Translation and Arabicization Methods of English Scientific and Technical Terms into Arabic

Abstract

Due to linguistic differences among languages, rendering new concepts embodied in new terms has always been a challenging issue in translation. English has become the medium of science and technology. Therefore, it has dominance over other languages of the world. Technical terms and concepts are translated mainly from English to other languages such as the Arabic language. Because of the foreignness and unfamiliarity of these terms in Arabic, the Arabic Language Academy ‫مجمع‬ ‫العربية‬ ‫اللغة‬ [majma' al-lughati al-arabiyah] has always endeavoured to coin native terms in order to domesticate and naturalizeforeign terminology into Arabic. To accomplish this goal, translation strategies, as well as Arabic word-formation techniques such as derivation and composition have been employed by the academy. Among Arabicization methods isoutright phonetic borrowing of the English term via transliteration into Arabic sounds and characters. Another form of borrowing is calque (loan translation). This translation and Arabicization method has also been used by the academy in its terminology work. The aim of this research is to identify strategies of translation and Arabicization used by the academy in its terminology work. Accordingly, a descriptive and comparative analysis of ten English scientific and technical terms with their translational and Arabicized equivalents were analyzed and discussed. These terms were translated and Arabicized by the Arabic Language Academy of Cairo (Cairo ALA), which adopted various translation and Arabicization approaches to introduce and assimilate these terms into Arabic. Translation methods included borrowing (loan word), loan translation (calque) and literal translation (word-for-word). Arabicization methods included outright phonetic borrowing, loan translation, derivation, and composition. Findings suggested that Cairo ALA has appropriately applied methods of translation, as well as techniques of Arabicization in its efforts to delimit the foreignness of English terms. Accordingly, these terms were properly domesticated into Arabic. www.awej-tls.org 93 Introduction The term Arabicization comes to light whenever there is a lack of translational equivalence or equivalent effect in Arabic. Word-coinage, which is a process of word-formation, usually takes place when a natural equivalent of the foreign concept or term is missing. Most often, new words of technology, i.e., scientific and technical terms, lack natural and standard equivalents in the host languages such as the Arabic language. For Pinchuck (1977) languages may suffer from gaps at the lexical level, and most likely, " one language will have no words for a concept expressed in the second language " (p. 53).Catford (1967) has earlier emphasized the difficulty of establishing translation equivalence between lexical items, especially when technical terms are concerned. Therefore, it is quite difficult to create absolute translation equivalence between technical and scientific terms in two different languages such as English and Arabic. Accordingly, the gap may be filled by a term borrowed from the source language or by the creation of a new term in the target language. To be natural and domesticated for native Arabs, scientific and technical terminology has been assimilated into the Arabic language through translation and Arabicization methods (Al-Asal&Smadi, 2012). In the context of this paper, translation methods include borrowing (loan word), literal translation (word-for-word) and loan translation (calque). Arabicization methods include phonetic borrowing via transliteration, which is generally referred to as Arabicization (at-ta'rib) by many scholars of Arabic, as well as word-formation techniques such as derivation and composition. Therefore, the researchers believe that the concept of Arabicization refers to the application of various word-formation processes in Arabic including phonetic borrowing via transliteration. Accordingly, when a foreign term is Arabicized, it is either coined in accordance with word-formation rules of Arabic and/or phonetically borrowed from the source language. The concept of Arabicization is differently approached by Arab linguists and scholars. According to Al-Asal & Smadi (2012), Arabicization is used to refer to a process of transliteration, where a foreign term is merely transliterated in conformity with the Arabic phonological and graphological systems. Therefore, when a certain English technical term is 'Arabi-cized', it means that " it is linguistically borrowed from English and used in Arabic with some modification, e.g., 'filtration'(faltarah) or without modification, e.g., 'filter'(filtar) " (p. 22). In the same vein, Ahmed (2011, p. 469) believes that Arabicization is an adopted and already implemented strategy to introduce new concepts into Arabic. It is " the process of translating foreign terms using Arabic forms " . For instance, the English philosophy, drachma and asphalt are Arabicized into falsafah, dirham and is falt, respectively. Arab scholars often refer to such transference as phonetic borrowing (Darwish 2009).English-Arabic examples include the English radar into‫,رادار‬ which is phonetically transferred into Arabic through a process called 'transliteration' or 'transcription'. Here, the phonetic properties of the source language term are directly transferred with or without modification into the target language. Therefore, Arabicization, in its narrowest sense, entails mere transliteration of a foreign term according to Arabic sounds and characters (Khulusi, 1982).