The Science and Art of Translation Between Arabic and English

Introduction

Translation is frequently described as either a science governed by rules or as an art that relies on intuition and creativity. Yet, this dichotomy is misleading and obscures the layered reality of translation, especially when working between structurally and culturally distant languages such as Arabic and English. More than a linguistic transfer, translation is a cross-cultural negotiation, a process of re-articulation, and an act of epistemological mediation. In this article, I argue that common questions about translation often reflect limited assumptions about language, meaning, and textual fidelity. I further explore the tensions that arise in the translator–client relationship, the structural and terminological mismatches between Arabic and English, and the broader implications for professional translation practice. 

1. Is Translation a Science or an Art? A Misleading Binary 

The enduring debate over whether translation is a science or an art is itself a reflection of conceptual reductionism. Translation involves scientific aspects such as terminological precision, syntax rules, and genre conventions, and artistic dimensions such as stylistic adaptation, cultural resonance, and rhetorical impact. 

More fundamentally, translation is an interpretive act. As Benjamin (1923/2000) famously argued, translation is not about reproducing the same message in a different code, but about expressing the “afterlife” of a text in a new linguistic world. Similarly, Eco (2001) emphasized that translation is not about saying the same thing, but about negotiating meaning. The translator is thus not merely a technician, but a co-creator, grappling with intention, audience, and ideology. This reframes translation as a knowledge-producing process rather than a passive transfer of information. 

2. Frequently Asked Questions: A Critical Reading 

Many frequently asked questions in the translation field reflect underlying misconceptions. Let us critically examine some of them: 

“Should translation be literal?” 

This question presupposes that literalness guarantees accuracy. In fact, literal translation often distorts meaning, especially when translating idioms, metaphors, and culturally embedded expressions. Arabic, for instance, uses rich figurative language that collapses under word-for-word rendering into English. The real issue is not literalness versus freedom, but functional equivalence—what Newmark (1988) referred to as communicative translation. 

“Why do two translators produce different versions of the same text?” 

Such questions assume that translation is a univocal act with one correct answer. Yet translation is interpretive, shaped by context, purpose, and audience. Variation does not necessarily signal error; it may reflect legitimate plurality of meaning (Venuti, 2013). 

“Can machine translation replace human translation?” 

This question is practical, but conceptually flawed. While neural machine translation has improved significantly (Bahdanau, Cho, & Bengio, 2016), it remains limited in capturing contextual nuance, cultural subtext, and pragmatic intention—elements central to human communication. Especially in legal, literary, and religious texts, machine translation risks flattening meaning or creating dangerous ambiguities. 

3. Structural and Cultural Barriers Between Arabic and English 

a. Syntax and Grammar Mismatches 

Arabic is a Semitic language with a root-based morphology and flexible sentence structure; English is a Germanic language with fixed word order and limited inflection. Arabic frequently uses nominal sentences and allows omission of the subject, while English favors explicit grammatical subjects and linear clarity. This leads to asymmetries in expression, requiring substantial restructuring during translation (Hatim & Mason, 1997). 

b. Cultural Concepts and Pragmatic Implicature 

Terms like “honor” (شرف), “modesty” (حياء), or “tribal allegiance” (عصبية قبلية) are culturally saturated and lack direct equivalents in English. Translators must therefore make interpretive choices—retain the original term (foreignization), find a rough cultural equivalent (domestication), or footnote the term (Venuti, 1995). Each strategy involves ethical implications. 

c. Terminological Gaps 

In technical and legal domains, Arabic often suffers from terminological fragmentation. There is no unified Arabic terminology authority equivalent to ISO or ASTM. This forces translators to make ad hoc decisions, which can compromise consistency and clarity. Moreover, many new technologies arrive with English neologisms that remain untranslated or inconsistently Arabized. 

4. Translator–Client Relationship: Misalignments and Power Dynamics 

Professional translators often face unrealistic expectations from clients who view translation as a mechanical act or a service detached from interpretive labor. Some critical tensions include: 

a. Speed vs. Quality 

Clients frequently request same-day delivery for complex documents, ignoring the time-intensive nature of research, drafting, and revision. This reflects a market logic that prioritizes speed over accuracy and ethical responsibility. 

b. Lack of Contextual Input 

Clients often fail to provide essential background information (target audience, purpose of text, regional preferences), which are critical for informed translation decisions. This neglect can compromise the quality and relevance of the final product. 

c. Misunderstanding Specialization 

There is a tendency to assume that any bilingual person can translate any document. This assumption ignores the need for domain-specific knowledge, especially in legal, medical, or technical fields, and contributes to the undervaluation of professional translation. 

