Syntactic Errors in the Translation of COVID-19 Documents from English into Arabic

Abstract

Translating COVID-19 information imposes some challenges on translators owing to its originality. The infodemic associated with this epidemic has urged translators to fight against the unreliable content of the translated material that they are managing. This article attempts to assess a sample of 20 COVID-19 brochures and posters translated from English into Arabic in terms of accuracy and faithfulness to the original text. Specifically, it aims to investigate the syntactic errors committed by translators based on error analysis as a theoretical framework to obtain credible statistics. Furthermore, the study attempts to identify the reasons behind such errors and find some appropriate translations. The study finds that the errors recognized are related to word order, transitions, prepositions, pronouns, nonparallel structures, agreement, tense, articles, and case. The study concludes that these errors occur as a consequence of various reasons relating to the specific nature of each error committed.