A Rhetorical, Stylistic and Translation Quality Assessment Based -Study of English and French Translations of Al-Sayyab's Poem

: Arabic Poetry in general and Iraqi Modern Poetry in particular are abundant in emotional, nationalistic and political attitudes. Iraqi poets express their devotion and loyalty to their homeland profoundly and figuratively. Badr Shaker Al-Sayyab is an Iraqi pioneering figure in modern Arabic poetry. His poem (For I'm Stranger) is one of his powerful and effective literary works in which he draws magnificent images of the strong psychological bond with his homeland Iraq. This poem is a challenging task for translators (from Arabic into any other language). Therefore, this paper focuses on how to render the meter and the rhyme of the source Arabic poem which has unique stylistic and prosaic structures into the TL concerned .The current study includes an analysis of the English and French versions of "Liaani Ghareeb ةَزغ ًٍلأ" poem. The analysis is made by comparing musical, rhetorical and figurative structures of the two versions to see which version is closer to the Arabic SL poem. This study comes up with the conclusion that the metrical and prosodic structures of the French version are more harmonic in terms of musicality. The English version ,on the other hand,seems acceptable but lacks the rhetorical compatibility in the light of the adopted theories of translation.

The poet has embedded his poetic expressions by some rhetorical and stylistic constructions to convey the meaning in an aesthetic way. His choices have musical and harmonic structures in the body of the poem (Obaid, 2020)

Poetic Modernism and Alsayyab's Poetry
Since the Mesopotamians invented writing , they documented the history of their land in poetic works. A good example is the Epic of Gilgamesh , the first epic in human history. Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab is one of the writers who believe that "the word is mightier than the sword" as a means to resist unjust social and national conditions, and to make changes in society by liberation and personal freedom. He is well-known for being the first modern poet to make changes and amendments on the rhyme and rhythm of the classical Arabic poetry (Thompson, 2017), thus giving modern poetry its new form.
Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab highlighted his personal attitudes and feelings towards the general social and political situation of Iraq in the 20th century (Ibid). In most of his poems and as most of his fellow poets , Al-Sayyab stressed an essential issue that the only hope for Iraqis is to love their country ; to build it and be loyal to its soil. He persistently motivates readers to rebel against social inequality (Boullata, 1969) (Al-Musawi, 2006).

Methodology 3.1.The poem
The data of this study includes the source poem (1) and the two TL versions: the French (2) and the English (3) . The source and target versions are published online. The French version is available at the Wikipedia website , which is the only version available for this poem globally, whereas the English version is uploaded on a famous platform for international poetry "PoemHunter". So, it is necessary to criticize the poem and enhance its quality in a way reflecting its original sense and form.

The Theme and the Structure of the Poem
This poem is deemed modern ; having artistic procedures and aesthetic structure i.e. the form and content serve the poet"s opinion towards the conflict between life and death. This poem was written in 1962 during the estrangement of Al-Sayyab in Kuwait. There are three main themes in this poem which are:-1-Feeling of estrangement 2-Homesick 3-Resistance (Al-Baharawi, 1993, p. 159) The themes deal with the conflict between life and death; the poet is suffering from illness and dying whereas the struggle for remaining alive is present in the poem.
According to (Al-Baharawi, 1993, p. 155) the poem has been divided into 11 Arabic sentences and as follows: In studying poetry , the main characteristic features which have received the interest of language researchers and literature writers alike are rhyme and rhythm. Though different in their mechanism in poetry writing , both are regarded associative features to form real poetic writing (Lerdahl, 2001).
Meter and rhyme enrich the image in the poetic writing in drawing attention towards the stimulus created by the prosodic music which facilitates cognitive processing of the poetic content (Stockwell, 2007). In other words, simplifying the cognitive processing could reduce efforts load in the working memory; eases the prediction of the upcoming details in the poem(Ibid ) The proponents of the cognitive poetics argue for the thesis that symmetry , similarity and recursive patterning which depend on metrical structure and rhyme are the resources of beauty and aesthetics of the poem (Jacobsen, 2006); (Di Dio, 2007). Therefore, rhyme and meter affect the poem by installing aesthetic linking which should be rendered and preserved ; to make TL poem more emotionally involving.
It is worth mentioning that there is no systematic and academic study has been done according to the translation theories to investigate the role of these two structuring features. How rhyme and meter leave an impact on the 4 TL readers, how can translators cope with the aesthetic and emotional processing of the original poetry ?
This study; therefore, attempts to show whether there is relevance between these structuring properties of poetry (rhyme& meter) and the quality of the translated poetry.