5. Reframing Translation as Knowledge Work 

Rather than treat translation as secondary or derivative, it should be recognized as knowledge production. Translation shapes how texts are received, understood, and canonized in new linguistic contexts. This is especially evident in the translation of religious, literary, and political discourse. Far from being neutral, translation: 

• • Reinforces or resists ideological narratives; 

• • Mediates between systems of knowledge; 

• • Constructs new interpretive frameworks (Spivak, 1993). 

Translators are thus not passive intermediaries but epistemic agents whose choices have cultural and political consequences. 

Conclusion: Towards a Critical Praxis of Translation 

Translation between Arabic and English is not simply a technical task—it is a critical praxis that engages with language, culture, power, and meaning. This article has argued that: 

• • The science vs. art binary is inadequate for understanding the complexity of translation; 

• • Common questions often reflect conceptual misunderstandings about language and meaning; 

• • Structural and cultural asymmetries make translation between Arabic and English uniquely challenging; 

• • Client expectations are frequently misaligned with the ethical and interpretive realities of translation. 

To advance the profession, we must: 

• • Promote translation literacy among clients and institutions; 

• • Support terminological standardization efforts in Arabic; 

• • Train translators in both theory and practice; 

• • Recognize the ethical and epistemic value of translation in global dialogue. 

Ultimately, translation is not just about transferring words—it is about negotiating meaning across difference. 

References 

Bahdanau, D., Cho, K., & Bengio, Y. (2016). Neural machine translation by jointly learning to align and translate. arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.0473. 

Benjamin, W. (2000). The task of the translator (H. Zohn, Trans.). In L. Venuti (Ed.), The translation studies reader (pp. 15–25). Routledge. (Original work published 1923) 

Eco, U. (2001). Experiences in translation (A. McEwen, Trans.). University of Toronto Press. 

Hatim, B., & Mason, I. (1997). The translator as communicator. Routledge. 

Newmark, P. (1988). A textbook of translation. Prentice Hall. 

Spivak, G. C. (1993). The politics of translation. In G. C. Spivak, Outside in the teaching machine (pp. 179–200). Routledge. 

Venuti, L. (1995). The translator’s invisibility: A history of translation. Routledge. 

Venuti, L. (2013). Translation changes everything: Theory and practice. Routledge. 

The Concept of Fidelity in Translation 

The issue of fidelity is a key concept in the various and multiple translation studies. It has occupied a prominent position in these studies. Just as theorists have disagreed on the concept of quality in translation, they have also differed in defining the standard of fidelity, which remains a fundamental condition in all translations, regardless of the differences in texts and their genres. 

Upon examining the meaning of the term fidelity, we find that the Hachette Dictionary defines this term as follows: 

1. 1. The quality of a faithful person 

2. 2. Constant attachment to someone or something 

3. 3. Respect for truth 

This definition indicates that fidelity pertains to constant attachment to something, as well as respect for truth. However, we may ask: To what extent is this definition complete? 

Cicero, the Roman thinker, in his observations regarding his translations from Greek, says: 

“It will not always be necessary to copy your language from Greek, as would a clumsy translator… When I translate from Greek, I cannot render with the same brevity what the Greeks can say in a single expression; 
I express it in several words.” 

This opinion, even if it stems from the idea that fidelity should be focused on the text’s content rather than its form, leads to the conclusion that there is a contrary view. This other view maintains that fidelity in translation, according to some theorists, oscillates between literalness and the spirit of the text. 

Thus, we find that there are those who represent the opposite direction, that is, absolute fidelity to the letter and the word in translation. This view is expressed by Boethius (Boece), the translator from Greek into Latin, who says: 

“In order for translation not to be a corruption of reality, it must be done word for word […] The merit of a good translation does not lie in elegance, but in the degree to which it preserves the simplicity of the content and the exact properties of the words.” 
(Boethius) 

As for the heritage and philosophy of translation in Arab history, we observe that the Bayt al-Hikmah (House of Wisdom) school in Iraq during the Abbasid era—among whose most famous members was Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq—developed, along with a group of translators, a set of criteria for fidelity in translation, namely: 

• • Expressing the meaning without deviating from it. 

