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198539

Body Parts Expressions between Praising and condemning; “An Arabic-English Contrastive Study with implications for Translation”

Article

Last updated: 04 Jan 2025

Subjects

-

Tags

اللغويات

Abstract

المستخلص Expressions including names of body parts behave differently in Arabic and English. Most of these expressions are used to indicate meanings beyond the body parts involved in them. Body parts expressions are used to condemn, and also to praise. Translating such expressions needs the human translator to be fully aware of the cultural differences between the two languages, to avoid deforming the messages intended in the source language. Translating these expressions using the regular machine translation programs will be completely misleading in most of the cases unless these programs are given enough data regarding the real non literal meanings of these expressions.
In Arabic, we use the expression /maɁSu꞉f-i rraɁabah/ ‘one with a fractured neck' to indicate that someone has been behaving in a disrespectful way. An expression like that is not familiar in English. Its expected literal translation for someone who is not common with the Arabic culture is “Neck pounded" or “with a pounded neck" and its machine translation version in programs such as ‘Google translate' and ‘Yandex translate' is “Neck cannon". The solution to avoid such an inadequate translation is to use alternatives carrying the meaning of someone behaving rudely or impolitely. These alternatives manage to bridge the cultural gap between the two languages reaching the most adequate version of translation.

DOI

10.21608/jfafu.2021.84450.1555

Keywords

Body-parts expressions, translation gap, Machine Translation, cultural gap, translation alternatives

Authors

First Name

رواء

Last Name

أنور

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

قسم اللغه الانجليزيه کليه الاداب جامعه جنوب الوادي

Email

rewaa.anwer@art.svu.edu.eg

City

-

Orcid

-

Volume

13

Article Issue

العدد 1 (اللغويات)

Related Issue

19806

Issue Date

2021-01-01

Receive Date

2021-07-06

Publish Date

2021-01-01

Page Start

1,910

Page End

1,941

Print ISSN

2357-0709

Online ISSN

2735-3281

Link

https://jfafu.journals.ekb.eg/article_198539.html

Detail API

https://jfafu.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=198539

Order

35

Type

المقالة الأصلية

Type Code

970

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

مجلة کلية الآداب جامعة الفيوم

Publication Link

https://jfafu.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Body Parts Expressions between Praising and condemning; “An Arabic-English Contrastive Study with implications for Translation”

Details

Type

Article

Created At

22 Jan 2023