Discourse connectives in translation : a relevance-theoretic account with special reference to translation from and into Arabic

The present study investigates how Discourse Connectives are handled in translation. It starts by reviewing available published studies on DCs with a particular focus on how these impacted on the field of translation studies and translation practice. DCs in English are mainly looked at from two different angles as the study shows: coherence/cohesion theory or from a relevance theory perspective. In Arabic, they are mainly grammatical structures. The study provides arguments which explain why looking at these linguistic structures from a relevance theory standpoint provide a better basis for understanding their role and the discourse in which they occur. The aim of the present research is to investigate how Discourse Connectives (DCs)- the structures used to provide the reader/hearer with clues as to what direction the writer/speaker wants them to focus on- are handled in translation. The research attempts to shed light on choices translators make when encountering DCs, and endeavours to put these choices to scrutiny by drawing on relevance theory. Thus, the main hypothesis adopted is that each instance a DCs is utilised, it is assumed that it bears a degree of relevance to the reader/hearer or in other words assist them to a less costly process - in terms of time and mental processing effort - in reaching the intended communication. To provide evidence for this view an empirical investigation was carried out. The corpus studied was published by the American geo- political studies think-tank (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) were selected together with their professionally translated and published versions. An investigation of DCs and their translation was carried out on carefully selected corpora. The basis of this discussion is the application of the Principle of Relevance as suggested by proponents of Relevance Theory in reaching the intended meaning in the source text through contextual effects (knowledge of the world, to use relevance theory proponents terms) and the notion of 'clues7, provided by discourse connectives, which facilitate a successful rendering.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo