DOI:https://doi-0004.org/6812/17937700257165
Dr. Rahma Kezouli1, Dr. Fatma Saadi2, Dr. Mohammed Bouali3
1 Research Professor, Class A, Center for Scientific and Technical Research For the Development of the Arabic Language (CRSTDLA)- Research Unit – Tlemcen, Algeria, E-mail: r.kezouli@crstdla.dz
2 Research Professor, Class A, Center for Scientific and Technical Research For the Development of the Arabic Language (CRSTDLA)- Research Unit – Tlemcen, Algeria, E-mail: f.saadi@crstdla.dz
3 Research Professor, Class A, Center for Scientific and Technical Research For the Development of the Arabic Language (CRSTDLA)- Research Unit – Tlemcen , Algeria, E-mail: m.bouali@crstdla.dz
Received: 16/05/2026 ; Published: 04/11/2026
Abstract
Linguistic borrowing is an ancient phenomenon that has been known to every nation, and it is one of the means by which the lexical resources of a language are expanded and renewed. Languages do not live in isolation; they influence one another through the cultural, scientific and civilizational exchange that takes place between societies. In the modern period the need for borrowing has grown, because globalization and scientific progress have brought languages into closer contact and produce new terms every day, in every field.
To keep pace with these rapid developments, Arab researchers in the language sciences in general, and in phonetics in particular, have turned to foreign languages, above all French and English, in order to transfer a number of concepts and terms for which Arabic had no equivalents. In this field borrowing is not limited to taking over the foreign word unchanged. It can take several forms and work through different mechanisms, among them Arabization and translation, and sometimes a combination of more than one, so as to arrive at a term that performs the required scientific function. These mechanisms have helped to enrich the Arabic linguistic lexicon and to supply it with new terms.
Keywords: Linguistic Borrowing ; Phonetic Terminology ; Terminological Formation ; translation; Language Development.
Introduction
Language has accompanied human beings since the earliest times, and neither can do without the other. People need words to express what they need to say; these words spread and are taken up by the linguistic community, and through them communication takes place, opinions and ideas are exchanged, and civilizations and cultures enter into dialogue. The result is a form of linguistic cross-fertilization, which is one of the important phenomena that languages undergo in the course of their lives. Arabic is no exception among human languages. All of them influence and are influenced by one another, and all of them lend to and borrow from other languages whenever they are neighbors or come into contact in any way, for any reason and for any purpose. (al-Salih, 1997, p. 135).
The reciprocal influence between languages is a natural human phenomenon. It was known among the ancient languages and continues among the modern ones. However deep its history and however rich its culture, literature and civilization, no language can live for long periods turned in upon its own lexical wealth without some external supply from other languages, and no national language can claim to be free of every foreign element. The fate of such a claim is the fate of the claim to racial purity: there is no pure race, since there is no pure blood. Languages are no different. They overlap with one another through the interaction of civilizations, and in doing so they reflect the circumstances of the peoples who speak them. Examples include the mutual influence between Arabic and the other Semitic languages, and between Arabic and Greek, Persian and the languages of India. (al-Hajj, 1959, p. 143).
This is no defect. As al-Aqqad puts it:
“A language is generally reproached for one of two shortcomings: a deficiency in vocabulary, or a deficiency in the basic principles of expression. A deficiency in vocabulary can be made good, since vocabulary grows through borrowing, transfer and renewal. Indeed, there is no language that would not look impoverished if everything added to it over the past few centuries were taken away. The truly damaging deficiency is a lack of basic principles and rules in the structure of the language itself. Among the charges once brought against our language was that it cannot express time in its various forms. That would be a serious deficiency if the charge were true, but, thank God, it is not. We are entitled to say that Arabic is the language of time, because it expresses time well, and because it is able to keep pace with time in our age and in the ages to come.” (al-Aqqad, n.d, p. 97)
1.The Definition of Linguistic Borrowing among Modern Scholars
When we turn to how modern scholars understand this term, we find that most of them followed the earlier authorities in naming the phenomenon. They used the terms ta’rib (Arabization), mu’arrab (Arabized word), dakhil (intrusive word), a’jami (non-Arabic word) and muwallad (neologism) to refer to it.
