Philosophical Interpretation of Lexical and Sentential Ambiguity in English-Arabic Translation

Dr. Arif Abdullah Saleem Al-Ashoor

doi:10.33193/IJoHSS.42.2023.531

Dr. Arif Abdullah Saleem Al-Ashoor Binghamton University- Translation Studies

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33193/IJoHSS.42.2023.531

الكلمات المفتاحية: Philosophical Interpretation, Lexical Ambiguity, Sentential Ambiguity, English-Arabic Translation

الملخص

Translation debates have continued to be passionately argued. The study of the connection between philosophy and translation on the one hand and ambiguity in translation on the other hand have both been growing. The connection between philosophy and translation is unavoidable and inevitable. Notwithstanding, philosophers have not tackled the question of translation directly; translation in general has been tackled indirectly by some philosophers. Ambiguity in translation is a fertile field to investigate. Translation of some written sentences is problematic since they are translated from different contexts in culture.

This paper aims to (1) study the connection between philosophy and translation on the one hand, and then (2) connect the philosophical interpretation of ambiguous sentences and their effect on the translation from English into Arabic. This paper also aims at (3) discussing the question that is hissing in the translator’s mind in order to translate an ambiguous sentence: whether to lean on syntactic or semantic dis-ambiguation. As a result, this paper hypothesizes that lexemes meaning, interpretation, and thus translation is not only sentence bound but clear cotext and context bound.

Therefore, to test this hypothesis, in my research, the study selects some sentences from some research and dictionaries which are believed to be ambiguous. The examples I have selected may not cover all ambiguous English sentences, for ambiguous sentences are still turning up, however, I have tried to cover frequently used sentences. I will look at some common difficulties in the interpretation of lexical items. Then, the ambiguity of these sentences will be removed by using these sentences with the same ambiguous lexemes in clear cotext and context. After removing the ambiguity, the sentences will be translated into Arabic to show the impact of both cotext and context on translation.

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