the Holy Qur'an, there are verses which reveal
another aspect or meaning of ‫ جهاد‬as in ‫وإن جاهداك على أن تشرك بي ما‬
‫( ليس لك به علم فال تطعهما‬Louqman: 31).
Even dictionary definitions highlight this misconception: for

example, Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines ‫ جهاد‬as
“1: a holy war waged on behalf of Islam as a religious duty. 2: a
crusade for a principle or belief” (649). Similarly, The New Shorter
Oxford has this to say: “religious warfare or a war for the
propagation or defense of Islam; transf. a campaign or crusade in
some cause” (Vol. I: 1448). The same holds true for “mujahidin”
which means “a person who fights a jihad. Guerrilla fighters in
Islamic country, esp. as supporting the cause of Islam” (The New
Shorter Oxford, Vol I: 1853). The above definitions ignore other
types of ‫ جهاد‬like ‫ جهاد الشيطان‬، ‫جهاد النفس‬, etc. This misconception
applies to many other words such as “Islamists”, “fundamentalists”,

“hijab”, etc.
Political relations between countries are reflected in some

politicized translations commonly used in mass media. For
example, ‫ المجاهدين‬or ‫ المقاتلين‬in Chechnya are translated in the
English news bulletins in the Arab and Muslim worlds as
“mujahidin” or “fighters”, but in western media, “rebels” is used
instead. Similarly ‫ الرئيس الفلسطيني‬is translated as "Palestinian
President", whereas in western media, PLO President is used to
reflect the discrepancy between our concept of the Palestinian
State and theirs. Another example reflecting diametrically-
opposed attitudes is ‫ قوات االحتالل‬in Iraq: it is translated in the Arab
world as “occupation forces”, but in western media “Anglo-
American or coalition forces” is used instead, and those who
resist occupation are described as “resistance groups” ‫جماعات‬
‫ المقاومة‬in our Arab mass media, but “terrorist groups” in the
western ones.
Lexical Barriers:
Lexical barriers are common in translation and translators

usually follow different communicative strategies to overcome
lexical problems such as paraphrase, coinage, cultural
substitution…etc. In this section, we focus on some examples of
lexical aspects that represent real barriers to translators:
1- Lexical Ambiguity:
Ambiguity is generally divided into two types: structural (or

grammatical) and lexical. The former results from the ambiguous
structure of the sentence e.g. visiting relatives can be boring. This
means that the sentence “becomes ambiguous because its words
relate to each other in different ways, even though none of the
individual words are ambiguous” (Hurford James and Brendan
Heasley. Semantics: A Coursebook. Cambridge University Press,
1998:128). Lexical ambiguity, on the other hand, is “resulting from
the ambiguity of a word” (ibid: 128). James and Heasley define a
lexically ambiguous word as “a word that has more than one sense”
(ibid: 121) such as the verb “bear” in “she cannot bear children”.
In many cases, an ambiguous word in English is not the same

in Arabic and thus the translator has to opt for one meaning and
ignore the other. Let's take some examples from Hamlet which is
replete with examples of lexical ambiguity that represent a lexical
barrier to translators. For example, in Act I Scene II, The Queen
addresses Hamlet:
Queen: And let thine eyes look like a friend on Denmark
Critics have two points of view of the meaning of Denmark in

the above line: it may mean the King of Denmark or the country
itself. There are three translators who rendered the play and
adopted three different choices:
Al Qut: ‫وانظر إلى الدنمارك بعين الصديق‬
Awad: ‫ودع عينك تنظر إلى ملك دانمركة نظرة الصديق‬
Enani: !‫وانظر نظرة ود لمليكك وبالدك‬
Al Qut renders it as ‫( الدنمارك‬Denmark), Awad as ‫ملك دانمركة‬

(King of Denmark), but Enani, who seems to be convinced of both
interpretations, includes both meanings in his translation ‫لمليكك‬
‫( وبالدك‬your king and country). In his endnotes, he refers to this
lexical dilemma: “Denmark might mean the country itself or the
King of Denmark and no critic had a decisive opinion about it…
and this is why I included both meanings in my translation” (348).
Another aspect of lexical ambiguity is the use of wordplay

and puns. In other words, in the world of Hamlet where
everybody wears a mask under which s/he hides his/her true
identity, where spying is a daily activity and where corruption
plagues the court, wordplay becomes an important and distinctive
aspect of daily communication between the members of this
corrupt, unstable and obscure world. Hamlet, for example, resorts
to wordplay to reveal his emotions and feelings towards others
without saying that directly to their very faces.
Many of the examples of the wordplay can be adequately

translated into Arabic if Arabic has the same senses and
connotations of the word in question. For example when Hamlet
pretends to be mad (Act II Scene II) reading one of the books,
Polonius asks him about the topic he is reading:
Polonius: What is the matter, my lord?
Hamlet: Between who?
Polonius: I mean the matter that you read my lord.
This lexical barrier can be easily crossed as Arabic has the

word ‫( موضوع‬topic-dispute) which can carry the same senses of
the wordplay to the addressee (readers and audience). The three
translators are aware of the above fact and successfully choose the
word in question, although Awad seems to be less successful than
Al Qut and Enani:
Al Qut: ‫ ما الموضوع يا سيدي؟‬:‫بولونيوس‬
‫ بين من؟‬:‫هاملت‬
‫ أردت الموضوع الذي تقرأ يا سيدي‬:‫بولونيوس‬
Awad: ‫ وما الموضوع يا موالي؟‬:‫بولونيوس‬
‫ موضوع في أي كتاب؟‬:‫هاملت‬
‫ أعنى موضوع الكتاب الذي تطالعه يا موالي‬:‫بولونيوس‬
Enani: ‫ وما الموضوع يا موالي؟‬:‫بولونيوس‬
‫ بين من ومن؟‬:‫هاملت‬
‫ أقصد الموضوع الذي تقرؤه يا موالي‬:‫بولونيوس‬
It is clear that the three translators are unanimously convinced

that the word ‫ موضوع‬will carry the wordplay with its implications
and connotations to the Arab audience and readers. However,
Awad is less successful than Al Qut and Enani in rendering

Hamlet’s question “Between who?”: he renders it as " ‫موضوع في أي‬
‫("كتاب؟‬In which book is it located?). In other words, the word
‫ موضوع‬has a third meaning in Arabic, namely, ‘located’, but it is
irrelevant to this context. This mistranslation does not carry the
whole wordplay to the Arab audience and readers and thus makes
them lose part of the pleasure of the wordplay used by Hamlet.
In the following scene, Polonius, this time, plays on the word

“matter” to endow it with negative connotations when talking to
the King, the Queen and others about the play Hamlet is preparing
“to catch the conscience of the king”.
Polonius: ‘T is most true
And he beseeched me to entreat your majesties
To hear and see the matter.
To describe the play as “the matter” is meant to show how

Polonius looks down upon what Hamlet is doing to show his
allegiance to the King, who is also rejecting what Hamlet is
doing. He (Polonius) appears as an old doddering fool whose
main business in life is political survival in the complex and
deceptive world of the court. This negative meaning meant by
Polonius has to be communicated to the Arab readers and
audience in translation by opting for a choice that has the same
‘condescending’ overtones; in other words, the translator’s job is
not confined to finding a linguistic and cultural equivalent that
communicates the meaning of the original to win the reader’s and

audience’s approval, but s/he “must be able to distinguish the tone
in order to allow his intuition to adopt a comparable tone” (Enani.
On Translating Arabic: A Cultural Approach. General Egyptian Book
Organization, 2000: 151).
Al Qut: ‫ وقد سألني أن أرجوكما‬.‫ هذا صحيح‬:‫بولونيوس‬
‫سماع المسرحية ومشاهدتها‬
Awad: ،‫ وقد رجاني أن ألتمس من جاللتيكما‬،‫ هذا صحيح‬:‫بولونيوس‬
‫أن تشهدا وتستمعا إلى هذا الحفل‬
Enani: ‫ هذا صحيح! وقد رجاني أن أقول إنه‬:‫بولونيوس‬
‫يرجو جاللتيكما أن تحضرا وتشهدا‬
‫أداء تلك المسرحية‬
Both Al Qut and Enani opt for ‫( المسرحية‬the play) which

carries neutral connotations in Arabic, and does not convey any of
the condescending connotations meant by Polonius. Thus the
function of the wordplay is not preserved in the translation. Their
choice could have been modified with a negative adjective
meaning silly, worthless or trivial …etc. Awad unsuccessfully
renders the word as ‫( الحفل‬the party) which does not describe what
is actually happening in the play! Thus the translations suggested
do not keep or transfer Polonius’ sarcastic and condescending
tone. This means that the three translations suggested do not keep
the purpose meant by Shakespeare. Thus the lexical or ‘tone’
barrier in question is not crossed or at least appropriately removed
as the translations suggested are not functionally adequate!
However, there are problematic examples of puns that represent

a real lexical barrier that cannot be removed. Such examples cannot
be kept in translation as stated by the translators themselves. For
example, in the Grave-digger scene (Act V, Scene I), Hamlet plays
on the word ‘lie’: ‘lie in bed’ and ‘tell what is untrue’.
From the semantic point of view, this is an example of

homonymy; a homonymous word is “an ambiguous word, whose
different senses are far apart from each other and not obviously
related to each other in any way” (James and Heasley: 123).This
undoubtedly represents a problematic aspect to the translator who
is compelled to choose one of the two senses, but his choice has
to maximally achieve the aim of the context in which it is used:
Hamlet: I think it be thine, indeed; for thou liest in’t.
First Gravedigger: You lie out on’t, sir, and therefore it is not
yours. For my part, I do Not lie in ‘t, and yet it is mine.
Hamlet: Thou dost lie in’t, to be in’t, and say it is thine.

‘T is for the dead, Not for the quick; therefore thou liest.
First Gravedigger: ‘T is a quick lie, sir; ‘t will away again, from

me to you.
‫‪70‬‬ ‫‪Contrastive Linguistics‬‬
‫‪Al Qut:‬‬
‫أظنه قبرك حقا ألنك ترقد فيه‬ ‫هاملت‪:‬‬
‫إنك خارجه يا سيدي‪ ،‬وعلى هذا فهو ليس لك‪،‬‬ ‫الحفار األول‪:‬‬
‫ما أنا فلست فيه وهو مع ذلك لي‪.‬‬
‫إنك تكذب حين تقول وأنت فيه أنه لك‪ .‬إنه للموتى‬ ‫هاملت‪:‬‬
‫وليس لألحياء‪ .‬ولذا أنت تكذب‪.‬‬
‫إنها كذبة قصيرة يا سيدي‪ ،‬سرعان ما تتحول مني إليك ‪.‬‬ ‫الحفار األول‪:‬‬
‫‪Awad:‬‬
‫البد أنه قبرك ألنك فيه اآلن‬ ‫هاملت‪:‬‬
‫إنك لست فيه‪ ،‬ولذلك فهو ليس لك‪ ،‬وأنا أيضا ال أقيم فيه‪ ،‬ومع ذلك‬ ‫الفالح األول‪:‬‬
‫فإنه لي ‪.‬‬
‫في كالمك تناقض حين تزعم أن هذا القبر لك ‪ .‬فإن القبور للموتى‬ ‫هاملت‪:‬‬
‫وليس لألحياء‪ .‬فدعواك إذا غير صادقة ‪.‬‬
‫ولكنها كذبة حية‪ ،‬ولذلك فهي تسعى وتنتقل مني إليك‪.‬‬ ‫الفالح األول‪:‬‬
‫‪Enani:‬‬
‫أظن انه قبرك فعال‪ ،‬فأنت في داخله!‬ ‫هاملت‪:‬‬
‫إنك لست فيه‪ ،‬وليس إذا لك! أما أنا‪ ،‬فلست في داخله‪ ،‬لكنه ينتمي لي !‬ ‫الحفار‪:‬‬
‫هذا كذب! كيف تقول وأنت في قبرك القبر للموتى‬ ‫هاملت‪:‬‬
‫ال لألحياء! إذا فأنت كذاب !‬
‫إنها كذبة حية يا سيدي! سرعان ما تتحول عني إليك !‬ ‫الحفار‪:‬‬

The three translators unanimously point out (Enani in his

endnotes, and Awad and Al Qut in their footnotes) that this pun is
untranslatable in Arabic. To put it more clearly, the word ‘lie’, as
mentioned before, is a clear example of homonymy as it has two
unrelated senses in English: ‘to lie bed’ and ‘to tell what is
untrue’ which is not the case in Arabic because these two senses
are lexicalized in Arabic in two different verbs, namely, ‫( يرقد‬to
lie in bed) and ‫ ( يكذب‬to tell what is untrue). It is equally that
obvious the three translators opt for one meaning and ignore the
other which cannot be kept in translation. This ‘unintentional or
compulsory infidelity’ to the ST deprives the readers and the
audience of this feature; thus, the rhetorical pleasure of this pun
will be definitely lost in translation. (Also Awad renders
gravedigger as ‫( فالح‬farmer) for unknown reasons!).
This emphasizes the fact that in rendering great literary works

like Hamlet, lexical loss is highly expected due to lexical
differences. The utmost translators can do to keep part of the
lexical and rhetorical pleasure of this pun is to resort to trouble
shooters (footnotes or endnotes) to interpret this ‘untranslatable’
aspect underscoring that this lexical barrier cannot be removed in-
text; and this is exactly done by the three translators.
2- Lexis across Ages:
Many words underwent semantic changes that translators

have to pay heed to. Sometimes the suggested translations show
that the translators are fully aware of the semantic changes of

words and thus opt for successful choices (achieving the function
of the original) and consequently remove any barriers like the
following example taken from Hamlet:
Hamlet: Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Or ever I had seen that day Horatio. (Act I, Scene II)
The adjective ‘dear’ or the superlative ‘dearest’ is used in

modern English to mean “regarded with esteem and affection;
beloved; loved, cherished; precious to” (The New Shorter Oxford:
Vol. I, 602). Thus the word is nowadays used to signify intimate
positive connotations of intimacy and closeness and thus would
never collocate with a word like ‘foe’, unless for a satirical, or any
other rhetorical, purpose. However, ‘dear’ was used in
Shakespeare’s day to mean the opposite as shown by the
following translations that reveal that the three translators are not
deceived by the modern sense of the word:
Al Qut: ‫ليتني لقيت في اآلخرة ألد أعدائي‬
‫قبل أن أشهد هذا اليوم يا هوراشيو‬
Awad: ‫أهون علي أن أقابل ألد أعدائي في السماء‬
‫من أن أشهد ذلك اليوم يا هوراشيو‬
Enani: ‫و ليتني قابلت في األخرى ألد أعدائي‬
‫وما شهدت ذاك اليوم يا هوراشيو‬

They unanimously render ‘my dearest foe’ as "‫( "ألد أعدائي‬my

bitterest enemy). Their translations save the reader, who may have
a bilingual translation, from the confusion created by the apparent
incongruity between ‘dearest’, with all its positive connotations
and ‘foe’, with all its negative ones. The three translators
unanimously agree that the literal approach i.e. translating ‘dear’
in its modern sense will lead the readers or the audience astray:
they prefer a sense-for-sense strategy.
Nevertheless, there are cases that represent a lexical barrier to

translators. For example, a word like ‘policy’ had a negative sense
in Shakespeare’s day (craftiness and dishonesty). These negative
connotations of the word are definitely meant by Shakespeare to
convey his vision and philosophy to his audience who understand
the purport of this word.
Polonius: And I do think – or else this brain of mine
Hunts not the trail of policy so sure
As it hath used to do- that I have found
The very cause of Hamlet’s lunacy
The three translators render the word as ‫( السياسة‬politics)

which may have positive or negative connotations in Arabic
depending on the context, that is, the word has a neutral sense.
Thus the translation suggested does not carry the negative
meaning that Shakespeare had in mind and thus the function of
this word is not achieved. However, the three translators could

have explained the negative connotations of the word in
Shakespeare’s time using one of the trouble shooters (footnotes or
endnotes) to enable the Arab readers to grasp the meaning of the
whole situation—which none of them did.
The other example is ‘politician’: it is used in the Grave-

digger scene (Act V, Scene I) when Hamlet talks to Horatio about
the skull the gravedigger throws while digging the new grave for
Ophelia. This word was used in a bad sense in Shakespeare’s age:
Hamlet: It might be the pate of a politician,
Which this ass o’er-reaches.
The three translators adopt three different approaches: Awad

keeps the negative connotations of the word by rendering it as
‫( دساس‬gossiper or plotter), a free choice. Al Qut ignores the
negative meaning in Shakespearean English and renders it as
‫( سياسي‬politician) with its neutral connotations, a literal choice.
Enani, who seems to be convinced to combine the old negative
sense and the modern neutral one, renders it as ‫سياسي أو دساس‬
( politician, gossiper or plotter): he combines both choices in
order to give the reader and the audience a full picture of this
‘lexical riddle’. In other words, he provides the Arab readers and
audience with both meanings to form their own — a kind of
reconciliation which could be accepted in functional translation.
3- Problematic Words:
Problematic words are simply those words which represent

translation obstacles. A revealing example is the translation of
‫ الصمد‬in surat Al-Ikhlas, Purity of Faith. Authorized exegeses
mention different meanings of the word, generally associated with
power, domination, eternity, benevolence, etc. To see how
confusing and problematic the translation of this word is, let's see
the meanings and interpretations offered by only one authorized
exegesis; namely, that of Al-Qurtuby (Vol. X: 180).
.‫الذى يصمد إليه فى الحاجات‬ .1
.‫الدائم الباقى الذى لم يزل وال يزال‬ .2
.‫السيد الذى يصمد إليه فى النوازل والحوائج‬ .3
.‫الذى ال يلد وال يولد‬ .4
.‫السيد الذى انتهى سؤدده فى أنواع الشرف والسؤدد‬ .5
.‫ والمحتاج إليه كل أحد‬، ‫المستغنى عن كل أحد‬ .6
.‫ والمستعان به فى المصائب‬، ‫المقصود فى الرغائب‬ .7
.‫الذى يفعل ما يشاء ويحكم ما يري‬ .8
.‫الكامل الذى ال عيب فيه‬ .9
.‫ المصمت الذى ال جوف له‬.10
This word, which occurs once in the Holy Qur'an, is

confusing: the translator is asked to study the above
interpretations to sacrifice them all except for one. What

intensifies the difficulty is that some of these meanings are totally
unrelated (see meanings 1, 4 and 10). Even Al-Qurtuby himself
tries to reach a one satisfying interpretation and therefore
concludes "‫( "أن الصحيح فيها ما شهد له االشتقاق وهو القول األول‬Vol. X:
180). The following translations unveil the solutions adopted by
the different translators:
Al-Hilali and Khan: ‘‘Say (O Muhammad ). He is Allah,

(the) one. Allah-us-Samad (‫ )الذى يصمد إليه فى الحاجات‬Allah the self-
sufficient Master, whom all creatures need, (He neither eats nor
drinks).
Rodwell: ‘‘Say: He is God alone: God the eternal!’’
Shakir: ‘‘Say: He, Allah, is One. Allah is He on whom all

depend’’.
It is crystal clear that both Rodwell and Shakir are satisfied to

opt for one choice corresponding to one of the meanings
mentioned before. For clarity, Rodwell's choice, ‘‘the eternal’’,
corresponds to meaning no. 2 and Shakir's choice, ‘‘He on whom
all depend’’, which is rather a paraphrase, corresponds to the
meanings of no 6 and 7. Al-Hilali and Khan do realize the
problematic nature of the word and feel responsible, at the same
time, for revealing the maximal degree of meanings. To do this,
they resort to different strategies including the following:
1- Transliteration
2- Bracketing
3- Mentioning the meaning in Arabic (‫)الذى يصمد إليه فى الحاجات‬
4- Mentioning more than one interpretation:
- ‫( الذى يصمد إليه فى الحاجات‬meaning No. 1)
- The self-sufficient Master whom all creatures need (meaning

No. 6)
- He neither eats nor drinks.
Although these different strategies break the flow of Qur'anic

verses and might seem confusing to many readers, they emphasize
the untranslatability of many Qur'anic words.
Translators, in their turn, should pay due attention to the

contextual meaning of the word to come up with an appropriate
translation. This means that consistency i.e. sticking to one choice
all the time regardless of the shades of meaning the word acquires
is a wrong strategy. In other words, translators should have what
we can call ‘translational flexibility’. The following table reveals
how the word "nature" is differently translated in Hamlet
depending on its contextual meaning:
The Original Translator’s choice
Al Qut Awad Enani
Queen: “Thou know’st ‘t is ‫الحياة‬ ‫الحياة الدنيا‬ ‫جسر الدنيا‬

common- all that live and
must die, passing through
nature to eternity” (Act I,
scene II)
King: “ ‘T is sweet and ‫خلق‬ ‫وطبع‬...‫روح‬ ...‫طبع‬

commendable in your nature ‫وشمائل‬
Hamlet”(Act I, scene II)
Hamlet: “That, for some ‫ حياة‬-1 ‫ خلق‬-1 embedded in
vicious mole of nature in translation
them, as, in their birth –

‫ حياة‬-2 ‫ خلق‬-2 ‫ طبيعة‬-2
wherein they are not guilty,
since nature cannot choose
his origin- by the overgrowth
of some complexion, oft
breaking down the pales and
forts of reason, or by some
habit that too much o’er-
leavens the form of plausive
‫ حياة‬-3 ‫ الطبع‬-3 ‫ طبيعة‬-3
manners, that these men,
carrying, I say, the stamp of
one defect, being nature’s

livery, or fortune’s star.”(Act
I, scene IV)
Hamlet: “ We fools of ‫الحياة‬ ‫الوجود‬ ‫الفطرة‬

nature”(Act I, scene IV) ‫(العجز‬
)‫الفطري‬
Ghost: “Till the foul crimes )‫حياة (حياتي‬ ‫حياة‬ )‫دنيا (دنياي‬
done in my days of nature” )‫(حياتي‬
(Act I, scene V)
Ghost: “If thou hast nature ‫نخوة حياة‬ ‫الحب‬ ‫حب الولد‬
in thee, bear it not”(Act I, ‫والوفاء‬ ‫الفطري‬
scene V)
Hamlet: “To hold, as it ‫الحياة‬ ‫الطبيعة‬ ‫الطبيعة‬

were, the mirror up to
nature”(Act III, scene II)
Laertes: “Nature is fine in ‫الطبيعة‬ ‫الطبيعة‬ ‫طبيعة‬

love”(Act IV, scene V) ‫اإلنسانية‬ ‫اإلنسان‬
Hamlet: “After what embedded ‫رغبتكم‬ ‫أساليبك‬

flourish your nature in
will”(Act V, Scene II) translation
The table above reveals that ‘nature’ really represents a

translational and lexical barrier to the translators as its translation
differs from one context to another. The three translators opt for
Arabic choices that correspond to the meaning of ‘life’, ‘human

nature’ or ‘nature’ in general. However, there are cases where
they seem inconsistent as the contextual meaning compels them to
be so. For example, when the Ghost uses ‘nature’ in talking with
Hamlet (Act I, scene V), the translators interpret the word
according to the parent-child relationship: Al Qut as ‫( نخوة الحياة‬the
magnanimity of life), Awad as ‫( الحب والوفاء‬love and loyalty) and
Enani as ‫( حب الولد الفطري‬the son’s filial love for his father), which
is the most appropriate choice matching the parent-child
relationship between Hamlet and his father (the Ghost). Also
when Hamlet mocks Osric’s pedantic and artificial style of
speech, he uses ‘nature’ to refer to his speech and style—not
human nature in general. This is successfully rendered by Enani
as ‫( أساليبك‬your styles), Awad as ‫( رغبتكم‬your wish) (not as
communicative as that of Enani) and it is embedded in Al Qut’s
translation i.e. not lexically phrased.
Wordplay:
We have already mentioned some examples of wordplay, but

it is necessary to examine and analyze more examples to show the
difficulty of translating examples involving this linguistic feature.
Translation theorists believe that wordplay is Language-specific
and this is why it is almost impossible to render wordplay in
many cases due to the linguistic (semantic, syntactic, stylistic,
phonic) differences between languages. For example, a word
creating wordplay can be polysemous or homonymous in one

language and uni-sense in another. This is why a word can be part
of a witty wordplay in one language which cannot be translated
into another.
Let's take some examples from newspapers. Wordplay is a

common device used in headlines to amuse the reader, draw
his/her attention to a certain point, create an ironic tone or just to
create fun The wordplay in the following headline stems from the
paradox between"‫( "الحريمي‬feminine) and the "‫( "الدكر‬masculine).
The latter is used in the Egyptian dialect as an adjective meaning
"insolvable", "fruitless", "futile", etc.
‫رؤية حريمي لقضية الفقر الدكر‬
(Akhbar Al-Youm on 30-4-2013)
A literal translation of this headline is "a feminist view of the

issue of masculine poverty". When this headline was given to
professional translators to render, they ignored the original adjective,
i.e. "‫"الدكر‬, and opted for other ones, e.g. "abject" sacrificing the
paradox and wordplay in favour of an informative choice. The
English-speaking reader can easily understand a translation like "A
feminist view of abject poverty" because "abject" normally
collocates with "poverty" unlike "masculine". Although this
translation carries the meaning meant by the writer, it is void of the
wordplay that makes the original a witty one in Arabic.
The wordplay takes a different form in the following example

where the writer replaces a word in a famous Egyptian song with
the name of a country that beat Egypt at football. The change is
intentionally meant to be funny and attract the readers' attention to
what went wrong in the match in question.
‫غانا العيد أهو غانا العيد‬
(Al-Akhbar on 18-10-2013)
Transferring wordplay is almost impossible and this is why

the translator should sacrifice it in favour of acceptable
informative choices such as:
-Ghana Football Team Spoil Egypt's Feast
- Ghana Beats Egypt in the Feast
- Egyptian Feast with a Ghanaian Defeat Flavor
However, when this headline was given to professional

translators, they suggested quite creative and innovative choices
that keep-as much as possible- both the wordplay and the
informative content of the original. The following table reveals
their responses to the two questions followed by their explanation
of how they solved the problem in question:
Translation Justification
The Feast Is I used the proper noun “Ghana” instead of
“Ghana” Be the contraction “gonna” (to create a similar
There! The Feast effect of the original). I improvised a lyric
Is Not “Ghana” whose connotation is similar to the intended

Be Here! meaning of the headline.
Oh, Our Feast, Reading the passage clarifies the passive
Ghana Beats Us connotations relating Ghana to the feast.
and Is the Best! Therefore, one cannot rely on the first
translation that depends on the similarity
between the famous song “Hail the Feast,
the Feast Has Come”.
Ghana Home of No difficulty has been faced at all. I
Gala understood that the writer tries to have a
Gala in Ghana melodious headline. I just tried to play on
musicality and have a melodious headline
as presented above.
"Defeat by Ghana The headline is derived from the famous
is Our Gala" song ‫ ;جانا العيد أهو جانا العيد‬the rhyme is
important. I tried to keep the rhyme
between Ghana and Gala.
Idioms in Arabic and English:
In this section, we will focus on idioms. It is quite necessary

to technically define what is meant by an idiom. David Crystal
points out that an idiom is "a sequence of words which is
semantically restricted, so that they function as a single unit", and
adds that from the semantic point of view, “the meanings of the
individual words cannot be summed to produce the meaning of
the idiomatic expression as a whole” (David Crystal. A Dictionary of
Linguistics and Phonetics. 1992: 170).
Let's take an example of a body-part idiom (related to the

hand) used in the Qur'an and the way translators rendered it. The
hand is one of the key body parts used in speech situations; the
palm, fingers and fingertips are used to signal reactions, feelings
and emotions related to refusal, acceptance, direction, emphasis,
victory (i.e. V sign), etc. The Qur’an abounds in hand-related
idioms that help in character portrayal, emphasis on certain
meanings or conveying certain themes to the reader or the
listener. The following verse is an outstanding example:
Original Translation Strategy
‫"ويوم يعض الظالم‬ Arberry: literal choice
‫على يديه يقول يا‬ “Upon the day the evildoer
‫ليتني اتخذت مع‬ shall bite his hands saying
"‫الرسول سبيال‬ ‘Would that I had taken a way
(The Criterion: 27) along with the Messenger.’ ’’
Ghali: literal choice
“And the Day that the unjust
(person) shall bite at his
hands, saying, ‘Would that I
had taken to my self a way
along the Messenger. ’ ”
Shakir: literal choice

“And the day when the unjust
one shall bite his hands,
saying: O! would that I had
taken way with the Apostle.”
The verb bite is used twice in the Qur’an constituting two

body-part idioms having two different meanings. Biting the hand
is a common body-part idiom used in Arabic to indicate self-
rebuking and regret (e.g. ‫يعض أصابع الندم‬, literally: bite the fingers
of regret, i.e. express regret). The above verse describes the
psychological condition of the evildoer on the Day of Judgment
when s/he discovers that s/he had to follow the Messenger of
Allah; it is a state of regret and self-rebuking.
The English language has many body-part idioms involving

the verb “bite”. The following table reveals this fact (all the
following examples are taken from The New Shorter Oxford 1993
Vol I: 109):
Idiom Meaning
1- Bite the hand that Be unfriendly to or harm somebody
feeds one. who has been kind to one.
2- Bite somebody’s head Criticize somebody angrily (and
off. often unfairly).
3- Bite one’s lips. Grip one’s lip or lips between the
teeth to prevent oneself from saying
something, sobbing, showing
emotion, etc.
4- Bite one’s tongue. Try hard not to say what one thinks
or feels; blame oneself for having
said something embarrassing,
hurtful.
It is quite clear that the fourth idiom, “bite one’s tongue” is

the closest one to the meaning and connotations of the original
Qur’anic idiom. Yet, the three translators decide to literally keep
the idiom, as biting one’s hands, associated with pain, agony and
distress, is expected to be understood by the target reader. This
semi-universal gesture makes the translator’s task easy as the
meaning and connotations of the body-part idiom can be easily
guessed and understood by the target reader.
Biting the hand, however, indicates meanings and

connotations different from those of biting the finger-tips: the
former indicates, as mentioned before, regret and self-rebuking,
whereas the latter indicates rage. This meaning is so clear in the
following verse:
‫ "وإذا لقوكم قالوا آمنا‬Arberry: literal choice
‫“ وإذا خلوا عضوا‬And when they meet you
‫ عليكم األنامل من‬they say, ‘We believe,’ but
"‫ الغيظ‬when they go privily, they
(The Household bite at you their fingers,
of Imran: 119) enraged.”
“And when they meet you,
they say, ‘we have believed;’
and when they go away in
private, they bite at you their
finger-tips, enraged.”

