International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation
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English and Arabic News Translation: Yemeni Gender-based Audience Preferences
Full text linkThis research explores Yemeni viewers'/readers' preferences to watch/hear the news whether in Arabic or in English and the networks they prefer from English to Arabic and vice versa. It attempts to investigate gender-based preferences of the Yemeni viewers/readers of the choice of news context. It involves an in-depth look into the English and Arabic news delivered by major news agency networks such as Al-Jazeera English (AJE) and Al-Jazeera Arabic (AJA), in comparison to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in its news coverage in English and Arabic. Through a questionnaire filled in by 93 educated public participants, the results show that the majority of the participants strongly disagree that the general translation tools used by the news agencies in their online sites deliver accurate translations in terms of conveying the same message in different languages. Looking into the news delivery broadcast in both languages in Al-Jazeera and BBC, Aljazeera seems to be favored with gender-based statistically significant differences p-value is ≤ .005. Regarding the preference choice of news context to Yemeni viewers/readers, the Arabic version channel is found to be favored more than the English one in the preference of Yemeni viewers/readers. The majority of participants agree to bias in the news delivered in Arabic to that delivered in English in Yemen
Exploring Non-linguistic patterns of Jordanian Written Wedding Invitations: A Multimodal Perspective
Full text linkThe purpose of this study was to provide a comprehensive analysis of salient nonlinguistic features that characterize the genre of Jordanian wedding invitation cards. It also explores how socio-cultural and religious beliefs and practices are reflected in the generic formulaic structure of this genre. In order to explore nonlinguistic features, a genre analysis was carried out upon a corpus of 200 wedding invitation cards. The analysis was influenced by the work of Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996) as it profitably illuminates the relationship between social practice and written discourse and refuses linguistic choices as the only meaningmaking devices and identifies space, colour, picture, position, and size, among many others, as important semiotic devices. The findings of the study revealed that the writers of Jordanian wedding invitations use a number of non-linguistic resources the way they like to generate some special effects and express private and organizational intentions within the framework of culturally recognised purposes. It is hoped that the results of this study will be of great help in further understanding the socio-cultural perceptions, attitudes and values that shape these two communicative events as well as aiding in efforts towards intercultural communication
Investigating the Role of Cultural Schemata in Understanding Others' Spoken Discourse
Full text linkThis paper aims to answer the question which is said, "To what extend cultural gap lets most people not to understand each other's spoken discourse critically?". It is an attempt to show the importance of cultural schemata in understanding each other's spoken discourse. The researchers have adopted the qualitative method. A questionnaire and interview were used as tools for collecting data relevant to the study. The sample of this study comprised of (60) + (10) people who did not share the same cultural background and they were descended from different cultural background identities. The marks obtained from the questionnaire and interviews were compared. The results have revealed that the cultural schemata play a great role in understanding each other's spoken discourse critically. Also, the results have shown that that there are highly differences among those people who descended from different cultural background identities. Therefore, more space should be given to those people to bridge the gap among themselves and others in terms of exchanging the discursive messages
Reflections of the Past in Amitav Ghosh’s Novels -The Shadow Lines and The Glass Palace
Full text linkThis paper takes into discussion the diasporic phenomena, namely, rootlessness, nostalgia, memory and alienation in two of Amitav Ghosh’s novels namely The Shadow Lines and The Glass Palace. It infers that the characters get respite from memory banks. Ghosh uses the flashback technique in order to intensify the characters’ quest for identity. Diasporic literature traverses barricades in order to clinch a new selfhood. The very thought and longing for belongingness form the core to search for the original root. It refers to the rootedness namely one’s home-place. One is not able to detach from the human bondage, sentiments, and love. Another element which is associated with this attachment to home-place is ‘Memory’. An immigrant never forgets one’s home-place. The thread which links the past and the present is the recollection. Thus, nostalgia and memory are equally interlinked to search for one’s root