To avoid the confusion and overlap among these terms, some contemporary scholars adopted the term “borrowing” as a figure of speech. Ibrahim Anis writes:
“The use of the word ‘borrowing’ for this phenomenon is merely figurative, or a concession to the terminology of modern linguists, for the borrowing of words is not borrowing in the strict sense. The borrowing language does not deprive the lending language of the words it takes; both languages benefit from them, and the borrowing language is not required to return what it has borrowed from other languages ( Anis, 1978, p. 117). Linguistic borrowing has therefore come to mean the transfer of one or more words from their original language into another language, to be used there to denote the meaning assigned to them in their original language.” (Zafanki, 2010, p. 242).
Borrowing is a process that living languages carry out continuously in order to express new concepts with which the speakers of those languages were previously unfamiliar (Siraj, 1991, p. 30). It is an ancient linguistic phenomenon that the Arabs knew through their contact with other nations and through their need for words that did not exist in the Arabian Peninsula, and its frequency has increased in the modern period because of the language contact that globalization and scientific progress have imposed, and the new terms they produce every day in every field.It is also one of the important factors behind the rapid modernization of Arabic and its ability to face the flood of foreign terms and to meet the sincere desire to keep up with the advance of the sciences, especially the modern ones. Borrowing here means taking in foreign words and giving them Arabic characteristics in sound and inflection.
Speakers turn to linguistic borrowing when they find the target language deficient, which obliges them to take over the foreign word and use it as it stands in the source language. The term “borrowing” may be a translation of the French emprunt, which means lending and borrowing between languages. Josette Rey-Debove defines lexical borrowing as follows:
“On appelle emprunt lexical au sens strict le processus par lequel une langue dont le lexique est fini et déterminé dans l’instant acquiert un mot (expression et contenu) qu’elle n’avait pas et qui appartient au lexique d’une langue également finie et déterminée dans l’instant.” ( Kouddad, 2004, p. 370)
In English: “Lexical borrowing, in the strict sense, is the process by which a language whose lexicon is finite and fixed at a given moment acquires a word (both expression and content) that it did not have and that belongs to the lexicon of another language, likewise finite and fixed at that moment.”
Borrowing, then, is the use by one language of the vocabulary of another, in both form and meaning, in order to denote a particular concept.
Most of the words that one language takes from others relate to matters in which the speakers of those languages specialized, excelled, or were distinguished by their production, or which they used most often. (Abd al-Wahid Wafi, 2004, p. 249).
2.Types of Linguistic Borrowing
Taher Mila distinguishes two types of linguistic borrowing.
2.1 Borrowing of necessity: This is also called borrowing out of need. A writer resorts to it when his language lacks a term or concept altogether, and he borrows in order to meet his intellectual need for expression. Among the borrowed words that necessity calls for are those that characterize a particular environment, such as a special kind of tree, flower or animal, or a particular food or drink that only that environment produces ( Anis, 1978, pp. 120-121). When a language lacks a concept or term, it is bound to borrow from another language, either by using the term as it appears there or with slight modifications. Vinay and Darbelnet observe in this regard:
“Trahissant une lacune, généralement une lacune métalinguistique (technique nouvelle, concept inconnu), l’emprunt est le plus simple de tous les procédés de traduction.”
In English: “Borrowing reveals a gap, usually a metalinguistic one (a new technique, an unknown concept), and is the simplest of all translation procedures.” (author’s translation) (J.-P. Vinay & J. Darbelnet, 1977, p. 18).
This type of borrowing is acceptable, Mila says, but it should not be overused.
2.2 Borrowing of preference: This occurs without any need for it, as when foreign words are taken over although the borrowing language already has equivalents with the same meaning. It arises from one nation’s admiration for another and its inclination to imitate it. It is therefore regarded as a kind of display and luxury, and both of these points to the vitality of a language and the breadth of its horizons. ( Anis, 1978, p. 124).
3. The Importance of Linguistic Borrowing
The importance of linguistic borrowing can be seen in the following respects:
- It fills the lexical shortage from which the borrowing language suffers, enriching it and supplying it with the new words that world civilization throws up every day, since the language on its own cannot meet the linguistic demands of modern life. ( Jasim , n.d, p. 228).
- It contributes actively to the process of linguistic development that all languages go through. Languages borrow from one another, and this helps them to develop and advance and makes them active and vital. ( Jasim , n.d, p. 228).