“And when they meet you
they say: We believe, and
when they are alone, they
bite the ends of their
fingers in rage against you.”
This verse describes the inner feelings of the Hypocrites who

were living in Al-Madinah during the time of Prophet
Muhammad. They pretended to follow the Prophet, but deep
inside them, they were full of rage and wrath towards the Prophet
and his Companions. The body-part idiom here is a revealing tool:
it is used to scandalize those Hypocrites who are real pretenders.
In this verse, the context itself plays a key role in facilitating
the translator’s task: the body-part idiom in question is followed
by a prepositional phrase ‫( من الغيظ‬i.e. out of rage). This means
that even if the body-part idiom might not be fully understood by
the target reader (i.e. the target reader does not understand the
significance of biting the finger tips), the following prepositional
phrase, rendered as ‘enraged’, ‘enraged’ and ‘in rage against you’
respectively, makes the picture clearer. It is also important to
point out that Arberry replaces the finger-tips, mentioned in the
original, with the fingers for no obvious reason. The English
language has similar body-part idioms that convey similar
meanings including the following:
- grind one’s teeth
- gnash one’s teeth in rage
- bite one’s thumb at someone
Exercise
Read the following passage and then comment on the lexical

difficulties that the translator faced and the strategies she adopted
to overcome them. Evaluate how far she succeeded or failed to
render this extract:
‫ أشارت برعبها إلى‬.‫أبصر ممدوح أم شعبان تلطم خديها بال صوت‬

:‫ قالت‬.‫ شفتاها يمصها الهلع‬.‫ الحزن يفيض من عينيها أنهارا‬.‫باب حجرة شعبان‬
‫ كان يذاكر ليل‬، ‫ كف عن المذاكرة فجأة‬.‫ امتحانه في الغد‬.‫مزق كتب الطب‬
‫ أشعلت النار‬.‫ عملت له عروسة‬.‫ الحسد مذكور في القرآن‬.‫ عين أصابته‬.‫نهار‬
)‫ (قهوة المواردي – محمد جالل‬.‫ عينا واسعة‬.‫ رأيت العين التي أصابته‬.‫فيها‬
Mamdouh saw Om Shaaban silently slapping her face with

her hands. Fearfully she pointed to Shabaan's bedroom door. Grief
was overflowing her eyes like rivers. Her lips were sucked by
terror. She said: "He tore the medical books. His exam is
tomorrow. He stopped studying suddenly. It is an evil eye. Evil
eyes are mentioned in the Koran. I made him a doll. I burnt it. I
saw the eyes that struck him. Wide eyes. (Translated by Marlyn
Iskandar)
Unit (5)
Neologisms in Arabic and English
Introduction:
A neologism is simply a new term introduced into a language

to indicate a new state of affairs, a new technology, a new
phenomenon, etc. This implies that a new state of affairs is 'born'
in a culture and the language used lacks a term to describe it. This
is why the users of the language in question coin a new one to
describe it, i.e. to meet a linguistic need. Many neologisms
embark upon a typical journey consisting of three stages: birth,
life and death. To clarify, a neologism is born, used for a while
and then dies, i.e. vanishes from the language because language
users stop using it.
Neologisms and Translation:
Translators employed by mass media, especially newspapers

and satellite channels, bear the burden of translating the torrent of
neologisms that appear everyday matching changes that take place
everyday especially in the fields of technology, science and
politics. Some of them resort to transliteration which is not always
a successful strategy. They, therefore, should provide other
translation options that are maximally communicative,
informative and at the same time accurate.
An obvious example that supports the above argument is

“chatology”: when this word was introduced for the first times it
was transliterated as ‫ تشاتولوجى‬and its root-cognate, chat, (verb or
noun) became ‫ تشات‬. Nevertheless, in the course of time, another
good option was suggested and eventually used by the media, that
is, ‫علم الدردشة اإللكترونية‬/‫عالم‬. A similar example is “quicktionary”; a
kind of electronic pen that is used as a translator: it scans the line
and the translation of the scanned words appear on a small built-in
screen. At first it was ‫ كويكشنرى‬, but later became ‫ القلم المترجم‬. An
economic term like “grey market” raised a debate among
translators: some of them suggested “‫”السوق البخس‬, while others
suggested ‫ السوق الرمادية‬claiming that Arabic could “accept” ‫السوق‬
‫ السوداء‬and it could also “welcome” ‫ السوق الرمادية‬. The following
table gives examples of other neologisms and their suggested
translations:
neologism translation
glocalism ‫العولمحلية‬
digitization ‫الرقمنة‬
multi-media ‫(تكنولوجيا) الوسائط المتعددة‬
tsunami ‫أمواج المد العاتية‬
zionazism ‫الصهيونازية‬
under-information ‫شح (او ندرة) المعلومات‬
over-information ‫إفراط (أو وفرة) المعلومات‬
shruggism ‫االستخفاف بخطورة التكنولوجيا الحديثة‬

technoplegia ‫الرعب من التكنولوجيا‬
Islamology ‫علوم اإلسالم – اإلسالميات‬
google (v) ‫يستخدم المحرك البحثى جوجل‬
Disaster Diplomacy ‫دبلوماسية الكوارث (استغالل الكوارث الطبيعية‬
)‫ تركيا واليونان‬: ‫لتحسين العالقات بين الدول مثال‬
Football Diplomacy ‫دبلوماسية كرة القدم (استغالل مباريات كرة القدم‬
)‫لتحسين العالقات بين الدول‬
Cricket Diplomacy ‫دبلوماسية الكريكيت (استغالل مباريات الكريكيت‬
)‫لتحسين العالقات بين الهند وباكستان‬
Funeral Diplomacy ‫استغالل الجنازات الرسمية لتحسين العالقات بين‬
‫ مصافحة الرئيس‬:‫ مثال‬.‫الزعماء والرؤساء والملوك‬
‫اإلسرائيلى موشيه كاتساف للرئيس السورى بشار‬
‫األسد أثناء جنازة البابا يوحنا بولس الثانى‬
Newspapers are considered a rich source of neologisms
especially political ones. Like all neologisms, a political one is
born to describe a new political state of affairs and consequently
fills in a lexical gap in the language. For example, thirty years ago
the English language lacked a political term that expresses
"political infiltration with the purpose of capturing the top positions
in an organization. We now have entryism with this meaning" (Peter
Newmark, About Translation. Multilingual Matters LTD, 1991: 159). This
term is currently a well-established one in the English language
indicating "the policy or practice of joining an organization, esp. a

political one, with the intention of subverting its aims and
activities" (The New Shorter Oxford: vol. I: 832).
Newmark classifies political neologisms into ephemeral and

permanent indicating that some political neologisms disappear
when the political situation they describe no longer exists, whereas
others describe permanent political rules, values and bases and this
is why they continue being in use. An example of the former type
is smart sanctions, a term which flourished in political circles two
or three years before the war on Iraq in 2003, but disappeared
because these sanctions, suggested by USA and UK, were rejected
by the international community. The term means preventing Iraq
from importing products or commodities of dual purpose, that is,
capable of being used for military and peaceful purposes. An
example of the latter is the Orange Revolution which refers to a
number of protests and political events that happened in Ukraine
from late November 2004 to January 2005 highlighted by civil
disobedience, sit-ins, and strikes because of the results of the
presidential run-off vote. The same term is currently used to refer
to any peaceful, bloodless revolution.
The following headline contains a (permanent) political

neologism that has gained currency since the 25 January
Revolution to refer to those Egyptians who are content with
following what is going on in the political scene in Egypt on TV
sitting on their comfortable home couches and are reluctant to
actively participate in political life, yet when it comes to elections,

they are a vital and effective element in this process. The writer
here sends regards to those people who take part in all political
activities electronically, e.g. e-voters. They are not passive as
they may seem:
‫تحية واجبة لحزب الكنبة‬
Egyptians used the term in the beginning as a kind of joke, yet

many translators have discovered that the term is quite problematic.
They started to search for a cultural equivalent in English and
found couch potato who is "sl. a person whose spare time is spent
lounging about, esp. watching television" (The New Shorter Oxford,
vol. I: 523) and gained currency for a while. The term suggested
carries the same idea of idleness and lethargy, but lacks the
political implications of the original Arabic. The English language
also has silent majority, namely, "those people holding, rarely
expressing or asserting, moderate opinions" (The New Shorter Oxford,
vol. II: 2862). There is no English equivalent that has the same socio-
political connotations of the Arabic term. This headline can be
translated in different ways including the following:
- A Due Greeting to Home Internet Users Party
- Electronic Democracy: Stay on Sofa and Post Your Vote
- Worthy Regards to Internet Users Sitting at Home on Sofa

This brings to mind an older headline published more than ten

years ago containing an older (ephemeral) political neologism
coined by the late former Libyan leader Muammar Al Gaddafi to
refer to his geo-political solution to end the Palestinian Israeli
conflict , namely, a two-nation- in-one-state solution:
‫القذافي يجدد دعوته لقيام دولة إسراطين‬
It should be mentioned in this concern that this neologism

underwent the typical journey mentioned above. To clarify, it was
invented by Al Gaddafi, gained currency in the media those days
and used for a while, then vanished from the language. It is
currently used –when remembered- as a kind of (political-lexical)
joke. It is important to point out that the process of word
formation used in this case is blending which is "a common
source of new words though not become standard" (David Crystal. A
Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Blackwell, 1992.: 40). In other
words, the geo-political solution involves Palestinians and Israelis
living in one state called Isratine (a blending of Israel +
Palestine):
Thus it can be translated as Isratine because blending is a

common and safe technique in rendering neologisms. It saves the
translator the trouble of producing an inaccurate translation and
keeps the novelty of the neologism in question as well. The
translator, however, may sacrifice the neologism in favour of a clear

informative choice, namely, "Palestinian-Israeli state".
Lexical Innovation:
Lexical innovation is a common feature of both Arabic and

English. It refers to the innovative way of coining or inventing
new words, widely used in the newspaper in particular. It is one
of the features of headlines as a means of attracting readers and
arousing their interest. Sometimes editors and writers coin a new
lexical item that expresses a 'special' meaning that cannot be fully
expressed by the usual common ones. The following headline is
an example of such lexical innovation:
"‫بين "القندلة" و "الببلوة‬
Here the writer coins two words ‫ القندلة‬and ‫ الببلوة‬derived from

‫ قنديل‬and ‫الببالوي‬, the family names of two former Egyptian prime
ministers. The linguistic innovation, apart from creating humour,
is meant as a sharp criticism of the performance of the two prime
ministers in question. This linguistic innovation should be met
with an equivalent one. In other words, the translator should try as
much as s/he can to avoid normalizing the original to keep its
novelty and innovation. It can be translated as "Qandilism and
Biblawism", Qanilization and Biblawization" or "Qandilizing and
Biblawizing" that literally keep the lexical innovation. Other
informative and innovation-free may include the following:
- Former and Current Prime Ministers: Out Of the Frying Pan into
the Fire.
- No Big Difference between the Governments of Qandil and

Biblawi.
- Reflections on Two Cabinets: Qandil’s vs. Beblawy’s.

Exercise
Look up the following neologisms in the dictionary or search

for their meaning on the internet, and then provide a translation of
each:
Word Meaning Translation
Oversharers
noob
staycation
troll
flatulance
balderdash
ego surfer
tweet cred
chilax
hinky
solastalgia
Unit (6)
Loanwords in Arabic and English
Introduction:
Did Arabic and English borrow words from other Languages?

The simple answer is that loanwords have been a linguistic
phenomenon in both Arabic and English for hundreds, even
thousands, of years which is the case of many languages of the
world. For example, before the emergence of Islam, Arabs were
in the custom of moving outside the Arabian Peninsula to trade
with other countries such as Abyssinia and the Levant. As result,
Arab merchants acquired many words (loanwords) from the
languages spoken in those regions. Those loanwords became in
the course of time part of the vocabulary of Arabic. Moreover, the
Arabs introduced some linguistic changes (phonological and
morphological) to make such words match the rules of Arabic
grammar.
Arab poets used loanwords such as the following verse by Al

Buhtury, one of the most famous and skillful poets in the history
of the Arabic language:
‫وأنوشروان يزجى الصفوف تحت الدرفس‬
And Anushrwaan is leading the troops under the banner

The word written in bold is the Persian word for flag or

banner, although Arabic has ‫ الراية‬and ‫( العلم‬meaning flag or
banner) for the same purpose.
Since its birth, English has been borrowing words from

other languages especially its ‘mother’ language, Germanic, then
from Latin, French, Greek, Arabic, etc. Even during the modern
English period (1500-1800) when Shakespeare (1564-1616) was
writing his masterpieces, he faced difficulty in expressing the
subtle meanings he had in mind because English lacked
expressive lexical items. This fact (lexical poverty) is supported
by scholars because during the Modern English period, “around
13,000 new loanwords entered the language in the sixteenth
century alone, and of these 7,000 were from Latin” (Jonathan
Culpeper. History of English. Routledge, 1997: 25).
Another important issue related to borrowing words from

other languages in both Arabic and English is register; in other
words, the loanwords acquired the same prestige of their ‘mother’
languages .For example, in English, Latin words are usually
regarded as ‘learned’ and ‘formal’ words because Latin at the
time of borrowing was “the language of scholarship, the law and
so on—in fact, it was the High language in a diglossic situation,
with English as the Low (and French in between as the language
of the court)” (ibid: 56).
Culpeper refers to the fact that Germanic loanwords are

usually regarded as informal, whereas Latin loanwords are the
formal ones with French occupying a middle ground. He sums up
the differences between loanwords taken from both languages as
follows:
Germanic Latin
frequent rare
spoken written
informal formal
private public
simple complex
concrete abstract
affective neutral
Rise and Decline of Lending Languages:
Reading the history of the world's languages (see Crystal's

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language and Malmekjaer's The
Linguistics Encyclopedia) reveals that human history witnessed
the flourishing of some languages that acted as lending or donor
languages due to being the languages of science, knowledge,
technology and sometimes religion, e.g. Latin, Greek, Arabic, etc.
For example, Latin was the language of religion and literature in
Europe for a long time especially during the Middle Ages.
Culpeper points out that “many literary, scientific and religious

texts were in Latin, since Latin was the language of scholarship
and scholarly literature” (25). However, “it was not until the
Renaissance in the sixteenth century that borrowing from Latin
took off” (ibid; 25).
As for Arabic, it also acted as a lending language to European

(and other) languages due to the role of religion, that is, one of the
ultimate aims of early Muslims in life was to spread Islam all over
the world. Many European languages, particularly English,
borrowed words from Arabic when Muslims were in Andalusia
for eight centuries until they left it in 1492. Arabic at that time
represented the language of scholarship and science. Pyles
supports the same point of view:
A number of words ultimately Arabic, most of them
having to do in one way or another with science or with
commerce, came during the Middle English period,
usually by way of French or Latin. These include amber,
camphor, cipher, cotton, lute, mattress, orange, saffron,
sugar, syrup and zenith. (311)
Al-Yasou'i in his ‫( غرائب اللغة العربية‬published in 1986) cites

interesting examples of Arabic words that entered European
languages including the following:
Hungarian Armenian Greek Russian English French Arabic
alixir iksir elixirion elexir elixir elixir ‫اإلكسير‬
alkémia alkimia alkhimiya alkhimia alchemy alchimie ‫الكيمياء‬
amir amir émiris émir ameer émir ‫أمير‬
tsoukor chakar zakhari sakhar sugar sucre ‫سكر‬
siroup charab siropi siropp syrup sirop ‫شراب‬
kâmfor kapour kafoura kamfara camphor camphre ‫كافور‬
minaret minaré minarés minaret minaret minaret ‫منارة‬
As for Romance languages (French, Spanish and Italian), they

acted as lending languages to English for a long period of time,
especially French. The coming of the Normans in 1066 heralded
that “French became the official language of law and
administration” (Culpeper: 25). French in the course of time
became the language of etiquette, dress and cooking. The use of
French by the ruling classes popularized a lot of French words,
but it never happened in the history of England that people spoke
French in the street. However, the French culture and style of life
continued to have a powerful impact.
However, it should be pointed out that Classical and Romance

languages ceased to act as lending languages because “these
languages experienced a decline in prestige” (ibid: 25).
Consequently, English is nowadays “borrowing from languages
which have not been traditional sources for vocabulary. For
example, one study suggests that Japanese accounts for 8 per cent
of borrowings in the last fifty years, and African languages for 6
per cent” (ibid: 25-26).
Arabic, on the other hand, has been borrowing words from

different languages before and after the revelation of the Holy
Qur'an, the text that represents a junction and a turning point in
the history of the Arabic Language. As mentioned earlier, there

are a number of languages such as Persian, Turkish, Hebrew,
Syriac, etc. that acted as lending languages to Arabic throughout
its history. There are other languages that acted as minor sources
of loanwords such as Greek, Latin, Romance languages
(especially French and Italian).
In tracing the history of loanwords in Arabic, Al- Yasou'i

came to a lot of significant conclusions. Even before the
emergence of Islam, Arabs had been borrowing words from
Aramaic till the sixth century especially in the areas of
agriculture, industry, commerce, navigation, science and
Christianity e.g. onko ‫( اآلنك‬lead), bakorto ‫( باكورة‬first fruits of
something), talmido ‫( تلميذ‬pupil)…etc.
Although Hebrew is a Semitic language like Arabic, he (Al-

Yasou'i) indicates that Arabic did not borrow many words from
Hebrew except for a few ones related to the Jews and Judaism e.g.
teba ‫( تابوت‬coffin),, tora ‫( التوراة‬Torah), chebet ‫( سبط‬old Jewish
tribe), etc.
Persian also acted as lending or donor language to Arabic for

a number of centuries. He also indicated that the Arabs conquered
Iran in the seventh century and dominated it till 1220. They
spread Islam in those lands and found that the Persians had a great
civilization and this made them borrow hundreds of words from
Persian e.g. owg ‫( أوج‬peak), parvahan ‫( برهان‬evidence), gohbod

‫( جهبذ‬a good critic), dowreh ‫( دورق‬pitcher), etc.
As for Greek, although the Arabs did not conquer Greece,

they came in contact with the Greeks for a number of generations.
The Arabs were so much interested in Greek philosophy and read
it in its original language or in its Syriac translation. On the other
hand, Lower Greek, after the emergence of Christianity, remained
for a long time the language used by all the Roman-ruled peoples,
side by side with their original languages. This is why when the
Arabs conquered countries like Egypt and Syria, they came in
contact with the Christians who used Lower Greek. As a result,
the Arabs in the course of time borrowed many words from those
peoples e.g. ovrizon ‫( إبريز‬pure gold), ethir ‫( أثير‬air), sofizma
‫( سفسطة‬sophistry), sapon ‫( صابون‬soap), etc.
As for Turkish, when the Sultan of Turks, Selim the First,

defeated the Mamluks in 1516, he dominated Syria, Egypt, what
is between the two rivers (Mesopotamia), Lebanon and Palestine
till the collapse of the Ottoman Sultanate in 1918, after their
defeat in the First World War (1914-1918). For four centuries, a
lot of Turkish words infiltrated into colloquial Arabic, but very
few became part of Standard Arabic e.g. kaftan ‫( قفطان‬a kind of
cloak), bey ‫( بك‬master), boghaz ‫( بوغاز‬strait), tersane ‫ترسانة‬
(arsenal), etc.
Al-Yasou'i indicated that Arabic borrowed few words from

other minor languages like Romance languages: French parlement
‫( برلمان‬parliament), Italian borsa ‫( بورصة‬stock exchange) and
Spanish tabago ‫( الطباق‬tobacco), Latin papa ‫( البابا‬Pope), German
zink ‫( زنك‬zinc), Russian mazout ‫( مازوت‬mazut ), Chinese tchha
‫( شاى‬tea), etc.
Recently English as the most important language and the

lingua franca of the whole world seems to be the major lending
language to Arabic especially in the field of technology e.g.
computer, disk, search engine, internet, etc
Classification of Loanwords:
David Crystal in his A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics

(1992) classifies the loan process into a number of types according
to form, meaning, pronunciation and translation, etc.:
Several types of loan process have been recognized such
as loanwords (where both form and meaning are
borrowed, or assimilated with the some adaptation to the
phonological system of the new language)…; loan
blends (where the meaning is borrowed, but only part of
the form)…; loan shifts (where the meaning is borrowed,
and the form is native)…; loan translations (where the
morphemes in the borrowed word are translated item by
item). (205)
Pyles has a different classification actually based on usage: he

classifies loanwords into popular loanwords, namely, “those of
oral transmission and are part of the vocabulary of everyday

communication” (294) and learned loanwords meaning those
that “owe their adoption to more or less scholarly influences”
(ibid: 294). He adds that popular loanwords have become an
integral part of English vocabulary and commonly and
extensively used in daily life to the extent that “those who use
them are seldom aware that they are of foreign origin” (ibid: 294).
Learned loanwords, on the other hand, are usually used in
academic writings, scholarly research or written text in general,
but they “may in time become part of the living vocabulary, even
though their use may be confined to a certain class or group”
(ibid: 294).
Semantic Changes:
Loanwords become in the course of time part of the lexical

stock of the language, users of language, if not specialists, will
never know that a certain word has been borrowed from another
language; and even if they know, they use it because it has
become ‘a lexical fact’ i.e. they have to use it to express the
meaning they would like to convey to the other users of language,
who definitely know that meaning. Thus there is no wonder that
these loanwords undergo the same processes of semantic changes
that the other words of language do; “a word may, as it were, go
downhill, or it may rise in the world; there is no way of predicting
what its career may be”(Pyles: 247). Culpeper points out that
there are a number of semantic processes that some loanwords

(like other original words in the language) undergo as a result of
the changes that occur in people's lives and reflected in their
languages. These processes include the following:
1- Generalization:
Pyles describes this process as widening of meaning; that is,

when the word starts to refer to more items or referents than
before. He has a similar definition, “A sense (of a word) may
expand to include more referents than it formerly had” (242).
Many English and Arabic loanwords have undergone this

process. In English, for example, a word like ‘mill’ has been
generalized: it was earlier used to refer to a place where things are
made by the process of grinding to be used for food. The grinding
element has been eliminated, so that “we may speak of a woolen
mill, a steel mill or even a grin mill” (Pyles: 243). Looking this
word up in Webster Ninth new Collegiate Dictionary reveals its
Latin origin:
(ME mille, fr. OE mylen, fr. LL Molina, molinum, fr.

