On the Translation of Modals from English into Arabic and Vice Versa: The Case of Deontic Modality
Babel: Revue internationale de la traduction/International Journal of Translation, (2006)Abstract
Modality has a claim to be considered a linguistic universal. There are many indications that this may be true. Yet, the concept of modality varies from one language to another. Even within a given language, there may exist uncertainties according to the approach: syntactic, semantic, pragmatic etc.; or formal definition vs. other definitions (e.g. English: modal auxiliaries, Arabic: verbs, prepositions and particles). The notion of modality is “notoriously vague” (Palmer 1986). It is further said that the meaning of modality is very difficult to determine relying on a single perspective.