The study examines the impact of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) from English on translated Arabic, highlighting CLI as a significant factor in language variation and change within translated texts. Focusing on different registers—fiction, legal, academic, and journalistic—the research explores how CLI affects translations across various contexts and investigates whether these influences contribute to broader contact-induced language changes in original Arabic. To achieve this, the researchers constructed a specialized comparable corpus that includes a bilingual sub-corpus of original English and Arabic texts alongside a monolingual sub-corpus of both translated and non-translated Arabic texts, spanning two distinct time periods (1950–1990 and 2000–2020).
The study specifically analyzes the conjunction system to operationalize CLI, employing a primarily quantitative methodology to determine the effects of sub-corpus type (language and translation status), register, and timespan on the frequency, distribution, and preferences of connectives and their logical-semantic relationships. The findings reveal that both language/translation status and register significantly influence the use of connectives in Arabic translations. These results support the presence of covert CLI effects, demonstrating that English influences tend to inhibit traditional Arabic writing preferences, resulting in a generally reduced use of connectives in translated Arabic texts. This reduction underscores how translation practices can subtly alter the structural aspects of the target language, contributing to ongoing language variation and evolution.