Fem. And neut. of molinus of a mill, of a millstone, fr.
L mola mill, millstone; akin to L molere to grind
more at meal)(6)
Arabic, on the other hand, has similar examples like ‫الخيال‬

which was originally borrowed from Persian to mean 'thinking' or
'illusion', but this meaning has been generalized to also mean
‘imagination’ and ‘inspiration’ (see ‫ معجم األلفاظ الفارسية المعربة‬by

As_Sidaday Shir (published by Lebanon Library in 1990 : 59).
2- Specialization:
Culpeper refers to it as “narrowing of meaning” (38) and

Pyles as “a process in which, by adding to the features of
meaning, the referential scope of a word is reduced” (244). Both
English and Arabic have examples of loanwords that underwent
this process: in English, for example, a word like ‘clerk’ started
with the sense of a clergyman, but nowadays it is used to refer to
shop or hotel worker, scholar and office worker.
Looking the word up in Webster Ninth new Collegiate

Dictionary reveals its Greek origin:
(ME fr. OF clerc&OE cleric, clerc, both fr. LL

clericus, fr.LGK klerikos, fr. GK kleros lot,
inheritance (in allusion to Deut18:2), stick of wood;
akin to GK klan to break—more at halt)
Arabic has similar examples that reveal the same process; for
example, word like ‫ صوان‬came from Persian meaning ‘A big
tent’, but it is used nowadays to refer to the tent pitched to receive
mourners when someone dies (see Shir: 109).
3- Amelioration:
Amelioration is the elevation of meaning, in other words, the

meaning of a word becomes ‘exalted’ or acquires better
connotations and associations than it formerly had. In English, a

word like ‘nice’ was borrowed from Latin to mean ‘ignorant’, but
in the course of time, it was used to indicate the positive meaning
we know today. This means that “what has been added has
ameliorated or elevated the semantic content of the word” (Pyles:
248). The following entry reveals the history of the word:
(ME, foolish, wanton, fr. OF, fr. L nescius ignorant,

fr. nescire not to know—more at nescience).
Similarly, we have loanwords in Arabic that underwent the

same positive change like ‫( الروضة‬literally garden) which was
originally borrowed from Persian with the meaning of ‘a swamp
of sand and weeds’ but in the course of time it acquired positive
connotations and elevated meanings to mean ‘garden’.
4- Pejoration:
Pejoration is the opposite of amelioration, that is, it refers to

“a change of meaning in which a word acquires a negative
evaluation” (Crystal, Encyclopedia: 419). In English, for example,
a Latin word like ‘notorious’ started with the meaning of ‘widely
known’ but nowadays it is used with the sense of ‘widely and
unfavorably known’. The etymological history offered by Webster
Ninth new Collegiate Dictionary supports the above semantic
change:
(ML notorius, fr.LL notorium information,

indictment, fr.neut.of(assumed)LL notorius making
known, fr. L notus, pp. of noscere to come to know—

more at know)
In Arabic, we have similar cases: a word like ‫ توز‬,tuz, the

Turkish word for ‘salt’, was neutrally used to refer to the
substance in question. However, it is nowadays used as a kind of
swearword. It is also important to point out that this process of
pejoration was associated with a change of register: this word is
only used in informal contexts, although its ‘neutral’ meaning
‘allows’ it to be used in all contexts, whether formal or informal!
5- Transfer:
Transfer refers to the shift of meaning a word undergoes

throughout the history of language “so that the word refers to
different -though often closely associated- set of things”
(Culpeper: 38). Pyles cites the example of ‘long’ and ‘short’ as
have been “transferred from the spatial concepts to which they
ordinarily refer and made to refer to temporal, as in a long time, a
short while”(244). Culpeper cites a more interesting and detailed
example, namely, that of ‘bureau’ and how its meaning changed
over a long period of time:
Twelfth century coarse woolen cloth
Thirteenth century cloth covering tables and counters
Fourteenth century counting tables
Fifteenth/sixteenth century writing table

Seventeenth century room containing the table people
working in the room, department, agency
The entry provided by Webster emphasizes the foreign origin of

the word and the interpretations suggested by Culpeper:
(F, desk, cloth covering for desks, fr. OF burel woolen

cloth, fr. (assumed) OF bure, fr. LL burra shaggy
cloth)
Unfortunately, in Arabic we do not have a historical

dictionary that gives us the etymological history of words.
However, Shir provides examples in his dictionary that can
indicate the same phenomenon in Arabic. For example, ‫( بريد‬mail
or post) is a Persian word meaning ‘to carry and transfer’ then in
the course of time it came to mean ‘mail or post’. He also says
that it can be of a Latin origin referring to the animal that carries
the mail, then it entered the Arabic language to mean the mail
itself.
Life and Death of Loanwords:
Metaphorically speaking, many loanwords pass through three

stages: birth, life and death. In other words, many of the
“loanwords have, as it were, a life of their own that cuts across the
boundaries between languages” (Pyles: 293). This simply means
that many of the loanwords are borrowed, used for a while and
then users of language stop using them for different reasons. That
is to say loanwords undergo ‘conventionalization’ which is a

gradual process in which the loanword progressively permeates a
larger and larger speech community, then the users of language
stop using it till it becomes ‘dead’ and labeled as ‘archaic’. For
example, many of the words that English borrowed from Latin are
no longer used and regarded as ‘archaic’. Users of English even
introduced some morphological changes to Latin words to acquire
an English ‘morphological character’. For example the plural of
the Latin ‘phenomenon’ is ‘phenomena’ according to the Latin
plural rules, but many users of English use the English
‘phenomenons’. The same holds true for ‘foci’ and ‘focuses’, the
former is the Latin plural of the singular ‘focus’, but is rarely used
nowadays except in scientific contexts; the English version
‘focuses’ is used instead. However, it should be mentioned that
this did not happen to Latin only, but to other languages as well
including French, Greek, etc.
In Arabic, there are similar cases of words that were borrowed

from other languages, used for while and then became ‘archaic’ in
the course of time. For example Arabic borrowed ‫ فالوذج‬from
Persian (a kind of dessert made of flour, honey and water). This
word is no longer used and is only found in books of history,
literature, etc. when talking about the history of Arabs or the
history of their literature. The same holds true for words borrowed
from other languages e.g. Aramaic salto ‫( إصلت‬a kind of sword),
Hebrew gadich ‫( جدث‬grave), Greek stoma ‫( سطام‬the pointed end

of the sword), etc. (see Shir).
Clues in Proper and Place Names:
In his book, Culpeper devotes a whole chapter entitled “Clues

in Place Names” to trace loanwords in place names in England.
He points out that following the history of those who invaded
and/or settled in England reveals a lot about the history of the
English language giving due attention to loanwords to support the
above fact:
The most important factor in the development of English
has been the arrival of successive waves of invaders and
settlers speaking different languages. The history of
place names in Britain is closely connected to the
dominance of various languages at various points in
time. (1)
He mentions a lot of examples proving his point of view

including the following:
Pen (Welsh) = top, hill (e.g. Pendle)
Castra (Latin) = camp, walled town (e.g. Lancaster)
By (Scandinavian) = village (e.g. Kirkby and Crosby)
Beau (French) = beautiful (e.g. Beaumont)
What Culpeper did can easily and satisfactorily be done in

Arabic to follow the infiltration of loanwords into Arabic. Names
of people in Arabic do help to reveal similar facts. The Dictionary
of Arab Names (1991) provides many interesting examples. The

authors conducted a survey of Arab names ending up with a huge
sample of 18,509 names representing the common names in all
the Arab countries. The etymological and linguistic analyses
provided by the authors provide insights into the infiltration of
loanwords throughout the history of the Arabic language. These
loanwords were used as names for people due to their beautiful,
lofty and interesting meanings including the names of flowers,
power-implying words, names of animals and birds, etc.
The authors in the English introduction refer to the difficulty

of tracing loan names, especially if the name in question came
from more than one language:
In the case of non-Arabic names, authentication of their
etymology was attempted, with mixed results. As might
be expected, in some cases there has been considerable
difficulty in deciding whether an originally non-Arabic
name came into society directly from its language of
origin or via another language. This problem is especially
apparent in the case of names of Persian origin, some of
which seem likely to have come via Turkish. (IV)
The dictionary abounds in many examples that clarify the

above fact including the following:
Name Origin Meaning
‫شيرين‬ Persian nice – beautiful – sweet –
cute
‫دينا‬ Hebrew – Aramaic religion – debt
Name Origin Meaning

‫ساويرس‬ Latin lover of justice or right-
serious- strict
‫شوشة‬ Persian – Aramaic a bullion of gold or silver
‫جبريل‬ Hebrew the man of God
‫سونيا‬ Russian Russian form of Sophia
meaning wisdom
‫نيرمين‬ Persian soft – subtle - serene
‫مارسيل‬ French from Latin courage or hammer
‫يارا‬ Persian or Turkish ability - courage – power
Or Syriac - necklace
‫بيطار‬ Latin veterinary
‫لونا‬ Latin the moon
‫ليديا‬ Greek a girl from Lydia (an old
town in Asia)
‫روفائيل‬ Hebrew cured by God
‫شنودة‬ Coptic from Ancient the son of God
Egyptian
‫شهرزاد‬ Persian son or daughter of the
city- native – national –
free - smiling face
‫شيرى‬ Coptic daughter
Also many of the names of places in the Arab world reveal the
infiltration of loanwords. For example, Fatma Mahgoub in her
‫( الموسوعة الذهبية للعلوم اإلسالمية‬1992) mentions the foreign origin of
‘Baghdad’; “a Persian word meaning gift from Allah” (Vol. VII:

266). Shir also refers to another city in Iraq, namely, Al-Anbar; he
says that it is a Persian word meaning ‘fat’. In addition, it is widely
known that ‘Alexandria’, was named after Alexander the Great
who invaded Egypt.
Transliterating Loanwords:
Is transliteration the most appropriate strategy when rendering

loanwords? A lot of mass media, especially satellite channels, use
transliterated words, phrases and expressions, although Arabic has
adequate equivalents. For example, ‫ الجماعات اإلثنية‬is used as a
translation of “ethnic groups”, although Arabic has ‫عرقية‬/‫ عرقى‬as
an adequate and accurate translation of “ethnic”. Similarly ‫التابوهات‬
is used as a translation of taboos, “a word, topic, or activity:
avoided or prohibited, esp. by social custom” (The New Shorter
Oxford, Vol. II: 3198). Arabic has good options such as
“‫ ”المحظورات االجتماعية‬or “‫”الموضوعات غير الالئقة‬. Such a strategy has
a negative impact on our mother tongue as it helps to instil such
choices in the viewers' and readers' minds forsaking acceptable
Arabic equivalents. The following table offers other examples:
The Transliterated Suggested
The Original
Choice Translation
charisma ‫كاريزما‬ ‫قبول – سحر الشخصية‬
dollarization ‫الدولرة‬ ‫اكتناز الدوالر – ادخار‬
‫ تحويل العملة‬-‫الدوالر‬
‫الوطنية إلى الدوالر‬

‫‪McDonaldization‬‬ ‫المكدلة‬ ‫الهيمنة الثقافية األمريكية‬
‫‪seminar‬‬ ‫سمينار‬ ‫حلقة دراسية‬
‫‪talk show‬‬ ‫التوك شو‬ ‫برنامج حوارى‬
‫‪cloning‬‬ ‫الكلونة‬ ‫االستـنساخ – التنسيل‬
‫‪prestige‬‬ ‫البرستيج‬ ‫الهيبة االجتماعية – الهالة‬
‫االجتماعية‬
‫‪genome‬‬ ‫الجينوم‬ ‫الشريط الوراثى‬
‫‪scanner‬‬ ‫اإلسكانر‬ ‫الماسح الضوئى‬
‫‪tycoon‬‬ ‫تيكون‬ ‫ملك من ملوك المال ‪ -‬أحد‬
‫ملوك الصناعة ‪ -‬زعيم قوى‬
‫‪Human Rights‬‬ ‫هيومان رايتس ووتش‬ ‫منظمة حقوق اإلنسان‬
‫‪Watch‬‬ ‫األمريكية‬
Exercises
Look up the following words in the dictionary and mention

the languages from which English borrowed them:
alcohol
boss
croissant
lilac
piano
pretzel
robot
tycoon
yogurt
zebra
Summary of Part 2
• Arabic is a Semitic language while English is Indo-

European (Germanic). Therefore they share no cognates.
• Languages change and expand to express new changes.

Agreed-upon translation may change to accurately express
the new changes.
• Euphemism is an inoffensive or indirect expression that is

substituted for one that is considered offensive.
• The glut of information created a flood of new terms.
• Politicizing lexis refers to the seemingly innocent terms that

can carry political views.
• Translators overcome the problem of lexical barriers by

using paraphrase, coinage, cultural substitution, etc.
• Lexical ambiguity refers to a word or a phrase that can be

used (in different contexts) to express two or more different
meanings.
• Many words undergo semantic change: amelioration,

pejoration, etc.
• Problematic words are those words which represent

translation obstacles. Translators may resort to paraphrasing,
explaining, bracketing, use the original word itself, etc.
• Wordplay (pun) can prove hard to translate.

• In idioms “the meanings of the individual words cannot be

summed to produce the meaning of the idiomatic expression
as a whole”
• Neologism refers to the new words introduced into a

language to indicate a new state of affairs.
• There is a wealth of loan word that Arabic and English

borrowed from each other.
Part 3
Morphology & Syntax
Unit (7)
Morphology
Objectives:
• Define “morphology”, “morpheme” and “affixation”.
• Differentiate between derivation and inflection.
• Recognize the essential role of derivation and consonantal

roots in word formation in the Arabic pattern system )‫(الوزن‬.
• Point out the similarity / difference between Arabic and

English in derivation.
• Realize how both roots (consonants) and vowels (infixes)

combine to produce rich vocabulary.
• Understand the patterns of deriving passive participles in

both Arabic and English.
• Exemplify common suffixes in deriving nouns, verbs,

adjectives and adverbs.
• Explain and exemplify diminutives in both English and

Arabic.
• Describe the parts of speech which inflect in English and

identify the ways by means of which each of them inflects.
• Enumerate the types of noun inflection in Arabic.
• Understand the concept of grammatical gender.

• Show how English contrasts with Arabic in terms of gender,

and number.
• Show how the concept of definiteness differs in English and

Arabic.
• Identify the differences between Arabic and English in the

pronoun system.
• Provide examples of allocation in both Arabic and English.
• Identify similarities and differences between Arabic and

English in the use of demonstratives.
Elements:
• Word structure and the smallest meaningful units of words
(morphemes).
• Inflection and distribution of forms
• Derivation and deriving new words (parts of speech).
• Affixation in English.
• The pattern system in Arabic.
Keywords:
• Morphology, morpheme, derivation, inflection, affixation,
infixes.
Morphology
Morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies the

structure or forms of words. Words are made up of smaller
meaningful components called morphemes. The word “modern”
is composed of a single morpheme while a word such as
“children” is composed of two morphemes, child + ren. The first
part is the root meaning “boy or girl”; the second means plurality.
It is not possible to divide “modern” to smaller meaningful parts
as the division into mod + ern is only a phonetic division into
syllables; each of the two syllables has no meaning by itself, no
lexical meaning and no grammatical meaning.
The word “sheep” in the sentence, “The sheep are roaming

around the field”, is also made up of two morphemes (word root
and plurality) the second of which is not represented.
Morphology is divided into two types: inflectional

morphology and derivational morphology.
The example of children and sheep explains inflectional

morphology where words inflect to other forms of the same part
of speech. In this case we deal with only nouns. Another example
is “played” which is also composed of two morphemes: “play”
(doing enjoyable things” + “-ed” denoting the past tense. The two
forms are verbs. We say the verb to play is inflected to play,
plays, played—all verbs. The adjective great inflects to greater
and greatest. Inflection can also follow the gender of the word
giving actor/actress and host, hostess.
On the other hand, derivational morphology derives one part

of speech from another. For instance, “modernise”, the verb is
derived from “modern”, the adjective. Other examples are:
education is derived from educate (noun from verb); educational
from education (adjective from noun); and randomly from
random (adverb from adj.).
English uses affixes to change word meanings (derivation)

and word forms (inflection). Theses affixes are prefixes, suffixes,
and infixes. Prefixes are used at the beginning of words as in.
unhappy (un + happy), pre-Islamic, non-Arab, irregular,
misunderstand, and discourage. In addition, suffixes are added to
the end or words as in: kindness (kind + ness), advancement,
sandy, entrance, and clarify. Moreover, there are a few infixes
that are used in English, such as man → men, foot → feet, goose
→ geese.
Arabic, on the other hand, depends mainly on the pattern

system ‫الوزن‬. All words have roots of mostly three or four
consonants. The vowels are then added according to a certain
pattern which changes the meaning of the word derivationally or
changes its form inflectionally. Thus, the root k-t-b can be inflected
according to Arabic pattern system to kataba, katabat, katabo, etc.
ْ ‫ َك َت َب‬،‫ب محمد‬
(‫ إلخ‬،‫ األوالد َك َتبوا‬،‫ت فاطمة‬ َ ‫)الجذر كتب يصرف إلى َك َت‬.
Inflection and derivation applied to the root k-t-b gives more

than two hundred forms.
Derivationally, the pattern system derives one part of speech

from another in words like:
‫ضاحك؛‬ ‫ضحك‬ ‫سباحة؛‬ ‫سبح‬
.‫عولمة‬ ‫عالم‬ ‫مقتول؛‬ ‫قتل‬
Morphology plays a pivotal role in the study of language

because it studies word structure, and words are at the interface
between phonology, syntax and semantics. Word forms often
reflect their syntactic functions. As in the following example:
.‫ عرف أصدقاؤهم العاملين‬.‫رأى العاملون أصدقاءهم‬
accusative = ‫ ؛ العاملين‬nominative = ‫العاملون‬
accusative = ‫ ؛ أصدقاءهم‬nominative = ‫أصدقاؤهم‬
Morphemes may be free, meaning that they can stand alone as

words, e.g. fit and dear, or they may be bound, meaning that they
exist only as components of words, e.g. un- in “unfit” or –ly in
“dearly”. In Arabic, most words are morphologically complex,
that is, they consist of more than one morpheme.
Arabic Root and Pattern System
A root is a set of three or four consonants, which carry the

meaning of the word. The vowels in a word form patterns and,
depending on how they are intermixed with the consonants,
determine the part of speech of a word. The consonants and
vowels have different functions in a word, with the consonants

usually being the root and the vowels usually constituting infixes.
Together, their combinations yield a rich lexicon of the language.
Patterns may contain affixes (additional syllables added at the
beginning, in the middle or at the end of words). The root k-t-b is
used for example to give the word maktab (‫ )مكتب‬which is made
up of the lexical root morpheme k-t-b and the grammatical pattern
morpheme denoting place ma_ _ a _, { maktab }.
Words which share the same core meaning usually come in

varying patterns but are all reducible to one and the same three-
consonant base; e.g. kitaab (book), kitaaba (writing), maktaba
(library, bookstore, bookcase), kaatib (writer), maktuub (letter,
something written, fate).
To represent the consonantal root and the vowel affixes, we

use the symbols C and V to refer to consonants and vowels as in:
ْ ‫) ُكتِ َب‬
k u t i b a t (‫ت‬
CVCVCVC
However, sometimes consonantal affixes carry grammatical

as well as lexical meaning as when Arabic verbs change their
meaning by changing their syllabic structure. For instance, a verb
root like /k-t-b/ may take on a causative meaning by doubling the
middle consonant (CVCCVC kattab ‫“ َك َّتب‬to make someone
write”(.
Variations are numerous, some of which are: to express the

idea of request, /istaktab/; to express reciprocal meaning, a long
vowel is used /kaatab/ ‘to correspond with someone’ )‫ ;)المشاركة‬to
express affectedness inkatab (‫)المطاوعة‬.
Active Participle
To derive the “Active Participle” ‫ اسم الفاعل‬denoting agent in

English, we normally add “er/or” as in “teacher”, “painter”,
“organizer”, “leader”, “actor”; “-ant” as in “accountant”; or “-ist”
as in “scientist”, “biologist”, “therapist”. In Arabic, the most
common pattern used is CaaCiC (where C stands for a consonant
of the verb root), thus deriving:
‫ ضحك‬DHK> dahaka > daahik ‫ضاحك‬
‫ وصف‬WSF> wasafa > waasif ‫واصف‬
‫ نام‬NAM > naam > naa?im ‫نائم‬
‫ ضرب‬DRB > Darab > Daarib ‫ضارب‬
Other patterns are also used as “moCaCCiC” as in ‫مهندس‬

‫مدرس‬، ‫معلم‬. Active participles in Arabic usually indicate continuity
and function as either an adjective or a verb as in ‫ الولد نائم‬which
would translate as “The boy is asleep / sleeping”.
Passive Participle
Similarly, to derive the passive participle, i.e. ‫ اسم المفعول‬,

English adds “-ed” to regular verbs as in “alarmed”, “amazed”,
“surprised”, and “unprecedented”. To derive the passive participle
in Arabic, the two most common patterns are “monCaCiC” as in

/monza‫؟‬ig/ ‫ منـزعج‬, /mondahi∫/ ‫ مندهش‬, /mobtadi?/ ‫ ; مبتدئ‬and
“maCCuuC” as in “ma?kuul” ‫ مأكول‬, “ma∫ruub” ‫ مشروب‬,
“masbuuq” ‫ مسبوق‬.
English Derivational Suffixes
In contrast to the very regular Arabic derivation root-pattern

system, English employs a number of suffixes to derive nouns,
verbs, adjectives and adverbs. These combine in an arbitrary manner
to make new words. Among the suffixes that make nouns are:
-ation formation, combination, activation, organization
-ity activity, prosperity, formality, popularity
-ure composure, failure, pressure, departure
-hood childhood, womanhood, neighbourhood
-acy diplomacy, literacy, piracy
-ment requirement, management, environment
-age shrinkage, verbiage, package
-y discovery, inquiry, ministry
-ship hardship, friendship
-ance entrance, clearance, difference
-th truth, depth, length

Suffixes that make verbs include:
-ise materialise, civilise
-ify clarify, justify, simplify
Other suffixes make adjectives such as:
-ful successful, beautiful, grateful, skilful
-ed surprised, polished, reserved
-able comfortable, sensible, loveable
-ary ordinary, customary
-ous dangerous, prosperous
However, some such affixes are ambiguous as they can be

used to derive various parts of speech. For instance, “-ing” can be
used to derive nouns such as “diving” and “swimming”, and
adjectives such as “charming” and “amazing”. Similarly, “-ly” is
often used to derive adverbs such as “clearly”, “easily” and
“simply”, but is also sometimes used to derive adjectives like
“lovely”, “motherly” and “brotherly”. Also the suffix “-al” creates
nouns like “arrival” and “disposal” as well as adjectives such as
“formal” and “legal”.
Gender
In Arabic, there are two genders: masculine and feminine but

no neuter. All nouns, for instance, are inflected for either gender.
While the masculine form is usually unmarked, the feminine form
is marked calling for a suffix (-a, -at) or a different lexical item.

Nouns denoting animate and inanimate referents equally show
gender marking. Non-animate objects may be either masculine as
‫ مسرح‬،‫ فصل‬،‫ ميدان‬،‫ شارع‬،‫ باب‬،‫ شباك‬or feminine like ،‫ بيئة‬،‫ وزارة‬،‫جامعة‬
‫ مدرسة‬،‫ جمعية‬،‫ مسرحية‬.
However, when it comes to animal names, there are different

words for the male and female members of each species such as
‫ األتان‬/‫ الحمار‬،‫الفرس‬/‫ الحصان‬،‫اللبؤة‬/ ‫ األسد‬،‫البقرة‬/‫ الثور‬and humans such
as ‫بنت‬/‫ ولد‬،‫امرأة‬/‫ رجل‬،‫ابنة‬/‫ ابن‬،‫أم‬/‫أب‬.
As for English, there are three grammatical genders:

masculine and feminine for animate entities, and neuter for non-
animate entities. Nouns like “country, family, government, street,
city, door, window” are all neuter ones that can be referred to with
the pronoun “it”.
However, English has a small number of nouns with feminine

derivational suffixes, most of which are of foreign origin:
-e fiancé fiancée -etta Henry Henrietta
-euse masseur masseuse -enne comedian comedienne
-ina George Georgina -ine hero heroine
-ster spinner spinster -ix aviator aviatrix
-stress seamster seamstress; mister mistress
-ess patron patroness; poet poetess; minister ministress

In addition, English also has some word pairs with separate

forms for the masculine and the feminine: bull / cow; cock / hen;
uncle / aunt; gander / goose; father / mother; king / queen; man /
woman; but this is a matter of lexicography rather than morphology.
Diminutives
Both English and Arabic use inflection to indicate the
meaning of smallness. In Arabic, there are a number of diminutive
patterns such as "‫ " فعيل‬as in ‫ كتاب < كتيب‬، ‫ بحر < بحيرة‬،‫ باب< بويب‬and
"‫ " فعيعل‬as in ‫ هرة < هريرة‬،‫بطة > بطيطة‬. In English, there are six
diminutive suffixes indicating the meaning of smallness or
endearment or both. These are:
1. –ette cassette, dinette, towelette, kitchenette
2. –kin, -ikin lambkin, manikin
3. –ling duckling, darling (from dear)
4. –et, -let circlet, booklet, starlet, cabinet
The diminutive suffix “-ie” or “y” can also indicate
endearment as when attached to proper names, kinship terms and
some other words as in “Willy, Betty, Tommy, Johnny, kitty,
doggie, birdie, sweetie, auntie.”
Inflectional Morphology:
The Noun
Inflectional morphology adds affixes to change word form

without creating a new word. While Arabic is known for being a
highly inflectional language, English uses very few inflections.
Inflection in English
The inflectional system in English is much simpler than the

