When Translators Juggle: The Translator’s Latitude in Translating Tenses

Duaa K Talafha; Shaidatul Akma Adi Kasuma; Mohamed Abdou Moindjie; Luqman M Rababah; Zein Bani Younes

doi:10.20944/preprints202501.1648.v1

Submitted:

16 January 2025

Posted:

22 January 2025

You are already at the latest version

Abstract

Many scholars contend that technical language is rigid in its style such as Witte (1985), Long (2003). This entails that the latitude of the translator is low most of the time. This paper questions this contention in a genre of language which is characterized by being standing on the border of technical and expressive language as termed business and economic language. Methods: The researchers explore the translator’s latitude by analyzing two websites that offer economic texts translated into Arabic and compared between the choices made by the translators to convey the semantic nuances of tenses and aspect used in the business and economic genre. Following Halliday and Hassan’s (1967) theory of discourse analysis, the researcher drew a purposive sample, including the three tenses and their multiple aspectual translations to meet the study objective. Results: The paper found that different choices were made by the translators in both websites where some of the nuances were not conveyed like the translation of the present perfect and some were expressed through other linguistic devices, mostly lexes. Grammar and semantics go hand in hand to build meanings through any language systems. Conclusion: This paper draws the lines to the features of the economic language which pours in the benefit of linguists and translators alike to converge meanings transferred from remote languages as is the case with English and Arabic.

Keywords:

hybrid language

;

nuanced meaning

;

tense

;

aspect

;

translator’s latitude

Subject:

Arts and Humanities - Literature and Literary Theory

Introduction

Events in all languages around the globe are expressed in accordance to a chronological reference. These chronological references are mostly divided into three tenses; namely, past, present and future as is the case of the languages under question in this research. i.e. Arabic and English. Strictly speaking, although these tenses exist in both languages the division is not uniform cross-linguistically; Meir and Sandler (2007) denotes that Standard Arabic, for example, encodes a distinction between two times; namely, past and non-past where the latter encodes the present and future. Despite the fact that these tenses have different aspects, these aspects certainly come to serve a significant purpose in every tense and represented differently in these two language systems where every language sets its peculiar granularity of tense and aspect. As a matter of facts, English uses sixteen forms of the tenses while Arabic employs only two aspectual forms (Gadalla: 2017). To this postulation, the translator is required to give a proper equivalence which fits into the contextual and aspectual features to the stretch of text under translation; let alone the different origins of Arabic and English which plays a crucial part in delineating the difficulty the arose in translating tenses and aspects (Mehawesh, 2014).

The technical translation which is the focus of this research occupies a large place in the curriculum of study programs at bachelor’s and master’s programs and has its different definition as a sub-category of specialized language according to Pop (2017), who asserts that its ‘technical content’ which gives it its peculiarity as an informative kind of texts. Technical translation as a language for specific purposes covers many subject matters; legal translation, medical translation, economic translation and manual book translation and, much more genres can be subsumed under technical translations. Business and economic texts out of all these technical genres of translation contain more characteristics that are similar to literary texts, especially in their heavy dependence on figurative language in their terminologies such as floating assets, hedge funds and, price freeze (Backhouse 1994: 343). This is why this genre has significant attention in technical text research. However, the studies that dealt with economic text translation between Arabic and English were limited to the problems of translating metaphors in the economic texts whose findings assert the non-uniformity of the procedures adopted by the translators such as the calque translation which was found in the studies of Nader (2014) and Nazzal (2017). Another bulk of studies by Harahap et al (2019), Abdihakim (2019), Al Obaidani (2018) and, Mahamid (2016) focused specifically on the economic terminologies that are represented in the frequent use of metaphoric expressions and collocations in addition to the high level of formality which left little to interpretations. Another set of studies was specified to pinpoint the problems of translations which focus on lexical, cultural, metaphorical aspects, cohesion, and omission errors which are found in the studies done by AbdulFattah & Al-Saleh (2004), Mohamed (2022), Al-Obaidani (2015), Al Buloshi (2008), Awawdeh (1990) and Olteanu (2012). Some semantic devices were studied like voices translation by Talafha (2023) and reference translation by Talafha (2023). Tense and aspect translation, inter alia, was not explored so far as to the researchers’ knowledge. Thus this paper comes to answer the next questions:

1.-: To what extent the translators of business and economic language were abided by conveying the aspectual meanings of the tenses?
2.-: Is the latitude of the translators’ flixable enough to retain the universal message conveyed in the translation of tense and aspect of the business and economic genre?

Literature Review

Time is concerned with indicating the time of the event while aspect is concerned with the nature of the event. Aspect as defined by Frantz (2017) is an "indication of the degree of completion of an event or process at the time of the utterance or relative to some specified reference point in time" (30). It is always indicated with tense when speaking about English. Contemporary English linguists, for example, differentiate between progressive vs. non-progressive and perfect vs. non-perfect forms of the verbs (Kabakciev 2000). Others like Walker (2010) and Comrie (1976) outline the aspect types by differentiating two super-ordinate types along with their sub-ordinates.; this is represented in the chart below:

Figure 1. Aspectual Distinctions (Comrie 1976: 25).