The Rhyme
According to (Jacobsen, 2006) meter and rhyme are the most important structuring properties. As for rhymes, they are realized by a pair of words (e.g. ban/fan) (Wainwright, 2015). The words are identical in having similar final sounds of the words (Ibid). Rhyme and meter haveas argued by (Pullinger, 2017)a potential impact on the aesthetics of the poem. As a result, the translator must take into consideration the effects of rhyme and meter during the process of transferring ideas from SL into TL. These two features heavily affect the recalling and comprehending of words in the poems (ibid) Many studies have proved that translating and writing rhyming words would be easy to comprehend and process if compared to nonrhyming ones (Geudens, 2005).
To organize the semantic and lexical information in the mental structure, a rhyme seems contributive and beneficial. In word recognition , scholars urge that rhyme is constructed according to the final sound creating and highlighting the holistic metrical structure (Ibid) The phonological similarity mostly constructs a rhyme that produces recurrent patterns between "two ante-caesura-syllables" which ,in turns, creates harmonic order in the stanzas and seems more memorable and predictable. (Fabb N. ., 2009) "End rhymes in metered poetry temporally structure both single verses and their configuration within the multi-verse unit of the stanza. "(Ibid) End rhymes focus on metrical structure by creating a "phonological resonance" between two highlighted words, or syllables which are the final word/syllable of the line in poetry (Geudens, 2005).
The standards of aesthetics in the poem heavily depend on the created similarity and recurrence like repetitions and symmetry (Pullinger, 2017). Rhyming words enhance the "beauty" and the aesthetic liking in the poem. Finally, poetics and rhetoric hypothesize that rhetorical elaboration makes the content of a message more prominent and more emotionally charged. Al-Sayyab has in this poem structured the rhyme as follows:

The Meter
Meter is the perception of alternating weak (unaccented) or strong (accented) syllables (Fabb N. &., 2008). The saliency of a stimulus can be influenced by the regularity of the meter ; it creates a specific stimulus so that the poet draws the perceiver's attention (Ibid).
The syllabotonic meter is the typical style of meter in English and German poetry. It is outlined by alternating stressed and unaccented words within a metered foot which also creates a set of stressed syllables in the original poem (Ibid).
The iambic meters are rhythmic recurrences that help to structure a line of verse (Carper, 2020).
There is substantial evidence that metrical patterning in many forms of poetry is beneficial to cognitive processes , see (Fabb N. &., 2008). Regular metrical structure, for instance, is easier to remember and to be reproduced than irregular metrical structure (Essens and Povel, 1985).
The poem of Al-Sayyab's Lani Ghareeb-For I'm Foreign is metrically structured according to the Arabic prosody of "Al-Mutaqareb Meter" which literally means "closing meter" ; the accented and unaccented morphological variations are close. Al-Mutaqarib has a high and clear musicality characterized by arrangement and intensity. For this reason, this meter is frequently employed for war and epical theme poems (Mustafa, 2012). The poem has been constructed to Al-Mutaqareb feet ‫فعىلي(‬ / ‫)فعىلي‬ (faɁulun)

Repetition
Poetry is a reflection of the poet's talent. Composing creative poetry is impossible without the presence of deep awareness of the poetic reality ; that includes repetitive features in the poem like repeated sounds and words (Silverstein, 1984).
In different languages, the analysis of "repetition" (or reduplication) in the comparative stylistic studies links this phenomenon to both the artistic creativity and its scientific importance in the content of the poem (Mazur, 2006) .
Without taking into consideration the poetic structure as the basic prerequisite of the perfection of sounding speech, conceptualizing the importance of sound repetition as a sort of harmonization, actualization, amplification in the poetic text would be insufficient (Clarvoe, 2009) .

Practical part
The poem of Liaani Ghareeb (for I'm foreign ) is influenced by the Shakespearean sonnet. The numbers of the lines , rhyme and meters all are like the structure of 16th century poetry. In other words, there are 4 stanzas and the content concerns with personal feeling, estrangement , homesick and resistance (Al-Baharawi, 1993, p. 159).
For the purpose of poetic and critical analysis, the criticism for the French and English translations has been done partially (from stanza no1. to no.4) respectively.

