The Degree to Which Translation Retains Parallelism: A Data-Driven Analysis of King Abdullah II’s Speeches from Arabic to English

Sana Shamaileh, Zayed University

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Forum for Linguistic Studies

Publication Date

1-1-2025

Abstract

This study investigates the frequency and handling of parallelism in Arabic and English, focusing on how it affects argumentation in political discourse. This paper examines how parallelism is preserved in translation from Arabic to English, with a focus on a selection of King Abdullah II’s speeches. However, it does not explore the impact of translating from Arabic to English on parallelism in other types of texts, an area that could be investigated in future studies. Using speeches by King Abdullah II, the study compares Arabic original texts to their English translations. The texts are taken from speeches by King Abdullah II to compare the changes in parallelism that occur when translating the texts from Arabic to English. Three levels of parallelism—word level, sentence level, and chunk level—are examined. The findings are presented in two tables: one for Arabic speeches and another for their English translations. The study’s corpus includes original Arabic political speeches and their English translations, as parallelism is examined from the perspective of translation studies. The analysis reveals a total of nineteen parallel structures in the Arabic texts. In contrast, the English translations retained only six parallel structures, displayed eight semi-parallel structures, and lost five structures altogether. These findings highlight the similarities and differences in parallelism between Arabic and English, shedding light on the implications of translation choices in the context of political speech. The study emphasizes the importance of maintaining parallelism to strengthen arguments in translation.

ISSN

2705-0610

Publisher

Bilingual Publishing Group

Volume

7

Issue

1

First Page

172

Last Page

186

Disciplines

Communication | Linguistics

Keywords

Compensation, Figure of Speech, Frequency, Loss, Political Discourse, Repetition, Rhetorical Device

Scopus ID

85213688536

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

no

Link to Full Text

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