Rafat Yahya Alwazna

• PhD in Translation Studies and Legal Translation
• King Abdulaziz University

Translating metaphor is a thorny issue within translation studies in general, and within legal religious texts in particular. The present paper addresses translating Quranic explicit and implicit metaphors in legal and non-legal Quranic verses into English. It seeks to explore and analyse the most appropriate translation procedure(s) for translatin...

Even though there exists an undeniable need for an acceptable translation among translators, translation scholars and translation teachers, the question of acceptability and the criteria against which this acceptability can be determined are still controversial. There is a lack of generally agreed criteria against which translation can possibly be...

News translation, which is often known as news transediting, which is concerned with the translation of materials for print and/or online mass media, has long stimulated interest within the field of translation studies. The present paper explores the strategies of transediting the terms used for describing the US dollar in the websites of four news...

The present paper explores all the cultural references (CRs) and sensitive elements (SEs) found in the English and Arabic subtitles of the two films available on Netflix, entitled: “عسل أسود” (Bittersweet) and “Holidate,” examining the subtitling strategies adopted for translating them and analyzing the translation issues associated with their tran...

Efforts to automate translation were made in the 1950s and 1960s, albeit with limited resources compared to current advanced standards. Machine translation is categorised under computational linguistics that examines employing computer software in the rendition of text from one language into another. The present paper seeks to compare five differen...

This paper addresses the relation between explicitation and translation expertise in the rendition of nominalisation and participles in the legal Qurʾānic verses specific to purification and prayer. It uses a corpus-based method: The Qurʾānic Arabic Corpus. The paper argues that most of the expert Qurʾān translators explicitate in rendering nominal...

Translation theory is taught at a postgraduate level in Arab countries through the use of English as a medium of instruction (EMI). It is often studied as a theoretical course, which is a major part of any EMI postgraduate translation/interpreting program taught in Arab universities. The present paper examines whether or not Arab instructors use tr...

The present paper addresses the evaluation of the cognitive dimension of translation considering the six phases proposed by Wilss (1996) in the decision-making process. Its importance springs from the fact that it is pivotal to view translation as a cognitive activity rather than a mere linguistic process and evaluate it by carrying out cognitive a...

Certain religious texts are deemed part of legal texts that are characterised by high sensitivity and sacredness. Amongst such religious texts are Islamic legal texts that are replete with Islamic legal terms that designate particular legal concepts peculiar to Islamic legal system and legal culture. However, from the syntactic perspective, Islamic...

Modulation is a procedure categorized under oblique translation method. The present paper addresses the semantic and syntactic changes associated with the use of modulation in English-Arabic translation. It seeks to present all the ten types of modulation, devoting an example for each type, to elucidate the semantic and syntactic changes made on th...

Legal terminology is deemed a key feature of legal discourse and a pivotal constituent of competence evaluation and quality control in the translation of legal texts. Problems of terminology unequivocally prove the need for analysing factors governing changing situations as well as macro-textual parameters and measures for the sake of making strate...

The present paper addresses translation teaching during the COVID-19 outbreak, seeking to discover the challenges translation teachers encounter in online education and the solutions available to resolve them. Its importance springs from the fact that teaching almost all over the world had to depend on distant teaching/learning through electronic p...

Based on Mahboob and Elyas (World Engl 33(1):128–142, 2014), who identified an expanding circle variety of Englishes, known as ‘Saudi English’, the present paper addresses the consonantal variations between Formal English and a sub-variety of Saudi English, termed as ‘Saudi Hijazi English’. The paper presents the specific consonants of Saudi Hijazi...

The issue of untranslatability of legal terms, particularly between originally unrelated languages, like legal Arabic and legal English, has long been a real challenge in legal translation. It stems from the conceptual incongruency between legal terms of different legal languages, which are derived from different legal cultures and legal systems. S...

Legal translation is deemed an arduous exercise, which draws on different lexical and structural choices (Chroma, 2004b, p. 2). Generally, the issue of legal terminology has long been an important area of interest among both legal translation scholars as well as legal translators. However, the use of legal labour terms, which points to the existenc...

The translation of collocations between different languages is not always an easy task, but can at times be a problematic and a challenging practice amongst linguists and translators/interpreters. The present paper argues that the translation of English collocations into Arabic can be a flexible practice if Arabic possesses the equivalent collocati...

Certain linguistic and cultural problems often emerge in legal translation due to a particular clash between two different legal systems and legal cultures. Islamic legal culture, as any other legal culture, is replete with terms and statements, which are deemed an important part of legal Arabic and therefore Islamic jurisprudence. In other words,...

Translation can be seen as a process through which the translator begins with the source text, with an attempt at analyzing this particular text into semantic construction. The translator then reconstructs the semantic construction concerned into proper forms of the target language, seeking to produce an equivalent receptor language text (Larson, 1...

Even though there exists an undeniable need for an acceptable translation among translators, translation scholars and translation teachers, the question of acceptability and the criteria against which this acceptability can be determined are still controversial. There is a lack of generally agreed criteria against which translation can possibly be...

Translation ethics have been strictly defined as the practice to keep the meaning of the source text undistorted (Robinson, 2003, 25). Two opposing views of scholars with regard to translation ethics can clearly be identified. The first view lies in following the source text verbatim regardless of whether or not the target text sounds exotic to the...

The need for legal translation and qualified legal translators has drastically increased, particularly in this globalised world. This unequivocally explains the reason behind the increasingly growing interest in the translation of legal texts by both linguists and lawyers (Sarcevic, 2000) as legal translation has become a practically pressing need...

Translation ethics have been strictly defined as the practice to keep the meaning of the source text undistorted (Robinson, 2003, 25). Obviously, this notion of translation ethics is too restricted as the translator in specific cases is required to distort parts of meaning of the original text to live up to the audience expectations (Robinson, 2003...

Culture generally reflects the attitude towards other cultures, people, events and the whole world alongside the way in which attitudes are mediated. In other words, culture points to a set of values and beliefs generally shared by specific social groups and to the stance adopted by text producers and receivers, including translated texts during th...

Legal translation is viewed as “a category in its own right” (Weston in An English reader’s guide to the French legal system. Berg, Oxford, (1991, p. 2). It is a kind of translation of the language used for specific purposes (Zhao in J Transl Stud 4:28, 2000). Legal translation requires accuracy in relaying the substance of the message, while respe...

Translation, as a profession, is relatively new; it goes back to Nuremberg trials or the recruitment of translators in the 1950s. It existed as a result of the rapidly growing increase in the translation types and the number of texts of different languages requiring translation (Newmark, 1991: 62). This was accompanied by a change in focus from lit...

] Legal translation is viewed as "a category in its own right" (Weston, 1991, p. 2). The present paper deals chiefly with the concept of how legal translation can correctly be tested in order to ensure precision and validity for application and implementation. This paper will argue that the main goal of legal translation and the major criterion aga...

Abstract Translation, throughout human history, has always been an important means of communication among and between nations. It had existed since the time of the Egyptian Old Kingdom and continued to develop until it has acquired particular forms of translation theory. The present paper presents three different views of scholars and translators o...