6.1.Stanza One
The poet starts the poem with two cause-effect clauses beginning with ( Lianni ‫-ألًٍ‬ because I'm) . There is a reasoning to the cause of his feeling of estrangement due to the poet's homesickness for Iraq:-(line 1. I'm stranger) and (line 2. Iraq is my love). So, Al-Sayyab meant to say "I miss this country because I'm far from it" , he was in Kuwait which is a neighboring country to Iraq. The nearest southern Iraqi city to Kuwait is Basra which is the city of Al-Sayyab's childhood.
The first line has repeated the topic of the poem ‫غزَة"‬ ‫الًٍ‬ -For I'm Foreign" . In other words, because Iraq is a wonderful and great land , the poet feels as if he were stranger and foreign ( ‫فٍ‬ ‫هٌا‬ ‫أًٍ‬ ‫و‬ ‫تعُذ‬ / ‫الحثُة‬ ‫العزاق‬ ‫ألىّ‬ ‫اشتُاق‬ ) Al-Sayyab misses everyone in Iraq whether they were men or women.
‫عزاق(‬ : ‫أًادٌ‬ ‫إلُها‬ ‫.)إلُه‬ The poet mostly uses specific reference to imply generic reference: (the people and land of Iraq) (Ismail, 2011) The rhetorical and stylistic structure of this part of the poem depends on the repetition of the last sound which constitute the rhyme [a/a/b/b] represented by ‫ق[‬ / ‫ق‬ / ‫ب‬ / ‫]ب‬ (Zawaydeh, 2000). These two Arabic sounds(/b/&/q/) are plosive and glottal ; having the semantic reference to coughing , feeling estrangement and dying.
The metrical structure in this poem is ‫فعىلي‬ / ‫)فعىلي‬ ) which is used to depict the harshness , war and severe life (Athamneh, 2017) a-English Version The English version does not reflect the musical structure of the source text; having no rhyme or rhythm. This translation has been written according to the metrical structure of iambic foot:-/for/i/am/a/strang/er/ = 6 syllables 7 /be/lovd/ir/aq/ = 4 syllables /Far/di/stant/, and/ I /here/ in /my/ long/ing/ = 10 syllables /For/ it/, for/ her/ .. I /cry/ out:/ Ir/aq/ = 9 syllables The translator has used "stranger" instead of "foreign" , it is believed that replacing stranger with "foreign" to create alliteration in the topic sentence of the poem. The figurative expressionslike alliterationgive a powerful feeling if compared with the literal one. So, the starting line of the stanza is suggested to be (For I'm Foreign) which includes 2 syllables of the iambic meter (Nizomova, 2021).
In line 1 , to add , changing "stranger" into "foreign" which ends with the nasal sound of /n/ creates a rhyme with line no. 3 (longging) which has the nasal sound/ŋ/.
Line 4 , the pronoun (it) is used to refer to Iraq , but using this pronoun causes a loss in the personification of the country. The poet tries to resemble Iraq to the beloved, so it is necessary to say "him" instead of (it).
(For him, for her .. I cry out: Iraq) which does not change the measurement of the English iambic meter (line 4 = 2 syllables (for-him-forher) + 4 syllables(I-cry-I-raq) (Tarlinskaja, 2006) Repetition is rhetorically necessary to create a musical harmony in the poem , for this reason the poet repeated the preposition "for" in line 4 (For him ‫الُه‬ , For her ‫إلُها‬ ) . Therefore , the suggested replacing of (it) into "him" seems more appropriate.
Line no.2 has an awkward translation ; it does not have the cause and effect preposition like that mentioned in Arabic ‫"ألى"‬ for". The repetition is absent in the second line in this stanza.
The deixis of place ‫-هٌا"‬ here" has been rendered successfully in line 3.
In line 3 ,also, the repetition of the word "Iraq" creates a musical compatibility with the original word ‫"عزاق"‬ i.e. /q/ resembles ‫/ق/‬ . The French translator has ended the first line with the word "étranger" which has a closing sound /e/. This vowel sound has been repeated in line 1 and line 2 as a rhyme to the stanza though the Arabic original poem ended with the consonant plosive sound ‫)ب(‬ with no vocalization. The Arabic rhyme used in lines3&4 is the glottal sound ‫"ق"‬ , the French translator has used the same sound as a rhyme ( /k/ in line 3 "nostalgique") and (line 4 in /irak/).
The translated structure of the French rhyme in this stanza is [a/a/b/b] which looks compatible with the Arabic structure [a/a/b/b] .