Hassan (1973) divides Arabic tenses into morphological and grammatical. The morphological tense is concerned with time reference out of context; it takes the three basic verb patterns of the three tenses which are: ' فعل 'for the past tense, 'يفعل 'for the present tense and 'افعل 'for the imperative, while the grammatical one looks at these verbs within the context of occurrence i.e. they take different forms from the three basic forms as in the morphological tense; they may come along with some particles like سوف) will) , اصبح) become)), with defective verbs like ( كان) was) ,برح ما( , and verbs denoting beginning like شرع, طفق ,انشأ ,بدأ) started) which in turn conceive a lot of aspectual senses. As a matter of facts, grammatical tenses are used to reduce aspect rendering gap between Arabic and English. For instance: استأجر خالد منزال في الريف ليس بالبعيد عن عمله حيث كان بن عمه طارق قد استأجره قبله هناك. Khaled rented a house in the countryside not far from his workplace; this house has been rented before by his cousin Tareq. Hassan (1973, p.241) This result is likewise confirmed also by Alasmari et al. (2018) who see that morph-syntactic features of the Arabic verbs together can bridge the semantic gap in the translation between Arabic and English.

Methodology

The current study is a type of product-oriented studies that aims at conducting a descriptive-analytical approach to the tenses and aspect translation in the business and economic language. The corpus is taken from two websites that offer business and economic language translated from English into Arabic where the authors are specialized in economics. Because the latitude of the translation is questioned in this paper, the analysis extends to these two portals in an attempt to consolidate the findings. The websites are WorldBank Blogs and Finance & Development Magazine. 20 original texts and their translations were drawn from each website were posted over the years 2019 till 2021. Only four mutual topics were elicited to be permeated in the sample which were Economic recession and work, Work, digital reality, and COVID-19 and work. Discourse analysis approach is followed because it allows for a proportional representation of the selected topics over the three years. The study aims to delineate differences between source language (SL) and target language (TL) and observe translators' choices in terms of the semantic functions after tabulating examples.

Findings

Worldbank Blogs

English has nine main tenses globally (Jiménez-Crespo 2013). These tenses are; simple present, simple past, simple future, present progressive, past progressive, future progressive, present perfect, past perfect and future perfect. Arabic, conversely, has two tenses; perfect and non-perfect. Perfect tense in Arabic relates to past tense whereas non-perfect relates to present and future tenses. It is evident from the analysis of the tenses in this section that simple present and simple past are the most used tenses and that past perfect and present perfect progressive are the least found in the English texts.

It is observed through the analysis that some changes have occurred in the tense itself beside the aspect in the translation. Simple present is rendered into past in Arabic at the expense of the form, yet no distortion of the message was observed; in addition to having its translation into future, which is also justified. Simple past also is rendered into present Arabic as it seems that translators give facts no significance to time when reporting them. The same applies to some cases of simple future where they are translated into present Arabic, thus, giving less importance to time. Continuous tenses also were treated the same as shifts in tense and aspect were detected as well. Present continuous, for example, was mostly translated into present Arabic without any denotation to the continuity aspect. Present perfect continuous missed the continuity aspect in the translation and has unjustifiable fluctuation between the past and present in translation. Past continuous though happen scarcely in the blogs, yet it gains a faithful translation at the level of tense and aspect. Finally, the perfect tenses fluctuate at the level of tense and aspect but all these fluctuations were justified due to many reasons, with the idiomatic Arabic expression as the most important. Table 1 shows the frequencies of tenses in Arabic and English.

The researchers infer from all these observations that translators tend to translate tenses unfaithfully sometimes as is the case with the continuous tenses, and they translate unfaithfully in the perfect tenses but these cases are justifiable due to the Arabic system. It follows then that translation of tenses sometimes is found to sacrifice some aspects and leads as a result to meaning loss in Arabic, which does not enhance the macrostructures of informative texts where directness of meanings is necessary. The next three subheadings are to detail these tenses.

A.: Simple Tenses

Simple tenses including present, past and future are the most occurring in the Blogs. Simple present is translated into present Arabic, past Arabic and future Arabic. The translated present Arabic are the major instances and they exist in all Blogs, as in the next example:

4 ways low-income economies can boost tax revenue without hurting growth	طرق تستطيع البلدان منخفضة الدخل أن تعزز بها إيراداتها الضريبية دون الإضرار بالنمو
Digital literacy needs to be packaged with foundational skills, language and non-cognitive skills to help graduates succeed in digital labor markets	ومن الضروري أن يتضمن التثقيف الرقمي المهارات الأساسية، وإجادة اللغات، والمهارات غير المعرفية لمساعدة الخريجين على النجاح في أسواق العمل الرقمية

It is axiomatic and faithful to the Arabic reader that the same tense is retained in the translation, but fewer instances are recorded where simple present tense is rendered past in Arabic as in the next two examples:

-The role of teachers, principals, and supervisors in channeling those resources is even more important.	-فمما ال شك فيه أن دور المعلمين ومديري المدارس والنظار والمو ّجهين في استخدام هذه الوسائل قد أضحى أكثر أهمية
-But perhaps the greatest damage to economies in the region is the widening gender gap	ولعل اتساع الفجوة بين - الجنسين كان أكبر ضرر لحق ببلدان المنطقة.

