Apart from general issues abort language, linguistics and language teach-ing, mainly focussing on English, it was necessary to give some space to the master of oriental languages in the Festchrift for Professor Janusz Arabski. He is a scholar and teacher connected with the University of Silesia, was the one to bring new philological specialties to the university, giving its students a chance to study English translation together with Arabic and Chinese lan-guages. This unique offer has been very popular with both students and appli-cants. It has introduced variety to the field of translation and inspired ideas for many remarkable dissertations that attempt to combine two linguistically and culturally different worlds and try to embrace a broader intellectual spec-trum of research. My modest contribution to the jubilee book is a token of gratitude to Professor Arabski for emphasizing the importance of oriental lan-guages and bringing knowledge of Far and Middle East countries to English philologists.
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Popularized by French and English philologists, the term faux-amis (false friends) refers to the lexical level and denotes pairs of words in different lan-guages that formally look and sound similar but differ in meaning (see LUKSZYN, 1993: 85). This kind of paronymy is typical for related languages (Slavonic languages — Polish and Russian or Czech), or languages less closely related but derived from the same stem (Polish and English or French).
Syntactic false friends of the translator of Arabic texts into Polish 135
In languages that belong to different families, surface lexical similarities seem rarer and, even if they appear, they do not contribute to mistakes or bad choices often made by translators. It is possible that, from the initial stage of learning a language that is substantially different from the mother tongue, learners often expect dissimilarities between linguistic phenomena such as a different alphabet or new phonemes. The Polish-Arabic linguistic contact has shown that lexical similarities of the two languages are a source of jokes rather than mistakes. Poles working in Arabic countries have reported on many
“cross-linguistic mistakes” that evoked laughter and turned into funny anec-dotes. For example, a Libyan word for a wife (zowza/zo–za) was adapted by Poles working in Libya as zołza (a Polish word that translates as “a shrew”). Most of the Polish users seemed to be convinced that those two words constituted se-mantic equivalents (see TUREK, 1992, part 1 and 2, 1997).
What might be really dangerous and troublesome for translators from Arabic is an intra-lingual interference (see KHALIL, 1985), arising from similari-ties between some root consonants in Arabic words that look and sound almost the same. For example, a sentence taken from one of the contemporary Arabic stories:
hal barrah.a-ka ăš-šawq? (KANA–FANΙ, 1975: 120, v. 11) — ‘Have you been both-ered by longing?’ — was translated into Polish as: Pokłuły cię ciernie?
(KANA–FANΙ, 1982: 107, v. 28) (‘Have you been pricked by thorns?’) as a result of a similarity between words šawq (longing, desire, yearning) — with the postvelar, uvular phoneme q and šawk (thorn) — with the velar phoneme k.
A sentence taken from another story:
wa-fι bayt al-hawlι kanat al-h.alqa mustah.kamatan h.awla fat.ima (IDRΙS, s.a.
88, v. 4) — ‘At overseer’s house, a tight circle surrounded Fatima’ — was translated into Polish as: ‘W domu polowego krąg sędziowski otaczał Fatimę’
(IDRIS, 1970: 235, v. 36) (‘At overseer’s house, a juridical circle surrounded Fatima’), which again resulted from the phonetic similarity of the words mah.kama (jury) and mustah.kam (tight, strong, close), even though this similar-ity is less obvious than in the previous example.
In the next example, a similarity between only two phonemes misled the translator who mistook the word h.iyadι (indifferent, blank) for the word h.adιdι (iron, steel) and (mis)translated the following sentence:
aš-šams tarqab bi-‘ayn barida h.iyadiyya (AS-SAMMAN, 1987: 272, v. 9) — ‘The sun is looking with its cold and indifferent eyes’ — as: ‘Słońce patrzy zimnym, stalowym spojrzeniem’ (AS-SAMMAN, 1984: 244, v. 31) (‘The sun is looking with its steel eyes’).
This sort of mistakes may result from the fact that written texts lack in vowel vocalisms, also the ones that are in a distinctive opposition, that decide about a meaning of a particular word. As a teacher of Arabic, I have observed problems with word pairs such as:
zahr (back) — zuhr (south), al-faras (horse) — al-furs (the Persians), firaš (bed, cushion) — faraš (butterfly, moth). These and many more examples rep-resent a type of mistakes called intralingual interference.