Arabic one. Nouns only inflect for the plural (e.g. boys) and the
possessive (boy’s), verbs for the third person singular present
tense (walks), the past tense (walked), the past participle
(walked), and the present participle (walking), and adjectives for
the comparative (easier) and the superlative (easiest). These
follow strict patterns although there are variations. English nouns
add “–s” or “–es” to form the plural as in “cats” and “boxes” but
there are exceptions like wife-wives, child-children, sheep-sheep,
phenomenon-phenomena, and so on. The possessive inflection is
straightforward as it adds “ ’s” to singular nouns (boy’s, cat’s)
and nouns not ending in “s” (children’s), but adds only an
apostrophe to plurals ending in s (countries’). As for adjectives,
their inflectional paradigm is even simpler. Short adjectives take
the suffixes “–er” for the comparative and “–est” for the
superlative (small – smaller – smallest) while longer ones are
preceded by “more” or “most”. Exceptions to this pattern are very
few and easy to learn. These are:
many – more – most; bad – worse – worst
good – better – best; far – farther – farthest
Inflection in Arabic
In contrast, Arabic is a highly inflectional language so that

word order is often insignificant. Thus we can front the object and
delay the subject as in the following verse: ‫إنما يخشى هللاَ من عباده‬
‫ العلما ُء‬whereas in English word order is more or less fixed and
determines sentence meaning.
Nouns and Adjectives
Both nouns and adjectives in Arabic receive a high number of

inflections. They inflect for case, gender, number and definiteness.
Case:
In English there are a number of cases: nominative, vocative,

accusative, dative and genitive, which contrasts with the three
major cases in Arabic that include all of the above and more.
1. Nominative e.g. Rain falls. ‫رفع الفاعل‬
2. Vocative: Are you coming, brother? ‫ النداء‬. In Arabic, this is

realized through the vocative particle ‫يا‬
3. Accusative e.g. The man killed a rat. ‫نصب المفعول‬
4. Dative (indirect object) e.g. I gave the boy a penny.
5. Genitive (possessive) e.g. the man’s house.
In Arabic, there are three major cases: ‫الرفع والنصب والجر‬. As

for ‫النصب‬, it includes objects, the exceptional, numbers, vocatives,
and adverbs ‫ ; المفعول والمستثنى والتمييز والنداء والحال‬while ‫ الرفع‬applies
to subject, predicate, subject (doer) and subject of passives ‫المبتدأ‬
‫ ; والخبر والفاعل ونائب الفاعل‬and ‫ الجر‬applies to genitive and
prepositional phrases ‫ اإلضافة والجر‬.
Gender
In Arabic, grammatical gender (i.e. masculine or feminine)

does not necessarily correspond to biological sex as it applies not
only to <+human> and <+animate> nouns, but also to <-human>
and <-animate> ones. For instance, table ‫منضدة‬, spoon ‫ملعقة‬, fork
‫شوكة‬, knife ‫سكين‬, car ‫سيارة‬, balcony ‫ بلكونة‬are all feminine, while
window ‫ شباك‬, salt ‫ ملح‬, dish ‫ طبق‬, chair ‫كرسي‬, and door ‫ باب‬are all
masculine. It also shows in adjectives which have to agree with
the modified noun in gender e.g. ‫ ولد عاقل‬/ ‫بنت عاقلة‬. In contrast,
English uses the “neuter” form for almost all nouns and adjectives
except those with a foreign ending e.g. blond/e and fiancé/e. (See
derivational suffixes earlier in this unit.)
Number:
English has only two number forms: singular (i.e. one) and
plural (i.e. more than one). On the other hand, Standard Arabic
has three number forms: singular, dual (i.e. two) and plural (i.e.
more than two). The dual in Standard Arabic is shown through the
inflections ‫ –ان‬and ‫( –ين‬as in ‫ حصانين‬/ ‫( حصان > حصانان‬. In
addition, the plural marking in English is –s for most nouns with a
few exceptions like wife-wives, goose-geese, man-men, foot-feet,
child-children, phenomenon-phenomena. On the other hand, in
Arabic there is a number of forms: sound plural masculine suffix,
both nominative ‫ فالحون‬and genitive ‫ فالحين‬, a regular feminine
suffix, ‫ فالحات‬and an irregular plural marking realized as an infix
and a suffix as in ‫ قلم > أقالم‬،‫شباك > شبابيك‬. Additionally, in Arabic

there is a “plural of plural” as in ‫ رجاالت‬،‫ أبابيل‬،‫ بيوتات‬emphasizing
the numerousness of the pluralized noun.
Definiteness
The attribution of definiteness to a noun is common to both

Arabic and English. However, the form and meaning of the
definite article differs in the two languages. In Arabic,
definiteness is usually shown through the definite inflection (‫)ال‬
while indefinite nouns are not inflected for indefiniteness. In
contrast, English has both a definite article, “the”, as well as an
indefinite article “a/an”. Moreover, in Arabic, definiteness can
mean generality as in ‫العلم نور‬. In English, however, general nouns
are usually indefinite as in “Knowledge is power” while definite
nouns are usually specific as in “the knowledge he acquired was
dangerous”. Abstract nouns take no definite article in English
while they do in Arabic. Contrast the English love, courage,
conscience with the Arabic ‫ الضمير‬،‫ الشجاعة‬،‫الحب‬.
Possessive / Allocation ‫اإلضافة‬
Allocation is shown in both Arabic and English both

morphologically and lexically. In English, there are two
possibilities: X of Y, or Y’s X, using the possessive. An example
of this is “the book of the student” or “the student’s book”. The
same two options apply to colloquial spoken Arabic as in ‫كتاب‬
‫ الطالب‬which does not include any affixes, and ‫ الكتاب بتاع الطالب‬,
which employs the particle ‫ بتاع‬which functions exactly like “of”

in English.
Pronouns
The English pronoun system consists of different pronouns

differing in case, number and person, and third person gender
(he/she) as can be seen below:
Subject Object Possessive Possessive
adj. adv.
1st per. sing I me my mine
2nd per. sing./pl. you you your yours
3rd per. sing. masc. he him his his
3rd per. sing. fem. she her her hers
3rd per. sing. neuter it it its its
1st per. pl. we us our ours
3rd per. pl. they them their theirs
Similarly, the Arabic pronoun system has different pronouns

for different cases, person, number and gender with some
differences. One difference is the absence of the neuter pronoun
“it” as Arabic nouns are either masculine or feminine. Another
difference is the use of dual pronouns in Standard Arabic: ‫هما‬.
Moreover, in Arabic there are free and bound forms. The free
forms, which usually come in subject position, are:
sing. m. sing. fem. plural
3rd person ‫هو‬ ‫هى‬ ‫هم‬
2nd person َ‫انت‬ ‫ت‬

ِ ‫ان‬ ‫انتم‬
1st person ‫أنا‬ ‫نحن‬
In addition to these free forms, there are bound forms. The

object NP is usually a suffix attached to the verb, and more or less
the same suffix attaches to a noun for allocation ‫اإلضافة‬, i.e. to
inflect for the possessive as in the following table.
sing. m. sing. fem. plural
3rd person ‫ـه‬ ‫ها‬ ‫ــهم‬
2nd person ‫ــك‬ ‫ــك‬ ‫ــكم‬
1st person ‫ ــى‬/ ‫ــنى‬ ‫ــنا‬
Demonstrative Pronouns
Demonstrative pronouns are common to both English and

Arabic although Arabic adds distinctions as to gender. In the two
languages there is reference to the near and the far: “here/ there”
‫هناك‬/‫هنا‬. As for demonstrative pronouns, English distinguishes
between singular, plural, near and far (this, these / that, those).
While Standard Arabic demonstratives vary along gender

(masculine – feminine ‫ هذه‬،‫ )هذا‬as well as number (singular – dual
– plural ‫ هؤالء‬،‫ هذان‬،‫ )هذا‬and distance (near – far ‫ ذلك‬،‫)هذا‬.
Summary
• Morphology studies morphemes, their different forms and

how they combine in word structure.
• Derivational morphology refers to the process of word

formation, creating new word classes (new parts of speech).
In inflectional morphology words inflect to other forms of
the same part of speech.
• In Arabic words follow regular fixed patterns, usually

changing the structure of the word and sometimes adding
prefixes, infixes and suffixes to verb roots.
• A root in Arabic is a set of consonants (3-4) carrying word

meaning whereas vowels form patterns. These patterns may
contain affixes (additional syllables added at the beginning,
the middle or at the end of words).
• Active participles or agents are derived following the pattern

CaaCiC
• English passive participles (e.g. alarmed, surprised) are

usually formed by adding -ed to a verb base.
• In English, suffixes like -hood, -ism , -ness, etc. are used for
deriving nouns , whereas other suffixes are used for verb,
adjective and adverb derivation .
• In Arabic, we have two genders (masculine and feminine).

All nouns are inflected for either gender: masculine and
feminine and neuter.
• In Arabic, there are a number of diminutive patterns (e.g.

‫)هريرة‬
• In English six diminutive suffixes indicate smallness or
endearment (e.g. -ette , -kin , -ling, , -et ).
• Arabic is a highly inflectional language & Nouns in Arabic

inflect for case, gender and number.
• Case refers to a grammatical category which shows the

function of the noun: nominative - accusative - genitive
• English uses the neuter for almost all nouns and adjectives
with a few exceptions. In contrast, Arabic grammatical
gender does not necessarily correspond to biological sex.
• Whereas English has only singular and plural, Arabic has

singular, dual and plural.
• In Arabic, definiteness is shown through the definite

inflection. Indefinite nouns are not inflected for
indefiniteness.
• English has both a definite article “the” and an indefinite

article “a / an”.
Exercises
1. Write an essay to compare and contrast the major aspects of the

morphologies of English and Arabic. The essay is a summary
of the unit in your own words where the most important points
are mentioned as examples not as an inclusive list of all the
pieces of information given. The essay should also include
your own commentary and personal experience in studying and
dealing with the morphologies of the two languages.
2. Define the following terms:
“morphology”, “morpheme”, “bound morpheme”
“free morpheme”, “inflection”, “derivation”, “affixation”.
3. What is the pattern system in Arabic morphology?
4. Produce active participles from the following verbs,

commenting on the different ways used by English Arabic
derivations:
work, learn, hack, mug

َّ , ‫قضى‬
‫ كتب‬،‫ رسم‬،‫ غنى‬،‫مثل‬
5. Inflect the following adjectives for the comparative and the

superlative: many, lofty, magnificent, bad, little ،‫ شديد‬،‫ بعيد‬،‫جميل‬.
6. Provide the feminine form of each of the following words

(naturally you will need a good dictionary):
tiger, lion, heir, Carol, Paul, emperor, executor, waiter,

launderer, proprietor, major, protégé, chanteur.
7. Give diminutives for each of the following:
Bob, statue, pack, pup, table, Ann, lord, drop, cigar, kitchen,
girl, John, Tom.
8. Form plurals of the following nouns or noun phrases:
this lad; that ox; a naïve peasant; datum; stimulus;

phenomenon; ‫;سياج‬ ‫امرأة‬.
9. Identify pronouns in the following sentences, determine their

number, gender, case and person, then translate them from
Arabic to English or vice versa, and comment on the
differences between the original and the translated versions of
these sentences:
a) I saw her name signed on the back cover of his book.
b) He gave them our number and they copied it onto their

clipboard.
c) We read the report he wrote about her.

ُ
d) .‫عرفت أنك كتبتَ رسالة وأرسلتها إلى شركتهم‬
e) .‫امنحوني ثقتكم‬
{
Note: Do not confuse pronouns with possessive adjectives. For
instance, “him” is a pronoun but “his” is a possessive adjective.
The confusion is greater in the case of “her” in sentences similar

to the following two sentences:
He saw her. (The word “her” stands alone as an O.
S V O Thus it is a pronoun standing for the N.)
He saw her sister. (…. “her” is an adj. describing sister.)
S V O
}
10. Comment on gender in Arabic and English.
11.Comment on grammatical number in Arabic and English.
12.Comment on the morphologies:
English: play, player; kill, killer
Arabic: ‫ العب‬،‫ قاتل ؛ يلعب‬،‫يقتل‬
13.Compare and contrast Arabic and English as regards the

following:
booklet = ‫كتيب‬ | duckling = ‫| بطيطة‬ kitten = ‫هريرة‬
14. A verb in English has five inflectional forms as for example

write, writes, wrote, written and writing. Verb “to say” has five
as well with one form repeated: say, says, said, said, and
saying. What about Arabic?
Unit (8)
Syntax
Objectives:
• Define syntax.
• Realise the benefit of having in-depth knowledge of the

sentence structure of the two languages.
• Recognise their need as translators to have such knowledge

and analysis.
• Analyse sentences to break them down to their component

constituents (NP VP, Subject Predicate, etc.).
• Know the basic English syntactic structure and the different

sentence types.
• Recognize the verbal sentence patterns and word-order in

Arabic.
• Know the verbless Arabic sentence and contrast it with

English sentences with linking verbs.
• Avoid mistakes of carrying over the rules of source

language syntax to the target text.
• Follow the rules of English syntax in English and the rules

of Arabic syntax in Arabic without any spill-overs.
• Recognize syntactic rules of S/V agreement, tenses,

negation, passive voice, etc., in English and Arabic.
Elements:
• Syntactic analysis and in-depth knowledge of text and
discourse.
• Basic syntactic structures of English.
• Basic syntactic structures of Arabic.
• Differences creating problems.
Keywords:
• syntax, word-order, SV(O/C), verbless, copula, linking verb,
NP VP, Subject Predicate, constituents, spill-overs.
Syntax
Syntax is the study of grammatical relations between words

and other units within the sentence. It deals primarily with how
words combine to form phrases and sentences.
In A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, David Crystal

defines syntax as “a traditional term for the study of the rules
governing the way words are combined to form sentences in a
language”.
We need knowledge of the syntax of both English and Arabic

in order to have in-depth descriptions of the structures of the two
languages. Our interest as translators and language learners lies in
many areas of similarities and differences, for instance in the
areas of the clause structure Subject Verb (SV) versus Verb
Subject (VS), Subject-Verb agreement, verbless sentences,
negation, questions, relatives, case (‫)الحالة اإلعرابية‬, tense, etc.
Therefore, some issues of the syntax of English will be dealt

with in a simple introductory form followed by review of similar
issues in Arabic Syntax and commentary on the points of
difficulty faced by students of translation.
Syntax determines the relevant component parts of a sentence

and describes these parts grammatically. The component parts of
a sentence are called constituents.
Doing a syntactic analysis of a sentence, we break down the

sentence into its constituents, and state the grammatical categories
of theses constituents.
These categories are the grammatical functions they do. This
means that syntactic analysis implies that we start from the largest
unit of syntactic description, i.e., the sentence, and proceed until
we arrive at the smallest meaningful unit.
Doing a simple syntactic analysis of the sentence “The little
boy has a nice toy”, we break it down to its components thus:
The little boy has a nice toy.
NP VP
That is a noun phrase (NP) (doing the function of a subject)
and a verb phrase (VP) (doing the function of the predicate).
The noun phrase is made up of a determiner and another NP
which in turn is made up of an adj. and a noun.
The verb phrase is made up of a verb and a NP similar in
structure to the first NP.
Thus the sentence (S) is broken down to its constituents in the
following symbolic manner:
S = NP + VP
NP = det. + NP
NP = adj. + N
VP = V + NP
etc.
On a tree diagram, the same analysis can be represented as in

the following:
NP VP
det. NP V NP
adj. N det. NP
adj. N
the little boy has a nice toy
The benefit the student gets from such knowledge is the

ability to analyse an English sentence for better understanding of
its meaning, especially when the sentence becomes longer or of a
complex structure. In the process of translation the first step
involves comprehension of the source text for later rendering in
the target language. This comprehension step depends on a
number of factors, one of which is sentence analysis.
This ability to analyse sentences is what the mind

unconsciously does when the experienced reader read text.
Without such ability comprehension will not be achieved. Thus

the leaners of English as a foreign language who think that
learning word lists by heart will help them comprehend written or
spoken English fail miserably when they face real life English.
Facing a fairly long complex sentence, the word-list learners

try to translate one word at a time while going along. When such
learners reach the end of the sentence, they have already forgotten
the meanings they imposed on the words at the beginning of the
sentence. The result is confusion and comprehension is sacrificed.
If syntax is ignored, a sentence like the following will be a

heap of unrelated words:
Accused of making notes secretly in the courtroom, the

journalist from the Daily Express submitted the material to the
presiding judge.
Word translation is not an option for comprehension. Syntax

analysis is.
The first word “accused” looks like a verb, but it is not for
two reasons. The English basic structure is SV(O/C), which is a
subject followed by a verb and the possibility of an object or a
complement while “accused” has no preceding subject. The
English sentence does not start with a main verb. Looking for
the basic components as in many simple sentences in English, the
reader will see some words standing out in the given sentence.
Accused of making notes secretly in the courtroom, the

journalist from the Daily Express submitted the
material to the presiding judge.
Thus, the meaning of the sentence depends on these basic
components:
Journalist submitted material.

S V O
The subject is of course extended with modifying elements

before and after it. The determiner “the” precedes it, and the
adverbial “from the Daily Express” follows it. There is also the
participial “accused” with its further details “of making notes”
preceding the subject and modifying it.
More specifically, the basic components of a simple sentence

may look like one of the following structures:
1. SV Birds fly.
2. SVO James kicked the ball.
3. SVA The baby is in bed. They arrived on Monday.
4. SVC The policeman is nice. John is a teacher.
5. SVOC We have proved him wrong. We have proved him a fool.
6. SVOA He laid the baby onto the bed.
7. SVOO She gave her child a book.

[S = Subject; V = Verb; O = Object; A = Adverbial; C =

Complement]; V or VO or VA or VC = Verb Phrase or
Predicate.]
The four sentence types are:
Simple: the sentence contains a single, independent clause.
The big whale died. [SV]
Compound: It contains two independent clauses that are joined

by a coordinating conjunction (such as: but, or, and, nor, so).
They saw the bird, but it disappeared again. [SVO, but SVA]
Complex: It contains an independent clause and one or more

dependent clauses. (A dependent clause starts with a
subordinating conjunction, such as: although, that, because,
while, where, if.)
He studies mathematics because it is the language of science.

[SVO because SVC]
Compound-complex: It contains three or more clauses (of

which at least two are independent and one is dependent).
When we meet, I will explain everything, but you shouldn’t

interfere. [When SV, SVO, but SV]
The basic structure can have some accessories such an

adverbial phrase at the begging or at the end, or a frequency
adverb before the main verb together with other small variations.
At that time, they presented their application. Adv., SVO.
Realising his mistake, Tome apologised. Participial ….., SV.
These and many others are variations of the basic structure

SV(O/C) which can be used two or more times with linkers to
create a complex, compound and complex-compound structures.
The structural analysis which the expert reader does

unconsciously is possible when the reader reads a great deal while
at the beginning at least trying to process the information in this
manner. Therefore, syntactic analysis is essential, among other
factors, for the comprehension of text and spoken discourse.
Sentence Structures of Arabic:
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is generally a verb-initial

language. Ignoring stylistic variations, we can say that the basic
word order of Arabic is VSO as in:
.‫أيد المزارعون القرار‬
.‫ مفعول به‬+ ‫ فاعل‬+ ‫فعل‬
In contrast, English adopts the basic structure SVO as in the

following translation of the Arabic sentence:
The farmers supported the decree.

S V O
Verbless sentences:
Another Arabic structure of interest to the translator is the so-

called Arabic verbless sentence. This is what is known in Arabic
traditional grammar as ‫الجملة اإلسمية‬. In such a structure there is no

verbal copula in sentences with present tense interpretation, as in
the following sentences:
ُ
.‫ الطفل في حجرة النوم‬.‫ العاملون معتصمون‬.‫ الفتاتان جميلتان‬.ٌ‫البيت كبير‬
The English counterpart structure uses a linking verb (the

copula) without which the sentence, in absence of any other verb,
is ungrammatical. English will render the previous sentences thus:
The house is big. The two girls are lovely. The workers are on
a sit-in strike. The child is in the bedroom.
There are other linking verbs in English such as become,

grow, turn, seem, appear, etc.
Problems in translation arise when the structure of one

language is carried over to the other. Of course we do not expect
any translator to write an English sentence without a verb or an
Arabic sentence with verb to be inserted where it does not belong.
However, even proficient translators make the mistake of using
the structure of the SL (source language) in the TL (target
language). Consider the following quite common faulty Arabic
structures used a great deal by translators.
.‫ * هناك قلم في يدي‬.‫ * هناك عصفور على الصخرة‬.‫* هناك كتاب على الطاولة‬
This foreign structure is not a part of Arabic syntax; it is a

good example of how the syntax of one language spills over into
the syntax of another. The three examples given are simply literal
translations not only of the content of the SL text but also of its
syntax. The English structure carried across to Arabic is: There is
a book on the table, where both “there” and “is” are dummy
fillers. They are simply grammatical words that do the function of
filling in the slots of S and V (subject and verb).
The Arabic structure that is used in such a case without the

influence of a foreign tongue is this verbless sentence with
fronting of the adverbial phrase thus:
.‫ في يدي قلم‬.ٌ‫ على الصخرة عصفور‬.‫على الطاولة قل ٌم‬
Another example of a relevant spill-over is when a translator

insists on inserting a translation of verb to be in Arabic where it
does not belong in the present tense as in the following examples:
What’s literature? What’s justice?
The common translations automatically given by translators

for whom both English and MSA are foreign languages are:
‫* ما هو األدب؟ * ما هي العدالة؟‬
The Arabic structure is simply: ‫ما األدب؟ ما العدالة؟‬
The influence of the English syntax on Arabic appears

clearly in the unnecessary attempt to insert a word to substitute
for the absence of verb to be in such Arabic structures.
Contrastive linguistics finds such differences in the structures

of the two languages so that the translator would be aware of the
problems of spill-overs.
Subject/Verb agreement
While both English and Arabic follow rules of subject-verb

agreement, some problems arise from the complexity of such a
rule in Arabic, and even from the simplicity of English inflection.
Since Arabic inflection is much more complex than that of

English, sometimes the simple English forms lead to errors. For
example, the Arabic present-tense verb ‫( يكتب‬write) has a complex
inflectional distribution thus:
1st per. sing. m. & f. ُ‫أكتب‬
1st per. pl. m. & f. ‫نكتب‬
2nd per. sing. m. ‫تكتب‬
2nd per. sing. f. ‫تكتبين‬
2nd per. pl. m. ‫تكتبون‬
2nd per. pl. f. ‫تكتبن‬
2nd per. dual. m. & f. ‫تكتبان‬
3rd per. sing. m. ‫يكتب‬
3rd per. sing. f. ‫تكتب‬
3rd per. dual. m. ‫يكتبان‬
3rd per. dual. f. ‫تكتبان‬
3rd per. pl. m. ‫يكتبون‬
3rd per. pl. f. ‫يكتبن‬
These thirteen different forms have only two counterparts

forms in English: write and writes.
Although this is a point of morphology, it is also involved in

syntax as it affects subject/verb agreement.
.‫ إلخ‬،‫ أما الفتيات فيكتبن‬.‫ كان األوالد يكتبون‬.‫ظلت الفتاة تكتب‬
The English counterpart agreement will only have two forms:
“The boys write. You write. They write. I write. He writes.”
Arabic-speaking learners of English get used to the simplicity

of English and sometimes use only one form, “write”. They
oversimplify.
In contrast, an English-speaking learner of Arabic will find

the rule of subject/verb agreement too complicated in Arabic
since it is not only the aforementioned thirteen forms that have to
be used, but there are still others for the past tense.
The diglossic problem makes this problem affect even

Arabic-speaking students who do not use MSA with proficiency.
Students taking this course have to exert the proper efforts
required to raise their linguistic proficiency in the two languages:
Standard English and Modern Standard Arabic.
Tense and negation
Tense and aspect differ a great deal in English and Arabic.

Some points of interest can benefit the students of translation at
least by making them aware of some differences since beginners
usually take tense for granted barely aware even of its existence in
either language.
Automatic dictionary translation reveals this insensitivity to

the subtle differences and sometimes not even very subtle
differences. Translating a simple sentence such as ‫أصبح الكومبيوتر‬
‫ مهما في حياتنا اآلن‬into English usually gives the incorrect: “*The
computer became important in our lives now.” The mistake arises
from the belief that the past tense Arabic verb ‫ أصبح‬equals the past
tense English verb “became”. In English the present perfect aspect
is expected in this sentence: The computer has become important
in our lives. That is why translation scholars always say never
translate the syntactic structure of the source language; transfer
instead the ideas of the source text in the syntactic structure of the
target language.
The reader of an English text creates a mental image of the

meaning of a text that is constructed by a number of factors, one of
which is tense. Of course the same thing happens in the context of
reading Arabic, but the manner of expressing time through tense
differs. The tenses of English (including aspect) are expressed in
numerous forms as compared to only a few in Arabic.
Traditional Arabic grammar mentions only two tenses in

Arabic, past and present. Those who were taught Arabic grammar
the traditional way have this belief entrenched in their minds.
This creates a problem in translating from English. Most

newspapers hire translators who have this kind of limited abilities,
so they resort to mechanical translation.
Consider the following sentence:
The co-pilot who flew 149 people to their deaths had long-
planned a spectacular and unforgettable event, an ex-girlfriend
claimed last night, after it emerged he was able to conceal a
medical condition that should have stopped him flying.
The Times of London, 28 March 2015.
The sentence main verb is in the past perfect for a reason. The
translators who think that Arabic has only past and present tenses
cannot see this reason.
The co-pilot set the airplane in steep descent, causing it to
crash, killing in the process 149 people. This is the piece of sad
news people read in the days before this issue of The Times and
also in the first subordinate clause of the given sentence.
What is the news then that the sentence is conveying to the
reader? It is that long before this tragic event the co-pilot planned
to bring about an event that will shock people while he imagined
it to be spectacular and unforgettable. Using the past perfect “had
planned” is not the same as past tense “planned”. If “had planned”
is translated ‫ خطط‬and “planned” is also translated ‫خطط‬, the
meaning of an event happening in the past before another is lost.
Translators who are sensitive to subtle differences which are
expressed through syntax not the dictionary list and traditional
grammar, express the idea in some manner that will make the
difference stand out. They rephrase, or they create the Arabic
target text as an original text. If there has to be a structure similar
to the English past perfect tense in Arabic, it is the one expressed

as ‫ أو كان فعل‬،‫كان قد فعل‬.
If traditional grammarians say Arabic has only two tenses,
this only means that there are to forms of the verb denoting tense.
However, tense and aspect can be seen in different ways. Some
linguists today differ with the old views. Tammam Hassan has a
whole inventory of tenses and aspects which might be
controversial, but they at least show things do not have to be the
way they were in the past. In his book, Arabic: Semantics and
Syntax "‫ معناها ومبناها‬:‫"اللغة العربية‬, Professor Hassan gives a
paradigm of different aspects and three tenses. The following is
the part concerning the past tense:
‫النفي‬ ‫اإلثبات‬ ‫الجهة‬ ‫الزمن‬
‫لم يكن فعل‬ ‫كان فعل‬ ‫البعيد المنقطع‬ ‫الماضي‬
‫لم يكن قد فعل‬ ‫كان قد فعل‬ ‫القريب المنقطع‬
‫لم يكن يفعل‬ ‫كان يفعل‬ ‫المتجدد‬
‫ما فعل‬ ‫قد فعل‬ ‫المنتهى بالحاضر‬
‫لما يفعل‬ ‫مازال يفعل‬ ‫المتصل بالحاضر‬
‫لم يفعل‬ ‫ظل يفعل‬ ‫المستمر‬
‫لم يفعل‬ ‫فعل‬ ‫البسيط‬
‫لم يكد يفعل‬ ‫كاد يفعل‬ ‫المقاربي‬
‫ليس يفعل‬ ‫طفق يفعل‬ ‫الشروعي‬

Moreover, negative particles in Arabic carry tense as in the

following:
Past I did not do. ‫لم أفعل‬
Present I do not do. ‫ال أفعل‬
Future I will not do. ‫لن أفعل‬
The Passive Voice:
The syntax of Arabic is not radically different from that of

English. Both English and Arabic use the passive voice, but each
has its specific properties. While English allows the use of the
original subject in a by-phrase as an optional construction, Arabic
does not. Thus, the following two constructions are allowed in
English:
Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 by John Booth.
Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.
In Arabic, however, only the second is allowed syntactically.

