Journalistic transgression against Classical Arabic via translation

Abstract

Journalistic Arabic appears to be encroaching upon Classical Arabic language in many respects. The former seems to have been influenced by European languages via translation. New construct phrases and idiomatic expressions have come into existence and other classical syntactic structures ceased to exist in journalistic Arabic. The new syntactic modes of expression are not as strict as Classical ones. They seem conformed to the English thought habits and thus retain much less of the rigid Classical Arabic structural particularities. Thus journalistic Arabic is deemed more flexible than Classical Arabic, which enjoys a restricted formal scope of Arabic literary genres that bring about the poetic use of the language. Such use is unwelcome by the media, merely because the focus of the media writing is on communicating the message rather than presenting the aesthetic value of the expression. It is not the intention of the author here to promote Classical language to the detriment of the language of the media, but to show how deviant the modern journalistic language is in relation to the classical Arabic, the most revered and highly respected. This paper is thus an inquiry into the journalistic transgression against Classical Arabic via translation from European languages, especially English. This transgression is obvious in deviant passive structures, negative constructions, and literal translation of foreign idiomatic expressions. Each of these themes will be discussed, alongside representative examples to elucidate each point in question. The paper ends by discussing the repercussions of this study for journalists and their affinity with Classical Arabic.