5Theta-Criterion and the Reconstruction of Two Arabic Verses into English: A Translational Perspective

Abstract

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to investigate Nicholson's version of literary translation for the following two lines of verse of Omar Bin Abi Rabeᶜah: خليليّ من ملام دعاني وألمّا الغداة بالأظعان لاتلوما في آل زينب إنّ القلب رهن بآل زينب عان Blame me no more, O comrades! But today. Quietly with me beside the howdahs stay. Blame not my love for Zaynab, for to her and hers my heart is pledged a prisoner [1].

This research examines the hypothetical approach in reconstructing the text of target language (TL) followed by Nicholson [1]. Problems of translation with regard to the misuse of lexicon whether the equivalent or the added items will be solved with reference to the principles of Theta-Criterion which says: "Each argument bears one and only one theta-role, and each theta-role is assigned to one and only one argument" [2] and also with reference to the Structure Preserving Hypothesis (SPH) of Chomsky [3]. Arguments involve noun phrases (NPs), prepositional phrases (PPs), inflectional phrases (IPs) and complementizer phrase (CPs). These arguments would be of great significance if they are included in the process of translation from source language (SL) into TL. Constituent and semantic selections as principles of Theta Theory that account for the interpretation of meaning may help us grasp the complicated nature of translation and design effective strategies to counter