Explicature in Translating Arabic Modern Fiction into English: Protraction and Interjection

Abstract

This study aims at investigating ‘explicature’ as a quadruple norm in translating Arabic modern fiction into English on the basis of the translator’s visibility. It is to show how explicature focuses on the author’s background knowledge and appreciates the reader’s language peculiarities by means of language catalysts in parentheses (i.e. interpolations). Four levels of explicature were found out: literal, formal, usable and liberal. Protracting and interjecting the potential reader’s flow of attention, the translator’s interpolations were obligatorily filling-out or specifying, optionally text-building or aesthetic, pragmatically local or global and technically inherent or revelatory. They could be modified by either full insertion, direct replacement, reverse replacement or full deletion. As the two medial types (formal and usable) are the most notable, this quadruple model of explicature is intended to be a distinct norm in translating texts of fiction across such two completely different linguistic systems and cultural backgrounds as Arabic and English.