Connotative and Denotative Meaning and Translation Issues. Words may have positive or negative meanings

1. Connotative
meaning and
Translation Issues

2. People use language to communicate.They share ideas, feelings
transfer thoughts through language by using words. When
people misunderstand what words mean it will have no meaning .
The meaning is the core of any language because it is the
meaning what gives the words power.
When we talk about the meaning we have to differentiate
between several meaning on the level of word we have
denotative meaning and connotative meaning . People need to
be aware about how meanings of words differ in different
contexts and times.
What is the difference between the denotative and connotative
meaning? Why translating the connotative meaning can be a
challenge for the translator?
What is the denotative meaning?

3. • The denotative meaning: is the literal
and exact meaning of a word, the
dictionary definition of a word
the surface meaning .
For example: She is wearing a blueT-shirt
and a pink shoes.

4. What is the connotation?

5. Connotation is the hidden meaning that gives a
word more emotional impact it give the reader or
the listener a distinct impression or feeling, calling
an emotion rather than fact.
Through connotation words can reveal hidden
opinion, attitude or judgments. Connotation refers
to a meaning that is implied by a word apart from
the thing which describes explicitly words carry
cultural and emotional association or meaning in
addition to their literal meaning (Denotation).

6. There are six types of connotative meaning :-
1- Attitudinal Meaning:
•The expression doesn't merely denote
the referent in a neutral way, but also
hints at some attitude to it:
For example: House and Home
House is a neutral word in English
whereas Home has an emotional
connotation

7. Place
Building
Where
you live
Feel
safe
Happy
Secure
(Denotative meaning) (Connotative meaning)
House Home

8. 2- Associative meaning:
• It may consist of expectations wrongly associated with
the referent that are rightly or of the expression:
For example : the word (Crusade ) has strongly positive
association with English , whereas ‫حملة‬
‫صليبية‬ its Arabic
equivalent has a negative association the Crusades to
Palestine in the Middle Age.

9. 3- Affective meaning:
• It related to the emotive effect worked on the
addressee by the choice of expression:
For example: the two expressions (silence please &
shut up) share the same in Arabic ‫اسكت‬and the
denotative meaning (be quite).The speaker in first
one produce a polite effect and the second one
produce an impolite one. So the speaker attitude to
the listener produce a different affective impact.

10. 4-Allusive meaning:
• It occur when an expression evokes an associated
saying or quotation in such a way that the meaning
of that saying or quotation becomes part of the
overall meaning of the expression
• For example, the oath ‫االلتزام‬
‫التام‬
‫باإلخالص‬
‫و‬
‫الثقة‬
‫والسمع‬
‫والطاعة‬
‫في‬
‫العسر‬
‫و‬
‫اليسر‬
‫والمنشط‬
‫و‬
‫المكره‬ . which members
of the Muslim Brotherhood swore to their leader,
alludes to the Quranic verses: ‫إن‬
‫مع‬
‫العسر‬
ً
‫يسرا‬ . ‫إن‬
‫مع‬
‫العسر‬
ً
‫يسرا‬

11. 5- Reflective meaning:
• The meaning given to the expression over and
above the denotative meaning which it has in
that context by the fact that it also calls to mind
another meaning or the same word or phrase:
For example: the word ‫حمار‬in Arabic to call
someone it connotatively mean he is (stupid) and
also refer to an animal (Donkey) which is the
context provides a connotative reflected meaning.

12. 6- Collocative meaning:
• The associations a word acquires on account of
the meaning of words which tend to occur in its
environment
For example:
Pretty and handsome share the common
grounds of (good looking) but they are
differentiated by the range of noun with which they
are likely to occur Pretty collocate girl, Garden,
women and flower, while handsome collocates
boy, man ,vessel, etc.

13. • Words may have positive or negative
connotations that depend upon social, cultural
and personal experience of individuals For
example, the
words childish, childlike and youthful have
the same denotative, but different connotative,
meanings. Childish and childlike have a negative
connotation, as they refer to immature behavior
of a person.Whereas, youthful implies that a
person is lively and energetic.

14. • look to these sentences:-
1-The woman slammed the door behind her and
threw her jacket.
2-The woman closed the door behind her and hung
her jacket.
The first sentence uses words with negative
connotation (slammed), giving the feeling that the
woman had a difficult day.
The second uses positive and neutral (closed) giving
the feeling that the woman had a successful day.
As can be seen, choosing words based on their
connotation can make for two very different tones.

15. it’s important to remember that the audience will be
faced with the task of decoding the words that we
choose to retrieve the meaning. If we share a word
intentionally or unintentionally with a negative
connotation, the audience will feel the impact of that
word and have an emotional reaction. Audience may
feel uncomfortable, become distracted, or tune out
completely.
It is important to note that not all connotations are
simply positive or simply negative, depending on
how a word is used, it can connote different things.

16. • When the translator doesn’t have any cultural
background of the source language then he will face
difficulties conveying the exact meaning. Language is
a part of culture and therefore translation from one
language to another can not be done adequately
without a knowledge of the two cultures.
• The successful translator has to cope with the
different shades of word meanings, which are in non-
literary translation.

17. References:
• Dr. Mohammed El HajAhmed Assistant Professor of
Translation, Connotation-https://studylib.net
• www.slideserve.com/ivana/connotative-meaning-and-
translation-issues
• https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/148399177.pdf
• Semantics.pdf.by Hilman_Pardede,FKIP2016

18. By: Nancy Haddad & Alaa Al-Rajabi
Dr. Khaleel B. Al Bataineh
Department of English Language andTranslation