1.3 Context

 
Context is an important notion is the process of translating because the type of equivalence that the competent translator opts for depends primarily on contextual factors. Basically, there are three contextual factors: the author, the text, and the audience. These factors can diagramatically be illustrated below:

 
The competent translator should never lose sight of these three contextual factors, as equivalence is, in the final analysis, a correlative of context, that is, the type of equivalence opted for depends entirely on the importance that the translator assigns to each of the foregoing contextual factors. For example, if the translator is dealing with an authoritative text such as a legal or a religious one, he/she should concentrate on formal equivalence at the expense of other types of equivalence because text type here emerges as the most significant contextual factor. By way of
illustration, the key biblical concept 'Death by, Crucifixion' ought to be only translated into a formal equivalent "القتل صلباً" regardless of whether this kind of death is familiar in the TL culture or not.
Similarly the Islamic court expression "وثيقة طلاق بائن قبل الدخول" ought to be translated into "certificate of irrevocable divorce before consumation of marriage" although this e bound term in Arabic.
By contrast, the translator is advised to avoid formal equivalence in some contexts in favor of functional or ideational equivalence because he/she considers the audience more important than the text type.' In a news report or a newspaper editorial, for instance, translating the Arabic expression "الكيان الصهيوني" may cause serious problems relating to the differing connotations associated with 'Zionism' in the Arab world and the Western world. Whereas Zionism is condemned by the Arabs as a 'racist, expansionist movement', it is generally regarded by the Westerners as a 'national, liberation movement.' To avoid this problem, the translator should . give up formal equivalence by translating the foregoing Arabic expression into 'The Jewish State' or even 'Israel'
To illustrate this point further, consider the following example:
التقى جلالة الملك حسين بأخيه جلالة الملك فهد خادم الحرمين الشريفين

Here a Saudi news. agency would ignore translating أخيه and خادم literally, thus offering "His Majesty King Hussein met with his Majesty King Fahd, the Custodian of the two holy mosques", while a non-Saudi news agency would do away with "the Custodian of the two holy mosques" or even do more editing in this way : "King Hussein of Jordan met with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia" or "The monarch of Jordan met with his Saudi counterpart" .
Finally, there may be some contexts where the author is more important than the other contextual factors. For example, when translating the poetry of Nizar Qabbani and Mahmoud Darwish,
the competei1t translator' should relay the 'delicacy' of the former versus -the 'fury' of the latter regardless of the topics that the two poets are addressing. By way of illustration, formal equivalence would fail Qabbani"  when adopted in translating his verse بيروت يا أنثاي من بين ملايين النساء
'0 Beirut, my female from among  millions of women', because the rather detached emotions associated with the English lexical item 'female' are completely incongruent with the renowned delicacy of this poet. This being' the case, the translator is supposed to opt for functional-equivalence thus: '0 Beirut, my beloved/lady from among millions of women.' To illustrate this point further, consider the following stanza from a poem entitled "Ashiq min Filastin" (A lover from Palestine) by the palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish along with its translation (Sulaiman 1984: 158:.160).

 
Your eyes are a thorn in my heart;
It stings me, yet I adore it
and protect it from the wind.
I thrust it deeper and deeper
beyond darkness and pain,
So that its wound kindles the lights of lamps
and makes from my present days a future for her
Which is dearer to me than my soul.



Exercise 8
a) Translate the following extract from an English news report into  Arabic

Baby Steps for Peace

 
There will be no Hail Mary passes in this round of the Arab-Israeli search. As he completed his trip to the Middle East last week, Secretary of State James Baker argued for incremental progress, not a big, bold plan. "You have to crawl before you walk, and you have to walk before you run," he said in Damascus. Baker didn't lean on anyone during this visit. The pressure will begin gently this week with Baker's follow-up phone calls to the leaders he saw, then intensify when President Bush makes his own trip to the region, expected later this spring. Bush aides say. . .
(From the Time Magazine)

b) Is formal equivalence a priority in this text type? Why

c). What type of equivalence have you used for the metaphors 'baby steps' and 'Hail Mary passes'?

Exercise 9
a) Translate the following extract from one of Nizar Qabbani's poems on the Lebanese situation into English.

 
b) Is formal equivalence a priority in this text type? Why?


c) What type of equivalence have you used for the creative metaphor "قبيلة من الجراح"?