- It is one of the means of terminology building, since it transfers concepts and terms quickly between languages. Although some reject it, it may be used, when necessary, that is, when a language cannot convey certain meanings or accommodate what they name. Borrowing is “the procedure most concerned with precision, since it achieves the highest degree of equivalence in translation between the source and target languages.” ( Kouddad, 2004, p. 77).
- As for the importance of studying the phenomenon of borrowing from a linguistic standpoint, Muruj Ghani Jabbar summarizes it in two main points:
- Distinguishing the native from the borrowed in the language under study, so that the tracing of origins is sound for the borrowing language. This means knowing which words are native to the language and have not come from another source, and which are incoming and non-native, and then understanding why they came, what lay behind their arrival, how they entered, and from which languages. This is what happens among the European languages, whose dictionaries take care to distinguish native words from borrowed ones and to name the language from which each was taken. ( Ghani Jabbar, n.d, p. 521).
- Tracing the historical course of change in the borrowing language through the stages of its growth, since borrowing is usually a cause of the growth and development of languages through the entry of new words together with their meanings. ( Ghani Jabbar, n.d, p. 521).
4. Mechanisms of Linguistic Borrowing in Modern Linguistics
These mechanisms are the following.
4.1Translation: Most technical definitions of translation agree that it is the transfer of words, meanings and styles from one language to another while preserving equivalence (Kahil, n.d, p. 21). On this basis, translation can be described as the process of transferring meanings from the language of departure (the source language) to the language of arrival (the target language). It rests on two interdependent components, and neither can exist without the other. The first is the “idea” carried by the words in the target language, that is, the “meaning” of those words; the second is the “form” of the words in both the source and the target language. By form we mean here the structure of sentences and the devices of eloquence and rhetoric, such as parallelism, antithesis, balance and adherence to the rules of the language. (Encyclopedia of the Professional Translator, n.d, p. 25).
4.2 Arabization: The tremendous development across the sciences and disciplines, and the difficulty of coping with the huge number of foreign terms that reach us every day, have made Arabization an important phenomenon in language development and terminology creation. It is counted among the means that enrich languages, allowing them to keep up with new developments promptly and at a faster pace, and it is one of the easiest and quickest ways of transferring knowledge. (al-Batal, 2008, p. 106) Ali al-Qasimi defines it as follows: “the word that Arabic takes from other languages and subjects to its phonological and morphological system by adding to it, removing from it, or by substitution, that is, by replacing some of its letters with Arabic ones.” (al-Qasimi, 2008, p. 435) The process of changing a foreign word so that it fits Arabic taste is called Arabization.
4.3 Tadkhil: This is the introduction of corresponding expressions that are foreign to the target language. According to Muhammad al-Didawi, “introduction occurs when literal translation is impossible because the target language does not find it acceptable. It is compulsory when the foreign expression has become an accepted fact recorded in the dictionaries, and voluntary when a translator who is steeped in the spirit of his mother tongue and knows its principles and rules sets out to create, and to find, the corresponding and fitting expression.” (al-Didawi, 1992, p. 176).
5.The Position of Modern Scholars on Linguistic Borrowing
In the modern period, with the great scientific and technical renaissance the world is witnessing, a huge number of foreign terms has been flowing into Arabic. Three currents have emerged in response to the use of these borrowed and intrusive words.
- The first current is the conservative one. It called for ridding Arabic of every foreign element and for coining terms derived from Arabic roots to stand against the foreign terms, “because terms of this kind have a generative capacity and a conceptual load that allow the recipient to add them easily to his conceptual system. In other words, our linguistic needs should be met from what lies in the dictionaries in the form of disused and unused words, or by derivation, blending and substitution.” (Rashad al-Hamzawi, n.d, p. 148) This current is represented by Ahmed Fares al-Shidyaq (d. 1887).
- The second current, represented by Abd al-Qadir al-Maghribi (d. 1909), is the current of expansion. It called for opening the door to borrowing, and held that this transfer need not observe the rules of Arabization laid down by the early linguists, so as to speed up the transfer of scientific terms and concepts.
- The third current permitted the use of Arabization to meet the need of Arabic for terms, on condition that the Arabized word not be counted among the original constituents of the language. ( Ghani Jabbar, n.d, p. 530).
