Iv - University of Salford Institutional Repository

It was only by chance that I came across an article in the
Literary Supplement of Al-Nadwa, a Makkah-based Saudi Arabian daily, on
the concept of 'shifts' as seen from the standpoint of Arabic
rhetorics. I was so impressed by the article that I began to reflect
upon the possibility of manipulating the concept of 'shifts' to evolve
a model for the teaching of translation to Arab students who are, more
than others, closely associated with Arabic linguistic tradition.
Though the concept of 'interlocked layers of meaning' was a good
starting point, the problem actually lay in how to apply the rhetorical
model to the analysis of texts and, subsequently, to translation
quality assessment. I could easily come to grips with the fact that
what we needed was to evolve an appropriate method of text analysis
which would place the text in its pertinent pragma-socio-communicative
perspective before translating it into the target language. The idea
of activating the model for the purposes of text analysis and
translation quality assessment was thus conceived. Moreover, I
supplied almost all necessary tools a text analyst would need for the
dismantlement of the intricately interlocked network of obligatory,
extended, and accessory meanings. This, in consequence, required that
some very basic concepts be arrived at and included in this thesis.
The first concept is included in Chapter One. Any model for text
analysis or translation quality assessment should be based on a sound
theory of translation. Similarly, no sound theory of translation could
be established unless certain elements were involved: philosophical,
communicative, and semiotic. Chapter One deals with these three
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