A Comparative Analysis of the Translation of the Causative Object between Arabic and English
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70036/cltls.v2i4.208Keywords:
Causative object, Arabic–English translation, voice shift, nominalization, cross-linguistic equivalenceAbstract
Background: Causative constructions represent a cross-linguistic grammatical category of agent versus affected. This means that the Arabic-to-English translation of causatives is challenged by both grammatical equivalence and semantic equivalence (Kemmer & Verhagen, 1994; Zemni et al., 2024). Aims: This study investigates the translational tendencies of the causative object, the patient experiencing/agent enacting a caused action, across Arabic and English, including the resultant lexical changes, translational tendencies, and contextual driving forces of explicitness. It also examines the importance of voice and semantics across discourse levels and translational direction. Methods: The present study was based on an annotated corpus of 2000 Arabic–English parallel sentences. Descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, and qualitative examples were used to evaluate translation tendencies in structure and meaning. Results: The findings indicate that causatives were most successfully translated from Arabic to English when using explicative periphrastic causatives (make/get), whereas causatives were most successfully translated from English to Arabic when relying on nominalization and templatic templates. Causative representation is more prominent in the foreground or background, depending on voice shifting, explicitation, and implicitation. Implications: Understanding of causative-object translation supports translator training, bilingual dictionary creation, and MT systems by means of functional awareness, stylistic consistency, and interlingual facilitation of causative meta-structures.
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