These positions differ, some supporting and others rejecting the phenomenon of borrowing, yet borrowing remains an important means of linguistic growth. It helps to make up the deficiency from which Arabic suffers in scientific, social, intellectual, economic and cultural domains, and thereby enriches Arabic with linguistic material through which it renews its lexical heritage. At the same time, however, borrowing is one of the causes of the death of some native words, particularly when the borrowing has no justification. It is commonly observed that the borrowed word lives side by side with the native word for a time, after which the native word may disappear. ( Anis, 1978, p. 122) If the borrowed word is well received, it spreads and its use becomes frequent, the use of its Arabic counterpart becomes rare, and in the end the Arabic word is abandoned and dies. (El Ziadi, n.d, p. 167).
The death of words is not confined to the native language. It also affects Arabized words, which disappear if people reject them. A large share of the Arabized vocabulary that entered the language in the pre-Islamic period stayed in use only briefly and was not used afterwards, to the point that philologists of later centuries, who labored to explain the ancient poems, often found it hard to identify the meanings and origins of these Arabized words. (Abd al-Wahid Wafi, 2004, p. 197).
Languages lend to and borrow from one another, and this is evidence of their life and development. A borrowed word that enters out of need will find its place in the language without obstacles, as a scientific term easily does. Where the place is already occupied by a native word, the two words coexist, with varying degrees of currency.
6.Linguistic Borrowing and Its Role in the Formation of Phonetic Terminology
Phonetics is among the important sciences that have received great attention from Western scholars. Its branches have multiplied, producing many terms that have entered English and French while remaining absent from Arabic. More recently, many of our scholars have shown a sincere desire to transmit this research into Arabic, and a “movement of blending, Arabization and translation of phonetic terms” has begun in the Arab world. In the words of one study, these have all been individual attempts: some scholars succeeded in the Arabic equivalents they proposed or used, while others lacked scientific precision, so that their equivalents were incomplete or wrong. Others used terms that were new to the Arab reader without giving beside them the foreign term they were explaining or commenting on. Some agreed on the equivalents they used and others differed. All of this came at the expense of the Arab reader, in whose mind the various new Arabic terms became confused, and who became unable to trace them back to the foreign origin from which they derived, especially since the Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo has set only a few Arabic equivalents while the terms of this science are multiplying very rapidly. (Hilmi Hilil, , 1983, pp. 100-101).
In what follows we carry out an applied study to show the role of borrowing, through its various means of Arabization, translation and tadkhil, in transferring foreign phonetic terms into Arabic.
7. The Applied Study
7.1 Description of the corpus
Ferdinand de Saussure’s celebrated work Cours de linguistique Générale (de Saussure, 2002) appeared in 1916, three years after his death, and is the fruit of the lectures he gave at the University of Geneva. (Mu’min, 2005, p. 119) The book would never have seen the light of day had two of his students, Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, not decided to collect, edit and publish those lectures. (Khalil, 2007, p. 14) In this way the lessons in general linguistics came into the world.
Although it was published under unusual circumstances, the book quickly became the key to reflection on language. It is regarded as the qualitative leap that freed linguistics from the influence of the historical and comparative approaches and set it on a new course, that of scientific study, so that linguistics became able “to rival the scientific disciplines in various fields of knowledge, because he subjected his field to the positivist tendency, and it became a model for the human sciences, enabling them to step outside the broad circle of science. After drawing on different scientific frames of reference, linguistics itself became an intellectual frame of reference from which some sciences began to draw their apparatus and their terminology.” (Lahcen, 2003, p. 91).
Despite the revolution that Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics brought about in the field of linguistics, becoming a fundamental source of inspiration for all the linguistic work that followed, it has not received its due in Arabic linguistic studies. The best proof is the date of its first translation into Arabic, 1985, some seventy years after its publication. The share of Arabic in modern linguistic studies is very small, owing to the very late arrival of this human science in the Arabic language. (Lahcen, 2003, p. 91).
Saussure’s book has been translated into Arabic five times, each translation bearing a different title. There is the Tunisian translation by Salah al-Qarmadi, Muhammad Ajina and Muhammad al-Shawish, published in 1985 under the title Durus fi al-alsuniyya al-amma (“Lessons in General Linguistics”). This translation is representative of translation in the Arab Maghreb, and our applied study examines its seventh chapter, entitled “la phonologie”, because of the phonetic terms it contains.
