Yemen Journal for Scientific Research, Volume (2), Issue

Yemen Journal for Scientific Research, Volume (2), Issue (1). (pp. 286-310)
The Role of Pragmatics in Translation and the Pragmatic Difficulties that Encounter Translators
Abstract
This study aimed to investigate the role of pragmatics in English-Arabic translation and the related pragmatic problems and difficulties encountered translators. Since pragmatics has been recently given a concerning growth and interest by many scholars and linguists, this study viewed pragmatics as a component of considerable importance in translation processes. The method used to achieve the study objectives and to identify the problems and difficulties encounter the translators was the analytical descriptive method. A questionnaire test was conducted and divided into two parts; each part consisted of five items regarding the role of pragmatics in translation, and the problems and difficulties encountered translators in rendering the pragmatic aspects from English into Arabic respectively. Twenty Yemeni translators participated in this study. The study came up with a conclusion that pragmatics has a significant role in English-Arabic translation. The results of the first part of the questionnaire showed that a percentage of 86.7% and total average of 2.6% out of 3% was the responses supporting the role of pragmatics in translation. The results, also, showed that there is a real need of understanding pragmatics for successful translation, where a percentage of 83.3% and total average of 2.5% out of 3% was the responses to the five items of the second part of the questionnaire on the existence of the pragmatic problems and difficulties encounter translators.
Key Words: Translation, Pragmatics, Translation Difficulties, English-Arabic Translation.


Introduction
Language is used not simply to report events in the world. It is used also to convey the rich mental models that individuals and cultures bring to bear on the communication process. It is the claim of the pragmatic-based approach Farewell and Helmreich (2004), that texts do not have meanings, but rather that in producing texts, people intended meanings. That is to say, the translator attempts to understand the author's intent in creating the source text for the original audience and then recreates, to the possible extent, that intent for the target audience by using the target language.
Based on conventional perspective, pragmatics operates in two different phases of the translation task; first, processing of source text (message), and second conceptualizing and reformulating the target text (message). In both phases a great awareness of the pragmatically relevant differences is needed so as to achieve an adequate translation that can fulfill its communicative role in the target language and culture. As a mediator, the translator performs as text receptor in the first place by trying to understand and capture the message of the source text. During this comprehending phase, the translator is bound to the source text pragmatics that he tries to decode appropriately and convey the true and intelligible meanings intended in the source text. However, in the process of translation, the translator is bound to manage the pragmatic differences between both source and target context.
From the views of House, Kasper, and Ross (2003), pragmatics is a type of knowledge that makes people detect the intercultural interaction structures and speech act strategies in order to resolve problems of misunderstanding encountered in the international social settings. Through pragmatics training, translators will be able to perceive the different interpretations of cross-cultural languages, and get accustomed to their assorted conventions, structures, and form. In this regard, any ignorance of such pragmatic aspects may lead to translation problems of pragmatic nature. For instance, speech events differ cross-culturally just as in social distance and closeness which are often culture-specific. It means that in each community there are specific cultural contexts in which word-in –word translation cannot help to convey the intended meanings of the source text. The translator is thus involved in using his knowledge of cross-cultural pragmatics to convey the message appropriately in his translation without causing any offence.