This study investigates the concept of metadiscourse in general and the multifunctionality problem of metadiscourse in particular. The concept of metadiscoure is still fuzzy and its taxonomies involve many disparate elements. The differences between Arabic and English in relation to linguistic and convention would make the problem of metadiscourse more complicated as far as translation is concerned. This study hypotheses that there is a similarity between English and Arabic metadicourse items. Therefore, not being able to grasp the function of these metadicourse items leads to have inappropriate renditions of translation. It also hypotheses that Arabic categories of metadiscourse can be applied to that of English when translations are involved. The aim of this study is to identify the metadiscourse items in the source language (ST) and their renditions in the target language (TL) and also to figure out to what extent the translators were successful in managing the linguistic and rhetorical functions of metadicourse items utilized in SL. The source text (ST) excerpts of this study are taken from a novel titled The Thief and The Dogs written by Naguib Mahfouz (1964) and translated into English by Le Gassic and Badawi (1984) and Elyas (1975). This study adopts the model of Eugen Nida (1964) in order to make a judgement on the appropriateness of metadiscourse renditions on the target text (TT). It shows that English utilizes metadiscourse items as Arabic does, despite the fact that the classification system of metadicouse in these two languages are somehow different. The findings of this study revealed a number of inappropriate renditions along the two parameters of metadiscourse: textual and interpersonal. It was also found that Eugene Nidas model is applicable to literary genre. The conclusion verified the validity of the hypothesis of the pesent study and suggested some recommendations and suggestions for further studies.