Translation Assessment of Arabic Implicit Negation into English

Abstract

Unlike explicit negation, which is grammatically or morphologically signalled, implicit negation is a syntactico-semantic concept referring to those sentences that are semantically negated by the presence of some adverbials, quantifiers, conjunctions, particles, etc. The present study is concerned with assessing the English translations of implicit negatives as found in Qura’nic ayas and Arabic literary texts to uncover whether or not the translations of this type of negation are accurately produced. It is hypothesized that inaccuracies in the translation of implicit negation seem to be more recurrent than the accurate renditions as far as the linguistic area under study is concerned. The assessment of the translated texts has proved that translation of implicit negatives is difficult to process and convey from Arabic into English due basically to the linguistic differences between both languages. This sometimes has led to translate Arabic implicit negatives into English explicit negatives.