Table 1: Terms appearing in the French original and in the Tunisian translation
| Salah al-Qarmadi’s Arabic term | English gloss | De Saussure’s French term |
| النبرة المقطعية (ص97) | syllabic accent | Accent syllabique (p. 91) |
| التقطيع النطقي (ص72) | articulatory segmentation | Acte articulatoire (p. 62) |
| عملية التصويت (ص70) | process of phonation | Actes de phonation (p. 61) |
| الصواتم الشديدة (ص78) | strong phonemes | Affriquées (consonnes)(p. 68) |
| جناس (ص66) | paronomasia | Allitération (p. 56) |
| الانفتاح الأقصى (ص77) | maximum aperture | Aperture minimale (p. 67) |
| الانفتاح الأقصى (ص77) | maximum aperture | Aperture minimale (p. 67) |
| الجهاز الصوتي (ص72) | vocal apparatus | Appareil vocal (p. 63) |
| تقطيع النطق في الفم (ص75) | articulation of speech in the mouth | Articulation buccale (p. 65) |
| تقطيع خلفي (أصوات غشائية) (ص80) | back articulation (velar sounds) | Articulation d’arrière (p. 70) |
| تقطيع أمامي (أصوات حنكية) (ص80) | front articulation (palatal sounds) | Articulation d’avant (p. 70) |
| نطق أسناني (ص66) | dental articulation | Articulation dentale (p. 55) |
| تقطيع جانبي (ص80) | lateral articulation | Articulation latérale (p. 71) |
| تقطيع مكرر (ص81) | repeated articulation | Articulation vibrante (p. 71) |
| الصواتم المنفسة (ص78) | aspirated phonemes | Aspirées (consonnes) (p. 68) |
| سجع (ص66) | rhymed prose | Assonance (p. 56) |
| دوي (ص75) | noise | Bruit (p. 65) |
| القناة الخيشومية (ص75) | nasal channel | Canal nasal (p. 65) |
| قواعد الرسم (ص64) | rules of writing | Caractère de l’écriture (p. 53) |
| الغار الفموي (ص73) | oral cavity | Cavité buccale (p. 64) |
| الغار الخيشومي (ص73) | nasal cavity | Cavité nasale (p. 64) |
| سلسلة أكوستيكية (ص71) | acoustic chain | Chaine acoustique (p. 61) |
| سلسلة اللفظ المسموع (ص71) | chain of the heard utterance | Chaine de la parole entendue (p. 61) |
| السلسلة المنطوقة (ص72) | spoken chain | Chaine parlée (p. 62) |
| حروف متوسطة (ص65) | intermediate letters | Consonnes moyennes (p. 54) |
| أصوات مهموسة (ص65) | voiceless sounds | Consonnes sourdes (p. 54) |
| الأوتار الصوتية (ص73) | vocal cords | Cordes vocales (p. 64) |
| أسناني (ص77) | dental | Dentale (p. 67) |
| حركة مزدوجة (ص66) | double vowel (diphthong) | Diphtongue (p. 55) |
| الكتابة الفنولوجية (ص63) | phonological writing | Ecriture phonologique (p. 52) |
| انطباع أكوستيكي (ص82) | acoustic impression | Effet acoustique (p. 72) |
| تهجى (ص64) | spelled out | Epeler (p. 53) |
| الأجناس الفنولوجية (ص70) | phonological species | Espèces phonologique (p. 61) |
| انغلاق تام (ص77) | complete closure | Fermeture complète (p. 65) |
| دعكية /رخوة (أصوات) (ص79) | fricative / lax (sounds) | Fricatives/spirantes (p. 69) |
| حد مقطعي (ص94) | syllabic boundary | Frontière syllabique (p. 88) |
| المزمار (ص73) | glottis | Glotte (p. 64) |
| صورة خطية (ص66) | written form | graphie (p. 55) |
| حلقي (ص77) | pharyngeal | Guttural (p. 67) |
| هاءات منفسّة (ص83) | aspirated h-sounds | Haspirés (p. 73) |
| انطباع أكوستيكي (ص62) | acoustic impression | Impression acoustique (p. 52) |
| شفوي (ص78) | labial | Labial (p. 68) |
| شفوية أسنانية (ص80) | labiodental | Labiodentale (p. 70) |
| لغة حية (ص67) | living language | Langue vivante (p. 57) |
| حرف (ص68) | letter | Lettre (p. 57) |
| مائع (ص77) | liquid | Liquide (p. 67) |
| إوالية تقطيع الأصوات (ص62) | mechanism of sound articulation | Mécanisme de l’articulation (p. 52) |
