Ahmed, S., Mahfouz, S., Ahmad, I. (2023). Explicitation in Translating Court Rulings from Arabic into English. CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education, 83(1), 259-283. doi: 10.21608/opde.2023.325337
Salma Essam Gaber Ahmed; Soheir Gamal Mahfouz; Ikram Abdel-Latif Ahmad. "Explicitation in Translating Court Rulings from Arabic into English". CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education, 83, 1, 2023, 259-283. doi: 10.21608/opde.2023.325337
Ahmed, S., Mahfouz, S., Ahmad, I. (2023). 'Explicitation in Translating Court Rulings from Arabic into English', CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education, 83(1), pp. 259-283. doi: 10.21608/opde.2023.325337
Ahmed, S., Mahfouz, S., Ahmad, I. Explicitation in Translating Court Rulings from Arabic into English. CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education, 2023; 83(1): 259-283. doi: 10.21608/opde.2023.325337
Explicitation in Translating Court Rulings from Arabic into English
This paper investigates the use of explicitation in the context of legal discourse, particularly in English translations of Arabic court rulings. Blum-Kulka (1986) introduced the 'explicitation hypothesis' in her article 'Shifts of cohesion and coherence in translation, which proposes that translators tend to add information in the target text that is implicit in the source text. This amplification results in translated texts that exhibit a higher level of explicitness compared to the originals, irrespective of the language pairs involved in the translation process. Thus, explicitation is considered a fundamental aspect of any translation activity. To assess the applicability of this hypothesis to English translations of Arabic court rulings, El-Nashar's (2016) framework is adopted as the tool of analysis. The analysis of the translated texts, which are extracted from Qatar Legal Portal (Al Mezaan, by the Ministry of Justice, demonstrates that translators occasionally opt to 'spell out' information that was implicit in the source text, leading to translated texts that are more explicit than the originals. The findings indicate that explicitation strategies serve various purposes, among which is to enhance cohesion and coherence, to prevent breakdowns in communication, to avoid ambiguity, and to add more explicitness to the target texts.
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