The Science of Translation

(an introduction,

with reference to Arabic-English

and English-Arabic translation)

The Science of Translation :

1. Preface ............................................................

Part I :

2. Unit 1 : The Language of Abstractions : Is it universal ? ...

3. Unit 2 : Semantic changes in the lexical item .................

4. Unit 3 : Synchronic Vs Diachronic approaches ..............

5. Unit 4 : Conceptual frameworks reflected in the style ......

6. Unit 5 : Arabic Abstract Style : translation problems ......

7. Unit 6 : Limits of interpretation in translation ................

8. Unit 7 : Communicating the sense : the problems ...........

9. Unit 8 : What is “translation style” ............................

Part II : The interaction of Arabo-Islamic Culture with

European Cultures,

10. Unit 9 : An Overview ........................................

11. Unit 10 : Philosophy and Logic ..............................

12. Unit 11 : Literature .............................................

13. Unit 12 : Science, mathematics and astronomy .............

14. Unit 13 : Geography ...........................................

15. Unit 14 : Medicine .............................................

Contents

Page

16. Unit 15 : Equal interaction based on the indivisibility

of knowledge and thought ............................

17. Unit 16 : Mediterranean Culture ..............................

18. Unit 17 : The Idea of Difference ..............................

19. Unit 18 : On the Sublime ......................................

Part III : On Class : How to translate academic style into

Arabic ?

20. Unit 19 : Class ..................................................

21. Unit 20 : Economic classes ...................................

22. Unit 21 : Political classes ......................................

23. Unit 22 : Cultural classes ......................................

24. Unit 23 : Integrative Versus analytical approach ...........

25. Unit 24 : Social Class in empirical sociology ...............

104

108

Preface

Preface

This book is an introduction to the “Science of translation”, if ever

such a science existed. Professor Nida's ‘Toward a Science of

Translation’ (I & II) may have drawn the attention of linguists to the

possibility of engaging in a process of formalizing, generalizing and

rule-setting which, for most of them, should constitute a solid enough

‘scientific’ basis for translation; but the many books produced in the

1990s on translation have shown that the possibility of that process

remains just that — only a possibility. The study of translated texts,

being the material of research, putatively equated with the hard facts

of science, is only a study of variables : for each translated text

represents no more than an individual effort, based mostly on intuition

and governed by factors that are too varied to generalize about, hence

the difficulty of formalization. Even the recent highly-rated attempt by

Mona Baker to adopt a modern linguistic approach to translation from

and into Arabic is based on ‘a back-translation’ approach which is far

from flawless. The ‘back-translations’ are produced by the author

herself and carry all the symptoms of individual bias. Even if she was

a gifted translator, her ‘back translations’ would remain only

‘assumptions’ — never the ‘hard facts’ needed for a science as we

understand it. Other books admit the variability and shy away from

rule-setting and so come closer to ‘reflections’ on translation, with a

good promise of providing a future researcher with a base for

scientific work.

The central problems may be summed up as follows : ‘every

Preface

language’, Professor Lyons tells us in his 1995 Linguistic Semantics (p.

90) ‘divides up the world, or reality, in its own way’. The possibility of

perfect synonymity between English and Arabic must, therefore, be

excluded. To state that ‘lexical differences’ will always exist is to

preclude the possibility of semantic equation which is the primary goal of

translation. And insofar as every translated text will always be

‘imperfect’ the study of translation will also include the study of

imperfectious — which will be no less individual and subjective than the

actual act of translation itself. The difficulty of the lexical approach is

compounded by the so-called Sapir-Wharf hypothesis, namely that ‘what

we think of as the world or reality is very largely the product of the

categories imposed upon perception and thought by the languages we

happen to speak’. (ibid). ‘Essentially’, Lyons adds, ‘the same view was

taken, at the turn of the century, by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de

Saussure’. According to this view, moving from English into Arabic, or

vice-versa, will be tantamount to moving from one world view to

another, and the purely linguistic approach will never be adequate.