To express the content of the first sentence it is transformed back
to its original active voice sentence. In Arabic, we can have the
following two sentences of which only the first one is in the
passive voice:
.1865 ‫ا ُ ْغتِي َل لِنكن في عام‬

[active voice] .1865 ‫اغتال جون بوث لِنكن في عام‬
The problems with translators who translate the grammar of

the source language ignoring the specific syntactic properties of
the target language is that they try to copy the grammatical
structures of the source language at any cost, even doing violence
to the target language as in the following faulty constructions:
.‫ بواسطة جون بوث‬1865 ‫* ا ُ ْغتِي َل لِنكن في عام‬

...... ..... ‫ بمعرفة‬........ ....... ...... ...... *
...... ..... ‫ من قِ َبل‬........ ....... ...... ...... *
.‫ بواسطة جون بوث‬1865 ‫* تم اغتيال لِنكن في عام‬
None of these is considered correct in Arabic, and each of
them is as ugly as the next one.
The by-phrase cannot be used in Arabic where if the agent

(the doer) is to be mentioned the speaker/writer has to use the
active voice. Of course there are some stylistic variations, but they
still follow the syntactic rules of Arabic.
Summary
• Syntax is “the study of the rules governing the way words

are combined to form sentences in a language”:
• In-depth knowledge of the sentence structure of the two

languages benefits translators as it gives them the ability to
comprehend and analyse the text or discourse of the SL.
• Analysing sentence structure breaks sentences down to their

constituents (NP VP, Subject Predicate, etc.).
• The basic English syntactic structure is SV(O/C) with

different variations and accessories.
• This structure is repeated with connectors to create

compound, complex and compound-complex structures.
• Arabic has a different word-order: VS(O/C), but it also has a

verbless sentence structure.
• A common error of translators is carrying over the rules of

the syntax of the source language to the target text.
• Being aware of this fact and studying the syntax of the two
languages comparatively and contrastively will overcome
the problem of spill-overs.
• The syntactic rules of the two languages differ in certain

areas of S/V agreement, tenses, negation, passive voice,
among many others.
Exercises
1. Write an essay to compare and contrast the major aspects of the

syntax in English and Arabic. The essay is a summary of the
unit in your own words where the most important points are
mentioned as examples not as an inclusive list of all the pieces
of information given. The essay should also include your own
commentary and personal experience in studying and dealing
with the syntax of the two languages.
2. Define the following terms: syntax, NP, VP, S.
3. Why do translators/interpreters need knowledge of syntax? Do

they translate the syntax of the source language into the target
language?
4. Arabic is usually described as having free word order while

English has a fixed word order. Explain with examples.
5. What is a verbless sentence? What problems does this create to

the translator?
6. What is the grammatical copula? What is a dummy filler in this

context? Does this affect the translator from English into
Arabic and vice versa?
7. Comment on the syntactic structures:
a) Arabic: ‫اإلنسان فان‬.
b) English: Man is mortal.

Part 4
Figurative Language
Part 4
Figurative Language
Objectives:
By the end of this part, the students should be able to:
• Realise the relationship between culture, language and

thought.
• Know that language determines the ideological framework

of its users.
• Learn how to overcome the problem of cultural and

linguistic differences.
• Provide some examples of how translators can avoid

looking culturally odd to the TL readers.
• Explain the difference between literal and figurative

language.
• Discover figurative barriers.
• Discuss culture-specific images as a translation problem.
• In translation, convey a whole situation not simply be

confined to semantic meaning.
• Learn that translation involves transferring one culture (or

frame of thought) to another.
• Find functional equivalents and cultural substitutes to

convey the whole message of the SL.
• Learn about universalism versus cultural relativism.
• Be familiar with the concept of domestication versus that of

foreignization.
• Learn about culture-specific idioms used figuratively.
Elements:
• Relation between culture (frame of thought) and language.
• Literal and figurative language.
• Culture-specific images.
• Functional equivalents and cultural substitutes.
Keywords:
• culture, figurative, literal, relativism, universalism,
domestication, foreignization.
Unit (9)
Figurative Language across Cultures
Introduction:
This chapter handles the interrelationship between culture,

language and thought pointing out how language reflects and
expresses the culture in which it is ‘born’ and used, and how
language determines the ideological framework of its users. The
problem of cultural and linguistic differences will also be handled
clarifying how translators try to overcome these differences
hoping to offer translations that do not sound culturally weird or
odd to the target reader.
The Interrelationship between Culture, Language and Thought:
The language of a people asserts and reflects the way they

see the universe; a common sentence usually used in socio-
linguistic studies to indicate how language is the carrier or
communicator of the ideology, beliefs, value system, etc. of a
certain community. This means that people express their ideas,
beliefs, dreams, etc. through language. This language changes and
develops to keep pace with the changes in people’s life and ideas,
scientific progress and technological advancement.
Language change, as Jean Aitchison in his Language Change:

Progress or Decay (published by Cambridge University Press in
1993) points out, has been attributed to “a variety of factors ranging
over almost every aspect of human life, physical, social, mental and
environmental” (105). For example, Shakespeare’s English is
different from contemporary English which is full of scientific terms
reflecting the technological aspects of modern man’s life. This implies
the fact that any human language is capable of change, development
and even sophistication because it must be in a state of constant
change to match man’s mental processes and how they develop and
sophisticate. Aitchison makes this point clear:
Language, then, like everything else, gradually
transforms itself over the centuries. There is nothing
surprising in this. In a world where humans grow old,
tadpoles change into frogs, and milk turns into cheese, it
would be strange if language alone remained unaltered.
As the famous Swiss linguist Feredinand de Saussure
noted: “time changes all things: there is no reason why
language should escape this universal law”. (4)
There is no doubt that there is a kind of interrelationship

between language, thought and culture. But before going deep
into this idea, it is important to differentiate between two
definitions of culture: culture may mean “refinement of mind,
tastes, and manners; artistic and intellectual development; the
artistic and intellectual side of civilization” (The New Shorter
Oxford, Vol. I: 568). This definition implies man’s interest in
reading, music, fine arts, etc. The second definition refers to
“the distinctive customs, achievements, products, outlook, etc.,
of a society or group; the way of life of a society or group”
(The New Shorter Oxford, Vol. I: 568). That is why, contrastive

linguistics is concerned with the second concept of culture that
implies the fact that language is born, grows, develops and finally
reflects that culture.
The notion about the interrelationship between language and

culture was first proposed by Edward Sapir (1884-1939) and
Benjamin Whorf (1897-1941) in 1930s, now known as the Sapir-
Whorf Hypothesis. They worked extensively on the American
Indian languages and concluded that these languages led
American Indians to see the world differently from the Europeans
who spoke European languages, that is, “people who speak
different languages perceive the world differently. That is, people
are prisoners of their language” (Elaine Chaika, Language: The
Social Mirror. Heinle & Heinle Publishers, 1994: 51).
This indicates that a member of a given society codifies

reality through his/her own specific language and patterns of
behaviour characteristic of his/her own culture and society. S/he
perceives and comprehends reality as it is presented to him/her in
his/her own language and since languages and people’s
behaviours partially and entirely differ, people have different
conceptions of the same reality. For example, an Arab who lives
in the vast desert of the Arabian Peninsula is expected to view
the world around him/her differently from the English man who
lives in Europe or the Eskimo who lives in the cold north.
This simply means that language not only reflects the

differences between cultures, but also the ideological framework
that distinguishes one society or group from the other. This
stresses that part of man’s cultural and intellectual identity is
revealed through the language s/he uses. The famous, classical
example usually cited by linguists is ‘snow’: the English man can
identify a single white entity as snow whereas an Eskimo can
distinguish between different types of snow because his language
has words that enable him to categorize or classify what he sees
differently from the English speaker.
The differences between human languages are clearly

reflected in translation: there may be a word in Arabic, for
example, which has no equivalent in other languages e.g. ، ‫ُخلع‬
‫ زكاة‬، ‫ عمرة‬, … etc. This highlights that part of the difficulty of
translation is attributed to the fact that “no two languages cut up
the semantic universe in the same way” (Chaika: 52). For
example, in Arabic, there are two different, distinctive words for
an old man and old woman, that is, "‫ "شيخ‬and "‫ "عجوز‬and this does
not exist in English which modifies ‘man’ and ‘woman’ using
‘old’ to indicate the same fact. Similarly, "‫ "يأكل‬in Arabic and ‘eat’
in English apply to both man and animal, but in German, people
‘essen’ and animals ‘fressen’. R. A. Hudson in his
Sociolinguistics (published by Cambridge University Press in
1996) indicates the same fact:
There are items in some languages which certainly

express meanings not expressed in others. This can be
seen in the difficulties of translating between languages
that are associated with different cultures … For
example, the English words brown, monkey, chair, jug,
and carpet are all more or less untranslatable into French,
in the sense that no single French word expresses
precisely the same concept as the corresponding English
word. (81-82)
The differences between languages, ideologies and cultures

made scholars, theorists and translators differ in their ideas about
the possibility of translating from one language into another. One
group believes that “all languages are mutually translatable. What
can be said in one language can be said in any other –somehow”
(Chaika: 350). This means that any sentence in any language can
have an equivalent sentence in any other language; they may not
be equal on the syntactic or lexical levels, but are equal on the
level of meaning.
Although this view of the intertranslatability between

languages is highly supported by many scholars, theorists and
translators, many others believe that this view can easily be
refuted because any language mirrors the culture in which it is
born and since cultures and environments are different, each
language has its own peculiarities reflecting these differences. In
other words, one meaning in one language may not have an
equivalent meaning in another because “the vocabulary of each
language develops partly according to the priorities of its culture”

(Chaika: 350). For example, linguists and anthropologists
discovered that the Eskimos have from eight to twelve distinct
words for snow distinguishing its colour, structure, shape … etc,
but in the heart of Africa where there is no snow, such lexical
items (with their connotations or implications) will be totally
irrelevant (see Chaika: 350).
Another good example is the sounds made by camels: the

Bedouin Arab, who lives in the desert with only the camel as a
society, can distinguish between seventeen different sounds
produced by a camel, a European who hardly knows the camel
will find such lexical items describing a camel’s sound
sophisticated, far-fetched or at least culture-bound. Eth-thacaliby
in his ‫ فقه اللغة‬mentions this fact:
‫ أرزمت (وذلك‬:‫إذا أخرجت الناقة صوتا ً من حلقها ولم تفتح به فاها قيل‬
‫على ولدها حتى ترأمه) * والحنين أشد من الرزمة * فإذا قطعت صوتها ولم‬
‫تمده قيل بغمت وتزغمت * فإذا ضجت قيل رغت * فإذا طربت فى إثر ولدها‬
‫ سجرت * فإذا مدت الحنين على جه ٍة واحد ٍة‬:‫ حنت * فإذا مدت حنينها قيل‬:‫قيل‬
:‫ كش * فإذا زاد عليه قيل‬:‫ سجعت * فإذا بلغ الذكر من اإلبل الهدير قيل‬:‫قيل‬
:‫ كت وقبقب * فإذا أفصح بالهدير قيل‬:‫كشكش وقشقش * فإذا ارتفع قليالً قيل‬
* ‫ زغد‬:‫ قرقر * فإذا جعل يهدر كأنه يقصره قيل‬:‫هدر * فإذا صفا صوته قيل‬
)227( .‫ قلخ‬:‫فإذا جعل كأنه يقلعه قيل‬
Another important fact that should be mentioned in this
respect is that some scholars believe that there is no one-to-one
correspondence between languages on the lexical level. A lexical

item in one language may have no equivalent (i.e. one-word
equivalent) in another language and to translate it, the translator
might paraphrase, delete or transliterate it. For example, no
English word can be a good translation of "‫"زكاة‬. The translators
of the Qur'an translated this word differently as “regular charity”
by Yusuf Ali, “stated alms” by Rodwell, “the alms levy” by
Dawood, and “the alms” by Arberry.
Literal versus Figurative Language:
The use of language has been divided into two types: literal
and figurative. Literal use of language means using the actual,
denotative meaning of words, that is, literal use refers to solid facts
and statements, e.g. the language of science and law. Metaphorical
or figurative use of language refers to the “flowery” use of words
to convey meanings and symbolic values beyond the literal
meaning of words. Writers and authors usually use figurative
language to have more insight into a character or situation. For
example, a metaphor like “time is money” is expected to instil the
idea of the preciousness and importance of time in its reader’s head
than the literal sentence “time is important”.
Figures of speech are so deeply rooted in daily usage that users

of language are hardly aware of their metaphorical origin or nature
e.g. ‘running water’, ‘vicious circle’, ‘leg of the table’, ‘heart of
the matter’, ‘flow of electricity’, etc. The same fact applies to
Arabic like: ‫ وجه الوقت من ذهب‬، ‫ كبد الحقيقة‬،‫ قلب الموضوع‬، ‫عين الحق ال تنام‬
‫الماء‬, etc. People use figures of speech in daily communications
because they may be more effective than literal expressions
without being aware of this fact. People become aware of the
metaphorical nature of figurative expressions when the violation of
selection restriction is obvious. To put it more clearly, figures of
speech combine elements used figuratively (although in normal
situations, such elements are not likely to occur in the same context
or structure) to signify something beyond the literal meanings of
words. Verse No 4 in sura Mariam, “Mary”, exemplifies a clear
case of the violation of selection restriction:
"ً ‫"واشتعل الرأس شيبا‬
I- Arberry: “My head is all aflame with hoariness.”
II- Dawood: “My head glows silver with age.”
III- Ghali: “My head is all aflame with hoary hair.”
IV- Yusuf Ali: “The hair of my head doth glisten with grey.”
What is striking is that the word "‫ "اشتعل‬is used once in the
Qur’an, in this verse. In normal usage, “‫ "اشتعل‬does not occur with
"‫"شيب‬, but in this verse both are used constituting a metaphor to
indicate the old age of Zakaria, one of God’s prophets. The two
words interact to reveal his old age and his need to have a son.
Arberry and Ghali prefer to communicate the metaphor

literally to keep the novelty and newness it creates. Their choices
“aflame with hoariness”, and “aflame with hoary hair” keep the
metaphorical elements ‫( اشتعل‬aflame) and ‫( الشيب‬hoariness, and
hoary hair). Dawood is different as he chooses a target-language
metaphor “silver with age” to keep the metaphorical nature of the
verse without appearing odd to the target reader. The New Shorter
Oxford defines silver as “to make (esp. hair) silver in colour …
e.g. Disraeli thought, not time, had partially silvered his raven
hair” (Vol. II: 2865). Yusuf Ali is different; he neither translates
the image literally, nor finds a cultural equivalent. He prefers to
replace ‫ اشتعل‬with “glisten” (literally to glitter) to keep the
metaphorical nature of the verse, although it lacks accuracy and
rhetorical effectiveness. Salah Abdet-Tawab in his ‫الصورة األدبية فى‬
‫( القرآن الكريم‬published by Longman in 1995) comments on this
metaphorical structure:
، ‫ وحقيقته كثرة شيب الرأس‬، ‫ وهو فى هذا الموضع أبلغ‬، ‫فأصل االشتعال للنار‬
، ‫ صارت فى االنتشار واإلسراع كاشتعال النار‬، ً ‫إال أن الكثرة لما كانت تتزايد سريعا‬
‫ وذلك أنه انتشر فى الرأس انتشاراً ال يتالفى كاشتعال‬، ‫وله موقع فى البالغة عجيب‬
،‫ يتمثل فى الحركة الممنوحة لما من شأنه السكون‬، ‫ وهذا لون من التخييل بديع‬. ‫النار‬
، ‫ ُتخ َّي ُل للشيب فى الرأس حركة كحركة اشتعال النار فى الهشيم‬،‫فحركة االشتعال هنا‬
‫ وهى‬، ‫ فيها حياة وفيها جمال … فترك الحقيقة‬، ً ‫وهى حركة معبرة ومصورة معا‬
‫ وأكثر دخوالً فى‬، ‫ لما علم أن المجاز أحسن من الحقيقة‬، ‫ أو شاب رأسى‬، ‫قول أشيب‬
‫ ومن ثم أسند االشتعال إلى الرأس ؛ إلفادة شمول االشتعال بجميع‬، ‫البالغة منها‬
)64-63( .‫ فإنه ال يؤدى المعنى بحال‬-‫ بخالف ما لو قال اشتعل شيب رأسى‬،‫الرأس‬
The Nature of Metaphor:
A metaphor is usually used either to convey meanings and

connotations beyond the literal meanings of words, or because the
literal meaning alone cannot convey what the speaker wants to
express. It is an integral part of human language: man’s language
contains metaphorical expressions beside the solid facts of daily life.
It is metaphor that adds beauty and sublimity to human language and
creates new rhetorical horizons for the human mind. Even the
language of science, supposedly ‘precise’ and ‘dry’, contains
metaphorical structures, e.g. "gold is the master of all metals".
Theorists differed amongst themselves about how metaphor is

structured and how it functions in a given situation to communicate
the intended meaning. Some of them studied metaphor from a
psychological point of view trying to pinpoint the interrelationship
between metaphor and man’s cognitive processes. Others tried to
relate metaphor to the culture in which it is “born” pointing out that
a full understanding of the content of metaphor can never be
separated from its cultural and social habitat.
Semanticians looked at metaphors as a kind of semantic

anomaly as metaphor usually relates two unrelated subjects in a
new and unique manner. For example, in “Tom is a lion”, the
metaphor here not only tells that Tom is brave, but it creates
a picture or an image of Tom that remains at the back of the
reader’s mind (based on the anomaly that combines ‘Tom’ and
‘lion’). The Qur’anic metaphor "‫"والصبح إذا تنفس‬, which compares

"‫ "الصبح‬to a human being, creates a beautiful image of freshness,
newness and vitality.
The Life and Death of Metaphor:
It can be said that there are three major stages: The first stage
implies that the metaphor creates a new meaning or connotation
out of already existing words or phrases that follow the
conventions of language and the new created meaning breaks
these conventions. The second stage involves the reader or
listener’s response to the metaphor created. At this stage, the
metaphor is alive, appealing and attractive. The third stage can be
described as the stage that witnesses the death of the metaphor. At
this stage, the metaphor starts or rather stops to have any
metaphorical effect or connotation. The metaphor simply becomes
an integral part of common usage that the original metaphorical
meaning has been lost to most of us, e.g. ‫عين العقل‬.
Figurative Barriers:
Figurative language is used in literary works to portray

characters and convey themes. For example Shakespeare ‘builds’
a network of imagery in Hamlet to reflect Hamlet’s dilemma and
the corrupt world he has to face. The play abounds with different
kinds of imagery including bird imagery, sea imagery, animal
imagery, etc. that help to reveal themes and portray characters.
As far as translation is concerned, it can be said that images in

Hamlet can be classified under three categories: universal,
problematic and culture-specific. The universal images are those
ones that can be easily understood by the readers and audience
regardless of their cultural or linguistic backgrounds. Such images
create the same connotations and almost elicit the same response
from the reader or the audience. They represent no barrier to the
translator who can easily render them faithfully.
A good example of such imagery is the one used by the Ghost

when talking to Hamlet about virtues and vices i.e. personification
(Act I, Scene V). Both English and Arabic poetry abound with
very similar personifications of abstractions, especially when
taking about the conflict between vices and virtues, good and evil,
integrity and corruption…etc.
‫ عالم تنتحب الفتاة؟‬:‫فقلت‬ ‫مررت على الفضيلة وهي تبكي‬
‫جميعا ً دون خلق هللا ماتوا‬ ‫ كيف ال أبكي وأهلي‬:‫فقالت‬
Ghost: But virtue, as it never will be moved,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
So lust, though to a radiant angel linked,

Will sate itself in a celestial bed,
And prey on garbage.
Al Qut:
‫كما أن الفضيلة ال تستجيب أب ًدا‬
‫‪Contrastive Linguistics‬‬ ‫‪183‬‬
‫إلغراء الفاحشة ولو تبدت في زى سماوي‬
‫فإن الشهوة‪-‬وإن ارتبطت بمالك نوراني‪-‬تعاف‬
‫‪.‬‬ ‫فراشها الطاهر ثم تقتات األقذار‬
‫‪Awad:‬‬
‫ولكن كما أن الفضيلة لن تتزعزع‪،‬‬
‫ولو جاءها اإلغراء في صورة سماوية‬
‫فكذلك العهر‪ ،‬مهما اقترن بملك كريم‬
‫ورقد في فراش سماوي‬
‫‪.‬‬ ‫فلن يتورع االنغماس في القمامة‬
‫‪Enani:‬‬
‫لكن العفة إن كانت حقة ‪،‬تأبى أن تسقط حتى‬
‫لو أغواها الشيطان المتمثل بخيال علوي‪،‬‬
‫أما الشهوة‪ ،‬حتى لو كان الزوج مالكا ً وضاءً‪،‬‬
‫فلسوف تمل اإلشباع بفرش من فرش المأل األعلى‬
‫وتميل إلى أطعمة الحطة في أكوام قمامة‪.‬‬
‫‪The three translators are so keen on keeping the figurative‬‬

‫‪content of the personification by keeping all its details and‬‬
‫الفضيلة‪constituents. Al Qut, Awad and Enani render virtue as ،‬‬
‫‪ (they literally mean virtue) respectively. Al Qut‬العفة ‪ and‬الفضيلة‬
‫اإلغراء ‪ (debauchery), Awad as‬الفاحشة ‪renders lewdness as‬‬
‫‪ (the devil). The different choices‬الشيطان ‪(seduction) and Enani as‬‬
‫‪suggested by the three translators do not change the propositional‬‬
content of the personification and achieve the function of the

personification in question.
The same can be said of the translation of lust as ‫( شهوة‬lust)

by Al Qut and Enani and ‫( العهر‬harlotry - prostitution) by Awad.
(All the verbs: “will be moved’, “court”, “linked”, “will state”,
and prey” are functionally translated.) The universal nature of the
image made the translators' task an easy one, that is, the image
does not contain any cultural phenomena (culturemes) that
represent any pitfalls to the translator.
The second type of problematic imagery refers to the images

that involve problematic translational aspects caused by a
linguistic aspect: lexical, structural or semantic (problems created
by cultural aspects belong to the third type as will be shown in the
next chapter). In such a case, the translator has to pay full
attention to all the problematic (linguistic) aspects of the image to
be able to come up with a functional equivalent. The following
example unveils the problem:
Polonius: At such a time I loose my daughter to him.
Be you and I behind the arras then;
Mark the encounter. If he love her not,
And be not from reason fall’n thereon,

Let me be no assistant for a state,
But keep a farm and carters.
(Act II, scene II)

The word ‘loose’ in the above context is the thematic word,

the word that carries the whole theme to the audience or readers;
this word is used when we are taking about animals at stud.
Hence, Shakespeare, through the use of this word, is forming an
animal image meant to reveal the parental corruption and moral
deviation represented by Polonius who speaks of his daughter as
if she were a trained animal. What supports this interpretation is
Polonius’ description of himself as the one whose role is “to keep
a farm and carters”.
What is expected from the three translators is to find an Arabic

equivalent of ‘loose’ on the semantic level to keep the
propositional content of the image. The translations provided by
Awad and Enani do not keep the propositional content of the image
as their choices ‫( سأرسل‬I will send) and ‫ ( سأخرج‬I will let) are
almost equivalents of ‘send’ and do not have the same mundane
connotations of ‘loose’ when used with human beings. Their
choices do not achieve the same function of the original image.
In contrast to them, Al Qut’s choice of ‫( سأطلق‬I will loose) is

semantically equivalent to ‘loose’, although we would prefer it to
be followed by ‫ عليه‬and not ‫ إليه‬, a preposition in Arabic that can
be used to refer to animals. However, it should be pointed out
that Al Qut by this functional choice has removed any figurative
barriers.
Exercises
Comment on the translation of the following poem pointing

out the strategies and techniques adopted by the translator to
render figures of speech.
Sonnet LXXIII:
That Time of Year thou mayst in me Behold
William Shakespeare
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

‫‪Contrastive Linguistics‬‬ ‫‪187‬‬
‫قد أبدو لك في هذا الوقت من العام‬
‫حينما يخلو ذلك الغصن الذي يرتعد من البرد‬
‫سوى من أوراق صفراء قليلة‪ ،‬أو ال أوراق‬
‫وحيث تغني الطيور الجميلة كجوقة بال أبواق‬
‫في وجهي ترين شفق يوم‬
‫غاب في غياهب الغروب‬
‫وجاء الليل البهيم فأخذه إلى عالم الغيوب‬
‫صنو الموت الذي يقودنا لنهاية الدروب‬
‫قد أبدو لك كالنار في اضطرام‬
‫ترقد على رماد شباب قد طوته األيام‬
‫كفراش الموت الذي تلفظ عليه آخر األنفاس‬
‫قضت نحبها على يد ما كانت به تقتات‬
‫هذا كما ترين من يجعل حبك أكثر قوة‬
‫أن تحبي هذا الينبوع الذي ستتركيه مهما طال الزمان‪.‬‬
‫(مأخوذ من كتاب االستعارة في الخطاب ترجمة خالد توفيق وعماد عبداللطيف‪،‬‬

‫صدر عن المركز القومي للترجمة عام ‪)2013‬‬
Unit (10)
Culture-Specific Images as a Translation Problem
Introduction:
Translating is not a process of transferring meaning from one

language to another. It involves transferring one culture (or frame
of thought) to another. This simply means that the translator’s job
is not confined to the search for semantic equivalents, but s/he
should try to find functional equivalents and cultural substitutes
that would help to maximally convey the message of the source
text and bridge the gap between the source text and the target
reader, especially if they belong to two completely cultural
backgrounds.
The translator, as Enani puts it in his On Translating Arabic:

A Cultural Approach (published by the General Egyptian Book
Organization in 2000), “is a cultural medium: no translator can
hope to evade the cultural implications of his or her translated
text” (36). This emphasizes the importance of the fact that the
translator should be well-acquainted with the cultural background
of both the source and target texts. The difficulty of translating
culture-specific images stems from the fact that they describe “a
culture remote from the second reader’s experience, which the
translator wants to introduce to him, not the original reader who
took or takes it for granted, but as something strange with its own
special interest” (Newmark, Approaches to Translation. Prentice Hall

