The Translation of English Comment Clauses in “Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice” into Arabic
Abstract
Comment clauses, also known as parentheticals, are a kind of clause used to add a parenthetic comment to another clause. They are syntactically isolated from the clause they are inserted into and are regarded as incomplete in syntax (lack of complementation). They reflect the main clause's commentary or assessment, resulting in more spatial flexibility, a lower tone, and semantic independence. Semantically, comment clauses serve multifunctional purposes. The present study aims at translating English comment clauses into Arabic. To do so, the study adopts Nida's model (1964) formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence. It is hypothesized that ignoring the translation of a comment clause in a sentence affects the meaning of the whole sentence. Nidas dynamic equivalence is more applicable to the translation of comment clauses than the dynamic equivalence. The translation of comment clauses is context-bound. That is, the function and meaning of a comment clause are determined by the context in which it occurs. Five texts were randomly selected from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and translated into Arabic by four well-known translators, namely , Amin , Anani , Akawi , and Mutran .. The analysis revealed that Nida's 'formal equivalence was adopted by the translators more than dynamic equivalence. Further , the analyses revealed that the multi purposes of the comment clauses are the main obstacle that stands in the way of translators