Syntactic Competence as a Prerequisite for Translation: Evidence from the Arabic English Paradigm

Two main points are discussed in this paper: first, a syntactic analysis of some of the verb complements in Arabic in the Government and Binding framework, henceforth GB. These include the following: the object , the absolute object, the causative object or the object of result, the comitative object, the locative object (adverb of place) and the temporal object (adverb of time). Second how such structures might be translated into English. Do they keep their syntactic categories as in Arabic or should they take some different syntactic forms but with the same meaning. The analysis shows quite clearly that syntactic categories cannot be kept through the process of translation although the meanings can be rendered quite properly.