Translating euphemisms : theory and application

Abstract EN

Euphemisms are mild, polite and less distasteful expressions and phrases that replace their offensive equivalence in which culture plays a crucial role in translating them from a language to another different one and they pose difficulty for some translators.

Therefore, the cultural awareness of source and target languages is necessary to translate euphemisms accurately as an indirect communication.

This paper deals with the social euphemisms that are used in daily life to delicate the offensive aspect of some talks.

The main object of this study is to investigate and study how Grice’s Implicature Theory (Cooperative Principles and Maxims) and Relevance Theory could assist a clear interpretation of euphemisms.

The former, however, focuses on deliberate flouting of maxims of conversation, giving rise to implicature while the later helps for an euphemism comprehension through an optimal relevance by using explicating strategies.

The study further investigates the linguistic manifestations as well as the pragmatic inferences while rendering English euphemisms into Arabic and vice versa with special emphasis on the difficulty of the interpretation of euphemism that translator may encounter.

This paper suggests some strategies to assist translating the euphemisms from one language into another one precisely.