Although these exact verbs are in their past form linguistically, they refer semantically to a present situation i.e. the first one could be back-translated into (became) to describe the present statuses of subject; whereas the second example describes a situation in the past. Still, translators are able to render the verb in the second example to the present form if they front rheme to the theme position, thus, it this Although. ان أكبر ضرر لحق ببلدان المنطقة هو اتساع الفجوة بين الجنسين. :as read be could second rendition of the sentence is the most used for Arab readers, the use of the past here does not distort the meaning as the two Arabic translated verbs fall under 'Kana' and its sisters (verbs that share the behavior of 'kana') category, all these verbs take the predicative complement in the accusative case. 'Kana' and its sisters function as stative verbs that give priority to describing and defining over actions. The context here implies the time.

Simple present is once translated into future through the drawn sample. The next example is the case:

Just like in many countries around the world, the crisis is likely to exacerbate inequalities in learning

وكما هو الحال في العديد من - البلدان في جميع أنحاء العالم، فإن الأزمة على الأرجح ستفاقم انعدام المساواة في التعليم.

The meaning of the probability marker likely to here affects the translation, for it conveys that something will probably happen in the future, which is the exacerbating of inequalities in learning. Hence, translators pay attention to the adverbs as they modify the verbs. Sometimes translators rely on by the meaning of probability marker in their translation. Hence, simple present enjoys a faithful translation as Arabic conception allows these kinds of rendition.

Simple past is another tense that happens in abundance and in most Blogs. It takes past and present Arabic translations. The translation into past Arabic is the normal case, but the translation to present Arabic is something that needs justifying. The next example is observed and can give a justification:

This meant reskilling the teaching workforce, dealing with literacy (reading/writing) in early learners so they could learn more online, and plugging major technology gaps.

وهذا يعني إعادة تأهيل القائمين على العملية التعليمية برمتها، والتعامل مع محو الأمية )القراءة والكتابة ( لدى أوائل المتعلمين حتى يتمكنوا من تعلم المزيد عبر الموارد التعليمية المتاحة على شبكة الإنترنت، بالإضافة إلى سد الفجوات التكنولوجية الرئيسية التي نشأت بين أجيال المتعلمين.

It is shown from the above example that the verb is in the present form in Arabic. This verb is not an action verb, rather it highlights a fact. Thus, its tense is not of high significance in the sentence. Translators chose the past knowing that they do not sacrifice much of the meanings.

Simple future, on the other hand, is translated into future Arabic in most Blogs. It is also modulated to a passive verb in Arabic as in the next example:

-Absorbing EVs into transport systems in the short-term will have little to no impact on current electricity generation infrastructure

و لا يوجد أثر كبير يُذكر على البنية التحتية الحالية لتوليد الكهرباء بسبب استخدام المركبات الكهربائية في شبكات النقل.

Again the Arabic verb (يوجد (here is not an action verb, thus, the importance of the tense is not high. Hence, using the present form of the verb in Arabic is deemed mere a modulation that translators use to retain the same effect. Another example on this case is the following one:

-An important prerequisite for the digital platform will be to transition public agencies from storing data on physical servers to utilizing a cloud.

ولبناء منصة رقمية، لا بد من تلبية متطلب أساسي - يتمثل في تحول الهيئات العامة في تخزين بياناتها من الخوادم المادية إلى السحابية.

The modulation here is represented in exchanging the verbal expression in English to a nominal phrase in Arabic which functions as obligation that is occurring in the future. This phrase comes as a predicate to the preceding noun 'prerequisite'. It is an idiomatic way in Arabic to front the prepositional phrase to take up the subject position. This phrase comes in a context of informing the reader what 'to do' to build a digital platform which indicates to a future action, per se. Thus, no meaning loss occurred during to this modulation.

B.: Continuous Tenses:

Continuous tenses found in the body of the samples are present continuous, present perfect continuous and past continuous where present continuous is the most identified tense. Although present continuous is used for unfinished actions in the present or for near future events, it is translated in Arabic to the past sometimes. The next example explicates the different tenses it carries in Arabic.

