Has Henry Softened the War in A Farewell to Arms? A Translational Perspective on Hedging

This paper provides an empirical investigation of shifts in hedges Arabic translation A Farewell to Arms (1929). The results reveal a tendency add rather than omit hedges. is associated with several discourse effects, such as move toward increased level awareness information quality and relevance, greater attenuation/mitigation, more politeness, improved interpersonal relations, reinforcement, speaker responsibility/commitment, higher cognitive emotional involvement, stronger textual relations the translated narrative. These effects reflect cooperation/dynamic role on (literary) translator’s part during his second verbal materialization re-narration original story. addition relevance points explicitation pattern that improves text’s readability reflects mediating voice attenuation reinforcement are indicative movement standardizing (appropriating) war novel has less emotive style emotionally remote (Arabic) reader, pushing for universalized interpretations normalized literary translations. Such movements, which cannot be linked at least this study any sociopolitical factors (e.g., language status, power relations), better regarded visible traces pointing translators’ (conscious or subconscious) orientation uniformity cross-cultural/universal understanding. .