últimas corrientes teóricas en los estudios de traducción - Gredos ...

HASSANE LOUNIS–RELEVANCE THEORY: HOW USEFUL IS IT TO TRANSLATING DISCOURSE CONNECTIVES?
So, what is said and written comes true in the most natural and surest way; that
the blessing and curse of the parents descend on their children and do not pass them by.
To put this text in other words, one would get the following:
As a consequence, [of the fact that children learn from their parents and follow their
example], what is said and written comes true […] that the blessing […]
His argument on the failure of this translation is based on the fact that “in this way”
and “as a consequence” differ in meaning. This failure is caused by ignoring a vital issue: the
semantics of the connective so in German and those of the English so. The English so as
analysed by Blakemore (1988) “[…] interpret[s] the proposition it introduces as a logical
consequence” (1988: 87; emphasis added). Gutt (1991, 2000) argues that this can not be
applied to the German so.
As far as this example is concerned, the German so has an anaphoric effect whereas
the English 4 , in this particular context is not consequential and therefore Gutt (Ibid) argues
they provide significantly divergent clues.
APPLICATION OF THE METHOD ON ARABIC/ENGLISH TRANSLATION.
The following section includes an attempt to apply Gutt’s suggestion regarding
handling DCs in translation on Arabic/English translation. The aim is to assess whether or
not the method is applicable to other languages. However, before dealing with such a task,
certain notions related to Arabic need to be explained.
Adawat al-rabt (DCs) and translation
What has been said about the enthusiasm vis-à-vis the study of DCs in English can
be said about Arabic. Adawat al-rabt has always been, and still remains, a marginalised
linguistic issue and language users still rely on the so-called ancient Arabic literature. This
literature, as most contemporary Arabic linguist and Arabists see it is grammar-based and
regards the Holy Kor’an (Muslim holy book) as a model text from a grammatical, lexical
and syntactical point of view. Household names grammarians, until up to the pre-colonial
era, have not even mentioned adawat al-rabt. It is important to mention here that there is a
significant distinction between what is mentioned in the old grammar literature that is
regarded by some non-specialist as subjects related to adawat al-rabt and what in actual fact
is referred at present as adawat al-rabt. Ancient references do not lack studies on sets of
language particles and their grammatical functions in an utterance (cf. Lounis 1999 for
further details). Adawat al-rabt, however, is a broader subject as contemporary linguists
argue. It was perhaps the openness of those new scholars and learners and the knowledge
they acquired from learning other modern languages that gave way for the new perceptions
and fresh ideas to emerge. It was only then that subjects such as adawat al-rabt came into
existence. That is not, by any stretch of meaning, to say that all that heritage is no longer
needed and cannot help build a new comprehensive modal within discourse analysis.
Contemporary linguists are attempting to build on it and update certain notions, especially
from a pragmatic and semantic point of view.
4 In some rare situations, the English so might have the role of expressing a consequence. (Blakemore 1988)
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