They need proof that their hard-earned resources are being used wisely

وهم يحتاجون إلى الدليل على أنه سيجري استخدام مواردهم التي اكتسبوها بعرقهم وجهدهم استخداما حكيما،

In this example, the continuity aspect is rendered through the Arabic verb سيجري) is undergoing) whose tense is the future. Translators seek a faithful translation of the aspect through this word that denotes continuity. Arabic employs words that retain the aspect in translation such as يجري ,تزال ال that suggest the progressive aspect. These words are followed by the gerund form of their respective verb in Arabic. These modulation cases retain the naturalness of the message where the aspect is shown in Arabic.

Moreover, present continuous is rendered to present Arabic verb without any signal to the continuity of the verb as in the next example:

We are happy that countries see the benefit of making these changes and are taking action

- وإننا سعداء أن البلدان تدرك منافع إجراء هذه التغييرات وتتخذ إجراءات لتحقيقها

The Arabic verb here is in present form that denotes no completion of the action. It is simply a present verb that is devoid of any signal to its aspect as that in its English counterpart, which, in turn, denotes to being countries taking action in the past and continues to this moment and that it is still in progress. Thus, a loss of meaning occurs.

Furthermore, present continuous becomes past in Arabic sometimes as in the next example:

Global trade is growing at its weakest pace since the 2008-2009 financial crisis, with trade barriers in major economies adding to costs and creating uncertainty about trade rules and supply chains

وبلغ معدل نمو التجارة العالمية أدنى مستوى له منذ الأزمة المالية ،2009-2008 إذ إن الحواجز التجارية في الاقتصادات الرئيسية ترفع التكاليف وتخلق حالة من عدم اليقين حول قواعد التجارة .وسلاسل التوريد

بلغ is a past form of the verb يبلغ, which is used as an equivalence to the English verb is growing. The existence of the adverb since creates the past context wherein an event's start is indicated through the use of this adverb. Translators still have the choice to translate the verb into present Arabic verb, but seemingly there is no significant loss of meaning by the use of the past form.

Present perfect continuous is treated the same way as present continuous. It is translated into present Arabic without any signal to the perfect or non-perfect aspect as in the next example:

The World Bank has been working with education ministries in MENA to maximize effective design and execution in remote learning strategies

ولهذا يقوم البنك الدولي بالتعاون الوثيق مع وزارات التعليم في منطقة الشرق الأوسط وشمال أفريقيا رغبة منه في تعظيم فعالية تصميم استراتيجيات التعلم عن بعد .ووضعها موضع التنفيذ

The last tense of the continuous tenses is the past continuous which occurs two times only throughout the sample and these occurrences are tabulated; The next sentence is an example which reads:

Before COVID-19, the world was already tackling a learning crisis, with 53% of children in low- and middle-income countries living in Learning Poverty

وقبل جائحة كورونا، كان العالم - بصدد أزمة تعلم، وكان %53 من الأطفال في البلدان المنخفضة والمتوسطة الدخل يعانون من فقر .التعلم

The verb كان is a past verb in Arabic followed by the word بصدد) in the process of) which denotes continuity then, thus, the translation transfers the exact meaning. Another example on this tense shows that the aspect is retained through the use of كان followed with the present verb. The example reads:

Djibouti was grappling with poverty even before COVID-19 hit

كانت جيبوتي تصارع الفقر - حتى قبل أزمة كورونا.

C.: Perfect Tenses

Perfect aspect occurred many times with the present and past only. Present perfect happens more than past perfect, which only occurs once. The sole example is the following one:

This included not only Djiboutian nationals living in extreme poverty, but also those that had been forcibly displaced internally and from neighboring countries.

وتضم هذه الفئة مواطني - جيبوتي الذين يعيشون في فقر مدقع، وكذلك النازحين قسريا في الداخل والالجئين من بلدان .مجاور

The verb is modulated to an adjective as it is expressed in a passive construction in English. It is more idiomatic in Arabic to bring the adjective from the verb ينزح than render it to ismu fai'l. This is ahead under the discussion of voices. However, present perfect tense is translated mostly to perfect (or past) Arabic and less often to present Arabic. This is maybe because it is located at the border of both of them. The next example is one of the cases where it is translated into past Arabic:

Over the past 13 years, 57 economies have merged or eliminated certain taxes.

-وخلال الثالثة عشر عاما الماضية، قام 57 بلدا بدمج ضرائب ُمعيَّنة أو إلغائها.

This sentence indicates an event that took place in the past where the past years are the signals. Thus, translators should retain the tense as what is possible. It is observed that the past translation of the present perfect is done with past signals. Present perfect is rendered into present Arabic:

In addition, COVID-19 has been strongly correlated with air pollution (as shown by studies looking at the US and European cases).

-بالإضافة إلى ذلك، فإن فيروس كورونا يرتبط على نحو وثيق بتلوث الهواء )مثلما تكشف دراسات في الولايات المتحدة وأوروبا).

