Methods of text type translation based on source/target text features and type­fixed procedures

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between text typology and translation with reference to specific discourse types, here informative and expressive texts. In other words, it attempts to shed light on the realizations of Arabic­English and English­Arabic informative and expressive parallel corpora. The objective of the study is twofold: first, it attempts to show whether the translation of an expressive or informative text will result in overt (source language (text) oriented) or covert (target language (text) oriented) translation, and second whether such translations are stamped by the adoption of specific translation procedure(s). Consequently, the main focus of the study is on the different procedures used by the translator to provide an overt or a covert translation. In the expressive parallel corpora, the focus is on the correctness of syntactic and stylistic features, the adequacy of lexical choices and equivalence of semantic ones. In the informative text type, assessment will cover the adequacy of lexical choices, correctness of grammatical choices and equivalence of semantic ones. The results reveal that for the expressive text type, the English­ Arabic and Arabic – English translations are more target language (text) oriented (covert) than source language (text) oriented (overt). The frequencies of the procedures of the former include less varied procedures than those of the latter. For the informative text type, there is a high percentage of overt translations than covert ones in English – Arabic –English parallel corpora and the used translation procedures are varied and close in number. The results highlight the specificities of each text type and their realizations in the target language. They confirm further that the translations of informative and expressive texts can be either overt or covert and that there is no typefixed procedure. The outcomes raise the importance of the topic of text typology in the field of translation teaching and translation in general