Abstract
The thematic and information structure of scientific and technical texts are arguably different among languages. This study examines the thematic structure of scientific texts in English and Arabic to see the differences in the hierarchical organization at different thematic levels. It adopts Halliday’s functional model of theme-rheme and applies it to English and Arabic scientific texts. The paper mainly investigates the three levels of theme: textual, interpersonal and experiential with the intention of discussing their translations into Arabic. It uses a corpus data of two scientific texts. The syntactic and textual elements of those texts were compared and contrasted and professional translations were provided to study the Arabic thematic structure. The data provides English and Arabic versions which allow for a comparable analysis of structure, convention and style. The study reveals that the most frequent type of themes and thematic progression is the experiential theme. It shows that those experiential themes are almost always occupying initial positions. The structure of themes has the tendency to be reproduced in the translation. However, the findings of this investigation indicate that position of themes may change as a result of translation, or changed from experiential into textual.
Highlights
Each language contains linguistic characteristics which distinguish it from other languages, be it lexis, syntax, structure, style, or written norms and conventions
This study examines the thematic structure of scientific texts in English and Arabic to see the differences in the hierarchical organization at different thematic levels
The study aimed at analyzing the thematic structure of English and Arabic scientific texts to see whether they are similar or different in their progression and development by drawing on Halliday’s (1985) Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG)
Summary
Each language contains linguistic characteristics which distinguish it from other languages, be it lexis, syntax, structure, style, or written norms and conventions. In order to find out the differences and similarities between Arabic and English in terms of thematic structure, this study highlights the conventions and norms of scientific texts in English and Arabic. The thematic progression of texts has been the subject of a number of studies (Carter-Thomas, 1999; Paltridge, 2006; Sade, 2007) This is because the flow of information in texts has always been the primarily focus for writers, readers and translators. The choice of themes, as they offer the given information, will influence the rhematic part which offers the new information for readers This rhematic element can be the thematic element on the following sentence. Such progression of theme/rheme ensures cohesive development of texts by employing cohesive devices (Eggins 2004). These devices have the function of connecting sentences and paragraphs of the text
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