As present perfect is used in English to connect present with past, it is rendered present in Arabic where significance of the time is not high. In the above example, the verb is used to repost an information elicited from studies. It is axiomatic in scientific research that scholars use present perfect tense to repost the finding they come up with. Thus, the translator's servitude to render the present perfect to a present Arabic verb is justified.

As a conclusion, translators fluctuate using different tenses as translation to one tense. They also try to transpose the aspect by adding suggestive words that attribute the tenses to the aspect (perfective or non-perfective) in few cases. Aspects are not present in Arabic due to the peculiarity of Arabic system that does not encode them. In addition, the most occurring tenses in Arabic are present and past. Still, translators can retain the aspect through using some words that connote it like للتوand. حالا

1.1.: Analysis of finance and development magazine

Different tenses were used throughout the blogs. Simple present, present perfect, simple past, present perfect and present continuous were the most frequently used, respectively. Translation of the tenses passed through some shifts that violates meanings sometimes in Arabic. It is observed also that shifts occur at the level of the tense and time. Table 2. briefs the tenses renditions into Arabic:

A.: Simple Tenses:

Simple present is the most used tense throughout the articles; simple past is the second one; while simple future is the least on the scale of the simple tenses. Retaining of tenses in the translations occurs most of the time, but changes in the tense also happen. To detail, simple present is mostly retained present in Arabic, the next example is to illustrate:

Most people access streaming video services on their smartphones, and India has some of the highest data usage per smartphone in the world.

و يحصل معظم الناس على خدمات بث الفيديو على هواتفهم الذكية, و تسجل الهند أحد اعلى معدلات استخدام البيانات لكل هاتف ذكي فيث العالم.

In the above example, the author reports facts about India where English speakers tend to use simple present to tell facts. The translated Arabic verbs يحصل and تسجل are in present tense an Arabic. Table 5.59 tabulates the occurrences in the Appendix. Few times, present simple is modulated causing a shift as in the following example:

My experience with Romania’s National Anti-Corruption Directorate is proof that nobody is above the law and that the law can be applied equally to everyone, regardless of their position in society.

تعلمت من تجربتي في المديرية الوطنية لمكافحة الفساد في رومانيا أن ال أحد فوق القانون وأن الجميع متساوون في نظر القانون بغض النظر عن وضعهم في المجتمع

In the English example, 'is' is a stative verb in the present simple which is modulated into another past verb in Arabic that gives the same meaning; the modulated sentence in Arabic reads "I learnt from my experience in the national municipality of curbing corruption …".Though no existence to the verb learnt is found in the English sentence, translators used it as Arabic preference to report facts by the use of VSO word order, thus they elicited the verb that collocates with lesson which is learn. The verb is has no equivalence in Arabic due to the intra-systemic differences between Arabic and English where English uses copula verbs in the stative sentence and Arabic does not. Still the translation gives the same effect as the 'proof' has the same meaning of the 'lesson learnt' in the past.

Simple past is translated consistently into past Arabic; the next example is one out of many:

Ahuja’s romantic comedy broke into Netflix’s top 10 list in the United States for a short period, generating buzz for the streaming company’s recent expansion into African content.

وقد اقتحم الفيلم الكوميدي الرومانسي الذي أنتجته أهوجا قائمة نيتفليكس أفضل 10 أفلام في الولايات المتحدة لفترة قصيرة، مما أثار ضجة بشأن توسع شركة البث مؤخرا في المحتوى الإفريقي.

As the two verbs in both English and Arabic versions are in the past, the two are supposedly reporting facts in the past. Lastly, simple future behaves like simple past in that it is translated into future Arabic in all cases.

-Some argue that pervasive automation is the price we pay for prosperity: new technologies will increase productivity and enrich us, even if they dislocate some workers and disrupt existing businesses and industries. The evidence does not support this interpretation.

ويرى البعض أن انتشار الاتمتة هو الثمن للازدهار: حيث ستؤدي التكنولوجيات الجديدة إلى زيادة الإنتاجية وإلى ثرائنا، حتى إذا أدت إلى تسريح بعض العمالة وإرباك الشركات وقطاعات النشاط القائمة. لكن الدلائل ال تدعم هذا التفسير

Both English and Arabic versions employ a future tense to express the possible outcome of prosperity in the future. Again like simple past, simple future is translated consistently into future Arabic.