International, 1988: 11).
Nature of the Problem:
Figurative language usually represents a quicksand area to the

translator because it sometimes implies certain features or
phenomena in the source language that might have no equivalents
in the target language. In other words, figures of speech reflect the
mentality, attitude, philosophy and frame of thought of a certain
people. The same image, when translated, may not evoke the
same atmosphere in the target language or cannot evoke the same
emotive response from the target reader. Thus cultural
considerations have to be taken into account when a figure of
speech is translated.
The translator’s role is not just a mediator between the source

text and the target reader: s/he acts as a creator of new target-
language structures that do not sound odd to the target reader and
preserve the rhetorical effect and metaphorical content of the
message of the source text. This is due to the fact that the
effectiveness and the communicativeness of the image depend
largely on the shared knowledge of the hearer (or target reader)
and the speaker (or source text).
The problem occurs when there is a discrepancy between the

cultural background of the source text and that of the target
reader. For example, the common image "‫"أثلج صدرى‬, which is
part of daily usage, represents an example of culture-specific

images. The cultural equivalent of this idiomatic expression is “it
warmed my heart”. Paradoxically "‫ "أثلج‬in Arabic is rendered as
“warm” in English due to cultural differences. To make this point
clearer, the Arab who lives in hot atmosphere believes that "‫"الثلج‬
is something pleasing and this is why "‫ "أثلج صدرى‬refers to
something pleasing to the speaker. In contrast, the English man
who lives in a cold atmosphere considers warmth one of the
pleasures of life and this is why s/he says “it warmed my heart”.
Another revealing example is Shakespeare’s famous line of

verse “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”. The beauty of
the line is highly appreciated by an English man who considers
summer one of the pleasures of life, but to an Arab, to whom
summer is totally unpleasant, the comparison will be strange and
alien. A good translator will be satisfied to translate summer here
as "‫"نسمة صيف‬, which is a good functional choice. Similarly the
image "‫ "جميلة كالقمر‬in Arabic is functionally translated in English
as “she is as beautiful as a rose”. The beauty of the moon is felt by
people, Arabs, who live in the desert where the moon is the only
source of light at night: it represents light, romance and love. The
English man who lives in a foggy climate will hardly appreciate
the image in question. In the English culture, the moon is
metaphorically used in some idioms to refer to a person’s
changeability and moodiness e.g. “Jane is as changeable as the
moon”. This is why Howard Nemerov in his New Selected Essays
(published by Southern Illinois University Press in 1985) points

out this fact: “metaphor depends upon a compound of likeness
and difference not always stable in the fashions of thought: one
man’s metaphor may be another man’s foolishness” (115).
Mona Baker in her In Other Words (published by Routledge

in1992) points out that a culture-specific concept “may be abstract
or concrete; it may relate to a religious belief, a social custom, or
even a type of food” (21). She mentions the word “privacy” as a
difficult example to translate. The English concept of privacy “is
rarely understood by people from other cultures” (ibid: 21).
Another illustrating example is the English weather idioms:

the English people are famous for using expressions related the
weather which are very difficult to translate such as “come rain”,
“come shine”, etc. Another interesting example is the word “owl”,
"‫"البومة‬, and its different connotations in both Arabic and English.
In Arabic, the word "‫ "بومة‬is associated with ill-omen, gloom and
jinx. This is pointed out by Ibn Manzour in ‫ لسان العرب‬when he
mentions "‫"ينعق كالبوم‬. In the English culture the owl is associated
with wisdom and respectability: in Longman Dictionary of
Contemporary English, the adjective “owlish” is defined as
“serious and clever” e.g. “Professor Jay looked owlish in his
horn-rimmed spectacles” (1014) meaning respectable and solemn.
This meaning will be odd to the Arab reader who has totally
different connotations of the same adjective, ‘owlish’.
Such examples reveal the cultural differences between

languages: what is common and acceptable in one language may
be abnormal and weird in another. Roger Bell in his Translation
and Translating: Theory and Practice (published by Longman in
1993) mentions the word ‘dog’ as an example emphasizing
cultural differences:
For example, the denotative meaning of the item dog in
English is straightforward and common property (so to
speak). The connotations vary from person to person,
extending, no doubt, from servile dedication to the well-
being of the species to the abhorrence and from society to
society; the connotations of kelb for Arabs are likely to be
more negative than those for dog for English speakers, even
though the denotation of the two words is identical. (99)
Universalism versus cultural relativism:
Images with universal significance represent, as previously

mentioned, no problem to the translator. Such images are
understood by the target reader due to their commonly-accepted
meaning. Such figures of speech are not expected to represent any
problem if they are universal or if there are adequate equivalents
in the target language capable of conveying the message with the
same rhetorical force. The translations of the following verse
emphasize this fact:
" ‫"ثم قست قلوبكم من بعد ذلك فهى كالحجارة أو أشد قسوة‬
(Al-Baqara: 74)
I- Arberry:
“Then your hearts became hardened thereafter and are like

stones, or even yet harder.”
II- Dawood:
“Yet after that your hearts became as hard as rock or even

harder.”
III- Ghali:
“Thereafter your hearts hardened even after that; so they were

as stones, or (even) strictly harder.”
IV- Yusuf Ali:
“Thenceforth were your hearts hardened: they became like a

rock and even worse in hardness.”
Here, the translators feel satisfied to translate the image in the

above verse using words expressive of hardness and toughness
such as ‘stone’ and ‘rock’. This simply means that the four
translators seem to have found no difficulty in finding an English
equivalent that conveys the message and keeps the rhetorical
effectiveness of the simile. The target reader, especially the English
one who may be acquainted with this simile even in Shakespeare’s
Othello “my heart is turned to stone”, feels at home with the
translation. The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
mentions two metaphorical idioms under the entry ‘heart’: “to have
a heart of gold: to be very kind” and “to have a heart of stone: to be
very cruel or unsympathetic” (661). Also, such images are found in

the Bible and common usage. However, it is important to point out
that the etymology of "‫ "قسا‬indicates that it is a culture-specific
image because it is derived from "‫ "قسوة‬which refers to "‫ "الجفاف‬in
the Arabian Peninsula, as pointed out by Ibn Manzour:
.ً‫ وأرض قاسية ال تنبت شيئا‬،‫ صلب‬:‫ وحجر قاس‬،‫والقسوة الصالبة فى شيء‬
‫وقال أبو إسحاق فى قوله تعالى "ثم قست قلوبكم من بعد ذلك" تأويل قست فى اللغة‬
‫ ذهاب اللين والرحمة والخشوع منه‬،‫غلظت ويبست وعست؛ فتأويل القسوة فى القلب‬
(Vol. XI:168)
But because the image is universal, as shown by the

Shakespearean example, the translator can find a cultural
equivalent. This is why we can say that as long as the image is
universal and its propositional content can be understood by any
reader, the translator is not expected to find any problem in
rendering it.
The fact that the proposition is universal (not tied to a
specific language but underlying all languages) gives its
central position in communication and provides us with a
major clue in our attempt at making sense of the process
of translation. (Roger Bell: 109)
Let's take a detailed example from the Qur'an, namely, the

translation of "‫"القر‬. "‫ "القر‬in Arabic means "‫"البرد‬, ‘coldness’, and
"‫ "القرور‬means "‫‘ "الماء البارد‬cold water’. Out of this literal
meaning, a metaphorical expression has been created, that is " ‫تقر‬
‫"العين‬. Ibn Manzour reveals this fact:
‫أقر هللا عينه من القرور وهو الماء البارد مثل قولنا أبرد هللا دمعة عينيه ألن‬
. (Vol II: 100) ‫دمعة الفرح باردة‬
Similarly, Al-Asfahani in his ‫ المفردات في غريب القرآن‬points out:
‫أصله من القر أى البرد … فقرت عينها (أى أم موسى) ألن للسرور دمعة باردة‬
(398( .‫ ولذلك يقال فيمن يدعى عليها أسخن هللا عينه‬،‫قارة وللحزن دمعة حارة‬
The two definitions refer to one of the Arabs’ beliefs: we said

before that the Arab, who suffers from a hot environment, finds
coldness nice and pleasant and this is why s/he believes that the
happy tears are cold and the tears of pain and agony are hot: a belief
created by the effect of his/her environment. The English man, who
lives in freezing conditions, finds the above fact odd, weird or at
least irrelevant to his culture. Thus, what is normal and common to
an Arab seems totally abnormal to the English man. Eugene Nida
(1966) comments that “what is quite implicitly understood in one
language is not so understood in another, especially in those
instances where the cultural context is very different” ("Principles of
Translation As Exemplified by Bible Translating": 24).
The root-cognates, words derived from the same stem, of

"‫ "القر‬, namely, "‫ "قرى‬، "‫ "تقر‬and ‫ قرة‬are metaphorically used in the
Qur’an in seven different contexts to refer to a state of happiness,
satisfaction and contentment. The following table shows the
verses in which these culture-specific metaphorical structures are
used and the choices offered by four translators of the meanings
of the Qur'an:
Verse Arberry Dawood Ghali Yusuf Ali
‫فرجعناك إلى أمك‬ she might her mind she might that her
‫كى تقر عينها وال‬ rejoice might be set comfort eye might
‫تحزن‬ at ease her eye be cooled
(Taha: 40)
‫فرددناه إلى أمه كى‬ she might she might she might that her
‫تقر عينها وال‬ be rejoice in comfort eye might
‫تحزن‬ comforted him her eye be
(Al-Qasas: 13) comforted
‫ ذلك أدنى أن تقر‬they will be they may be get their the
‫ أعينهن وال يحزن‬comforted contended eyes cooling of
(Al-Ahzab: comforted their eyes
51)
‫ فكلى واشربى‬be rejoice comfort and cool
‫ وقرى عينا‬comforted your eye (thine) eye
(Mariam: 26)
‫ والذين يقولون ربنا‬refreshment joy comfort of the
‫هب لنا من أزواجنا‬ the eye comfort of
‫وذرياتنا قرة أعين‬ our eyes
(Al-Furqan:
74)
‫ وقالت امرأة‬a comfort joy comfort to a joy of
‫فرعون قرة عين‬ the eye the eye
(Al- ‫لى ولك‬
Qasas: 9)
‫ فال تعلم نفس ما‬comfort bliss comfort delights of
‫أخفى لهم من‬ the eyes the eye
‫قرة أعين‬
(As-Sajdah:17)
What is noticeable in the seven contexts is that "‫ "تقر‬، "‫"قرى‬

and "‫ "قرة‬are associated with "‫ "عين‬to indicate the metaphorical
origin. It is clear that the image is confounding to the translators:
rendering it literally will not achieve the aim of their translations.
Also the metaphorical meaning of "‫ "القر‬is a cultureme: a common
phenomenon in the Arabian peninsula which will be irrelevant to

the members of the other cultures.
Arberry, Dawood and Ghali solve this problem by reducing

the image to its sense: they prefer to opt for choices like ‘rejoice’,
‘joy’, ‘comfort’, ‘set at ease’, and ‘bliss’ to avoid the cultural
specifity of the image. This fact is much clearer in the choices
made by Arberry and Dawood. Ghali, a native speaker of Arabic
and seems quite aware of the cultural background of the image,
prefers to choose “comfort” and “eyes” in different phrase
structures to reach a kind of middle ground: keeping the spirit and
origin of the image in choosing “eye” and combining it with
“comfort” aiming at reaching a functional translation that keeps
the meaning-formulation process active and preserves, partly, the
spirit of the image in question.
He also resorts to footnotes in an attempt to remove any

communication barriers that might be created by the cultural
specifity of the image. For example, in verse No. 40 in sura Taha
he writes in his footnote that "‫“ "تقر عينها‬literally: that her eye
might settle down” (314), in verse No. 74 in sura Al-Furqan, “The
Criterion”, he comments “literally: the coolness (when) the
eyes settle down” while in verse No 9 in sura Al-Qasas
“The Narrative”, he adds “literally: for the eye to get steady and
settle down, to be refreshed” (386). These footnote comments
activate the communication between the source-text image and
the target reader. Yet, they do not help to convey the origin of the
image or its interrelationship with the culture in which it is born.
In contrast to the three translators, Yusuf Ali seems to be

wavering between two choices: rendering the image semantically
plus explaining its original meaning in a footnote or producing a
functional equivalent that is highly communicative and
appropriate. To be clearer, Ali prefers to render the image literally
“that her eye might be cooled” in verse No 40 in sura Taha and
provides his reader with a footnote that explains the upshot of the
image: “the mother’s eye had, we may imagine, been sore with
scalding tears at the separation from her baby. Now they were
cooled: a phrase meaning that her heart was comforted” (797). In
other verses such as verse No 13 in sura Al-Qasas, “The
Narrative”, he prefers a functional choice “that her eye might be
comforted” without resorting to footnotes believing that such a
highly communicative choice will be fully comprehended by the
target (in spite of the inconsistency of his choices).
To sum up, it can be concluded that semantic translation, if

adopted by the translator, in translating the root-cognates of "‫"القر‬
will not achieve the required degree of communication and
interaction between the source text and the target reader. Opting
for a functional choice will achieve the function of the target text
i.e. communication, and achieves the required level of intratextual
coherence. A good functional translation of the image in question
is provided by Enani in his translation of Hafez Ibrahim’s poetry

in which he praises Omar Ibn El Khattab, the second caliph, for
his justice.
‫فنمت نوم قرير العين هانيها‬ ‫أمنت لما أقمت العدل بينهمو‬
You feel safe, having established justice among your people
And, now sleep with an easy conscience and a happy heart.
Let's examine the translation of another problematic culture-

specific image taken from Hamlet:
Hamlet: He took my father grossly, full of bread,
With all his crimes blown, as flush as May.
(Act III, Scene III)
The image above contains novel elements that make it among

the unique images in the play. Enani, in his translation of the play,
points out that “I translated the image as it is for its novelty and
newness” (408). However, there are two constituents that make
the image a culture-specific one: “full of bread” and “as flush as
May”. “Full of bread” is a Biblical phrase meaning to be indulged
in worldly lusts.
The three translators do not render the image literally as

translating it literally will make it lose its ‘metaphorical presence’
and create a semantic barrier between the image and the target
readers and audience. Awad and Enani render the image as " ‫لم يكن‬
ً‫( "أبى صائما ً مطهرا‬my father was neither fasting nor pure) and " ‫دون‬
‫("صيام أو تطهر‬without fasting or purity) respectively. Al Qut opts
for a more general paraphrase "‫( "وهو منغمس في لذات الحياة‬while he
was indulged in worldly pleasures). In other words, the three
translators, to remove the figurative barrier, resort to paraphrase
as one of the communicative strategies, as a literal choice will not
produce a functional equivalent that wins the approval of both the
readers and the audience.
Another figurative barrier is created by the simile “as flush as

May”. Hamlet means to say that his father’s sins were
‘flourishing’ and ‘blooming’ as roses in May, i.e. spring. This
image is quite novel and new as Enani indicated, but still
represents a problem to the Arab readers and audience who may
not equate May with spring, that is, ‘May’ may be the beginning
of summer and heat in the Arab World. Al Qut and Enani realize
this cultural barrier and render the simile as ‫ مزهر كأزهار الربيع‬and
‫( مثل ربيع يحفل باألزهار‬as spring full of flowers) respectively. Awad
renders "May" literally as ‫ أيار‬, the Syriac month (only common in
the Levant and few Arab countries) and avoids ‫ مايو‬which is more
common and known. This is why both Enani and Al Qut replace it
with spring, a choice that matches the Arab readers’ and
audience’s cultural background.
Domestication versus Foreignization:
Another issue which is closely related to the translation of

culture-specific images is the conflict or debate between
domestication and foreignization as two approaches or strategies
adopted when the translator renders culture-specific elements.
Domestication describes the “translation strategy in which a
transparent, fluent style is adopted in order to minimize the
strangeness of the foreign text for the TL readers” (Shuttleworth
and Cowie, A Dictionary of Translation Studies: 43-44). In other
words, it refers to the translator’s tendency to undertake a cultural
naturalization or neutralization of the translated text. S/he tries to
neutralize the culture-specific features of the original text to
produce a text that matches the target reader’s environment as the
reader is given priority over the text or faithfulness, as it were, is to
win the reader’s approval. Supporters of this trend or tendency
believe that a ‘domesticated text’ will be more acceptable, enjoyed
and understood by the readers whose cultural context might be
totally different from that to which the original text belongs.
However, those who oppose this trend believe that

domestication makes the original text lose its cultural specificity
and flavour and no ‘cultural addition’ is introduced to the readers
(and audience). Thus the pleasure of reading other literatures is
lost or at least minimized.
Foreignization indicates faithfulness to the original, that is,

maintaining the alien, culture-specific nature of the original text.
In other words, it is a term “used by Venuti (1995) to designate
the type of translation in which a TT is produced which
deliberately breaks the target conventions by retaining something
of the foreignness of the original” (ibid: 59). This implies that the
translator’s main job is to preserve the distinctive identity
(cultural and linguistic) of the original. This tendency takes the
target readers and audience into new cultural and linguistic realms
(of the original text) different from theirs.
The functional approach does not recommend or support one

of these two theories or tendencies to be followed all through the
translation process (just like adopting the literal or the free
approach). In other words, it is against adopting any of the two
extremes: literal versus free or domestication versus
foreignization. The addressee has the foremost priority and the
translator has to adopt the approach that increases the target
addressees’ pleasure and understanding of the ST.
Some more examples from the translations of Hamlet will drive

the whole issue home. As for the three translators of Hamlet, they
seem to follow different strategies: sometimes they ‘domesticate’ the
text, sometimes ‘foreignize’ it and in other cases neutralize it (they
neither keep the original content, nor find an equivalent in the target
culture). For example, in Act III, Scene II, Hamlet says to

Rosencrantz:
Hamlet: Ay, sir, but ‘while the grass grows’—the proverb is

something musty.
In fact, Hamlet mentions half of an old saying: “while the

grass grows, the simple horse starves”. Critics believe that what
Hamlet says is ambiguous:
The present application to the present situation is not

altogether clear; perhaps he means ‘while I am waiting to
succeed to the throne, I may die’, like a simple horse who
is too slow to take advantage of the fresh grass (new
opportunities) around him. (Berbard Lott, ed. Hamlet.
Longman, 1982: 124)
The three translators are required to disambiguate this proverb

to the target readers and audience and to do so, they follow
different strategies:
Al Qut: "‫ إنه مثل مبتذل‬،‫ لكن على أن ينمو العشب‬،‫"اجل يا سيدي‬
Al Qut keeps the original proverb literally (foreignization),

but in his footnotes, he completes the proverb and translates it,
without providing the Arab reader with an Arabic equivalent.
Awad: "‫ "إلى أن ينبت العشب‬:‫"ولكني ما أخالك إال عالما ً بالمثل القديم‬
Awad almost follows the same strategy: keeping the original

proverb (foreignization), but he feels that this might not be clear
to the Arab readers and therefore resorts to footnotes in which he

completes the English proverb and provides a colloquial Arabic
equivalent that alleviates the degree of the foreignization of the
translation provided; ‫“ مت يا حمار إلى أن يجي العليق‬the donkey dies
before the grass is brought”.
Enani: "‫ إلى أن يجيء الترياق من العراق‬-‫"نعم يا سيدي! لكن –كمل يقول المثل‬
Enani’s approach is different: he is a professor of translation

and a firm supporter of domestication believing that a translator’s
role is to bridge, and not to widen, the gap between the ST and the
target reader. Therefore, he opts for a standard Arabic equivalent
that carries the same meaning and connotation “till antidote
comes from Iraq”. Enani tries to achieve a kind of ‘proverbial
equivalence’. In his endnotes, he (Enani) not only justifies his
choice, but also gives the reader another colloquial equivalent; the
same one used by Awad.
Thus, the strategies adopted by the three translators are clear:

both al-Qut and Awad favour foreignization, whereas Enani favours
domestication. This simply means that each one of them tries to
render this cultureme or cross this cultural barrier in his own way,
although Enani seems to be the most successful as it will be clear to
the audience when the translation (i.e. the play) is performed. The
choices provided by Al-Qut and Awad will not be as clear as the one
provided by Enani. This shows that Enani gives priority to the
addressee, who is the core of the translation process.
Another cultureme that represents a cultural barrier in this

play is the one used by Polonius in a dialogue with Ophelia (Act
I, Scene III) about Hamlet’s love for her:
Polonius: Ay, springes to catch woodcocks

Woodcocks are common symbols of foolishness and
stupidity in the English culture: woodcocks were easily
snared and were therefore considered to be foolish. The
phrase used by Polonius was proverbial; it meant ‘traps
to catch fools’, and this is what he believes Hamlet’s
vows to be. (Lott: 32)
This symbol (of stupidity) is culture-specific and would seem

alien or strange to the Arab readers or audience. This means that it
is the translators’ task to adopt an appropriate strategy to alleviate
the weirdness of the symbol used:
Al Qut: "‫"حبائل الصطياد طيور الغابة الحمقى‬
Awad: "‫"تلك أحابيل الصطياد الدجاج البري‬
Enani: "‫"نعم! أحابيل اصطياد ساذج الطيور‬
It is obvious that the three translators follow different

strategies. Awad favours foreignization; he renders woodcock as
‫( الدجاج البري‬a literal equivalent of springes. Al Qut seems to be
wavering between domestication and foreignization: he seems to be
convinced that a literal translation of ‘woodcock’ would not win
the readers’ or audience’s approval (domesticating tendency) and at
the same time would like to stick to the original (foreignization).
He reaches a kind of compromise; he renders woodcock as ‫طيور‬
‫( الغابة الحمقى‬foolish birds of the wood); a technique classified by

Mona Baker in her In Other Words as translation by a
superordinate. This is a very common strategy adopted by
translators “for dealing with many types of non-equivalence,
particularly in the area of propositional meaning” (In Other Words:
26). This strategy is a successful one “in most, if not all languages,
since the hierarchical structure of semantic fields is not language-
specific” (ibid: 26). It can be said that translators adopt this strategy
to fill in any semantic or cultural gap if the target language lacks a
hyponym equivalent to the one used in the original text or if the
hyponym is available, but does not carry the same connotations and
propositional content of the original.
Along the same lines, Enani seems not to favour foreignization:

he realizes, as indicated in his endnotes, that this is the wrong
strategy. He resorts to the same technique used by Al Qut but in a
more general way; he renders the word as ‫( ساذج الطيور‬foolish birds)
and it is up to the readers and audience to imagine the bird (symbolic
of foolishness) in their culture. What Enani does is not
domestication proper, but a kind of neutralization or naturalization
that helps not to block the channel of communication between the
text and the target reader.
Culture-specific Idioms Used Figuratively:
The following examples represent different cases of culture-

specific elements. Some of the culture-specific body-part idioms
in the Qur’an are used figuratively, i.e. they indicate connotations

and meanings beyond the literal meaning of words.
Some body-part idioms are used in the Qur’an as visual

(hyperbolic) images such verse 42 in the sura of “The Pen” in
which the body-part image used to create an atmosphere of
exaggeration and intensification (and also represents a translation
problem for the translators) occurs in the following verse:
‫ "يوم يكشف عن‬Arberry: literal choice
‫“ ساق ويدعون إلى‬Upon the day when the leg
‫ السجود فال‬shall be bared, and they shall
"‫ يستطيعون‬be summoned to bow
(Al-qalam:42) themselves, but they cannot.”
Ghali: literal
“On the Day when the shank choice+
shall be bared, and they shall footnotes
be called to prostrate
themselves, yet they are
unable to.”
Shakir: paraphrase
“On the day when there shall
be a severe affliction, and
they shall be called upon to
make obeisance, but they shall
not be able.”
To “bare the leg or the shank” is an Arabic body-part idiom

indicating calamity and hard times. As for English, the verb ‘bare’
is used with other body-part idioms, but not "the leg" or "the
shank": bare its teeth (of an animal) show its teeth when angry.
Bare one’s heart/soul (to somebody) (rhet or joc) make known
one’s deepest feelings' (The New Shorter Oxford, Vol I 1993: 82).
To render this culture-specific idiom, the three translators
follow three different strategies: Arberry renders it literally
without using any of the common trouble shooters (footnotes,
endnotes or bracketing). Ghali also renders the idiom literally, but
resorts to a trouble shooter to alleviate the weirdness of the
original. Shakir adopts paraphrase to render the idiom believing
that paraphrase will suffice to give the intended meaning.
Here using one of the trouble shooters (i.e. footnotes,
endnotes, bracketing, etc.) is almost mandatory to explain this
Arabic-specific idiom which is hard to be guessed by the target
reader. Neither Arberry nor Shakir, however, resorts to any of
them. The former’s choice is shrouded in mystery, while Shakir’s
paraphrase saves him the trouble; he almost conveys the meaning
to the reader, but the (linguistic and cultural) pleasure the reader
might elicit from knowing a body-part idiom belonging to a culture
totally remote from his/her is almost non-existent. In contrast to
them, Ghali, a native speaker of Arabic, realizes the linguistic
specifity of this idiom and this is why he resorts to footnotes to
clarify its meaning: "i.e. the uncovering of the shank is an
indication of great calamity when the Day comes" (Ghali: 566),
an explanation that the target reader really needs to understand the

meaning of the idiom, let alone the whole verse.
When some native speakers were asked about this idiom,
they agreed that they do not have the idiom in question in their
dialects. That is to say, baring the shank or the leg makes no sense
in their cultures. Thus the idiomatic gap between Arabic and
English is quite clear in this case. They suggested the following
acceptable suggestions as a translation of the Arabic idiom:
-on that day when the flesh shall be afflicted
-We are cutting close to the bone
-won’t be able to move a muscle
-when the noose begins to tighten around your neck
- bite the bullet (rather informal and not a body-part idiom proper)
This is not the case if the culture-specific idiom is of universal
nature. Sometimes, the body-part idiom used as a figure of speech
is non-problematic if the target language, English, has the same
figure of speech performing the same rhetorical function. The
following verse is a case in point:
‫"أو كصيب من السماء‬ Arberry: literal choice
‫فيه ظلمات ورعد وبرق‬ “Or as a cloudburst out of
‫يجعلون أصابعهم في‬ heaven in which is darkness,
‫آذانهم من الصواعق‬ and thunder, and lightning –
‫حذر الموت وهللا محيط‬ they put their fingers in their
"‫بالكافرين‬ ears against the thunderclaps,
fearful of death, and God
(Al-Baqara: 19
encompasses the unbelievers.”

