The Translation of Allah-Referring Expressions from Arabic to English

This study was prompted by the confusion from the Egypt Air Flight 990 in 1999 concerning the relief first officer's utterance: "tawakkaltu 'alallah" 'I rely on Allah' just seconds before the plane crashed. The study deals with the translation of similar Arabic expressions into English where a reference to Allāh (God) is made, such as: wahhidū llāh 'Say that Allah is one', yā'hl llāh 'Oh! People of Allāh' , 'in šā' allāh 'if Allāh permits', 'in rād allah 'if Allāh wants'. It examines the translatability of expressions like tawakkaltu 'ala llāh to find the options available to translators in terms of translation equivalence. The dichotomy of semantics and pragmatics is highligthed. To do this,these expressions are divided into semantically translated and pragmatically translated categories. They are also subcategorized according to the speech-act functions they play in language, such as: request, affirmation, promising, leave-taking, dissatisfaction, and supplication. The findings show that the major problems in translating such expressions are attributed to the difficulties in distinguishing pragmatic from semantic imports.