8
The repetition has been fulfilled rhetorically by retaining the repetition of the preposition (for him ‫إلُه‬ / for her ‫الُها‬ ) in the French translation "Pour lui, pour elle" . There is another embedded compatibility in the music of the poem created by this repetition as in (Pour lui / Je crie) /i:/.
It seems that the French version in this stanza is more compatible and has a rhetorical and stylistic similarity with the Arabic original poem if compared to the English version . After the poet expresses his feelings , he tries in this stanza go deeper in the description and says that his strong passion towards to Iraq makes him cry , as if he were in exile. The echo is only present when there is a vacuum . In the vacuum and empty rooms , a sound turns into an echo. He says that "my call to go back to Iraq and no one hears it as if I'm talking to rocks and walls". The world and the people are dead ; they do not respond to my call .
The last word in this stanza is "my cry-"ٍ‫ًذائ‬ is written alone in a separate line to reflect the isolation . This word is supposed to be related to the 3rd stanza. The poet focuses on this word which carries the core content of theme of the poem.i.e. crying out in solitude.

And from my cry a lament returns 2. An echo bursts forth 3. I feel I have crossed the expanse 4. To a world of decay that responds not 5. To my cry The Arabic original rhyme structure is [a/b/b/a/c] whereas the English version has the structure of [a/b/c/d]
The first line in this stanza is suggested to do a foregrounding for the word "returns" to be:-(And from my cry returns a lament ) so that the line rhyme with line 4 (lament vs. not) , both having the sound /t/ .
Deleting the word "forth" in line 2 and ending the line with the word "bursts" is semantically fair. This change creates a rhetorical harmony with line 3. Repetition in this translation has been employed successfully by repeating the pronoun (I) in line 3 in (I feel I have) which reflects the original repetition in the Arabic poem ‫تأًٍ(‬ ‫)أحس،‬ .
Leaving a space before line 5 "To cry" is preferable, it adds to the music of translation the sound /i:/ which is found originally in Arabic in the word ‫ًذائٍ‬ . This space draws an attention to the sematic content of this word: "my solitude" , being alone and feeling estrangement.
After these manipulations, the structure of the rhyme is [a/b/b/a/c] which is totally identical with the Arabic poem.
The metrical measuring of this stanza is as follows:-Line 1 : /and+from+my+cry+a+lam+ent+re+turns/ = 9 syllables Line 2 : /(An+ech+o+bursts+forth/ = 5 syllables Line 3 : /I+feel+I+crossd+the+ex+pasns/ = 7 syllables Line 4 : /To+a+world+of+de+cay+that+re+sponds+not/ = 10 syllables It seems that the meters in the English stanza are neither parallel nor balanced . Therefore, a proposed rendering is required to manage this parameter at the end of this study.

