Exploring Intricacies in English Passive Construction Translation in Research Articles’ Abstracts by Arab Author-Translators

Abstract

Self-translation of academic texts has received little attention thus far in literature, particularly in terms of how cross-linguistic features are rendered into target language. This study undertakes to examine the various linguistic strategies of rendering English passive structures by Arab academics when they translate their research articles’ abstracts (RAAs) into Arabic. Fifty-one English abstracts with their Arabic translations were collected from Languages, Humanities and Social Sciences journals published in different Arab universities. To analyze the collected data, #LancsBox 4.5 Lancaster University corpus tool was used to identify the English passive structures (208 instances) and to analyze some of their Arabic translations. The most interesting finding is that the Arabic linguistic alternatives diverge from the English passive structures and they include the use of Arabic active verbs, Arabic periphrastic constructions, Arabic passive verbs, and Arabic verbal nouns. The results cast a new light on the use of periphrastic structures. While the literature usually refers to the occurrence of this structure in journalistic Arabic, this study provides evidence of its occurrence in academic texts in almost 22% of the corpus. The increasing use of this strategy is a feature of Modern Standard Arabic as discovered in some corpora. The study supported the argument that Arabic does not avoid passive verb forms in academic discourse but expresses them by using stylistically different strategies.