B.: Continuous Tenses:

Present continuous tense is the most frequent tense found in the articles. Its translations were not the same; because the translations fluctuate by introducing equivalences where words that denote continuity were present sometimes, past Arabic, bare present and modulated Arabic. Thus, the aspect was not clear in all of its translations. Firstly, it is rendered faithfully to Arabic where the aspect is retained through words that denote continuity as in the next examples:

Streaming giants like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon are growing new audiences and overlapping markets in ways never seen before	ويعمل عمالقة البث عبر الإنترنت مثل نتفليكس، وديزني،+ وأمازون على جذب جماهير جديدة وإحداث تداخل بين الأسواق بطرق لم نشهدها من قبل.
We’re building this office from scratch	نعكف حاليا على بناء هذا المكتب من نقطة الصفر،

The Arabic verbs 'يعمل 'and 'نعكف 'in bold are words that mean that the action is in process and is not done yet. They are chosen to retain the continuity aspect in the English tense. The translators were able to use the adverb 'يزال ال) 'still) instead of them, but as the English verbs state actions that currently happen no matter their start in the past, these verbs are more formal and indicate accurately the continuity aspect. Moreover, it is translated once into past Arabic as in the next example:

What’s beautiful about it is we’re sitting on the same platform

الجميل في الأمر أننا أصبحنا على نفس المنصة

The Arabic verb 'أصبحنا 'in bold is a stative verb, it is actually one of ' kana sisters' which means became in English. although 'sit' is an action verb in English, but the translators use the stative verb in Arabic because 'sit' does not mean physically 'sitting down', rather the verb 'become' comes to describe a state. Further, the verb 'become' describes a shift in the status of the entity from the past to the present. Moreover, lots of translation were not accurately rendered into Arabic as the continuity aspect was missing, as in the next example:

They are working in different judiciaries with different procedural rules, and we have to find common ground.

وهؤلاء يعملون تحت مظلة سلطات قضائية وقواعد إجرائية مختلفة، وعلينا إيجاد قاسم مشترك بين الجميع.

Not surprisingly, the art industry is fighting the regulations. Some sectors are asserting that examples of actual money laundering via the art trade are rare or exaggerated by law enforcement agencies eager to generate sensational headlines.

ليس من المستغرب أن تعارض صناعة الفن اللوائح التنظيمية، إذ تؤكد بعض القطاعات أن أمثلة غسل الأموال الفعلية عبر الاتجار في الأعمال الفنية نادرة أو مبالغ فيها من أجهزة إنفاذ القانون التي تتوق إلى توليد العناوين الإخبارية المثيرة.

The verb 'يعملون 'in Arabic is a bare present in in the first example. The continuity aspect is mitigated in the translation, though it is clearly expressed in English. If translators choose to express it more clearly, they can add adverbs such as the adverb 'يزال ال) 'still) to denote concretely to this aspect. In the second example, the continuous verb is rendered into bare present in Arabic as the verb is not an action. verb, thus continuity is not of high importance, rather it comes to generalize a truth, thus translator's choice seems logical. Lastly, continuous verb is transposed to a noun in Arabic as in the next example:

It is one of the many reasons Iceland is now taking part in the group of Wellbeing Economy Governments

وهو أحد الأسباب العديدة لمشاركة آيسلاندا الآن في مجموعة حكومات اقتصاد الرفاهية،

Transposition occurs in the above example due to substituting the verb in English to a noun in Arabic 'مشاركة'. Transposition here seems fit because no sacrifice of meaning occurs during the translation and that the aspect is retained through the time adverb 'االن) 'now). Thus, it is still a faithful translation.

Past continuous, on the other hand, is translated faithfully as the aspect of continuity was present, as in the next two examples:

Matthew Green, 51, was preparing to take over the family business so his father could pursue new passions.	وكان ماثيو غرين، البالغ من العمر 51 عاماً, يستعد لتولي الاعمال التجارية للأسرة حتى يتمكن والده من متابعة شغفه الجديد.
Now, money launderers like Beaufort were searching for less obvious ways to scrub their cash, and Matthew Green knew how to trade in multimillion-dollar works of art	و قد كان ممارسوا غسل الأموال, مثل شركة بوفورت, يبحثون عن طرق أقل وضوحاً لغسل أموالهم, و كان ماثيو غرين يعرف كيف يتاجر في الاعمال الفنية التي تقدر بملايين الدولارات.

The Arabic two translations above contain the verb 'كان + verb in present' as in 'يستعد كان 'and ' يبحث كان 'which both denote the continuity aspect in the past. كان is an Arabic past verb that maybe followed with a past or present verb. If it is followed with a present verb, the tense is deemed past but not finished in that moment in the past as in the above two Arabic verbs. It can denote a complete action in the past if it is followed by the particle 'qad' + the past verb. Thus, tense and aspect are indicated in the translation. The same applies in the case of future continuous as in the sole following example:

…they’ll be making 7 percent less every year than if they had entered the job market last year.

يعني أنه بحلول الوقت الذي يصير فيه السباب في الاربعين من عمرهم، ستتراجع دخولهم بنسبة %7 سنويا مقارنة بما إذا كانوا قد انضموا إلى سوق العمل العام الماضي.

In the above example, the continuity aspect is represented through the adverbs 'ًسنويا 'which means that the verb will continue from that point of time onward.

C.: Perfect Tenses

Present perfect occurs more frequently than past perfect and future perfect. The present perfect is mostly translated into past Arabic as in the following example:

how small the world of entertainment has become in a new age of streaming video.