False friends may also refer to linguistic levels other than lexis, for example syntax (JAMES, 1998: 102; SZPILA, 2005: 78). Such a phenomenon (in relation to Polish and Arabic) was observed during a syntactic analysis of Arabic literary texts and their Polish translations and a subsequent study of equivalents used by Polish translators1. There are several constructions in the Arabic language that have their grammatical equivalents in Polish. Translators, especially begin-ner-translators, tend to choose these constructions or their close equivalents making the translation far from perfection; the formal equivalent abruptly changes the stylistics of the text or, because of its archaic character, departs from the text’s register.
I would like to present four Arabic constructions that are “syntactic false friends” for Arabic-Polish translation, and that often lead to the use of a wrong stylistic, or even semantic, formal equivalent.
(1) The Arabic figura etymologica: al-maf‘ul al-mut.laq (or: accusativus absolutus, paranomastic accusativus). This is the way to determine the accusa-tive form of deverbal noun derived from predicate of a sentence — both verbal and nominal — or a synonymous predicate (predicative) that may be equipped in various attributives, e.g.:
tug˘ummi‘at fι bayti-hi maktaba kabιra kana ya‘tazz bi-ha kull al-i‘tizaz (‘ANAYIT, 1978: 20) — ‘W jego domu powstała wielka biblioteka, z której był ogromnie dumny’ — ‘A new library, which he was extremely proud of, was built in his house’.
Constructions known as figura etymologica are typical for classical Euro-pean languages such as Latin or Greek. They are defined as a kind of a comple-ment where a noun and the verb it modifies are etymologically or semantically related (POLAŃSKI, 1999: 152) and the noun is often functionally equivalent to an adverbial. The same construction, consisting of a verb and a related deverbal noun in an instrumental case (ablative) that might appear with attributes (e.g.
‘żyć przyjemnym życiem’ — ‘to live a happy life’, ‘śmiać się gromkim śmiechem’ — ‘to laugh a heavy laughter’) — can be found in Polish but in most cases this formal equivalent will be useless in Arabic-Polish translation.
For stylistic reasons, the sentence above cannot be translated as: [‘Wielka biblioteka, z której był dumny całą swoją dumą’] — [‘A big library, he was proud of with all of his pride’]. Although the meaning is clear, it is necessary to use an adverbial of degree („bardzo” — “much”, „ogromnie” — “extremely”), in order to stress the sentence’s emphatic character. In the sentence where the
Syntactic false friends of the translator of Arabic texts into Polish 137
1 I used the same method in my studies on contrastive syntax of literary Arabic and Polish.
See: GÓRSKA, 2000.
Arabic word al-mut.laq is formed from the verb qatala (kill), we cannot use Polish figura etymologica with an ablative, but we have to substitute this con-struction for a Polish adverbial of manner:
qatalna fat.ima qatlan (POLAŃSKI, 1999: 77, v. 10—11) — ‘Uśmiercilibyśmy/
zniszczylibyśmy całkowicie Fatimę’ — ‘We would kill/destroy Fatima com-pletely’.
There are more translation possibilities than the adverbial of degree or man-ner, including often used comparative adverbial clauses:
yataraqqab al-g˘ama‘ hurug˘a-ha taraqquba-hum li-l-malika (POLAŃSKI, 1999:
91, v. 17) — ‘Wszyscy będą spoglądać na jej wyjście tak, jakby patrzyli na królową’ — ‘Everyone will watch her move as if they were looking at a queen’
or complementary adverbial clauses: ‘Wszyscy będą spoglądać, jak wychodzi w orszaku niby królowa’ (IDRIS, 1970: 239, v. 12—13) — ‘Everyone will watch her move in the retinue like a queen’. Another possibility is an adjectival at-tributive in a form of a past participle:
yah.kι la-hum ‘an umur an-nisa’ ăllatι hum ag˘hala al-g˘ihal bi-ha (IDRΙS, s.a. 83, v. 5) — ‘Opowiadał o nieznanych im sprawach z kobietami’ (IDRIS, 1970: 231, v. 33—34) — ‘He talked to women about things unknown to them’ — and many other substitutes. With no fixed equivalents, a translator, whose freedom is limited only by semantically-syntactic possibilities of the target text, can choose according to his (her) own preferences (see: GÓRSKA, 2000: 309—310).
