(Un)translatability of (Yemeni) Arabic Oath Expressions into English

Abstract

Oaths are mostly a culture-embedded linguistic component and this to such an extent that their translation to other languages may be questionable. This study investigates the translation potential or translatability of (Yemeni) Arabic oath expressions into English. It tries to answer whether (Yemeni) Arabic oath expressions (un)translatable into English by examining the syntactic formula of oaths from linguistic and cultural angles in relation to (Yemeni) Arabic and their (closely translated) English oath expressions. A corpus of 1169 oath expressions was created through an online questionnaire. Findings showed that linguistically, there is a very close equivalence between English and Arabic, with respect to oath-making, in both particles and expressions. At the cultural level, there is also some equivalence, which is evident in the original effect that (Yemeni) Arabic oaths retain in their English translation.