| الصواتم الرخوة (ص78) | lax phonemes | Mouillées (consonnes) (p. 68) |
| عمليات تقطيع النطق (ص70) | articulatory operations | mouvements articulatoires (p. 61) |
| حركات جهاز التصويت (ص62) | movements of the phonatory apparatus | Mouvements phonatoires (p. 52) |
| انغلاق تام (ص77) | complete closure | Occlusion complète (p. 67) |
| انغلاق تام محكم مؤقت (ص78) | tight, momentary complete closure | Occlusion hermétique momentanée (p. 68) |
| صواتم شديدة (ص78) | strong phonemes | Occlusives (p. 68) |
| انفتاح (ص84) | opening | Ouverture (p. 73) |
| الانفتاح الأدنى (ص77) | minimum aperture | Ouverture maximale (p. 67) |
| حنكي (ص65) | palatal | Palatale (p. 55) |
| التصويت (ص87) | phonation | Phonation (p. 77) |
| صوتم (صواتم) (ص66) | phoneme(s) | Phonème(s) (p. 56) |
| علماء الأصوات (ص85) | phoneticians | Phonéticiens (p. 75) |
| Phonétique (ص62) | phonetics (kept in Latin script) | Phonétique (p. 51) |
| الفنولوجيا (ص61) | phonology (Arabized) | Phonologie (p. 51) |
| الفنولوجيا التعاملية (ص87) | combinatory phonology | Phonologie combinatoire (p. 77) |
| عالم فونولوجيا (ص85) | phonologist | Phonologiste (p. 75) |
| علماء الفنولوجيا (ص70) | phonologists | Phonologistes (p. 61) |
| فيزيولوجيا الأصوات (ص62) | physiology of sounds | Physiologie des sons (p. 51) |
| النواة الحركية (ص94) | vocalic nucleus | Point vocalique (p. 89) |
| الرنين الخيشومي (ص75) | nasal resonance | Résonnance nasale (p. 65) |
| قافية (ص66) | rhyme | Rime (p. 56) |
| صوت بسيط (ص71) | simple sound | Son simple (p. 62) |
| أصوات (ص61) | sounds | Sons (p. 51) |
| الأصوات المقطعة (ص63) | articulated sounds | Sons articulés (p. 52) |
| أصوات انفجارية (ص63) | explosive sounds | sons explosifs (p. 53) |
| صوت غالق (ص88) | closing sound | Sons fermant (p. 91) |
| أصوات انحباسية (ص63) | retentive (stop-like) sounds | Sons implosifs (p. 53) |
| أصوات منعزلة (ص86) | isolated sounds | Sons isolés (p. 76) |
| صوت فاتح (ص88) | opening sound | Sons ouvrant (p. 91) |
| الأصوات المجهورة (ص77) | voiced sounds | Sons sonores (p. 67) |
| الأصوات المهموسة (ص77) | voiceless sounds | Sons sourds (p. 67) |
| أصوات مجاورة (ص95) | neighboring sounds | Sons voisins (p. 88) |
| مقطع (ص66) | syllable | Syllabe (p. 56) |
| الكتابة المقطعية (ص72) | syllabic writing | Syllabique (p. 62) |
| نظم الشعر (ص66) | versification | Système de versification (p. 56) |
| نظام فونولوجي (ص64) | phonological system | Système phonologique (p. 54) |
| طور أكوستيكي (ص 72) | acoustic phase | temps acoustique (p. 62) |
| طور تقطيعي (ص72) | articulatory phase | temps articulatoire (p. 62) |
| وحدات أكوستيكية (ص72) | acoustic units | Unités acoustiques (p. 62) |
| وحدات مقطعية (ص85) | syllabic units | Unités syllabiques (p. 75) |
| غشائي (ص78) | velar | Vélaire (p. 69) |
| نزيز صوتي مجهور (ص74) | voiced vocal vibration | Vibrations sonores (p. 64) |
| حركات خافتة (ص83) | muted vowels | voyelles chuchotées (p. 73) |
| حركات ضعيفة (ص78) | weak vowels | voyelles faibles (p. 68) |
| حركات مهموسة (ص83) | voiceless vowels | Voyelles sourdes (p. 73) |
7.2 Methods used to translate the phonetic terms in Salah al-Qarmadi’s translation
After collecting and counting the phonetic terms found in al-Qarmadi’s translation, which came to ninety-five (95), we excluded three because they were derived, and derivation is not counted among the methods of borrowing.
