(Un)translatability of (Yemeni) Arabic Oath Expressions into English

Mohammed Ali Mohammed Qarabesh, Mohammed Q. Shormani and Arif Ahmed Mohammed Hassan Al-Ahdal

World Journal of English Language, 2023, vol. 13, issue 3, 4

Abstract: Oaths are mostly a culture-embedded linguistic component and this to such an extent that their translation to other languages may be questionable. This study investigates the translation potential or translatability of (Yemeni) Arabic oath expressions into English. It tries to answer whether (Yemeni) Arabic oath expressions (un)translatable into English by examining the syntactic formula of oaths from linguistic and cultural angles in relation to (Yemeni) Arabic and their (closely translated) English oath expressions. A corpus of 1169 oath expressions was created through an online questionnaire. Findings showed that linguistically, there is a very close equivalence between English and Arabic, with respect to oath-making, in both particles and expressions. At the cultural level, there is also some equivalence, which is evident in the original effect that (Yemeni) Arabic oaths retain in their English translation.

Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.sciedupress.com/journal/index.php/wjel/article/download/23218/14469 (application/pdf)
https://www.sciedupress.com/journal/index.php/wjel/article/view/23218 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jfr:wjel11:v:13:y:2023:i:3:p:4

Access Statistics for this article

World Journal of English Language is currently edited by Joe Nelson

More articles in World Journal of English Language from Sciedu Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sciedu Press ().