or belongingness. This fixation to one’s home-place is the belongingness which is portrayed through the lens of recollection and flash back technique. Past always acts as a mirror in which the present has its reflections. In the Shadow Lines the glorious memories of Calcutta and Dhaka are beautifully pictured by the characters longing for their homelands. The partition of Bengal and the resultant trauma are widely depicted. The old family house stands as a wholesome framework of attachment of deeprootedness. It remains a home for the grandmother, even after partition and she always longs to see it again. In the Glass Palace, home thoughts are not something to be merely remembered as an abstract construct but represented as a cultural tool of negotiation for new cultural encounters. Thus, a new space is created through home thoughts which helps in the construction of a new identity. The past is remembered not as a dead, remote period, but as flowing on, into the present
Strategies of Translating the Concomitant Accusative by Saudi EFL Learners
Full text linkArabic is a Semitic language and is spoken throughout the Middle East, North Africa and some African countries. Classical Arabic is the language of the Qur'an; a Modern Standard Arabic is used in schools, universities and the mass media. On the other hand, English is a member of the Indo-European languages family. It is originated from Proto-Indo European, a language thought to be spoken about 3000 B. C. Due to the above-mentioned reason there are a lot of grammatical differences which arise between the two languages. Languages across the world have strikingly different syntactic rules when it comes to number, gender, person, tense, aspect, voice and word order. Some of these grammatical devices or systems may be present in one language but absent in another language. With students inclined to literally translate between such languages as in the case of KSA, the change of form can be quite difficult to understand. Teachers of language and translation in KSA are concerned with learning problems that arise due to lexical and grammatical non-equivalence between Arabic and English which often leads to confusion and incorrect output during translation process. The current study aimed at investigating one of the Arabic grammatical structures which has no equivalent in English (Concomitant Accusative). Following analytical methods, the study targeted two objectives: One, testing the learners’ ability to translate the Concomitant Accusative; and two, to gather an understanding of the strategies they adopted in the process. The study is likely to be of great value in a foreign language learning environment as is the case in the KSA. Participants were female undergraduate students (N=35) at Hurimilla College of Science and Humanities, Shaqra University, KSA. The data collected was analysed using SPSSR. The findings showed that this structure is indeed confusing for students as (53.7%) of the students’ translations were literal, while 26.3% were correct or acceptable, and (7.4%) were incorrect. On the other hand, (9.7%) of the students did not give any translations, while the weak translations represented (5.7%)
Reintegrating English Language in Benin Primary Schools Curricula: Practicality of an Experimental Approach
Full text linkThe purpose of this study is to investigate the acquisition of English language experimentation in public primary schools, specifically how English for young learners is applied to Benin as a francophone country. This survey began from the academic year 2017- 2018, involving 36 language instructors, 216 primary schools, 12 language experts and 12 Departments through the assignments, mechanisms, outcomes and mid – evaluation process. Data were collected by means of interviews (learners and instructors), Focus Group Discussions with experts and primary schools’ administrators via content analysis curricula, instructors training program, Total Physical Response implementation with feedback. Preliminary findings suggest the importance of clear consistent guidelines for assignments, learner and instructor profile design, processing approach leading to extensive and effective language education from teaching to learning with criteria for evaluation and periodical capacity building programs. It is hoped that assumptions from longitudinal study will be useful to language education program as integral with little success in the present generational integration policy
Articulating the Optimal Features of a Good Muslim Wife: Some Qur’anic expressions that Affiliate with the Woman’s Perfect, Metaphysical and Real Worlds