“Or as a cloudburst from heaven
in which are darkness and
thunder, and lightning – they set
their fingers in their ears
against stunning (thunderbolts),
wary of death, and Allah is
encompassing the disbelievers.”
“Or like abundant rain from the
cloud in which utter darkness
and thunder and lightning; they
put their fingers into their
ears because of thunder peal,
for fear of death, and Allah
encompasses the unbelievers.”
In this verse, the body-part idiom constitutes a figure of

speech, namely, synecdoche ‫)مجاز مرسل‬: "synecdoche presents
either particular things instead of a whole, or a whole instead of
something particular" (Oxford Encyclopedia of Rhetoric 2008:
763). For example when we say that “I need ten hands to finish
this building”; “hands” is a synecdoche for persons or workers (a
part instead of a whole). On the other hand, when I say “the
Americans landed on the moon in 1969”, I simply refer to a group
of astronauts, not all the Americans (a whole instead of a part).
In the above verse, it is stated that the unbelievers put their fingers
in their ears. The fingers here (a whole) refers to the fingertips (a part).
It can be said that the synecdoche is used here as a kind of hyperbolic
image of those unbelievers who fear death. The three translators

unanimously agree to keep the idiom (or the synecdoche) as they
realize that the English language has this common figure of speech.
They actually achieve what can be called "figurative equivalence", i.e.
they keep the figure of speech as the target reader can understand the
significance of the synecdoche in question as the English language
uses the same figurative tool. As a result, the target reader will
familiarize with this hyperbolic image as it is part of his/her linguistic
(and figurative) background. What makes the translators’ task easier
is that putting the finger (i.e. fingertips) in the ears is a universal act
used by human beings spontaneously when they hear a fearful sound.
Another, but different, challenge occurs when the translator

faces a dead metaphor. Body-part idioms are among the various
ways which native speakers of a language use to conceptualize
situations. It is equally important to point out that many of the
body-part idioms have become dead metaphors: users of language
use them without fully realizing that these idioms are originally
metaphoric because dead metaphors.
Examples , as previously mentioned, include idioms like ‫أصاب‬

‫( كبد الحقيقة‬literally: s/he hurt the liver of the truth) which is an
expression used to indicate that someone hit the target, and ‫رأس‬
‫( الفساد‬literally the head of corruption) which is used to refer to
someone or something that represents the peak of corruption and
disarray of values, etc. Since the Holy Qur’an was revealed in the
language used by Arabs, whose everyday language contained
body-part idioms constituting dead metaphors, it is normal and
logical that we find many verses involving such types of body-

part idioms. They form part of the world view that Arabs held.
Idiomatic expressions may become so conventionalized

that they are lexicalized (i.e. we do not treat them as
metaphors, but rather as linguistic expressions in their
own right). We may use plenty of them, but we are not
aware of their cognitive role in production or
comprehension. (Najah Al-Jahdali. "Idioms of Body Parts in
Hijazi Dialect of Arabic: A Study Based on Cognitive Semantics".
Unpublished PhD thesis. University of Leicester, 2009: 3)
In such cases (of dead metaphors), translators usually waver

between two choices: keeping the dead metaphor although its
metaphorical content is almost absent or rather unfelt even by
native speakers, or ignore the dead metaphorical content and
renders it communicatively i.e. by paraphrasing it or substituting
it with a cultural equivalent, namely, adopting the strategy of
cultural substitution.
This brings us back to the idea that the translator’s role is not
only a mediator between the source text and the target reader: s/he
acts as a creator of new target-language structures that do not sound
alien to the target reader and preserve the rhetorical effect and
metaphorical content of the message of the source text. This is due
to the fact that the effectiveness and the communicativeness of the
image depend largely on the shared knowledge between the sender
(or source text) and the addressee (or target reader). The problem
occurs when there is a discrepancy between the cultural

background of the source text and that of the target reader. Verses 2
and 3 of the sura of “Al-mujadalah” reveal this fact:
The two verses contain two body-part idioms: the first is a

pure culture-specific one, whereas the second one is semi culture-
specific, and both are dead metaphors. ‫ الظهار‬, aZ-Zihaar, is a pre-
Islamic divorce custom that continued till the early days of Islam.
The noun “Zihaar” is derived from an utterance used by men at
that time to divorce their wives, that is, “you are for me like the
back of my mother”, an image (combining a simile and a
synecdoche) indicating divorce. Only the verb is used in the
Qur’an (‫ َتظاهرون‬- ‫ )يظاهرون‬in three contexts, two of them in the
verse in question. The second idiom is, as it were, a semi culture-
specific one, ‫( فتحرير رقبة‬literally set a neck free). This body-part
idiom (a synecdoche) can be easily understood as the neck (part)
can be understood to refer to the whole body (whole).
‫"الذين يظاهرون منكم‬ Arberry: literal
‫من نسائهم ما هن أمهاتهم‬ “Those of you who say, regarding choice +
‫إن أمهاتهم إال الالئي‬ their wives, ‘Be as my mother’s paraphrase
‫والذين يظاهرون‬...‫ولدنهم‬ back,’ they are not truly their
‫من نسائهم ثم يعودون لما‬ mothers; their mothers are only
‫قالوا فتحرير رقبة من‬ those who gave them birth…And
"...‫قبل أن يتماسا‬ those who say, regarding their
wives, ‘Be as my mother’s back,’
and then retract what they have said,
they shall set free a slave, before
the two of them touch one another.”
Ghali: literal
“ The ones of you who back choice
away from their women-in no +footnotes
way are they their mothers;
decidedly their mothers are none
except those who begot
them…And (the ones) who back
away from their women, and
thereafter go back on what they
have said, they shall then set free
a neck.”
Shakir: literal
“(As for) those of you who put choice +
away their wives by likening paraphrase
their backs to the backs of their
mothers, they are not their
mothers; their mothers are no
others than those who gave them
birth…And “(As for) those who
put away their wives by likening
their backs to the backs of their
mothers then would recall what
they said, they should free a
captive before they touch each
other.”
The two verses contain two body-part idioms: the first is a

pure culture-specific one, whereas the second one is semi culture-
specific, and both are dead metaphors. ‫ الظهار‬, aZ-Zihaar, is a pre-
Islamic divorce custom that continued till the early days of Islam.
The noun “Zihaar” is derived from an utterance used by men at
that time to divorce their wives, that is, “you are for me like the
back of my mother”, an image (combining a simile and a
synecdoche) indicating divorce. Only the verb is used in the
Qur’an (‫ َتظاهرون‬- ‫ )يظاهرون‬in three contexts, two of them in the
verse in question. The second idiom is, as it were, a semi culture-
specific one, ‫( فتحرير رقبة‬literally set a neck free). This body-part
idiom (a synecdoche) can be easily understood as the neck (part)
can be understood to refer to the whole body (whole).
Both Arberry and Shakir do not use any of the trouble

shooters to elucidate the two body-part idioms in question. They,
however, follow two different strategies: they render the first
idiom literally by paraphrasing it although their literal choices
seem weird and odd to the native speakers, i.e. this body-part
idiom seems weird or incomprehensible. Their (long) paraphrases
break the flow of Qur’anic diction and spoil the economy of
Qur’anic expression as "it involves filling a one-item slot with an
explanation consisting of several items" (Baker 1992: 40). As for
the second idiom, both render it communicatively: they
paraphrase it as 'set free a slave' and 'free a captive' respectively as
setting a neck free (the original Qur’anic expression) might be
unclear to the target reader. However, it should be pointed out that
Shakir’s choice lacks accuracy because the neck mentioned in the
verse, according to authorized exegeses, is that of a slave not a
captive, i.e. set a slave free.
In contrast to them, Ghali renders the two expressions literally

and clarifies them in the footnotes, but the comments he adds do
not help to clarify the two expressions as they (i.e. the comments)
are totally repetitive. Regarding the first expressions, he says, "i.e.
their wives, to whom the husbands say “Be as my mother’s back”.
This is called Thihar" (Ghali 1997: 542). Similarly, the second
footnote is almost a repetition of his translation, "literally: there
should be a freeing of a neck" (Ghali 1997: 542).
When native speakers were asked about the idioms in

question, they pointed out that they do not have the two idioms in
question in their dialects underscoring the culture-specific nature
of both idioms and indicating an idiomatic void to be filled in by
translators. When they were asked to provide an equivalent
English body-part idiom to replace the second original idiom,
they suggested the following (most of which are not idioms):
-untie somebody’s hands
-unchain someone’s hands
-take the shackles off somebody’ feet
-set a slave’s feet lose
-unshackle the chains from a slave’s hands or necks
It can be said in such cases of dead metaphors (or in the case of

culture-specific idioms) footnotes and endnotes are more reliable
and helpful tools than bracketing (i.e. explaining the meaning
between brackets) as they give the translator the space and the
freedom (more than the bracketing limited by the flow of Qur’anic
diction) to fully explain and disambiguate the idiom in question.
They simply help the translator fill in cultural (and sometimes
linguistic) voids.
When Yusuf Ali’s translation of the Qur’an was consulted, it

was found that he uses the following footnote in which he
provides the target reader with a brief, but accurate and adequate,
background of one of the above dead metaphors:
This was an evil, Arab custom, by which the husband
selfishly deprived his wife of her conjugal rights and yet
kept her tied to himself like a slave without her being
free to remarry. He pronounced words importing that she
was like his mother. After that she could not demand
conjugal rights but was not free from his control and
could not contract another marriage. See also lviii. 1-5,
where this is condemned in the strongest terms and
punishment is provided for it. A man sometimes said
such words in a fit of anger: they did not affect him, but
they degraded her position. (Ali (undated): 1103)
Exercises
Comment on the translation of the following poem pointing

out the strategies and techniques adopted by the translator to
render figures of speech especially culture-specific ones.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

‫من ذا يقارن حسنك المغرى بصيف قد تجلى‬
‫وفنون سحرك قد بدت فى ناظرى أسمى وأغلى‬
‫تجنى الرياح العاتيات على البراعم وهى جذلى‬
‫والصيف يمضى مسرعا اذ عقده المحدود ولى‬
‫كم أشرقت عين السماء بحرها تلتهب‬
‫ولكم خبا فى وجهها الذهبى نور يغرب‬
‫البد للحسن البهى عن الجميل سيذهب‬
‫فالدهر تغير وأطوار الطبيعة قلب‬
‫لكن صيفك سرمدى ما اعتراه ذبول‬
‫لن يفقد الحسن الذى ملكت فيه بخيل‬
‫والموت لن يزهو بظلك فى حماه يجول‬
‫ستعاصرين الدهر فى شعرى وفيه أقول‪:‬‬
‫ما دامت األنفاس تصعد والعيون تحدق‬
‫سيظل شعرى خالداً وعليك عمراً يغدق‬
‫ترجمة فطينة النائب‪ -‬من كتاب "فن الترجمة" للدكتور صفاء خلوصي‪ -‬الهيئة‬
‫العامة للكتاب‪(1986 -‬‬
Summary of Part 4
• Culture, language and thought are closely related.
• Language determines the ideological framework of its users.
• Translators/interpreters should know how to overcome the

problem of cultural and linguistic differences.
• Better knowledge of the two cultures (not only languages)

provides translators with the means to avoid looking
culturally odd to the TL readers.
• Differences between literal and figurative language affect

the message of the text.
• There are figurative barriers which should be overcome for

better understanding of themes and connotations.
• Some images are culture-specific while others can be

universal.
• Translators need to convey a whole situation not simply

confine their renderings to semantic meaning.
• Translation involves transferring one culture (or frame of

thought) to another.
• There are functional equivalents and cultural substitutes to

convey the whole message of the SL.
• Awareness of universalism as opposed to cultural relativism

is important.
• Domestication is a “translation strategy in which a

transparent, fluent style is adopted in order to minimize the
strangeness of the foreign text for the TL readers”
• Foreignization indicates faithfulness to the original, i.e.,

maintaining the alien, culture-specific nature of the original
text.
• Culture-specific idioms are sometimes used figuratively.

For Further Reading
Akesson, Joyce (2009). The Complexity of the Irregular Verbal

and Nominal Forms & Phonological Changes in Arabic. Lund: Pallas
Athena Distribution.
Badawi, El-Said and Hinds, Martin (1984). A Dictionary of
Egyptian Arabic. Beirut: Librairie Du Liban.
Chun, Dorothy M. (2002). Discourse Intonation in L2: From
theory and research to practice. Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V.
Crystal, David (2008). A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics.
UK: Blackwell.
Roach, Peter (2009). English Phonetics and Phonology: A
Practical Course. UK: Cambridge University Press.
Ryding, Karin C. (2014). Arabic: A Linguistic Introduction. UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Versteegh, Kees (1997). The Arabic Language. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Watson, Janet C. E. (2002). The Phonology and Morphology of
Arabic. UK: Oxford University Press.
.‫ دار الثقافة‬:‫ المغرب‬.‫ معناها ومبناها‬:‫ اللغة العربية‬.)1994( ‫ تمام‬،‫حسان‬
Part 5
More Exercises
& Application
226 Contrastive Linguistics (Applications)
Contrastive Linguistics (Applications) 227
Exercises & Application
Part One: Phonology

Unit 1
Note: These exercises, like all the others in this book, deal with
information, but the point is not simply giving information. It is
rather the manner of selecting, analyzing and presenting the
information that matters. The first two exercises of the next unit
(Unit 2) are done for you.
1. What is phonology? Why do interpreters need to study the

phonology of the two languages?
2. What is a consonant sound? What is the difference between

a phoneme and an allophone? Apply what you say to
consonants of Arabic and English.
3. Explain how some English and Arabic consonant sounds

are similar but not identical.
4. Give minimal pairs to contrast emphatic and non-emphatic

consonant sounds of Arabic. Describe how the difference
between them is phonemic in Arabic but allophonic in
English.
5. “Gemination is a feature of Arabic phonology whereby

some consonants are doubled as in /darrasa, xarradʒa,
dʒawwada/ ‫ جوّ د‬،‫خرج‬
َ ‫درّ س‬.” What is the meaning of
geminate consonants and what benefit do they do to Arabic
derivation?
6. “Arabic has no sequence of more than two consonants

while English can have up to four consonants without an
intervening vowel sounds, and even up to six across word
boundary”. Explain giving examples of the two languages,
commenting on the problems arising from this fact.
7. Give examples of English and Arabic similar consonant

sounds. Show why they are called similar not common or
shared.
8. Modern Standard Arabic employs 28 contrasting

consonants. Does this apply to Egyptian colloquial Arabic?
9. What is the meaning of velarization? Give examples and

explain what the velum has to do with the involved sounds.
Unit 2
Note: The first two exercises are done for you not to give an
example of a “perfect answer” or a “model answer” as there is
no such thing as a “perfect answer” or a “model answer”. There
are many good answers with many differences given by many
students or scholars. The students are expected to study the course
book, consult references, practise, do some research and write
their own individualised answers. At the university we do not
simply consume knowledge, but we also produce (that is create)
knowledge.
1. Write an essay (of around five paragraphs and 250 words) on

the vowels of Arabic and English.
(An Essay given in response to Exercise One)
The Vowels of Arabic and Englsih
Vowels are part of the sound system (phonology). They are

produced by modulating the oral cavity with no impedance of the
air passage. The differences between Arabic and English in this
area are greater than the similarities.
The vowels of English are seven short vowels, five long ones
and eight diphthongs. The long vowels are vowels such as /i:/ in
“seed” and /u:/ in “mood”. Examples of short vowels are /ɪ/ in
“sit” and /u/ in “put”. Moreover, /əu/ as in “go” and /eɪ/ as in

“take” are example of diphthongs.
In contrast with the vowel phonemes of English, the Arabic

vowel phonemes are limited in number not usage. They are three
long vowels represented as / ‫ ى‬،‫ و‬،‫ا‬/ or the equivalent of aa, oo, ee,
and three short vowels represented by / َ ‫ ـ‬، ُ ‫ ـ‬، ِ‫ـ‬ / or the
equivalent of a, o, e. MSA has two diphthongs /ai/ as in /kitabain/
(‫ )كتابين‬and /au/ as in /qaum/ (‫)قَ ْوم‬. However, many Egyptians do
not use MSA as their active dialect with proficiency. The Arab
learner beginning to learn English will turn the diphthongs to long
vowels (e.g. /əu/ → /oo/ in “go”).
The schwa / ə / is used at a very high frequency in English

since many weak syllables turn their full vowels into schwas.
Arabic has no such sound.
Differences in vowel systems of English and Arabic are

