Stylistic Issues in Two Arabic Translations of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms

This thesis provides an analysis of four stylistic features of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms (ST) and their equivalents in two Arabic translations (TT1 and TT2): 1. The coordinator and; 2. Existential there; 3. Dummy it; and 4. Fronted adverbials. Examples of these four stylistic features are identified in the ST, TT1, and TT2. Their formal (structural/syntactic) and functional (semantic) properties are then anlaysed linguistically from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. Two reader-response questionnaires are administered, one dealing with the ST and the other with TT2. These are used to ascertain readers’ reactions to extracts involving these four stylistic features in the ST and their correspondents in TT2. Finally, the results of the formal and functional analyses of the four stylistic features are compared with those of the reader-response questionnaires.
The linguistic analysis reveals that all four stylistic features considered give rise to a variety of translation procedures in TT1 and TT2. It also reveals some changes from the ST meaning in the TTs, particularly in the case of fronted adverbials. The questionnaire analysis shows that while ST respondents saw the ST as ‘simple’ and ‘vivid’ regarding these features positively, TT2 respondents frequently regarded TT2 as ‘simple’ but saw this as a negative feature. Their general view was that Arabic TT2 has a poor style, because it fails to exhibit traditional stylistic and rhetorical features of Arabic writing, such as metaphor and parallelism. Apparently identical stylistic effects, such as ‘simplicity’, may not hold the same value for TT respondents, as for ST respondents.
The thesis finally shows the relevance and applicability to the data examined and analyses carried out of a number of translation norms proposed by key translation studies scholars who have dealt with norms: Nord, Toury and Chesterman: 1. Nord’s regulative norms (conventions) (considered identical to Toury’s textual-linguistic norms); 2. Toury’s initial norms; 3. Chesterman’s communication norm; and 4. Chesterman’s relation norm.