Systematic Shifts in Implicatures in Two Arabic Translations of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms

Abstract

This paper uses a descriptive model to analyze the systematic shifts in implicatures in two Arabic translations of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. The findings have shown that translators tend to observe more maxims and flout fewer maxims than the source author does. The findings have revealed an explicitation trend that improves the quality and quantity of information in the translated text. This trend presents the translator as being more cooperative in communication than the original author. It also repositions the target reader as being less cooperative than the source reader, a trend that indicates a more distanced and less involved reader. There is also a tendency to switch to a more euphemistic form, which gives evidence of the special status of the maxim “be polite” in Arabic. The textual analysis suggests that the explicitation of implicatures has nothing to do with the structural differences between the source and target languages, but is rather related to some assumptions that (i) literary translation involves interpretation and re-verbalization of the original semantic and emotional values, (ii) literary translators may assume a lower level of reader participation or productivity and (iii) they opt for explicitation to avoid gambling with the text’s communicability.