English Language and Literature Studies; Vol. 10, No. 3; 2020 ISSN 1925-4768 E-ISSN 1925-4776 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education 15 English-Arabic-English Translation: A Novel Methodological Framework for the Standardisation of Translation Parameters Ahmad Mustafa Halimah 1 1 King Faisal University, AlAhsa, Saudi Arabia Correspondence: Ahmad Mustafa Halimah, Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies, Department of English Language & Literature, College of Arts, King Faisal University, AlAhsa, Saudi Arabia. E-mail: ahalimah@kfu.edu.sa Received: May 15, 2020 Accepted: June 18, 2020 Online Published: June 23, 2020 doi:10.5539/ells.v10n3p15 URL: https://doi.org/10.5539/ells.v10n3p15 Abstract It is evident to see that, in the field of translation, there is a random use of the terms ‘method’, ‘approach’, ‘strategy’, ‘procedure’ and ‘technique’ by both teachers and students alike. This article attempts to shed light on such phenomenon and to bring more clarity and objectivity to the world of translation by suggesting a standardised methodological framework. English-Arabic-English translation examples and a questionnaire filled by university Arabic-speaking students and teachers were used for analysis and discussion. Results of the analysis and discussion of samples and the questionnaire in this paper have indicated that there is an urgent need for a novel methodological framework in order to form a standardised profile for the use of translation parameters such as ‘method’, ‘approach’, ‘strategy’, ‘procedure’ and ‘technique’. To achieve this objective, a proposed methodological framework was made for use by students, teachers and those interested in carrying out further research in this field. Keywords: translation, ‘method’, ‘approach’, ‘strategy’, ‘procedure’ and ‘technique’, methodological framework 1. Introduction There has been a lot of debate over the terminology used to analyse translations and practise translation as an interlingual phenomenon. Confusion seems to surround the concepts and usage of the following five most common translation parameters: Method, Approach, Strategy, Procedure and Technique. Cicero (46 BC) and St. Jerome (395 CE), for example, did not use any of the five parameters but referred to the process and product of translation by the generic term ‘translation’ to inform readers about the kind of translation they used as ‘word-for-word’ translation and ‘sense for sense’ translation. These two poles identified by Cicero (46 BC) and St. Jerome (395 CE) were replaced with ‘literal translation’ and ‘free translation’ respectively during the Abbasid Age (7501258), by two well-known translators: Yuhanna bin Batriq’ who used ‘literal’ translation and Hunayn bin Ishaq’s who used ‘free’ translation (Gutas, 1998). In the second half of the twentieth century, there was a change where Eugen Nida (1964a), for example, used the terms ‘formal equivalence’ and ‘dynamic equivalence’ as concepts to refer to the phenomenon of translation rather than any one of the aforementioned five parameters. Similarly, in his linguistic approach to translation, Catford (1965) used the term ‘translation shift’ instead of the five parameters (Jeremy, 2001/2008). Peter Newmark, however, in his dichotomy of language translation emphasis, (1988, p. 45) truly pioneered in his use of the parameter ‘method’, to refer to the following terms of Source Language (SL) translation emphasis: ‘word-for-word’, ‘literal’, ‘faithful’ and ‘semantic’, and those of the Target Language (TL) emphasis, ‘adaptation’, ‘free’, ‘idiomatic’ and ‘communicative’. It must also be noted that while he related the ‘translation methods’ to whole texts, he also used the term ‘procedure’ to refer to ‘sentences and the smaller units of language’ (Ibid, p. 81) as in the following examples: ‘transference’, ‘naturalisation’, ‘transposition’, ‘modulation’ etc… Unlike Newmark (1988), Vinay and Darbelnet (1995, pp. 3042) identified two major methods: ‘direct translation’ and ‘oblique translation’. They, however, referred to them as strategies and associated the former with three procedures called “borrowing, calque, and literal translation” and the latter with four procedures called “transposition, modulation, equivalence and adaptation”. This said, their use of terminology lacked a rigorous and systematic use of such terms.