numerous, which represents quite a challenge to the Arab learner.
In contrast to its profusion of consonant phonemes, Modern
Standard Arabic exhibits a relatively restricted range of vowel
contrasts, and the colloquial dialects are even more limited.
However, although Arabic has fewer vowels it is still more
musical than English because of the frequency, occurrence and
distribution of the Arabic vowels and because of the very limited
consonant clusters. (302 words)
~~~ ^ ~~~
{
Of course students are not requested to count words. The
number of words required is just an approximate number. Some
students can write an excellent essay in around 200 words, others
do the same in 350 words. Nobody counts words. The only thing
is that a student cannot write an acceptable essay covering the
subject in, say, 90 words, and there isn’t enough time for a long
research paper that covers the subject satisfactorily.
Again, the student does not count words. Each person knows
he/she writes how many words per line. If your handwriting is so
small and you write ten words per line, 25 lines will give 250
words. If you write five words per line 50 lines are required. Any
student who writes a lot throws one glance at the sheet(s) of paper
he/she has written and gives an approximate number in a flash.
2. Write short notes: [Answer given]
Find three English words with different spellings for each of

the following phonemes:
/u:/ , /i:/ , /əu/.

(Response to Exercise Two)

/u:/ food, soup, two {note to the student: “foot” does
not fit because the vowel contained is short despite the fact that it
is represented as double (“foot” = /fut/)}
/i:/ sea, see, machine.
/əu/ know, goat, no.
3. Write short notes:

a) What is monophthongization?
b) Give examples of the short vowels of Arabic.
c) Give examples of the long vowels of Arabic.
d) Does the Arabic letter ‫ و‬represent two different phonemes
in these two words: ‫ محمود‬/‫واحد‬. Explain.
e) Does the Arabic letter ‫ ي‬represent two different phonemes
in these two words: ‫ سعيد‬/‫يوم‬. Explain.
f) How are the vowel sounds different in each of the
following pairs of words: bought / boat ; soup / soap ;
wood / food ; said / sit.
g) What is the common vowel sound in the following words:
said, dead, better, abet.
h) What is the odd vowel sound that does not belong in the
following group: mood, food, wood, boot.
i) Which in the following words does not contain a
diphthong: bone, boat, no, got, note.
Unit 3
1. How is the study of continuous speech important for the
interpreter?
2. Does speech intonation affect the content and message of the

speaker? How?
3. Are the differences between Arabic and English in the rhythm

of speech great or limited? Explain with examples.
4. What are content words and function words?
5. What is sentence stress?
6. What is intonation?
7. Mention the two important intonation tunes of English with

examples?
8. Does the written text translator need to study intonation?

Does the language interpreter? Are the skills of speaking and
listening connected?
9. Explain the meaning of “Arabic rhythm is syllable-timed”.
10. Explain the meaning of “English rhythm is stress-timed”.
11. How is a typical English song different from a typical Arabic

song?
12. Should children learning a foreign language be exposed to

continuous speech of that language first even before exposure
to single words? Why?
13. What is wrong with creating a classroom English that sounds

very much like Arabic with staccato rhythm for purpose of
teaching English to Arabic speaking students?
14. What are the tools a teacher can use to teach intonation? How
can an e-Learning student teach himself/herself the correct
English sentence intonation? Can the TV, the computer, the
Internet, smartphones, audiobooks, and digital recorders help?
How.
15. On which syllable (that is the vowel in the syllable) does the
primary stress fall in the following words: allow, follow,
begin, open, fabrication, canal, channel, killer, police,
dictionary, necessary, object (v.), Mary, Richardson,
philosopher, philosophical. {Use a good dictionary.}
16. Which of the following short sentences takes more time to

pronounce and why?
“She’s in the garden.” (5 syllables, but one stress on “gar-”)
“He fired Kate.” (3 syllables, but 2 stresses on fired and Kate)
17. Which of the following sentences take more time to

pronounce and why?
Just this.
Let him take it.
Take your hat off.

She’s in the garden.
You are the suspect.
18. How is the intonation of Modern Standard Arabic different

from that of Egyptian colloquial Arabic (or any other
regional dialect of Arabic)?
Part Two: the Lexicon

Unit 4
1- Read the following passage and then comment on the lexical
difficulties that faced the translator and the strategies he
adopted to overcome them. Evaluate how far he succeeded (or
failed) to render this extract:
‫ أشارت برعبها إلى باب‬.‫أبصر ممدوح أم شعبان تلطم خديها بال صوت‬
‫ مزق‬:‫ قالت‬.‫ شفتاها يمصها الهلع‬.‫ الحزن يفيض من عينيها أنهارا‬.‫حجرة شعبان‬
.‫ كان يذاكر ليل نهار‬، ‫ كف عن المذاكرة فجأة‬.‫ امتحانه في الغد‬.‫كتب الطب‬
.‫ أشعلت النار فيها‬.‫ عملت له عروسة‬.‫ الحسد مذكور في القرآن‬.‫عين أصابته‬
)‫ (قهوة المواردي – محمد جالل‬.‫ عينا واسعة‬.‫رأيت العين التي أصابته‬
Mamdouh saw Om Shaaban silently slapping her face with

her hands. Fearfully she pointed to Shabaan's bedroom door. Grief
was overflowing her eyes like rivers. Her lips were sucked by
terror. She said: "He tore the medical books. His exam is
tomorrow. He stopped studying suddenly. It is an evil eye. Evil
eyes are mentioned in the Koran. I made him a doll. I burnt it. I
saw the eyes that struck him. Wide eyes. (Translated by Marlyn
Iskandar)
‫)‪Contrastive Linguistics (Applications‬‬ ‫‪237‬‬
‫‪ -2‬اذكر المرادفات التى تعرفها للكلمات اآلتية‪:‬‬

‫المرادف‬ ‫الكلمة‬
‫ظلم‬
‫ضعف‬
‫غرور‬
‫سعادة‬
‫شجاعة‬
‫فطنة‬
‫فقر‬
‫كرم‬
‫موت‬
‫‪ - 3‬اذكر صيغة الجمع للكلمات اآلتية‪:‬‬

‫صيغة الجمع‬ ‫الكلمة‬
‫ليث‬
‫حصان‬
‫إمبراطور‬
‫حياة‬
‫إنسان‬
‫عندليب‬
:‫ اذكر صيغة المفرد للكلمات اآلتية‬-4

‫صيغة المفرد‬ ‫الكلمة‬
‫أشالء‬
‫طالسم‬
‫شآبيب‬
:‫ ما الفرق فى المعنى بين الكلمات اآلتية‬-5

‫الفرق فى المعنى‬ ‫الكلمات‬
‫ مسكين‬/ ‫فقير‬
‫ رحيم‬/ ‫رحمن‬
‫ عجوز‬/ ‫شيخ‬
‫ الصفح‬/ ‫العفو‬
‫ الحمد‬/ ‫الشكر‬
‫ الرؤيا‬/ ‫الرؤية‬
6- Give synonyms of the underlined words:
1- Tom is regarded as a brilliant student.

2- The attack on New York and Washington was a real disaster.
3- Shakespeare is known for his elegant style.
4- Everybody knows that Jack is brave.

5- The writer uses this style to convey his points.
6- Everybody is willing to defend his religion.

7- She is hated because she is arrogant.
8- Her behaviour irritated everybody.
9- Mary is at the peak of her career.

10- This book is fascinating.
11- Naguib Mahfouz is an important literary figure.
12- This is the core of the subject.

13- He does not know what mercy is.
14- This is a very sophisticated technology.
15- He is very tough with everybody.
16- He is homesick and this is why he wants to go home.
17- Mary is known for her strict values.
18- This is a very serious disease.
19- He is very cultured.
20- Can you give me a summary of this long book.
21- She is very rich.

22- He is in bad need for money.
23- This is one of the dangers of life.
24- This is a good place for our project.
25- This is one aspect of the problem.

7- What is the adjective from the following words
doubt theme
figure repetition
air touch
alarm surprise
speak angel
write tourism
fear spite
8- What is the plural of the following words:
criterion datum
mouse ox
basis nucleus
people syllabus
focus curriculum
passer-by erratum
point of view
9- Form the verb from the following words:
brutal norm
people victim
black Hamlet
Arab Egypt
error beauty
rich sharp
nation personification
drama difference
active
10- Form the noun from the following words:
brave greedy
valid symbolic
chivalric shrink
villain link
false cheat
stupid precise
suspect multiple
fanatic chaste
11- form the adjective from the following words:
spring autumn
charity concept
speed rose
island hell
sky society
conflict moon
sun marriage
disease fault
Holland Israel
parent knowledge
mistake panic
family Switzerland
Wales compassion
Bible book
fish fact
poet imagination
error humour
coward sympathy
son/daughter brother
sister youth
12- What is the opposite of the following words:
generous modest
noble coward
famous foreign
moderate lazy
13- Insert the correct verb:
1- You have to ………… a balance between fun and work.
2- The police forces tried to ………… riots/demonstrations.
3- You can’t depend on Tom, he never ………… his promises.
4- Everybody ………… sin in one form or another.
5- The government intends to …… taxes on foreign products.
6- The U.N refused to ………… sanctions on Iraq.
7- The police forces ………… an attack on drug dealers.
8- The Ministry of Culture ………… a book fair every year.
9- The president decided to ………… the next elections.
10- Israel tries to ……… its grip over the Palestinian territories.
11- If he is not properly cured, he will ………… into a coma.
12- Prince Charles ………… Queen Elizabeth in the future.
13- The rebels ……… the ex-president and ……… a new one.
14- Do it again, you have to ………… your luck.
15- Henry IV killed his brother Richard II and ………… the

throne from him.
16- You have to ………… to your principles.
17- You have to ………… respect for other people’s opinions.
18- The president will ………… a speech next week.
19- The eggs will ………… within twenty days.
20- Don’t hesitate, ………… your choice.
21- The poet ………… his beloved to a rose.
22- The rumours ………… his reputation.
23- When you are insulting someone when he is not present, you
are simply ………… him.
24- Tom was accused of taking bribes and this is why the court
decided to ………… all his properties.
25- Iraq ………… Kuwait in 1990.
26- The Egyptian national football team will ………… for the
world cup finals in Germany in 2006.
27- The judge ………… the criminal to death.
28- Palestinians failed to ………… a compromise with Israeli

government.
29- Our company has to ………… its obligations.

30- Everybody tries to ………… his/her ambition.
31- The doctor’s smile ………… our hopes.
32- Many criminals try to …… weapons across the borders.
33- The internet ………… barriers between people.
34- I will try to ………… the opportunity and tell him the whole
truth.
35- When the war was over, the fighters ………… their swords.
36- Too much blood has been ………… in this conflict.
37- Farmers ………… cattle.
38- The government does its best to ………… illiteracy.
39- He ………… Islam/Christianity when he was twenty.
40- He ………… up his courage and attacked the dog.
14- Insert the correct adjective.
41- This woman tries to control everybody. She is very ……
42- President Sadat was a ………… politician.
43- Tom smokes a lot: he is a ………… smoker.
44- This writer uses very few words to express himself; his style
is very ………
45- He spends all the money he earns. He is …………
46- She does not give birth to children. She is a …… woman.

47- This child is making a lot of fuss. He is very …………
48- President Bush’s speech in which he describe Sharon as a

man of peace was very ………
49- He will never be a famous poet: he will always be ……
50- I don’t understand anything. He is very …………
51- We can plant vegetables in this land. It is ………… land.
52- This politician’s … speech made everybody enthusiastic.
53- After the battle came to end, there was ……… silence.
54- He never gives up: he is again on his feet and this is why he is
………
55- He likes to do everything accurately: he is very ………
56- Prince Charles belongs to the ………… family.
57- The president issued a ………… decree.
15- Fill in the space using the right word or phrase:
1- ………… is the person who helps a woman to give birth

to a child in poor areas.
2- Prince Charles is the ………… of England.
3- In the States, if the president dies, the ………… replaces

him till the end of the term.
4- He is very poor and she is rich: they can never get

married because there are ………… between their
families.
5- ………… is the tool that doctors use to make cuts in the

human body.
6- The cabin where the pilot of a plane sits is called

…………
7- The sound of a lion is called …………
8- If someone kills his father, this crime is called …………
9- The place where money and gold are kept in a bank is

called ……
10- The branch of science concerned with the production and

description of sounds and voices is called …………
11- If somebody cannot pronounce the “R”, he is called

………
12- The piece of wood upon which meat is cut called

…………
13- If somebody speaks two language’s he is called

…………
14- The opposite of introvert is …………
15- If two armies decide to stop fighting, this is called ……
16- In the past, the woman who was employed to give her
breast milk to another woman’s baby is called …………
16- Mention the difference(s) between the following words:
1- habit, custom
2- childish, childlike
3- legend, myth
4- last, latest
5- kidnap, abduct, hijack
6- mind, brain
7- kill, murder, assassinate
8- steal, rob
9- alone, lonely
10- later, latter,
11- rape, usurp
12- tasty, tasteful
13- cool, cold,
14- deep, profound,
15- revenge, avenge
16- audience, spectators, viewers, congregation
17- immigrate, emigrate, migrate
18- ripe, mature
19- customer, client

20- complicated, complex
21- shy, ashamed
22- drown, sink
23- point to, point at, point out
24- economic, economical
25- champion , hero
26- city, town
27- hole, hall, whole
28- forgive, pardon
29- older / oldest, elder / eldest

Unit 5
1- Look up the following neologisms in the dictionary or search

for their meaning on the internet, then provide a translation:
Word Meaning Translation

Crowdsourcing
Geobragging
Noob
Ego surfer
Mitthead
blog
Adultolescence
Advertorial
Ambiturner
anyhoo `
Appetize
awesome-itude
Bacheloric
bagel
Baller
Ballinest
beaulicious
Unit 6
1- Look up the following words in the dictionary and mention the

languages from which English borrowed them:
kindergarten
fiancée
dialogue
democracy
music
cafeteria
opera
philosophy
caliph
guru
theory
appendix
hajj
Part Three: Morphology & Syntax

Unit 7
I. Define the following terms:
1. morphology
2. morpheme
3. affixation
4. the pattern system in Arabic morphology
5. derivational morphology
6. inflectional morphology
7. part of speech
8. grammatical gender
9. morphological number
10. morphological affixes denoting case in Arabic
II. Divide the following words into their morphological

components explaining the meaning of each morpheme:
books, mice, feet,
document, development,
uncivilised, booklet, computerised,
lovely, quickly, misinformation,

played, education, heroine
cat, fish (in caught several “fish”.),
globalization, hostess, bulky,
Tommy, windy, courageous,
starlet, kitchenette, windy
drove (v.) derived, shook,
enlarge, widen, dug
googled, tweeted emailed
oxen, formulae, stimuli,
{
Note that while development contains two morphemes
(develop + -ment), the word “document” is made up of one
morpheme since division into docu+ment is not allowed. The
bound morpheme –ment is not used here as “docu” has no
meaning, neither lexical nor grammatical. The word “document”
is morphologically indivisible.
Note also that the bound morpheme –ly in “lovely” has a

grammatical meaning; it turns the noun into an adjective.
However, the bound morpheme –ly in “quickly” turns the
adjective into an adverb.
}
III. Divide the following words into their morphological

components explaining the meaning of each morpheme:
‫طبيبتان‬ ،‫عامالت‬ ،‫طبيبان‬ ،‫مهندسة‬ ،‫فالحون‬

‫استكتب‬ َ ‫كا َت‬
،‫ب‬ ، ْ‫كاتب‬ ،‫ُك ُتب‬ ،‫مساجد‬
{
Note that Arabic morphology derives and inflects words in a
manner different from that of English. There are similarities in the
first row of words, but the second row is different and can better
be explained by using the pattern system (‫)نظام الوزن الصرفي‬.
IV. Write short notes on the following:
1. grammatical number in Arabic and English
2. grammatical gender in Arabic and English
3. grammatical case in Arabic and English
V. Compare & contrast Arabic and English as regards the

following:
booklet = ‫كتيب‬
duckling = ‫بطيطة‬
kitten = ‫هريرة‬
VI. Produce nouns, verbs, and adjectives from the following

words: [Answer given]
civil, form, act, large, wide, ‫ ضحك‬،‫أكل‬
Response:
Word Noun Verb Adjective
civil civilization civilize civilized
form formation form formed
act action act active
large largeness enlarge large
wide width widen wide
‫ضحك‬ ‫ضحك‬ ‫يضحك‬ ‫ضاحك‬

‫أكل‬ ‫أكل‬ ‫يأكل‬ ‫آكل‬
VII. Explain the following quotations from the morphology unit,

commenting on them when possible:
1. “Morphemes may be free, meaning that they can stand

alone, or they may be bound” (free versus bound
morphemes).”
2. “The inflectional system in English is much simpler than

the Arabic one.”
3. “In contrast [with English], Arabic is a highly inflectional

language so that word order is often insignificant.”
4. “Both nouns and adjectives in Arabic receive a high

number of inflections. They inflect for case, gender,
number and definiteness.”
5. “In Arabic, definiteness can mean generality as in ‫العلم نور‬.

In English, however, general nouns are usually indefinite
as in ‘Knowledge is power’ ...”
6. “The English pronoun system consists of different

pronouns differing in case, number and person.”
7. “Demonstrative pronouns are common to both English and

Arabic although Arabic adds distinctions as to gender.”
8. “Words are at the interface between phonology, syntax and

semantics. Word forms often reflect their syntactic
functions.”
Unit 8
I. Define the following terms:
1. syntax
2. verbless sentences
3. grammatical copula
4. VP (verb phrase)
5. Sentence constituent components
6. S/V agreement
II. Why does a translator need knowledge of syntax?
III. What are the basic syntactic components of a simple

sentence?
IV. Give an example of each of the following sentence types:
• Simple
• Compound
• Complex
• Compound complex
V. Give English sentences that exemplify the following symbolic

structures:
1. SV _____________________________________.
2. SVO _____________________________________.
3. SVA _____________________________________.
4. SVC _____________________________________.
5. SVOC _____________________________________.
[S = Subject; V = Verb; O = Object; A = Adverbial; C =

Complement];
VI. Comment on the syntactic differences:
a) Arabic: ‫ إن اإلنسان يفكر‬/ ‫ اإلنسان يفكر‬/ ‫يفكر اإلنسان‬.
b) English: Man thinks.
VII. Comment on the syntax:
a) Arabic: ‫ألقى للكلب عظمة‬
b) English: He threw a bone to the dog.
VIII. Comment on the syntax:
a) Arabic: ‫أعرف جيدا هذا الكتاب‬
b) English: I know this book well.

IX. Comment on the syntactic change that took place in the

development of English syntax by analysing the following
sentence written twice in old English and modern English.
You do not need any knowledge of old English; you only
need the power of observation and logical analysis:
Old English: On angynne gesceop God heofonan and eorðan.
Modern Eng.: In the beginning God created heaven and earth.
X. What are the constituent components of the following

sentence?
The little cat chased the big rat.
XI. Draw a tree diagram to represent the components of the

sentence given for analysis in the previous exercise.
XII. Write short notes to comment on or explain the following:
1. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is generally a verb-initial

language.
2. In Arabic, there is no verbal copula in sentences with

present tense interpretation.
3. English sentences may use a linking verb without which

the sentence, in absence of any other verb, is
ungrammatical.
4. The Arabic syntactic structure (‫ )*هناك قلم في يدي‬is

ungrammatical. It is a mere translation of the English
counterpart structure.
5. Why do some translators add the Arabic pronoun (‫ )هو‬or

(‫ )هي‬in sentences such as the following:
‫* ما هي الحرية؟‬ ‫* ما هو الشعر؟‬ ‫* ما هو الحب؟‬
6. Both Arabic and English follow rules of Subject/Verb

agreement, but the Arabic rules are more complex.
7. There a problem of diglossia in Arabic.
8. Tense in English is not always equivalent to tense in

Arabic.
9. Negative particles in Arabic can denote tense.
10. Both English and Arabic use the passive voice, but each
has its specific properties.
11. Why is the following Arabic sentence a bad translation of

the given English source text:
.‫ بواسطة جون بوث‬1865 ‫* تم اغتيال لِنكن في عام‬
Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 by John Booth.
12. Explain and exemplify the following symbolic structure:
VS(O/C).
13. Explain and exemplify the problem of spill-overs in

translation. Give examples of syntax.
XIII. Break the following texts down to separate sentences. Write

them as numbered sentences and write the symbolic
structure and sentence type of each one after it.
[Following is a short text which is done for you as an example

to follow.]
In a report, Weston said that accidents have causes. They are our
responsibility. The reason may be complex, but people cause
accidents. That often shows that accidents destroy people, and
harm the economy.
Analysis:
1. In a report, Weston said that accidents have causes.
Prep P., SV that SVO. {complex sentence}
2. They are our responsibility.
SVC. {simple sentence}
3. The reason may be complex, but people cause accidents.
SVC , but SVO. {compound sentence}
4. That often shows that accidents destroy people, and harm the
economy.
S frequency adv. V that SVO, and (S)VO. {complex-compound

sentence}
1. People always see rainbows during the day because they

require sunlight. In certain areas, people can see a night-
time rainbow, on nights when the moon shines particularly
brightly. A night-time rainbow is not very bright. In fact, it
is whitish because the human eye cannot discern bright
colours in dim light.
2. On 20 March 1917, a baby girl was born in Kent, and

given a name “Somme” which is heavy with history. Her
birth certificate records her full name. "Tiny" was her
mother's nickname. Her last name marks the tragedy that

tore through the family.
3. Andreas Lubitz, who was at the controls on Tuesday when

the Germanwings flight plunged into the mountains, ripped
up a sick note. The note showed that he should not fly on
the day of the disaster. The note was among a hoard of
medical serious papers.
XIII. Translate the following Arabic sentences into English. Use

the correct English syntactic structures, and do not
replicate the Arabic syntactic structures used in the given
sentences.
.‫ لقد أنشئت هذه الجامعة حديثا‬.1

.‫ قلت ذلك ليطمئن قلبي‬.2
.‫ سئلت ولم أجب‬.3
.‫ األبناء بارون بآبائهم‬.4
.‫ األبناء يحترمون آباءهم‬.5
.‫ أبناؤنا أكبادنا تمشى على األرض‬.6
.‫ لقد كان خطؤه جسيما‬.7
.‫ كتابتك واضحة ومقروءة‬.8
.‫ من يلجأ إلى هللا ينل مبتغاه‬.9
‫ هل من شيء خير من الصدق؟‬.10
‫‪264‬‬ ‫)‪Contrastive Linguistics (Applications‬‬
‫‪ .11‬الصدق مبدأ من المبادئ اإلنسانية‪.‬‬

‫‪ .12‬لم يقل ذلك‪.‬‬
‫‪ .13‬ال يقول ذلك‪.‬‬
‫‪ .14‬لن يقول ذلك‪.‬‬
‫‪ .15‬لو كنت مكانك لما قلت ذلك‪.‬‬
‫‪ .16‬ما هذا إال جزء ال يتجزأ من القضية‪.‬‬
‫‪ .17‬الكتاب ورقه أبيض‪.‬‬
‫‪ .18‬الشجرة ورقها أخضر‪.‬‬
‫آخر‪.‬‬ ‫ُ‬
‫قرأت كتابا َ‬ ‫‪.19‬‬
‫‪ .20‬قابلت نسوة أ ُ َخر‪.‬‬
‫‪ .21‬خِيار ُك ْم خِيار ُك ْم لنسائهم‪.‬‬
‫‪ .22‬من يعمل سوءا يجز به‪.‬‬
‫‪ .23‬يسبح له من في السماوات ومن في األرض‪.‬‬
‫ُ‬
‫قرأت عن مشاريع توظف الشباب‪.‬‬ ‫‪.24‬‬
‫‪ .25‬هناك قضايا تحير العقل‪.‬‬
‫‪ .26‬ثمة شيء يربكني‪.‬‬
‫‪ .27‬س ُِر َق البيت‪ .‬س ُِر َق الكتاب‪.‬‬
‫‪ .28‬لم أدرس الفلسفة ‪.‬‬
‫‪ .29‬ال نعرف قيمة األشياء حتى نفقدها‪.‬‬

‫‪ .30‬ليس الحاسوب سوى آلة‪.‬‬
‫‪ .31‬لم أكن أريد هذا‪.‬‬

‫‪ .32‬لن يتوقف النضال‪.‬‬
‫‪" .33‬أينما وجد الظلم فالكتاب هم المسئولون عنه" فولتير‬
‫‪" .34‬المثقف مسئول عن أية جريمة تحدث وإن لم يعلم بها" سارتر‬
‫‪XIV. Translate the following Arabic texts into English. Use‬‬

‫‪the correct English syntactic structures, and do not‬‬
‫‪replicate the Arabic syntactic structures used in the‬‬
‫‪given sentences.‬‬
‫‪ .1‬وكان يقدر أن األساتذة في السوربون سيكلفونه بعض الواجبات المكتوبة‬

‫كما كانوا يكلفون غيره من الطالب‪ .‬فلم يكن له ب ّد إذن من أن يتهيأ‬
‫لتحرير هذه الواجبات حين تطلب إليه على وجه ال يعرضه للسخرية‬
‫واالزدراء‪ .‬وما أكثر ما كان األساتذة يسخرون من طالبهم إذا كتبوا لهم‬
‫الواجبات فقصروا في بعض نواحيها! وكان األساتذة يقرءون بعض هذه‬
‫الواجبات‪ ،‬يختارون من بينها للقراءة أشدها تعرضا للنقد‪ ،‬ثم يأخذون في‬
‫هذا النقد على نحو الذع ممض يحرضون به الطالب على أن يحسنوا‬
‫العناية حين يكتبون وكانت سخريتهم بالمقصرين تضحك الزمالء‬
‫وتخرجهم أحيانا عن أطوارهم‪[ .‬طه حسين "األيام"]‬
‫‪" .2‬إدوارد سعيد ال يختلف عن غيره من المثقفين الذين أدمنوا نظرية‬

‫المؤامرة وتعليق تخلف شعوبهم وهزائم حكوماتهم على شماعة الغرب‪،‬‬
‫وأمريكا بوجه خاص‪ ،‬دون أن يكلفوا أنفسهم عناء البحث والتفكير في‬
‫ إذ ينكر هؤالء أن هذه‬.‫األسباب الحقيقية وراء هذا التخلف المريع‬

‫الهزائم وليدة ذهنية التدمير المهيمنة على العقل العربي واستخدام لغة‬
".‫العنجهية وأساليب العقود الغابرة في مواجهة مشاكل العصر المعقدة‬
]‫ معارض عراقي‬.‫ عبد الخالق حسين‬.‫[د‬
XV. Translate the following text into English. Since the syntactic
structures and organisation of the text are a little complicated,
we need to analyse the text first and break it down to its
components. This can be done in Arabic before the actual
translation starts. It is both analysis of the content and
grammar of the text, on the one hand, and an attempt to
reformulate the content into basic English sentences on the
other. The student will turn this preliminary translation into
the final one.
"..‫"مواجهة اإلرهاب‬
‫والمثقف اإلرهابي‬
‫نرجئ الحديث عن خطر المبشر والسياسي؛ الخطر الخارجي؛ إلى الخطر‬

.‫الداخلي‬
..‫وهو خطر أكثر ضراوة وعنفا‬
‫فإذا كان الخطر الخارجي أمامنا عيانا بيانا يتمثل في الرأسمالية التي خطفت‬
‫الثورة الصناعية منذ القرن الخامس عشر وأخذت تطورها عبر تكوين‬
‫إمبراطوريتها وإمبرياليتها االستعمارية على العالم‪ ،‬فإن الخطر الداخلي أكثر ضررا‬
‫وغبنا على عقول مثقفينا الذين يتباينون اآلن بين أنماط شتى‪ ،‬أكثرها تأثيرا‬
‫وخطورة نمط "المثقف اإلرهابي"‪ ..‬وهنا تنشأ المفارقة‪ ..‬فكيف يكون مثقفا؟‬
‫وكيف يكون إرهابيا؟‬
‫وهل هو نمط جديد لم نتعرف إليه من قبل؟‬
‫[مصطفى عبد الغنى‪ ،‬األهرام‪ 25 ،‬أغسطس ‪]2003‬‬
‫تحليل النص وترجمته من العربية إلى العربية‬
‫• هناك خطران‪ :‬داخلي وخارجي‬

‫• نؤجل الحديث اآلن عن الخطر الخارجي‬
‫• نتحدث عن الداخلي – فهو أكثر عنفا‬
‫• الخارجي = خطر سياسي = الرأسمالية واالستعمار == خطر واضح‬
‫‪ o‬الرأسمالية استغلت الثورة الصناعية وسيطرت على العالم‬
‫• الداخلي أكثر خطرا وتأثير على عقول المثقفين‬
‫‪ o‬المثقفون (متباينون) مختلفون‬
‫• أكثرهم خطرا "المثقف اإلرهابي"‬
‫• هناك مفارقة = كيف مثقف وإرهابي في نفس الوقت؟‬

First basic translation (barebones):
Subject Verb Completion (C, O, etc.)
There are two dangers: internal &

external.
We defer talking about the external

danger.
We shall talk of the internal danger
which is fiercer.
The ex. danger is a clear political danger.
It is capitalism
which kidnapped the Industrial Revolution, (and)
turned it into imperialism controlling

the world.
etc. etc. etc.

‫‪Part Four: Figurative Language‬‬

‫‪Unit 9‬‬
‫‪ -1‬اشرح معنى التعبيرات المجازية اآلتية‪:‬‬

‫المعنى‬ ‫التعبير‬
‫بلغت القلوب الحناجر‬
‫يمزق نياط القلب‬
‫حتى تقر عينه‬
‫استأصل هللا شأفتهم‬
‫مات رغم أنفه‬
‫يلمس شغاف القلب وحنايا الروح‬
‫قضى عليهم قضا ًء مبرما ً‬
‫أنزل هللا شآبيب رحمته‬

‫ال ناقة لنا وال بعير‬
‫عاد بخفى حُنين‬
‫بلغ عنان السماء‬
‫أزبد وأرغد‬
‫يفرى كبده‬
‫أصاب كبد الحقيقة‬
‫وهو مازال أزغب الحوصلة‬
‫ال يفرق بين الغث والسمين‬
2- Comment on the translation of the following stanzas

pointing out the strategies and techniques adopted by the
translator to render figures of speech.
‫دخل الشتا وقفل البيبان ع البيوت‬

‫وصبح شعاع الشمس خيط عنكبوت‬
‫وحاجات كتير بتموت في ليل الشتا‬
.‫لكن حاجات أكتر بترفض تموت‬
!!‫عجبي‬
‫فتحت شباكي لشمس الصباح‬

‫ما دخلش منه غير عويل الرياح‬
‫وفتحت قلبي عشان أبوح باأللم‬
.‫ما خرجش منه غير محبة وسماح‬
!!‫عجبي‬
)‫(صالح جاهين – الرباعيات‬
Winter came in and shut all doors quite tight,
Turned the rays of the sun into a spiderweb.
Many things do die in winter’s dreary night,
Yet many refuse to die, they stay and fight.
Lo and Behold!
I opened my window to the morning glow,
Only the wind came in with a howl and scream.
I opened my heart to let the sadness flow.
Only love and mercy came out in a stream .
Lo and Behold!
(Translated by Nehad Salem)

Unit 10
1- Comment on the translation of figures of speech in the

following poem. Are they universal or culture-specific ones?
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
by John Donne
If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must

Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where I begun.
‫نحن روحان‬
‫تشبهان إبرتي البوصلة‬
‫روحك تشبه تلك الثابتة‬
‫التي ال تتحرك إال إذا تحركت األخرى‬
‫وعلى الرغم من أنك في مركز البوصلة ساكنة‬
‫إال أنه حينما تتحرك اإلبرة األخرى‬
‫تميلين وتصغين‬
‫وتقومين حينما تعود األخرى‬
‫وهكذا أنت لي‬
‫كاإلبرة األخرى التي أدور حولها بميل‬
‫فثباتك يجعلني أدور بانتظام‬
‫وانتهي من حيث بدأت‪.‬‬
‫(ترجمة الدكتور خالد توفيق)‬
‫‪2- Translate the following idioms into Arabic:‬‬
‫‪1- Tom got Dutch courage in the fight.‬‬
‫‪2- He looked very blue yesterday.‬‬
‫‪3- I had my back to the wall all the time.‬‬
‫‪4- He goes with/against the flow.‬‬
‫‪5- He had a frog in his throat.‬‬
‫‪6- He is a frog.‬‬
7- She has friends in high places.
8- The scene made her hair stand on end.
9- He talked to us like a Dutch uncle.
10- He passed the exam with flying colours.
11- People were going down like flies.
12- I know the place like the back of my hand.
13- I will go Dutch with them in the restaurant.
14- I think we're just fogging the issue by discussing all these
points.
15- He is an old fogey.
16- What he did was a hard act to follow.
17- He is living in a fool's paradise.
18- Jack was nobody's fool when it came to money.
19- I think it is better to draw a veil over the story.
20- The whole story is shrouded in mystery.
21- She took the veil last year.
22- The teacher's advice gave me food for thought.
23- Mary is off her food.
24- He has two left feet.
25- Jane has both feet on the ground.
26- He got his foot in the door.

27- The problem of education has become a political football.
28- I decided to get the job done, come hell or high water.
29- He didn't have the guts to confess.
30- Our army is on a war footing.
31- He missed his footing.
32- Darwin's theory rocked the scientific establishment to its

foundation.
33- He is a fruitcake.
34- Her criticism hit the nail on the head.
35- He plays it cool.
36- I got it straight from the horse's mouth.
37- He has got horse sense.
38- His advice is just a lot of hot air.
39- Get Tom to look at your car; he is an old hand with engines.
40- The news of winning all that money took her breath away.
41- The big salary made her mouth water.
42- His friend is a bad influence; she leads him by the nose.
43- There is a lot of work to do, everyone must pull their weight.
44- His name is on the tip of my tongue, but I just cannot recall it.
45- I hope she sees the sense before it is too late.
46- Tom got out of the frying pan into the fire.
47- Production came to a full stop when the generator blew up.
48- Let's open a window, it is like a furnace in here!
49- I am going to take the matter further and discuss this with
the managers.
50- Nothing can be further from the truth like what he said.
51- The government ordered the suspension of the elections until

further notice.
52- It was futile to continue the negotiations.
53- It is a pie in the sky.
54- He has a finger in every pie.
55- In a nutshell, this is a catastrophe.
56- He said he would help and he was as good as his word.
57- The office was at sixes and sevens.
58- If you invite him, he'll come at the drop of a hat.
59- Their insulting behaviour left us all with a bad taste in our
mouths.
60- He is working behind the scenes.
61- The thieves were caught in the act.
62- I tried to bring Tom down to earth.

63- The atmosphere in the hotel was free and easy.
64- He gave the speech offhand.
65- His bank statement shows that he is in the red.

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Introduction to

Khaled Tawfik Ali Abdel Aziz

1703 Contrastive Linguistics (7 )

Designing & Formatting by Book

Part 1: Phonology ……………………………..………… 13

Part 2: The Lexicon …………………………...…………. 51

Part 3: Morphology & Syntax …………………….……... 123

Part 4: Figurative Language …………………………….. 167

Contrastive linguistics can be generally defined as a sub-

This course is interested in aspects of contrastive linguistics

Since this course is a part of a Distance Learning Translation

Contrastive linguistics draws on “general linguistics” which

This course will compare and contrast some elements needed

Phonology: the study of the sound system of the two

Morphology: the study of the structure of words and

Lexicology: the overall study of the vocabulary of the two

Syntax: the study of sentence structure, comprising the study

Applied linguistics, in general, has extended the science of

the aim of producing machine translation where the human

Another applied linguistic science is that of contrastive

On the other hand, contrastive linguistics assumes that

Contrastive Linguistics compares specific linguistic

language learning through the analysis of errors made by

Contrastive analysis as a method of foreign language teaching

Such contrastive analysis can have various applications to

monitoring and overcome difficulties arising from first-language

In the case of Arabic and English, they are expected to have

Arabic has the further complication of being a diglossic

These two levels have different sounds, vocabulary items, and

Germanic Italic Greek Indo-Iranian Slavonic

West Anglo- Latin

German Old English Italian French Spanish Portuguese

A partial diagram of the Indo-European languages

Hebrew Aramaic Akkadian

A partial diagram of the Semitic languages

• Identify the place of consonants within phonology.

• Define and exemplify phonemes and allophones.

• Understand how Arabic conceptualizes consonants and

• Differentiate between Arabic and English in conceptualizing

• Determine which consonants are shared by Arabic and

• Identify similar consonants and language-specific consonants

• Exemplify velarized consonants in Arabic.

• Differentiate between English and Arabic with regard to

• Define and exemplify geminate consonants in Arabic.

• Explain and exemplify the concept of syllabic consonants.

• Phonemes and allophones.

• Shared, similar and specific consonants

• Geminate consonant and consonant clusters.

Phonology, which is a branch of linguistics, studies the sound

Phonemes are basic sounds that contrast and lead to meaning

Arabic and English also differ with view to vowel sounds. In

Standard Arabic has a relatively restricted range of vowels.

In contrast, in English, vowels are basic to the structure of a

The two languages share certain consonants; some English and

Sounds that are similar (not identical) in the two languages

Similarly, Arabic /r/ is a flap produced by successive

Language Specific Consonants:

While there are 24 consonant sounds in English, there are 28

specific sounds not shared by Arabic include: /t/ as in chair”, / ŋ/

Arabic is unique in having some consonants velarized

Some minimal pair contrasting non-emphatic )‫ ذ‬،‫ د‬،‫ س‬،‫ (ت‬and

‫ ﻅل‬،‫| ذل‬ ‫ ضل‬،‫| دل‬ ‫ صد‬،‫| سد‬ ‫ ﻁيار‬،‫تيار‬

In contrast, the English phoneme inventory does not include

A velarized consonant occurring anywhere in a word may