Reasons for Variation in Rendering the Arabic In/definiteness into English

Abstract

This article explores the reasons for variation in rendering the Arabic in/definiteness into English. It presents some of the findings of my Ph. D. dissertation (2015). Three approaches are followed in analyzing data of this study; syntactic, semantic and functional. In terms of syntax, the study is limited to analyzing the in/definite subjects and in/definite predicates. In terms of semantics, it is limited to analyze the functions and purposes of the rhetorical style of in/definiteness in the qur'anic verses of Al-Baqara and Al-A'raf. The study uses Nord's functional approach to translation. The results of this study show that context and the syntactic position in a sentence are influential factors in addressing in/definites. The study also reveals that there are some differences in rendering Arabic in/definite nouns into English. Some reasons for these differences are: unlike Arabic, English can express uniqueness by using a capital letter at the beginning of a unique noun instead of using definite article, can use bare-noun phrases to denote genus, and can use 'all' instead of the definite article when used with plurals to denote real inclusiveness. In addition, English does not use the definite article to denote genus and type in negative sentences however Arabic does. Furthermore, unlike Arabic, English uses the generic indefinite article to pick out a member as representative of a certain class.