Another problem arises from the fact that the entities or the concepts

which the atomistic theory in semantics confine to specific words are

never independent : they are, as structuralism has taught us,

interdependent in so far as they exist in grammar and in a system of

thought. They are sometimes described as syncategorematic : they are

words (word forms) whose meaning and logical function derive from the

way in which they combine with (syn-) other independently defined

categories, however tentative and variable the definition may be — a

difficult proposition requiring illustration. The incongruity of the use of a

word like (as a translation of Sponsor) in such recent expressions as

is due to the interdependence of

راعى

] شركة كذا الراعى الرسمى للدورة الصيفية [

Sponsorship (to finance an ‘event’ and make use of it for publicizing a

given product) with the established sense of the Arabic word as

‘Shepherd’, or caretaker, overseer — even ruler ! The grammar plays a

no less important part — for the implied ‘is’ in the Arabic structure

suggests a fact, indisputable and definitely correct. The reader feels that

a decree has been issued by some high authority to establish this fact

‘officially’. It may be rendered thus : “X company is the official

sponsor of the summer Tournament”. How different the meaning

would be if the structure was modified to read :

-1 شركة ) س ( سوف ترعى الدورة الصيفية رسمياً !

-2 شركة ) س ( تتبرع لرعاية الدورة الصيفية رسمياً !

1. ‘X’ company to sponsor the summer tournament, officially.

2. ‘X’ company' donates a sponsorship, officially, to the

summer tournament (?)

The central sense seems to be the same, but the meaning has

changed. It is the structure, here, that has modified the meaning. The

structuralists insist, justifiably, that the meaning must be seen to derive

as much from the word-form and word order as from the entities

represented by words, according to the atomistic theory. Lyons

comments :

Indeed, structuralism as a philosophical doctrine maintains

in its extreme forms that entities have no essence or

existence independently of the structure that is imposed by

thought or language upon some otherwise undifferentiated

world-stuff. It is a heady doctrine, and many semanticists

have been intoxicated by it. Diluted with a sufficient

measure of naïve realism, it is not only philosophically and

psychologically defensible, but provides, in my view, an

empirically sounder basis for linguistic semantics than does

any atomistic theory of meaning. (ibid, 90-91)

The obstacles facing a student of contrastive structure in Arabic and

English are, however, inseparable from those encountered in handling

the ‘categories’, or even the syncategoramatic units. Any separation of

the two spheres will lead to the falsification of results. Granted that any

study of translation, as any study of two languages, will involve a

measure of subjectivity, any book on the ‘science of translation’ will

remain only tentative, paving the way to the establishment of such a

science rather than constituting a basis for any science as such.

This book deals with the major problems in both areas outlined

above — the lexical and the structural. It should help the learner to

acquire a better understanding of the problems involved, for without

such an understanding, no ‘solutions’ will even be possible.

PART I

Part I

Unit (1)

The Language of Abstractions :

Is it Universal ?

It may be possible to describe the evolution of the language of

science as consistently in the direction of abstraction. In its higher

echelons, science enables man to generalize by abstracting certain

qualities from certain objects in order to re-classify such objects

according to different principles : new categories are born every day

and the ‘semantic range’ of each term changes with further research.

In the animal kingdom, where the classification seems reasonably

fixed, scientists use different systems for categorization so that even

specific terms are further qualified to prevent confusion and others are

expanded to include other categories. Thus a predacious bird has

come to be distinguished from a bird of prey, though in Arabic we

have one term for both, namely الطيور الجارحة . The frigate bird طير

الفرقاطة belongs to the former, not to the latter which has come to

denote any bird of the order ‘Falconiformes’ (hawks, falcons, vultures

and ospreys الباز ، الصقر ، النسر ، غراب الماء ) which eat other animals

but feed chiefly on carrion الجيفة . The common adjective predatory

now refers to any person or animal living (or characterized) by

plundering, robbing or exploiting others — not simply by capturing

and feeding on other animals الحيوانات المفترسة أو السباع . In so far as it

seeks to generalize, so as to deal with the categories arranged and

re-arranged according to different bases, the language of modern

science aspires to that of philosophy : in its farthest reaches, and

especially in the human sciences, it has become too abstract. It is

Part

increasingly turning into the language of thought and as such, is

ideally universal, the perfect example of which being the language of

mathematics.