(2) Arabic at-tamyιz that Arabists call “accusative of distinction” or “accu-sative of specification” is a noun in a form of indefinite accu“accu-sative, which — if related to a predicate specifies the action expressed by a verb (see: DANECKI, 2001, vol. 2: 70). Functional equivalent of this construction in Polish is an ad-verbial of respect rarely used in the process of a written translation. In some cases, the use of a formal equivalent abruptly changes the semantic norm of a text, and sometimes, it ends up with a complete failure as in the following ex-amples:
la yaqillu ‘an-ni ma‘ rifatan fι ad.-d.ah.k (AL-‘UG˘ AYLΙ, 1978: 130, v. 15) (liter-ally: ‘Nie jest gorszy ode mnie pod względem umiejętności wyśmiewania się’
— ‘He is no worse than I am when it comes to his abilities to laugh at others’) — ‘Nie mniej ode mnie zna się na podkpiwaniu’ (AL-UDŻAJLI, 1983:
340, v. 31—32) (‘No worse than I can he laugh at others’);
wa- yazdad kull t.araf is.raran (IDRΙS, s.a. 66, v. 5) — (literally: ‘Każda ze stron rośnie/umacnia się w uporze’ — ‘Each party gets stronger in obstinacy’) —
‘Zwiększa się wzajemny upór i zawziętość’ (IDRIS, 1970: 247, v. 7—8) — ‘Mu-tual obstinacy and doggedness increases’;
fa-yazdadun faza‘an(AS-SAQR, 1978: 116, v. 17) — (literal translation is impos-sible, construction: 3rd person pl. masculine, present tense ‘to become greater, become more, grow, increase’ + acc. of indefinite noun, meaning “fear, fright, anxiety”) — ‘Ich przerażenie rosło’ — ‘Their fear was increasing’.
In the last sentence, it is hardly possible to approximate the translation to the Polish adverbial of respect. For stylistic reasons, the Arabic equivalent in a dependant case (casus obliqui) must replace the subject in the Polish sen-tence, which involves a modification of a noun case and a verb form.
The Arabic at-tamyιz can also make a construction with a nomen (usually an adjective in various forms) as its adverbial attributive. As such, it can de-ceive a translator and make him use an analogous Polish construction — a nominal attributive in the instrumental case — that may turn out a “syntactic false friend”. Whereas translation of the word group:
akbaru-hum sinnan as ‘najstarszy wiekiem/pod względem wieku/jeśli chodzi o wiek’ — ‘the oldest in age’/‘as far as age is concerned’ is correct and sounds natural, the translation of sarι‘un h.ifzan as ‘szybki, jeśli chodzi o zapa-miętywanie’ — ‘quick, as far as memorizing is concerned’ is hardly acceptable (a better solution for this phrase is: ‘szybko zapamiętujący/mający dobrą pamięć’ — ‘able to learn/memorize quickly’ or ‘the one with a good memory’).
Polish grammatical equivalent is unacceptable for the following phrase katιfun lih.kyatan — ‘z gęstą brodą/o gęstej brodzie’ — ‘with thick beard/of thick beard’.
(3) In Arabic, word groups, synonymous to the phrases/sentences mentioned above, can be formed on the basis of the genitive construction. The Arabic im-proper annexation — the structure consisting of an adjective in the position of the defined word and a noun in the position of the defining word — has its for-mal equivalent in the Polish language which consists of an adjective and a noun in the role of genitival attributive — however it is very uncommon for this structure to act as a textual equivalent of this syntactic unit. More typically this role is assumed by a single adjective (e.g. asmaru ăl-lawni — ‘śniady’ —
‘tawny’), an adjective with a complementary adverb of comparison (e.g. farι‘u ăt.-t.uli — ‘bardzo wysoki’ — ‘very tall’), prepositional phrase (e.g. katιfu ăl-lih.yati — ‘z gęstą brodą’ — ‘with thick beard’), etc. The Polish structure of this type, e.g. ‘pełen dostojeństwa i godności’ — ‘full of dignity and self-es-teem’ can become a textual equivalent of another type of annexation, e.g. du in the nomen regens position (du mahaba wa-waqar) (see: GÓRSKA, 2002: 137).
