Translational Problems in Transferring the Intended Meaning of Clarification Tropes in Shiite Discourse

Abstract

The current paper is an attempt to identify the vital role that can be assumed by rhetorical pragmatics in the bridging translational gaps that characterize various kinds of the translations of Shiite religious discourses. It is believed that translators may not manage transferring the exact intended effect or illocutionary force from ST to TT. Thus, translators of religious texts and discourses, particularly Ahlulbait's traditions and Hadith, are supposed to familiarize themselves with pragmatic issues in general and rhetorical pragmatics-related ones in particular in order to handle some of the major translational pitfalls that characterize some of these translations. In other words, translators are expected to configure the right intended meaning and its concomitant perlocutionary effect through the use of pragma-rhetorical tropes. From a pragmatic perspective, the translator's job is to transfer the meaning and intended effect of the ST in a way that actualizes that meaning and its accompanying effect in the TT. Owing to this pragmatic premise, the study concerns itself with the task of establishing a pragma-rhetorical translational model to bridge the above-mentioned gap in translation. In association with this aim, the work hypothesizes that a certain set of pragma-rhetorical elements, namely: Clarificational Tropes, is the distinguishing feature of the data under investigation. It also hypothesizes that these clarificational tropes are utilized to exercise the intended meaning and its concomitant effect in the data of the work. To develop an analytical model for the data of the work, the relevant pragma-rhetorical tropes and translation models of analysis are reviewed and made use of in this regard. The data of this work are represented by relevant texts retrieved from the renowned speech of Fadak by Lady Fatimatulzahra (P.B.U.H.). The analysis reveals various findings on the basis of which the paper arrives at a number of conclusions which include: the pragma- rhetorical clarificational tropes assume a crucial part of the entire discourse under analysis. They consists of the tropes of metaphor, simile and irony. Metaphor is the most distinguishing feature of the texts, which is heavily used and generally mistranslated. Simile comes in the second place in the discourse scrutinized and it poses similar translational issues.