“If” Particle in English – Arabic Translation A Pragmatic Study
Abstract
In conversation, people use different speech acts to express their attitudes and reactions toward others in order to achieve some effect on them. Conditional speech act is one of these acts which will be the main goal in the current study. The translation of conditional, however, is not without problems due to the fact that different meanings of conditional can not be easily understood by non-professional translators. So they can not convey them into Arabic adequately. Context is supposed to play an important role in determining the equivalent translation of source text (ST). This study aims at studying if particle pragmatically (from speech act theory perspective) in English and Arabic as well as the different meanings which can be achieved by this particle in accordance with the situational contexts and different possibilities of translating them into Arabic.