b-French Version 1. Et de mon cri me revient des pleurs 2. Un éclat d'écho 3. Je crois avoir traversé l'étendue 4. A un monde en décomposition qui ne répond pas ----5. Pour mon cri
The Arabic poem has the rhyme structure of [a/b/b/a/c] whereas the French version is [a/b/b/c/d]. Some amendments are needed to create a compatibility between the Arabic and English versions . The main ones are :-In line 2 , the original repetition has been ignored though it is necessary as referring to the personal feeling. Therefore, in line 3 a structure like (je sens j'ai) is preferable to retain the original rhetoric of the poem ( ‫/احس‬ ‫.)تأًٍ‬ The original meaning has a reference to sensing ‫أحس(‬ -I feel/ Je sens) rather than believing ‫اظي(‬ -I think / je crois).
Line 4 which ends with a negative structure "ne répond pas" is possibly to be changed into "n'a pas réagir". This change creates a rhyme with line 1 that has the sound /r/ in (eur+ir).
Leaving a space before line 5 is suggested to give a thematic focus on the semantic content of the word "cri-cry/ٍ‫ًذائ‬ " which is also ended with the sound /i:/ the same sound in the Arabic version.
The long sound /i:/ refers also to the prolonged suffering of illness and pain in the soul and body of the poet ; the translator should give attention to this sound. (Kiparsky, 2014) After these manipulations in the poem , the structure of the rhyme in French is possibly to be [a/b/b/a/c] which is the same rhyme structure of the Arabic poem. In this stanza , there are some motivated stylistic choices to figure out a rhetorical image. One of the themes is : "My cry can shake the branches" line 1 , it is rhetorically and pragmatically implies that the poet's crying is very powerful and can shake the branches. This translation causes a loss of intertexuality with the Quranic image of Maryam which is toward you the trunk of the palm tree; it will drop upon you ripe, fresh dates". The poet's language seems figurative rather than literal which led to intensiveness of the rhetoric. Line 2 says : "nothing but the death falling down ; the trees or the branches carry the death and stones" i.e. these branches carry stones and death instead of the fruits and life. a-English Version 1. If I shake the branches 2. Only decay will drop from them 3. Stones 4. Stones-no fruit The structure of the English rhyme is [a/b/a/c] whereas the original Arabic poem has the structure of [a/b/a/c]. There is a semantic shift in line 2 ; the original meaning is the death ‫الزدي-‬ whereas the English version shifted that into decay though both have the same signification.
The translator has used the first case of the conditional sentence (if) , it is preferable to say "when" instead of "if" because the poet talks about facts in his poem , "when you shake the branches , only death drops from the branches".
The translator has also repeated the words ‫حجار"‬stones" as the original poet had done the same thing.
The last word in the stanza is "fruit" in which the translator has forgotten to add the plural-s morpheme. This inflectional morpheme is not only semantically necessary yet it is rhetorically important to create a rhyme with line 1. (Campe, 2013) Therefore , if the translator follows these modifications , the rhyme structure will be [a/b/a/a]. The metrical measuring of this stanza is as follows:-

. Pierres, mais pas de fruits
This translation needs simple modifications in the sequence of the words to create an appropriate rhyme structure in the TL poem like : 1-line 1 , putting the verb "secoue" at the end of the line to be (Les branches , si je secoue). This is because the last sound in /oue/ is identical to the sound in the last word of the poem "fruit" that ends with the sound /ui/. Stylistically speaking, a foregrounding of "Les branches" is significantly remarkable to the rhyme structure. 2-A foregrounding in line 2 for the preposition phrase "d'elles" at the beginning of the line is needed to serve two issues:-1 ) alliteration with line 3 , and 2) to end the line with the verb "tomber" . 3-In line 3, the addition at the end of the line of the conjunction (et) that can create rhyme compatibility between lines 2 and 4 4-Dividing line 4 into two sub-lines as in : "Pierres, mais" "Pas de fruit". This dividing is stylistically and rhetorically beneficial for the two following purposes: 1) Creating alliteration between lines 4 and 5 .
2) Creating a compatible rhyme between line 4 and line 2 using the sound /e/ found in the two French words (mais+tomber) 5-For the word "fruits" in the last line, it is preferable to delete the plural -s morpheme; the sound /ui/ creates a rhyme and rhythm with line 1 as well. After these alterations , the French rhyme in this stanza can be represented as [a/b/b/b/a].

. Conclusions
The study comes up with the following points:-1. It seems that both the French and English versions have followed the style of the Shakespearean sonnet that includes 4 stanzas /14 lines in the poem. 2. The metrical measurements throughout this study show that the French meters are employed and they function properly , whereas the English version translator provides less than half of the poem in accordance with the metrical feet (iambic). 3. While the French version presents a well-structured rhymes , the English version reflects the rhetorical repetition in the original poem very accurately . 4. Both the French and English translations are equal in the rhetorical power ; they preserved up to 75 % of the original Arabic rhetoric represented by figures of speech and other rhetorical expressions . 5. Stylistically speaking , the French version has made some choices that led to a sort of compatibility with the Arabic poem , whereas the English version hardly conveys the core meaning disregarding the stylistic motivations. Consequently , the study recommends an alternative English and French translations conveying the sense and form of this highly impressive Iraqi sonnet ( see 8 and 9) *****