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The question of tense, which marks the relative time of
events, constitutes a major problem both for language students and
translators. Tense is a major construct of the verb, and as such,
marks the time span of the action in which the actor or actors are
involved. The division of tense into past, present and future is
almost common in all languages. The present-tense form, however
is by no means clear-cut either in English or in Arabic. In the
, k , s1 . ,
Arabic sentence1,61(.114i/IV,4ts,,,r-UJ'2J-0 (People are born
-
-
and die, but good memory lives forever.), the verbs 'yaglicilk'
(literally 'go') and s va.it h n' (literally 'Co') are both in
the present tense form. But this does not mean that the events of
birth and death are limited to the present time only. On the
contrary, the present-tense form of both verbs in this particular
instance refers to the past, present and leads well into the
future. , Similarly, the present-tense form in English indicates a
variety of relative times, eg. the verb 'comes' in the following
expressions indicates relative times: 'If he comes, we will give
him a warm welcome' (future); 'After that she comes and kisses him
passionately while everyone was having a quiet drink' (past) and
'She comes every Saturday night' (past, present and future). Since
the division of tense into present, past and future is by no means
clear-cut it may be appropriate, for analytical reasons, to talk
about prior, contemporaneous, and subsequent. But even these
distinctions would not solve all the tense problems in both English
and Arabic.
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