An Application of Syntactic Semantic Analysis in English and Arabic Translation

Abstract

This paper aims at studying certain syntactic and semantic aspects in English and Arabic. It specifically applies the syntactic method of Transformational Generative Grammar (TGG) and the semantic model thematic roles in certain English sentences and their Arabic translation from a linguistic point of view. It provides a theoretical background of TGG and thematic roles as the basic framework of the analysis applied in this study. The data includes selected English sentences from three different short stories along with their Arabic equivalents. The co-analysis of the English sentences and their Arabic translations is based syntactically on Chomsky's TGG (1965) and semantically on Fillmore's thematic roles (1977). The results of the study shows that syntax and semantics within these two languages make some kind of interface. This emphasizes the idea of linguistic universals advocated by Chomsky. The application of co-analysis indicates that the syntactic and semantic aspects can be relatively similar in English and Arabic particularly in terms of the type of the noun phrases in the deep and surface structures and semantic roles.

The study concludes that translation is a practical field where the feasibility and utility of  linguistic theories and ideas can be tested, and that integration and application of more than one approach in translation such as TGG analysis and semantic roles can help in producing more appropriate translations. However, it should be stated that syntax semantics interface and its overlapping can't be solely used in translation studies.