Stylistic Features in Arabic Argumentative Texts

Translation into Arabic presupposes an existed knowledge of categories and methods set up for transla[left]tors to help easing their heavy tasks. An argumentative text with two theses, the first is cited to be opposed by the second. This argumentation may be addressed to be explicit or implicit when the choice between these two ways is considered as a stylistic variant (Hatim, 1997:145).

Abdul-Raof (2001:154) says that if a translator looks at a full Arabic text, s/he will know that written sentences are generally delimited by “a full stop, a question or exclamation mark”. Almost each sentence contains at least one main clause while a few can be classified as minors. The function of the sentence is referred to as a statement, a question or an order, namely the main clause indicates the function, i.e., whether it is a declarative, an interrogative or an imperative. In addition, he adds that the major Arabic text types are journalistic, advertisement, scientific, narrative, letter, and poetry, instructional, descriptive, expository and ‘argumentative’. The main stylistic hallmarks of argumentative texts in Arabic language are the use of ‘emotive and figurative words’.

Aziz (1998: 91) argues, “all the four main types of cohesive devices, Reference, Ellipsis and substitution, conjunctions and lexical cohesion, are used in Arabic”. Nevertheless, there may be some structural differences between English and Arabic, which may prevent the translator from imitating the same argumentative style as that of the original. These aspects must be examined from a stylistic point of view and, if possible analyzed logically. The text-analyst, in this case, needs to see the choices of the sentence structure that the original author makes, i.e., whether the translator has used nominal or verbal, passive or not, imperative or vocative, negative or not, compound or complex, parenthetical or interrogative. According to him, lexical cohesion with its four types; repetition, synonymy, antonymy, and collocation, are used in producing a text. Aziz (ibid:105) adds that “it is probably true to say that Arabic uses lexical cohesion more than English does”. In this respect, the decoder may need to see whether a text provides sentences that initial with elements other than verbs such as adjuncts. For example, SE4-E1 “now it was disappearing” as translated into:
" وكان ألان في سبيله إلى التلاشي" .

Hatim (1997:174) declares that “Arabic favours through–argumentation over counter-argumentation. Within the latter form, Arabic tends towards a mode to which we will here refer as explicit counter-argumentation”. In this favoured type, a concession may be traced in a structured thesis. From translational perspective, one may expect some strategies as well as shifts during the process of translating the SLT. Hatim (ibid:188) expects translators to “note how the crucial function of source text punctuation is decoded and glossed in Arabic”, as in Hatim’s example below:
(ST) “Now it will rise, perhaps quickly: a European rope trick, with Mr. Major as fakir.”
"أما الآن فإن الجنيه الإسترليني سترتفع قيمته وربما بسرعة لكن ذلك لن يتحقق إلا إذا استطاع ميجر صنع المعجزات".
In the process of translation, Hatim (ibid:212) focuses on a particular problem when translating into Arabic. This problem may appear beyond the identified signals that differentiate one argumentative tactic from another. Regardless an implicit or an explicit a text can be, through or counter, the problem that concerns him more is whether the argumentative signals are suppressed or not (in both SLT and TLT). He confirms that
Arabic tends towards the ‘unsuppressed expression of discourse relations. There are substantiating particles (e.g. إذ ، ف ، حيث ) which have no equivalents in English…The translator must therefore first retrieve the signal, if missing from the English text, and then restore it in the Arabic text.
In Arabic, Hatim (1997:217) assures that the “suppressed argumentation in Arabic is the exception rather than the rule, and that Arabic tends to favour the explicit expression of connectors”.
By me
Ahmed Attia H. Elimam