يوضح إلى أي مدى أصبح عالم الترفيه صغيراُ في عصر جديد لبث الفيديو عبر الإنترنت.

In the above example, the present perfect form of the verb in bold becomes perfect Arabic. The verb 'أصبح) 'become) is used to indicate to a past state and how it looks like in the present. The translation leads to no loss or gain in the transferred sentence, yet it is acceptable. Furthermore, it is much less frequently translated to present Arabic as in the sole following example:

This was significantly facilitated by the Fed, which basically said, in March of 2020, “Leave it with us; we’ve got this covered.”

وقد سهل الاحتياطي الفيدرالي هذا الأمر اتركوا »: إلى حد كبير، حيث قال حرفيا في مارس 2020 وكانت تلك إشارة.« الأمر لنا، فنحن نسيطر على الوضع(

The present perfect verb above is translated into Arabic as a present verb. Though, in English it is expressing a status that has been in the past, the effect is in the present, so no violation of the meaning is observed. Translators, in this particular tense, have the choice whether to render it to present or past. Secondly, past perfect, is less frequently observed compared to present perfect. It is rendered faithfully in all cases as in the next example:

emerged as strong as ever in terms of wealth, regaining what they had lost by 2012.

--فقد خرجت شريحة الواحد في المائة الأكثر ثراء من هوة الركود بنفس قوتها من حيث حجم الثروات، واستعادت جميع خسائرها بحلول عام 2012

What distinguishes this tense is that it talks about an action that is finished in a known point of the time in the past, which is the year 2012 in this example. The adverb 'بحلول 'comes to clearly define the point of the time when it is perfected, thus, the translators translate it faithfully.

Some other tenses connote perfectness and continuity simultaneously. This includes present perfect continuous. As for present perfect continuous, it is modulated in its two cases which are:

It has been encouraging that IMF reports have covered these issues. Engagement with countries is critical.	و من المشجع ان تقارير صندوق النقد الدولي قد غطت هذه القضايا. ان المشاركة في جهود البلدان امر بالغ الأهمية. و هي مسألة دائما ما يثيرها المستثمرون.
This is usually a bad sign for the economy’s health, especially in an environment where businesses lay off more workers and many governments’ wage and income support has been tapering off	و عادة ما يعد ذلك بادرة على سوء الأوضاع الاقتصادية, لا سيما في ظل تسريح الشركات لأعداد متزايدة من العاملين و سحب الدعم الحكومي للأجور و الدخل تدريجياً.

both of the present perfect continuous verbs in English were modulated to noun phrase in Arabic. This modulation results in some loss in the meaning. The translation of the first example has no indication to time in any means, while the translation of the second example has a reference to past action, which is, still, devoid of the continuity aspect. Hence, modulation causes mistranslation.

Discussion

The translation of tenses is found to be different in the two portals, though Arabic system does not have aspectual differences, but translators try to transfer these meanings through lexes rather than grammar as when they use words that denote the progressive aspect of the present continuous tense in the TL. Furthermore, translation of the tenses was different sometimes between the two variables due to translators' preferences. Translators resort to lexes to develop the meanings of some aspectual features of the tenses where translators sometimes do not encode them such as the continuity and perfect aspect of English. As Alshehab and Rababah (2020) confirm, meaning sacrifice happens but that is due to the translator's choices rather than Arabic system. Further, tenses translation is found to have some translators' differences which plays a part in some meaning change although sometimes translators abide by the Arabic way of expressions (oblique translation). The translations are not found to distinguish between past simple and present perfect even lexically though translators differentiate between present simple and present progressive by the use of some denotative words of continuity aspect such as the use of the word (in the process of) [bisadad] بصدد. Thus, the Arabic system lacks aspectual nuances and translators fill these gaps by the use of oblique translation procedures.

Simple tenses show some level shifts in translation such as the translation of simple present to present, past and future Arabic in the World Bank analysis, but translated to present Arabic and modulated to expression in the F&D analysis. Present continuous in the World Bank analysis is translated sometimes differently. It is transposed to Arabic nouns, yet perfect tenses show stability in the translation behavior in both of these portals analyses. The frequency of these occurrences is found to employ approximately the same ratio. Although the translations sound different in some aspects, Arabic system does not employ the same aspect features tenses, yet some translations have been characterized by some shifts due to semantic requirements. They transfer the aspects into Arabic by expressing them lexically rather than grammatically as Arabic by using lexical aspects rather than grammatical aspects since Arabic only has perfect and non-perfect types of tenses. Thus, the latitude of the translators is governed in the Arabic lexis other than its grammar. Table 4.4 and Table 4.58 brief the different translations of the tenses. The most used tenses are the simple ones ensued by the progressive and the perfect tenses. The previous literature ensures that Arabic imperfect tense corresponds to English present tenses whether they are simple or continuous (Mobaidin, 1988; Ryding, 2005), thus, the translators in both websites show strenuous efforts to bridge this gap semantically. As for perfect tenses in Arabic, Comrie (1976) sees that they include perfective meaning and relative past time reference. Ryding (2005) again contends that Arabic perfect tenses is equated to simple past and past perfect in English; the same finding that this study reached. Simple future, lastly, is clearly indicated by the modal verbs (will, shall, should, going to) where the Arabic particles (sa/sawfa) were introduced regularly in the translation of the simple future (AlSaleemi 1987) a statement that is truly approved through the translation of both samples of the websites.