Full text linkThis small-scale study investigates the optimal features of good Muslim woman. It aims to describe, interpret, and explain the rhetorical features of the properties the Qur’anic discourse (QD) maintains for both sexes and those it excludes for the good Muslim woman. The study benefits from corpus, i.e. text, linguistics for data collection. It also applies a critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach to the Quotes collected from the Noble Qur’an (NQ). The paper builds on Van Dijk’s 1998 model of analysis at the syntactic, semantic and schematic levels of the properties identified for a good Muslim woman. It has been found that the QD assigns ten properties to describe a good Muslim man and woman; they include submission, belief, obedience, truthfulness, faithfulness, humbleness, alms giving, fasting, chastity, and turning to Allah. Among these, the QD exclusively and inclusively lists ‘being resigned, believing, always turning to Him, being devoted to worship, fasting’, and ‘being a widow or a virgin’ as general semantic features for a good Muslim wife. It has been concluded that the properties identified for a good Muslim woman have directive, informative, meta-linguistic and affective functions. They are part of the sociology of Islam which accommodates the ontological principle of creating women as a different sex having other roles to play with the deontological theory of moral obligation to obey freely the other sex. The Qur’anic engineering tactfully goes beyond reconciling both sexes’ needs and roles to repair some social norms established and entrenched against the woman who has already experienced marriage before
The Father-Figure in Fadwa Tuqan's and Yael Dayan's Autobiographie
Full text linkThis paper examines the father figure in the autobiographies of the Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan (1917-2003) and the Israeli novelist Yael Dayan (1939-present). In the early half of the twentieth century, Nablusi women, exemplified by Fadwa, did not have the chance to participate in the political life until the nakba in 1948. Women subsequently became freer and could gain more access to the social and political life which normally monopolized by patriarchs. In the same year, i.e. 1948, Tuqan's father died, so he was not present later to share the success of his daughter. Hence, the picture of the father that Fadwa draws in her autobiography A Mountainous Journey (1990) is mainly bounded to the domestic life. Dayan, unlike Fadwa, was given the infinite freedom to experience life since childhood. Although most Jewish women in the Israeli community obtained the same opportunities at the time, she was more privileged because she was the daughter of the famous Israeli leader Moshe Dayan. In her autobiography My Father, His Daughter (1986), Yael talks extensively about her father's political position and how it affected her life negatively and positively. This paper henceforth sheds light on dominant social and political patriarchal ideologies in the two autobiographies and how they are represented differently, that is: Tuqan's social father and Dayan's political father.
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Investigating Reading Proficiency: A Case Study of a Moroccan High School
Full text linkThe present study explores students’ primary concerns, perceptions, difficulties and attitudes characterized by a sheer lack of motivation towards reading. It also demonstrates how a language teacher can prosper in his/her own undertaking to bring about a community of readers with a want to read. This study covers an important comparison between students of three different levels, namely Common Core, First and Second year Baccalaureate. Likewise, it tries to explore the extent to which unmotivated readers are prone to meet the challenges all along the assigned reading tasks. A questionnaire was designed for analyzing the barriers towards attaining reading proficiency. It was also geared to determine the things that should be done to overcome the obstacles towards achieving the aspired reading competence. The results from this study imply that there is reason to suggest the need to develop a want in students to read via breathing life into comprehension texts presented to students. This can be done through integrating more illustrations and key vocabulary rubrics. Equally important, reading texts in students’ textbooks need to be given due importance, and dedicated efforts are to be considered on the part of textbook designers to help students attain and boost their reading skills. Reading, if done extensively, helps develop the reader’s reading competence and ultimately becomes an essential tool for academic succes
Sources of Offensive Nicknames in the Horan District in Jordan: A Sociolinguistic Study
Full text linkThis study aims to investigate the sources of offensive nicknames used by Jordanians in the Horan district from a sociolinguistic perspective. The sample consists of 150 nickname-users who live in the Horan district. A questionnaire was used for data collection. For data analysis, offensive nicknames were classified into many categories and then descriptively analyzed according to their sources. The study shows that these nicknames are associated with the nicknamees' body features, unpleasant psychological traits, or sensitive events in the nicknamees' lifetimes. The results of the study signify nicknames as a powerful tool by the hands of nickname users to show dominance over the nickname bearers. Nicknames in the rural regions in Jordan are extremely offensive and would negatively affect the nicknamees' self-esteem. It is hoped that the results of the current study will open the door for other researchers to go deeper into examining this sociolinguistic phenomenon