To state that the language of science can be universal is not to

conclude, however, that it can be shared by people all over the world.

As the qualities abstracted vary from one culture to another, the bases

for classification will differ. Translation deceives us into thinking that

the ‘agreed’ translated terms will facilitate the task of universalization;

but what we often have in mind is basic vocabulary (which in

semantics is concerned with basic concepts). In fact, even basic

vocabulary is coloured by contexts, as ‘pragmaticians’ will tell you so

that a simple term like ‘food’ can become غذاء (or أغذية in the UN

parlance, cf. Food and Agriculture Organization ( منظمة الأغذية والزراعة

or طعام . A voracious eater آكل / طاعم / نهم / شره is one who devours

يزدرد / يلتهم large quantities of food (ravenous, gluttonous ?) And the

choice of the translated term will depend on the context, which is

naturally determined by culture.

Lesson :

* The language of abstractions can be but is not universal.

* Examine the differences between Arabic and English use of the

concept of vision.

to look into the matter ينظر فى الأمر

to look up to an ideal إلى مثل أعلى يتطلع

to look at a painting يتأمل لوحة فنية

to look for a solution يبحث عن حل

To the Student : Can you find more examples ?

Unit (2)

Semantic Changes in the Lexical Items

Apart from basic vocabulary, notwithstanding its problems, even

seminal concepts are rarely shared by Arabic and English. Consider

the concept of science itself which most people will translate as . العلم

Even UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and

Cultural Organization), which used to call itself : منظمة الأمم المتحدة

للتربية والعلوم والثقافة has recently changed العلوم to العلم claiming that the

adjective refers to a more specific pursuit. In fact the modern

European concept refers to physical sciences (physics, chemistry,

biology etc) believed to have been born in the seventeenth century. It

is commonly agreed that the scientific tradition established in the late

nineteenth century and which is very much with us today, relied on

the well-known five-stage method, namely observation (sensuous

data) hypothesis (conceptual premise) experiment (a physical exercise

under controlled conditions) theory (conceptual conclusion), and law

(a general rule which enables the scientist to predict a result in

comparable conditions). The Arabic concept is, however, rooted in the

religious tradition, so much so that the Arabic noun العلماء (written

‘ulemas’ in English) is almost equal to the early meaning of ‘doctors’,

(such as the early fathers of the church, distinguished by eminent

learning, and later, the leading schoolmen). Recent attempts to

overcome this early sense, so essential to the Arabic word, as the

Quran amply illustrates, by using it in the plural, as in the Faculty of

Science كلية العلوم , have left a hurdle uncleared namely, — دار العلوم

Dar el-Uloum, i.e. literally the House of Learning or of Sciences, an

Part I

early college, now a fully fledged faculty of the university of Cairo,

(recently renamed كلية دار العلوم ) but is devoted to the study of

traditional Arabic and Islamic subjects. Consider the following use of

the term by Taha Hussein himself, the exponent of modern thought

and learning :

كان الأزهر معهداً يدرس فيه العلم ، لأنه العلم ، لا يحد الدرس فيه

إلا بطاقة الأستاذ المعلم والطالب المتعلم ، وكانت حرية الدرس فى

الأزهر كأحسن ما تكون حرية الدرس سعة وانطلاقاً ، يصطدم فيه

الرأى بالرأى ، والمذهب بالمذهب ، فلا ينشأ عن هذا الإصطدام إلا ما

يكون من الحوار العنيف والجدال الشديد الذى يذكى جذوة البحث ،

ويزيد خصب العقل ، ونفاذ البصيرة وحدة الملكات .

) أوراق مجهولة للدكتور طه حسين - 1997 ( ، ص 108

Al-Azhar was an educational institute where

knowledge was imparted, simply because it was

knowledge. No limits were set to the pursuit of

knowledge, apart from the capacities of both learner and

teacher. The freedom of learning in Al-Azhar was ideal in

its freedom and unrestricted scope. Opinions clashed and

doctrines jostled, with the outcome confined to heated

conversations and cogent arguments. This promoted better

research, richer minds, deeper insights, and sharper

faculties.