• • Adapting the language of the translated text in such a way that it does not remain foreign or hybrid in the target language. 

• • Respecting the textual structures of the target language. 

This principle of fidelity later developed further with De Baley in the sixteenth century, who insisted that meaning is the goal of translation, not style. He held that the original text is preferable to read if the translated text fails to preserve the meaning. 

In addition, Jacques Amyot introduced the element of creativity in translation, arguing that the language of literature must be elegant to be acceptable to the reader. 

The most notable example of the transformation in the view of fidelity came with Ablancourt, who introduced the concept of “les belles infidèles” (the beautiful unfaithful [translations])—the result of increased interest in translating classical literature to enrich European literatures, especially as the Académie Française, which was established in 1940, contributed to the development of translation theory. 

It became widespread to say that what matters in translation is not the number of words, but their weight and impact. This trend continued amid a push and pull between the two schools of thought—literal vs. free—until the publication of the book by Georges Mounin titled: 

Les Belles Infidèles (The Beautiful Unfaithful Ones) 

In it, he pointed out that there are two types of translation that allow the translator to be faithful. These are: 

• • Les verres transparents (transparent glasses): translations in which the reader does not perceive that they are reading a translation, as the text reads naturally in the target language. 

• • Les verres colorés (colored glasses): word-for-word translations, that is, fidelity to the source language. 

As for Ladmiral, in his discussion on fidelity, he presents the idea that the translated text is a unique type of text — it is neither identical to the original nor entirely different from it: 

“Every theory of translation is confronted with the old problem of the same and the other: strictly speaking, the target text is not the same as the source text, but it is not entirely different either.” (Ladmiral, 1994, p. 57) 

Ladmiral tends here to summarize the problem of fidelity in translation by drawing upon the long history of theoretical efforts that have addressed this issue. Starting from the premise that fidelity in translation means fidelity to meaning, not to language, he argues that the translator, in order to be faithful, should not seek to translate what was literally produced in the source language. Rather, they must express what was understood, but in another language. 

This is because focusing on form in translation is not among its primary tasks. Transferring the language without conveying the meaning is not translation, since language alone does not contain or communicate meaning. Meaning depends on a series of factors, such as context, cognitive competence, the form of discourse, and other variables. 

Marianne Lederer affirms this when she says: 

“What matters for the translator is fidelity to the author’s intended meaning; it is the refusal to allow it to be replaced by what a lack of knowledge or the bias imposed by certain interests might attribute to what was said.” (Lederer, 2006, p. 23) 

These views on fidelity raise many questions concerning how translations are judged, a point emphasized by Mustafa Moueqqit in an article published in the journal Fikr wa Naqd (Thought and Criticism), in which he states: 

“To judge any translation by its non-conformity to the source text is a questionable claim — firstly, because the requirements of equivalence are limited by the target language; and secondly, because we are imposing on the translation a kind of equivalence that does not even exist in monolingual communication.” (Moueqqit, 2002) 

Due to the difficulty of achieving perfect equivalence between languages, and thus the challenge of achieving complete fidelity, translation has long been associated with a concept that has persisted from the Renaissance to the present day: the concept of betrayal. 

In every act of translation, something is lost in meaning due to several factors. Even when the translator does their job well, they can only arrive at a portion of the intended message. 

From the critics’ perspective, the translator — by falling short of conveying the original — has betrayed the author’s intentions, and thus the well-known Italian saying applies to him: “Traduttore, traditore” – “Translator, traitor.” 

The insistence on this idea of betrayal stems from the reality that miscommunication exists even among speakers of the same language—so how much more difficult is it to achieve effective communication between two different languages, especially across multiple levels? 

Therefore, the claim that translation must be equivalent to the original is unjustified, because translation can never fully match the original. Nor can it fully reproduce the rights of the source text, as everyone—even the most skilled—fails to completely transfer literary masterpieces from one language to another. This is due to the intervention of subjective factors in the translation process. 