We then tried to identify the methods of linguistic borrowing that the translators adopted in rendering these terms: translation, Arabization and tadkhil. The most widely used method proved to be translation, which heads the list with seventy-eight terms. Literal translation is among the most frequently used types, employed for forty-six (46) terms. It is followed by equivalent translation with twenty (20) terms, while explanatory translation, that is, translating the meaning of the term where no equivalents exist, accounts for twelve (12). The second method used is Arabization, with thirteen (13) terms Arabized, whereas tadkhil was used only once (1), when the word Phonétique was carried over unchanged from the foreign language.
The table below summarizes the results obtained for al-Qarmadi’s translation.
Table 2: Methods of borrowing in al-Qarmadi’s translation (phonetic terms)
| Total | Literal translation | Equivalent translation | Explanatory translation | Arabization (ta’rib) | Tadkhil |
| 92 | 46 | 20 | 12 | 13 | 1 |
7.3 Summary of findings
The applied study shows that there is confusion in linguistic terminology in general and in phonetic terminology in particular. Among its causes are the following :
- Linguists and phoneticians rely on translation and Arabization as the most important means of linguistic borrowing in transferring scientific texts. Translation heads the list in frequency of use.
- Our scholars resort to tadkhil only in cases of necessity. Salah al-Qarmadi used it just once, in order to avoid admitting further foreign terms into Arabic.
- The modern linguistics founded by de Saussure carried terms that express new concepts, which had not been in circulation before him. Some of the terms he used were not even known in French, which left the Arab translators in difficulty when they came to supply Arabic equivalents for them.
8. Conclusion
At the close of this study, it is clear that linguistic borrowing has played a prominent role in the formation of Arabic phonetic terminology. By transferring newly coined concepts and terms into Arabic, and by keeping pace with the developments that the science of phonetics has undergone, it has enriched the Arabic phonetic lexicon. The theoretical and applied study has shown that linguistic borrowing, in its various mechanisms, is an essential means of engaging with modern linguistic knowledge, although its use in forming phonetic terminology has not been free of certain difficulties.
The applied study revealed confusion in Arabic phonetic terminology, which is attributable to the multiplicity of ways of transferring foreign terms and to the differing judgments of researchers and translators in finding suitable Arabic equivalents for them. It emerged that translation and Arabization are the most prominent borrowing mechanisms used to transfer phonetic terms, with translation leading in frequency of use. The study also showed how limited the recourse to tadkhil is, since al-Qarmadi adopted it in only one instance. This reflects a tendency to avoid overloading Arabic with foreign terms and a concern to find alternatives suited to its own linguistic system.
On the other hand, the emergence of modern linguistics with Ferdinand de Saussure brought new concepts and terms, some of which had no settled equivalent even in French. This made them harder to transfer into Arabic and led to a multiplicity of terminological equivalents, which differ from one another. This suggests that the problem of phonetic terminology does not lie in the mechanisms of borrowing alone. It also depends on the nature of the new concepts and on how far Arabic can absorb them and supply precise equivalents for them.
On the basis of these findings, it can be affirmed that linguistic borrowing, despite the problems it raises, remains a necessary mechanism for developing Arabic phonetic terminology and keeping up with scientific developments, provided that it is subject to clear scientific and linguistic controls. These rest on precision in transferring concepts, respect for the characteristics of Arabic, and consistency among the terms in use. Hence the need to unite the efforts of researchers, linguists and translators in order to reduce terminological confusion, to coordinate the Arabic equivalents, and to strengthen communication between Arabic phonetic studies and their foreign counterparts. Borrowing then ceases to be a mere transfer of terms from one language to another and becomes a deliberate means of building an Arabic phonetic terminology that is precise, unified and able to keep pace with modern linguistic knowledge.
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