Today we tend to distinguish knowledge المعرفة from science; as

well as between the adjectives معرفى (cognitive) and علمى (scientific)

as the former has gained an unrivalled place in philosophy

(epistemology نظرية المعرفة ) and semantics علم دلالة الألفاظ , while the

latter remains confined to the natural sciences and those human

sciences which aspire to the same level of certainty which

characterizes the findings of, say, the physicist. We talk of scientific

method المنهج العلمى in psychology in the hope that our experiments

will be as laboratory-controlled and the results as absolutely certain as

those of the genetic engineering specialist. And we talk of the

scientific method in economics, in politics and in language learning —

and in literary scholarship !

Lesson :

* There are differences between the uses of the same word in the

same language. Spot the difference between :

I know he is there

أنا أعلم ) واثق ( أنه هناك

and

I know only a few facts about this area

أعرف إلا حقائق معدودة عن هذا المجال ) المنطقة ( لا

So, when someone answers your claim that someone is faithful by

saying ‘You don't know that, do you ?’the meaning will be :

أى ليس لديك من الأدلة ما يقطع بصدق دعواك ( ولكنك لست متأكداً - )

Semantic changes in the lexical item

Part I

Unit (3)

Synchronic Versus Diachronic Approaches

Just as the term for science varies in implication from one culture

to another, the abstractions used in science vary considerably, even in

their most direct meaning, from one language to another. A famous

Arabic word, ) الحكم ( is used to refer, as an immediate ‘signified’, to

judgment, but has a multitude of other meanings in different contexts.

The original or the most obvious and direct meaning is retained in

such works as Kant's Critique of Judgment نقد الحكم where the term

means ‘understanding, good sense, discrimination’ as is implied by

the Quranic verse Z آتيناه حكماً وعلماً X (Joseph, 22) (to him we gave

judgment and knowledge). To this sense is allied the noun, another

difficult abstraction, الحكمة — commonly rendered as ‘wisdom’,

though in the Quran it can have the added meaning of ‘profound

discretion, good reasoning, or correct insight’ as it is often ‘collected’

with (the Revelation or the Book) as in the verses وما أنزل عليكم من X

) البقرة : الآية 231 ( Z الكتاب والحكمة and in ten other verses. The original

meaning of discrimination is retained in another context, namely in

the verse ) سورة ص - الآية 20 ( Z وأتيناه الحكمة وفصل الخطاب X where it is

associated with the ‘ability to decide, or to determine’ and thus

confirms that meaning of judgment. Similarly, the Bible adds another

dimension to the more generalized meaning, which is justice or right

(righteousness) or equity, Isaiah. (61/8) “For I the Lord love

Judgment” — alternatively rendered in the Revised English Bible as

Justice. How close the two meanings are can be seen from the other

noun, again used significantly in the Quran with reference to God,

Part I

الحكيم or الحاكم . The two morphological versions in Arabic can be

regarded as equivalents, though the difference in implication will

always depend on the context : the comparative أحكم may be used with

each أحكم الحاكمين (the wisest of the wise) and أحكم الحاكمين as in the

famous verse Z أليس ا> بأحكم الحاكمين X (The fig, 8) “Is not God the

justest of the Judges ?) (Arberry) “Is not Allah the Wisest of all judges

? (Pickthall) “Is not God the wisest of judges ?” (Yusuf Ali) The other

plural of حاكم — namely الحكام — is also meant to refer to the judges,

as in verse 188 of The Cow, and all translators agree.