If that is the case, then it is logical to avoid speaking of a single translation, and instead acknowledge the existence of multiple translations of the same source text. Translation, in light of the above, is not a fixed copy but rather a series of interpretations and explanatory readings of the same work, each one tied to its own specific context. 

There is no such thing as an absolute or definitive translation, and therefore, the translator must take this into account. They should not base their judgments or work on absolute concepts, because everything related to translation is relative, and subject above all to its specific conditions. 

We have previously pointed out that although fidelity is considered both a requirement and a condition agreed upon by all translation theories, there remains disagreement about what it actually means and what its aspects are. 

This raises legitimate questions regarding the implications and consequences of this concept for the translated text. The broad lines on which fidelity is based in translated discourse, given that fidelity is not absolute in the translation process, are primarily linked to several key factors: 

• • Respecting the intended meaning embedded in the discourse. 

• • Preserving the same effect on the reader. 

• • Maintaining the same intentionality. 

• • Retaining the same linguistic level. 

• • Preserving the communicative function of the translation. 

• • Ensuring the intelligibility of the translated text. 

The translation process revolves around re-expression using the means of the target language. This process begins with comprehension (la compréhension), then moves to deverbalization (la déverbalisation), and concludes with re-expression (la réexpression). This final stage takes into account both the level of the text and the level of the text’s receiver. Translation must, within the target language, reproduce the message of the source language using the most relevant and natural linguistic resources in terms of meaning and effect. 

The freedom that the translator enjoys in expressing the meaning differently, and in a way that frees them from the constraints of the source language, is closely tied to the translator’s success in creating equivalences that fall within the scope of conveying a specific meaning. Lederer says: 

“The corollary of freedom in translation is fidelity to the meaning, understood not as the global effect of the text on the recipient.” 
(Lederer, 2006) 

2. Fidelity from the Perspective of Interpretive Theory 

The concept of fidelity is multifaceted and semantically complex. Fidelity is not only to meaning but also to the steps required by the translation process. It is not incidental but essential for meaning, not for linguistic form. Fidelity requires adherence to objective standards, and the subjectivity inherent to languages makes it impossible for the translator to be fully faithful when they prioritize language alone at the expense of content and semantic intent. 

Factors that contribute to the incompatibility of fidelity with the nature of translation in all cases include: 

• • The multiplicity of word meanings outside context 

• • Sentence ambiguity 

• • The variation in meaning of the same word across different languages 

• • The diversity of linguistic styles among languages 

• • The wide range of fields and genres involved in translation 

• • Lexical similarities with divergent meanings 

Lederer explains: “There are many reasons why it is impossible for translation to be limited to language knowledge alone. To name a few: the polysemy of words, the ambiguity of sentences, the elliptical nature of utterances, the different connotations that identical words evoke in different domains, and the stylistic differences that characterize discourse in each field of human activity.” (Lederer, 1998, p. 154) 

The translator is responsible for how they understand the text, and in all cases, they are both free and constrained, since the discussion around fidelity has moved beyond the concept of linguistic equivalence and into the realm of functional and dynamic equivalence. However, the conditions that enable the translator to be faithful in expressing meaning include the ability to access that meaning, as well as the analytical capacity to reformulate it in another language. Lederer also adds: “The mere fact of placing the unknown term beside its explanation simplifies the reader’s task without modifying the text.” (Lederer, 1998, p. 166). 

References 

Boece. (1982). In op. cit. (Referenced in D’hulst, 1982, p. 127). 

D’hulst, L. (1982). Cent ans de théorie française de la traduction: De Batteux à Lettré (1748–1847). Presses Universitaires de Lille. 

Ladmiral, J.-R. (1994). Traduire: Théorèmes pour la traduction. Paris: Gallimard. 

Lederer, M. (1998). Traduire la culture. In Palimpsestes, (No. 11), Presses universitaires de la Sorbonne nouvelle, pp. 153–166. 

Lederer, M. (2006). La traduction aujourd’hui: Le modèle interprétatif. In Lettres Modernes – Minard, Cahiers Champollion 9. 

Mounin, G. (1955). Les belles infidèles: Essai sur la traduction. Paris: Cahiers du Sud. 

Moueqqit, M. (2002). الترجمة والتأويل [Translation and Interpretation]. Fikr wa Naqd, (54), 55–59. [Thought and Criticism, in Arabic]