(4) Like in other languages, Arabic extraposition (ar. qat.) — abruptly changes the natural grammatical structure of a sentence to emphasize one of its nominal components and to repeat it in a form of an anaphoric pronoun further in the sentence. Cantarino calls this construction an anacoluthon (CANTARINO, 1975, vol. 2: 45), although in European languages, including Polish, it functions as nominativus pendens/nominativus antecedens (anticipation of subject and ob-ject) or nominativus absolutus (POLAŃSKI, 1999: 397).
Translation of the Arabic extraposition with a use of its Polish grammatical equivalent is generally acceptable and translators tend to overuse it. Although syntactically correct, it may cause problems on functional and stylistic levels as
Syntactic false friends of the translator of Arabic texts into Polish 139
extraposition does not play the same role in Arabic and Polish. In both lan-guages it serves as an expressive-impressive device but in Polish it has an addi-tional function — it gives words special and even solemn character, especially when extraposition is distinguished from the rest of the sentence with a dash.
I have observed that, in modern Arabic, the extraposition is used considerably more often as a construction that allows emphasizing any nominal part of a sentence (not necessarily a subject or an object) with limited grammatical possibilities of its inversion. Semantically transparent and convenient for Arabic users, the syntactic, analytical construction that remains in accordance with the spirit of communicatively used dialects, is used not only to convey ex-pressive function but more often as a device used to organize the the-matic-rhematic structure of sentences.
And so, for example the sentence: wa-n-nar lam tahrug˘ alsinatu-ha min nawafidi-ha hiya (AS-SAMMAN, 1987: 274, v. 22) does not necessarily mean:
‘Ogień — jego jęzory nie wydobywają się z ich okien’ — ‘Fire — its tongues don’t come out of their windows’, but rather ‘Jęzory ognia nie wydobywają się z ich okien’ — ‘Tongues of fire don’t come out of their windows’. In the next sentence wa-‘abdun ma‘a anna-hu kabιr fι ăs-sinn illa anna ah.adan la yaqul la-hu ya ‘amm (IDRΙS, s.a. 231, v. 3.) the name of Abdun should not be empha-sized by the extraposition. It is recommended to make use of flexibility of Pol-ish syntax that allows positioning an object at the beginning of a sentence:
‘Abduna, chociaż był już stary, nikt nie nazywał stryjem’ — ‘Abdun, although very old, no one called an uncle’. Introduction of the Polish extraposition to the following sentence would make it sound funny and too solemn for a used Arabic register:
wa-t.aqιyatu-hu qad kabasa-ha fawqa ra’si-hi (IDRΙS, s.a. 92, v. 20) —
‘Wcisnął na głowę takijję’ — ‘He jammed takijja on his head’ (literally:
‘Takijja — wcisnął ją na głowę’ — ‘Takijja — he jammed it on his head’). If used in the following sentence, the extraposition would be even more difficult to accept:
amma ăl-an fa-ha hiya ăs-suh.ub al-katιfa tasta‘ιd mawaqi‘a-ha (As-SAMMAN, 1987: 274, v. 9) — ‘I oto teraz gęste chmury wracają na swoje pozycje’ — ‘And here they are, the thick clouds come back where they belong’ (literally: ‘Co do chwili obecnej/jeśli chodzi o chwilę obecną, oto gęste chmury wracają na swoje pozycje’ — ‘At the very moment/if the present moment is concerned, here are the thick clouds coming back where they belong’).
Among all the presented examples of “syntactic false friends”, extraposition seems to be a peculiar construction. Even if used by an inexperienced translator, it does not cause any serious syntactic or semantic flaws to the translation.
What it changes, however, is a distribution of semantic stresses in the text, and eventually the text’s function and sometimes even the register. The ability to see the surface nuances is an extremely important element of translation skills and
translators should pay more attention to those aspects of the construction pre-sented in the paper.
This kind of linguistic analysis is obvious for the majority of European lan-guages, especially English. However, it should be underlined that the syntactic
— comparative and translatory — analyses of Arabic and Polish are quite a new phenomenon. There are only two guides on Arabic didactics available (GÓRSKA, SKOCZEK and ADNAN, 1999; KRÓL, 2005), and no books dedicated to the teaching of Arabic-Polish translation.
Studying problems of syntax of modern literary Arabic, I try to point to problems teachers and translators of the Arabic language should pay special attention to — and this is the main purpose of my work, including this small article.
Translated by Anna Malinowska
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