Today this intrinsic Arabic meaning of the word and its cognates

has been confined to the work of the judiciary, under the influence of

the recent changes in the structure of the modern state. The judge is no

longer حاكم but قاضى ; though the sentences he passes are . أحكام

Incidentally, the term ‘verdict’ is also rendered as حكم (in effect a

judgment on the guilt or innocence of the defendant only) whilst a

sentence is closer to the Arabic عقوبة (penalty — normally a term of

imprisonment, though we still hear of capital punishment which is the

death penalty, and of people ‘sentenced to death’). The word حكم has

in legal jargon come to mean any court decision, but the plural is also

used ) أحكام ( in referring to the ‘provisions’ of a legal text, a legal

instrument or an international treaty. We hear of / تنفيذ أحكام الاتفاقية

اللائح ة that is, implementation of the provisions of an agreement / a

Statute / Regulations etc. The old meaning of حكومة (as it occurs in a

famous speech by Ali Ibn Abi Taleb) has been transferred to a totally

new concept, though with implications rooted in the original sense,

namely the Government. Ali Ibn Abi Taleb used the term in the

following context ولقد كنت أمرتكم فى هذه الحكومة أمرى ، ونخلت لكم مخزون X

Synchronic Versus diachronic approaches

Z ... رأيى in addressing his rebellious supporters, with reference to the

question of ‘arbitration’, commonly rendered and known in today's

Arabic as التحكيم and the rebellious faction are known as المحكمة (or

الحرورية the Harouriyah, that is the people of حروراء / Haroura' a place

near Al-Koufah). The original meaning of a different form of the verb

تحكّ م that is, to be despotic, has since gained another dimension,

namely to ‘refer to the judgment of God’, as the Khawarij or the

dissenters said ‘There can only be one judgment : God's’. Ali's

statement may thus be rendered as “I had given you in this case an

order, and sifted for you my stored opinions” where case is the legal

term for a modern dispute or a question referred to arbitration. Old

Arabic dictionaries equate الحكم with الحكومة but a modern one adds the

meaning of government as a modern sense of the term.

It is this modern sense, however, that comes to mind whenever

one reads the term حكم or any of its cognates. We today speak of حاكم

كندا (the Governor of Canada) and of نظام الحكم (system of

government) or النظام الحاكم (regime) of محاولة قلب نظام الحكم attempting

a coup d'etat, or a putsch) of الإطاحة بالحكومة (overthrowing the

government) and so on. So established has this sense been in modern

standard Arabic that a well- known verse in the Quran has been

re-interpreted (or misinterpreted) accordingly. The verse is ومن لم X

Z ... < يحكم بما أنزل ا (The Table, 44) where يحكم must mean ‘judge’,

whether it refers to ‘general discrimination’ in general or to passing

judgment on certain questions or in certain cases in particular. The

sense of ‘rule’ has been given to the word, and الحاكم والمحكوم have

come to mean the ‘ruler and the ruled’, so much so that an uninitiated

reader might think Kant's Critique of Judgement to be a book in

politics.

Part

The problem of translating abstractions into Arabic (or from

Arabic) is therefore compounded by the fact that old (archaic ?

obsolete ? obsolescent ?) meanings are not only embedded in modern

ones but they also coexist with them. The original meaning of

judgment is implicit in the new meaning given to الحاكم (governor,

ruler) even if this is not immediately recognizable; and the original

meaning has become too specific, as the division of powers in the

modern state into the Legislative, the Executive and the Judiciary has

made it necessary to separate the function of the حاكم (the Executive

or the government) from that of those who pass judgment in courts of

law من يحكمون بين الناس ! There has been, in other words, a diachronic

basis for the classification, besides the accepted synchronic one.

Ideally, the diachronic level is reserved for the specialists, and

advocators of the synchronic approach will argue that we should never

bother about old meanings except in historical research; but Arabic is

an exception. Confusion will all too often arise when one reads

modern writers brought up on the language of the ancients : we tend to

interpret نزاهة الحكم as meaning ‘impartial or honest government’ but

then it can also mean ‘impartial judgment’. The context will, no doubt,

determine which sense is intended, but the fact that we have two bases

for the classification of abstractions, one ancient, the other modern,

will require the translator to be conscious of both, and to decide which

one to adopt — an added difficulty in translating any Arabic text.

Lesson :

Remember the difference between a synchronic semantic

approach and a diachronic one. Try to apply it to other concepts in

Arabic.

