Translate it in Any Other Words: The Translation of Euphemisms from Pragmatic and Linguistic Perspectives

This book focuses on English euphemisms and their translation into Arabic from a linguistic and pragmatic perspective. It consists of five main sections. The first section discusses definition, forms, and uses of euphemisms. The nature of euphemism in Arabic, sometimes referred to in Arabic as talaṭṭuf التلطف, is also addressed. Section two focuses on the relationships between euphemism and other translation-related issues. It addresses the relations between euphemism and lexical meaning, and those between euphemism and genre, register, and text types. Section three considers figurative euphemisms from a theoretical perspective: metaphors, metonyms, overstatements and understatements, and reversals. Section four focuses on the translation of English euphemistic figurative devices, using data from two English novels: D.H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Jane Austen's Emma and their Arabic translations. To translate euphemistic English metaphors, politeness theory and Grice's maxims are utilised to test to what extent Arabic translation retains the euphemistic force of the original English. Section five addresses the conclusions and recommendations.