As for Progressive tenses, this study revealed that translators come about some semantic convergence to convey these meanings through the use of lexes or any temporal adverbial which, in turn, build the ideational function of the economic context. Past progressive is formed authentically in Arabic where the perfective of the verb be in Arabic is attached to the imperfective of the main verb as in يجدُكان in the samples. Progressive tenses belong to the aspectual category of the imperfect Arabic tenses; the marked category so to speak. They represent ongoing tenses at time reference be they in the past or present (Bybee et al., 1994). Many equate progressiveness to non-temporariness which cause some verbs to having not this aspect such as stative verbs (Mobaidin, 1988; Ryding, 2005).

Present perfect on the other hand, is rendered perfect Arabic without any use of any particle although nuances of progressive tenses almost retained. Thus AlSaleemi’s hypothesis is not necessarily true. Gadalla (2006) in his paper of translating a novel found that present perfect could be translated into seven renderings, among of which simple past, simple present, progressive past, etc. Additionally, he observed ten renderings of past perfect including past, present and future indications in Arabic which is not found in this study where no tense shift occurred and an unanimity is found in both websites. This could be ascribed to the function of the language under study where literal genre accepts shifts more than a fossilized language by nature as the economic language. Perfect tenses imply some continuity of the past action and their relevance to present action according to Comrie (1976: 52). Arabic can converge to this aspect through the use of the particle ‘qad’ followed by the perfect verb to show that a perfect verb is finished in the moment of speaking (Al-Saleemi 1987: 42). Some scholars find that this particle rather ensures emphasis to the past action such as (Al-Muttalibi 1986).

Conclusion

Tenses and aspects of the English verbs show more nuanced meanings than their counterparts in Arabic. Although the analysis shows changes in the translator’s priorities to keep these nuances between the two websites, some of these nuances were not conveyed like the translation of the present perfect and some were expressed through other linguistic devices, mostly lexes, such as with the assistance of particles and nouns. For instance, when they add words that denote continuity to the translations of present continuous. Grammar and semantics go hand in hand to build meanings through any language systems. This finding goes in line with Alasmari et al. (2018) one who reached significant findings that dethrone the contention that Arabic verbs are narrowed down to limited indications of past, present and future; they rather found that morph-syntactic features of Arabic verbs may help in bridging the semantic gap of these verbs and through the help of contextual tools that may clarify the meanings of these verbs. Translators should be aware of these morph-syntactic tools which clarify the meanings and can keep true message out of these technical texts where the preciseness of meaning is given the priority over esthetic expressions as in the literary text where adaptation is allowed. Modulated and transposed equivalences were employed to show a natural flow of expression in Arabic but still the Arabic system cannot bring all the nuances which affects negatively on the ideational function of the Arabic texts.

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Table 1. Frequencies of Tenses in Arabic and English.

English tense	Arabic translation	Number of occurrences	Frequency of occurrences
Present simple	present	122	0.31
Present simple	Past	10	0.02
Present simple	future	1	0.002
Simple past	past	97	0.24
Simple past	Present	7	0.01
Simple future	future	32	0.08
Simple future	modulated	3	0.007
Present continuous	Continuity aspect is retained in the present Arabic	6	0.015
Present continuous	Continuity aspect is missing in present Arabic	30	0.07
Present perfect continuous	Continuity aspect is retained in the present Arabic	4	0.010
Past continuous	Continuity aspect is retained in the past Arabic	3	0.007
Present perfect	Past Arabic	68	0.17
Present perfect	Present Arabic	7	0.017
Past perfect	modulated	1	0.002

Table 2. English Tenses Renditions into Arabic and their Frequencies.

Tense in English	Rendition in Arabic	Number of Occurrences	Frequency of Occurrences
Simple present	Present Arabic	282	0.96
Simple present	modulated	11	0.4
Simple past	Past Arabic	136	100%
Simple future	Future Arabic	21	100%
Present continuous	Present Arabic with words that denote continuity	13	0.22
	Present with continuity aspect missing	40	0.68
	Transposed to a noun in Arabic	5	0.08
Past continuous	Past Arabic with words that denote continuity	9	100%
Future continuous	Future Arabic with words that denote continuity	2	100%
Present perfect	Present Arabic	163	0.98
Present perfect	Past Arabic	3	0.01
Past perfect	Past with words that denote perfectness	8	100%
Present perfect continuous	Modulation that achieves no time reference	2	100%

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