Synchronic Versus diachronic approaches

Unit (4)

The Conceptual Framework as Reflected

in the Style

Consider the following paragraph which is taken from a book

published as recently as 1998 :

لما غزا مروان القرظ بن زنباع قبيلة بكر بن وائل وقع فى الأسر ،

فطلب من آسره أن يذهب به إلى خماعة بنت عوف بن محلم وكان مروان

قد أسدى لها يداً فيما سلف من دهرها ، فلما ذهبوا به إليها أجارته من

كل مكروه . وكان مروان قد أساء إلى عمرو بن هند ملك العرب وطاغية

الحيرة ، فأقسم عمرو على ألا يعفو عن مروان حتى يضع يده فى يده

) أى يملكه من نفسه ( وكان عمرو إذا ملك فتك ، فلما علم بمستقره من

عوف أرسل إليه ليأتيه به ، فقال عوف : قد أجارته ابنتى وليس إليه من

سبيل إلا العفو فأجابه عمرو إلى ما طلب وعفا عن مروان . وما كان

ليعفو عنه بعد أن ظفر به لولا أن أجارته المرأة .

. 393- د. محمود عرفة محمود - العرب قبل الإسلام - ص 392

When Marwan Al-Quraz Ibn Zinba' invaded the tribe

of Bakr Ibn Wa'il, he was captured and taken prisoner. He

asked his captor to take him to (Lady) Khom'ah bint Awf

ibn Muhlim, to whom he had once done a favour; and

when he was taken to her she declared that he would be

under her protection and that she would shield him from

any possible threats. Meanwhile, the Arab King and tyrant

of Al-Heerah, Amr Ibn Hind, had once been wronged by

Marwan and had taken an oath never to forgive him until

Marwan surrendered to him. Amr was known, however, to

be in the habit of killing his captives. Learning from Awf

about Marwan's whereabouts, he sent word to him asking

for Marwan to be handed over. “Well, my daughter has

Part I

granted him protection”, Awf said, “there is nothing you

can do now but to grant him forgiveness”. Amr granted his

request and forgave Marwan. He would never have

forgiven Marwan, now he was so close at hand, had not

the woman given him protection.

Not only are the concepts (the ideas of invasion, redemption of

captives, and protection) alien to our modern world, but the style itself

relies on a set of abstractions that reflect the mode of thinking in that

distant past. The concept, for instance, of ملك العرب can not be rendered

as ‘king of the Arabs’ as the Arabs in pre-Islamic times never had a

kingdom, in the modern sense of the term. Concepts of ‘wronging’

someone, or the concept of ‘injury’ or danger or threat مكروه , or

indeed doing somebody a ‘favour’ are too vague for present-day

readers; and so are the concepts of ‘surrender’, once given in terms of

the traditional (customary) gesture of ‘giving somebody one's hand in

submission’, and later in the difficult verb يملك (that is, to have power

over somebody, hence to enslave). An even more difficult concept is

that of ظفر به which today means ‘had him in his power’ : in the text it

means ‘nearly got him’.

The difficulty of rendering the abstractions, which can only be

diachronically approached, is exacerbated by the use of metaphor,

albeit as ‘dead’ figures of speech. Look at أسدى لها يداً and, rather than

say ‘in the past’, the writer says وفيما سلف من دهرها , and finally, the

expression which is not yet totally obsolete ليس إليه من سبيل . The

writer, though still young and who currently works as a professor of

history in our university, is so immersed in the idiom of the ancient

language that he cannot rephrase the anecdote in modern standard

Arabic. he sometimes adopts the modern style, but soon reverts to the

old ‘mode of thought’ when he reports an ancient incident. On the

The conceptual framework as reflected in the style

same page we read :

كانت المرأة العربية تتحمل مسئولياتها نحو قومها بالتدخل

الإيجابى فى إطفاء نار الحرب إذا ما استمرت طويلاً وكثر فيها القتلى

والجرحى . فمن ذلك أن الحارث بن عوف المرى - سيد العرب - قال ...

394- المرجع نفسه - ص 393

Arab women shouldered their responsibilities towards

their people by positively intervening to extinguish the fire

of war, if too prolonged, and if the Casualities are too

many. As an illustration, Al-Harith Ibn Awf Al-Morry, the

Arab potentate once said ...

Like chieftain, potentate is vague. And just as ملك العرب simply

meant an Arab king (or leader, or chieftain) so سيد العرب must give a

similar meaning. While the idea of ‘positive intervention’ is certainly

modern, like the very concept of ‘responsibility’, that of being a king

or Lord or Master is not. Abstractions exist in both Arabic and

English and, indeed, in all languages, but the conceptual framework

differs from one to the other.

The language of science can only be universal if the concepts and

ways of reasoning are universal. This is the ideal aspired to by modern

writers (and thinkers) in the human sciences; and Arab writers hope to

share the modern ‘solid’ method of denotation evolved and improved

down the centuries by the writers of European languages. Indeed,

sociologists will today use conceptual formulas as often as scientists

will use chemical or physical ones. There is a tendency towards

uniformity of denotation, most obviously shown in the Arabic

terminology in the physical sciences. A fluid can be either a liquid or

a gas; it is therefore الجمع موائع ( مائع ( which can refer to a سائل or to a

غاز and the substitution of the former to either of the latter terms is

Part I

frowned upon by scientists. In the human sciences this ideal of

precision remains an aspiration, for the abstractions, apart from the

difficulties said to be attributable to the different modes of thought or

reasoning, with the underlying diachronic problems hence of

‘classification’, are rendered even more difficult by the texture of

classical Arabic itself where dead figures of speech play such a central

role. In the above — quoted passages the reader is expected to

‘abstract’ a meaning from every metaphor — never to dwell on the

figures of speech themselves. And even in today's Arabic we describe

somebody's attitude as م ائع implying that it is undecided or

non-committal or simply unclear; the metaphor may be due to the fact

that all fluids have no fixed shape but take the shape of the vessel they

are kept in. Amorphous ? Shapeless ? Any adjective with a clear-cut

meaning will do; but what about تمويع القضية — (should be — ( تمييع

the expression now common in politics ? Does it mean to ‘dilute’ (by

adding extraneous matter which has the effect of thinning the

substance) or causing the ‘question’ or the ‘case’ to lose its shape —

its proper shape, that is, and, consequently be ‘distorted’ ? Are we to

shun metaphor altogether ?

Modern writing seeks the ideals of abstraction, made possible

through generalization, and precise meaning (denotation) but does not

banish the power of metaphor altogether. In Hegel's Phenomenology

of the Mind metaphor is thought of as the only fit medium of

expressing ‘subtle spiritual realities’ which are otherwise impossible

to convey. But it is to the figurative language as used in the eighteenth

century that modern scientists and scholars are opposed — that is, as

dead figures ornamentally used. Dr. Arafa uses ‘ ’ إطفاء نار الحرب

(rendered as ‘to extinguish the fire of war’) and Taha Hussein in the

The conceptual framework as reflected in the style

previously qu oted passage uses يذكى جذوة البحث which is totally

disregarded as metaphor but rendered ‘promotes better research’ while

it literally means ‘fans the flames of research higher’ or ‘keeps the

live coals of research glowing’. Another dead metaphor in the same

passage خصب العقل has been rendered ‘richness of mind’ when in fact

it literally means ‘mental / intellectual fertility’. As the writer here is

simply using these figures of speech as part of traditional Arabic

idiom in a non-literary context, the metaphors are thus discarded.

In literature, however, the use of imagery is of prime importance.

A poet resorts to imagery not for decoration or for expressing difficult

philosophical intuition but as an essential means of intuiting his

subject matter. Indeed, a whole school of modernism (the Imagist

School) had fought against those very ideals of scientific language,

targeting abstraction in particular as the arch-devil. In literary arts, the

ideal was thought to approach those of visual and auditory arts, and,

contrary to the scientific discourse, to speak to the senses. Arabic has

used both the abstract mode in scientific writing (such as in the

Epistles of the Brethren of Purity رسائل إخوان الصفاء ) and the imagist

mode, albeit dominated by dead figures of speech, in literature.

Criteria varied from time to time, but the difference, both in European

languages and in Arabic, never consisted in the actual words (lexical

items) used but in the method of approach, what I have referred to

earlier as ‘reasoning’, and in the presentation of ideas.

Original writing in both languages shows that if the ideas are well

organized, scientific writing abstract or not, will be easy to translate,

with a minimum of what I have elsewhere called ‘transformational

tricks’. I shall give here examples of such writing in Arabic, both

Part I

characterized by the nominal style, and separated by more than one

thousand years. Here is the first :

أقسام ، شىء يمشى ، وشىء يطير ، وشىء أربعة الحيوان على

يسبح وشىء ينساح . إلا إن كل طائر يمشى وليس الذى يمشى ولا

يطير يسمى طائراً . والنوع الذى يمشى على أربعة أقسام ، أناس

وبهائم وسباع وحشرات .

) الجاحظ - الحيوان (

1. There are four kinds of animals : those that run, those

that fly, those that swim, and those that creep. Every

bird can run, but it cannot be called a bird if it could

not fly as well. Those that run are classified into four

kinds- people, beasts of burden, wild animals and

insects.

2. Animals may be classified into four categories : those

that run, fly, swim or creep. While every bird can run,

it must be able also to fly to be a bird. Running

animals are subdivided into people, beasts of burden,

wild animals and insects.

Written as early as the ninth century A.D., the text shows that

Arabic is capable of precise expression that is almost totally free of

redundancies. Al-Jahiz refers initially to sections أقسام then refers to

the first section as a kind نوع . Today we may use a more specific

terminology, but the translator will not depart too much if he or she

should interpret the division as classification or the sections as

categories. The translator may not, however, use a modern term (such

as species or genres) as that would add a modern flavour to an

ancient text. The first version echoes the structure of the original, and

the changes introduced in the ‘transformation’ are minimal : indeed,

others are or should be equally valid :

The conceptual framework as reflected in the style

1. Animals are four kinds .......

2. Animals are divided into four kinds (sections etc.)

A more recent example of the nominal structure occurs also in

scientific writing, this time in economics.

القطاع العام ) الإنتاج العام ( ليس الصورة الوحيدة لتدخل الدولة

النشاط الاقتصادى وربما ليس الصورة المثلى لدور الدولة فى

والاجتماعى . ولذلك فإن تقليص دور القطاع العام - فى الحدود التى

تبرر ذلك - ليس بالضرورة تقليصاً لدور الدولة . وعلى العكس فقد

يؤدى ذلك إلى استرجاع هيبة الدولة وفاعليتها عندما تتخصص فيما

أهلت له ، وهو استخدام سيادتها لوضع السياسات العامة وقواعد

السلوك واستخدام سياسات الإنفاق ) وليس الإنتاج ( كوسيلة لتحقيق

أهدافها .

، ) حازم الببلاوى ، التغيير من أجل الاستقرار ، 1998

)141- ص 140

The Public Sector (public production) is not the only form

of state intervention. It may not even be the ideal form of

the role of the state in socio-economic activities. Within

the limits that justify it, a reduction of the role of the

public sector is not necessarily a reduction of the role of

the state. It may, on the contrary, result in a recovery of

the prestige and effectiveness of the state, as it would help

the state perform its proper functions, namely to use its

sovereign powers in policy formulation, establishing

codes of ethics, and in employing expenditure (rather than

production) policies as a means of achieving its

objectives.

The reason why this kind of writing is so easy to translate is not

that the ideas are contemporary or modern or universal, (although in

Part I

fact they are); the real reason is that the author of this book is a ‘born

writer’ — a man capable of straight thinking and expressing himself

in a tidy and meticulously calculated manner, in spite of the

sophisticated ideas handled.

Lesson :

The conceptual framework differs from one language to another.

This is reflected in the style which mirrors the mode of thought of the

people using each language.

The conceptual framework as reflected in the style