In simultaneous interpreting (SI) from a subject-verb-object (SVO) language such as English, Arabic simultaneous interpreters are confronted with the dilemma of choosing between the default, dominant, and unmarked V-initial or VSO structure, or a derived and marked S-initial or SV(O) structure. The choice of the former may cause memory overload and omissions or failure due to prolonged time lag and excessive storage of input chunks, especially if structural asymmetry coincides with such extreme factors as high source language (SL) input rate, structural complexity and/or information density. By contrast, the choice of any of the SV(O) structures available in Arabic can help interpreters closely follow the structure of SL discourse and avoid potential risks despite the shift of focus and emphasis brought about by the marked SV(O) structure. Using a corpus-based analysis of an English-to-Arabic parallel multimodal corpus of mediated and non-mediated discourse, the article seeks to determine which structure is used more frequently in simultaneously interpreted speeches compared to translated and original ones. The results indicated the dominance of the S-initial structure in SI, whereas the V-initial structure dominated translations and original speeches and that the choice of structure was impacted by mediation type (SI vs. translation) and language modality (written vs. spoken). These findings help relate the choice of structure to the SI process and suggest that the interpreters adopted structure-based processing. The results contribute to the research on a relatively under-investigated language pair and are valuable for informing SI training.

This article reports on an empirical investigation into language-specific factors and strategies pertaining to syntactic asymmetry in English>Arabic simultaneous interpreting. It discusses the disparity between subject-verb-object (S-initial) and verb-subject-object (V-initial) structures when complicated by long and/or complex initial subjects in the source language (SL). These types of complex initial structures in the subject position significantly delay the verb that is normally needed to start sentences in Arabic. I hypothesise that professionals are more likely to follow SL structures to cope with complex initial subjects and avoid memory overload, information loss or failure. I propose that they do so using what I refer to as the strategy of not waiting for the verb, utilising Arabic word-order flexibility which offers nominal clause structures similar to the English S-initial structure. Three English speeches from real-life conference settings were analysed. The analysis focused on English sentences with complex initial subjects and their different renditions in multiple authentic Arabic simultaneous interpretations. The results of the analysis and fidelity assessment supported my hypothesis in relation to strategy and "language-pair specificity", indicating a preference for "form-based processing". The analysis also supported the difficulty of interpreting complex initial subjects. The strategy of not waiting for the verb was found to contribute to greater completeness and accuracy, albeit the latter to a lesser extent. It can be proposed as a complementary strategy to 'waiting', 'lagging', 'restructuring', 'anticipation', and so on. This approach could enhance (would-be) interpreters' repertoire of potentially useful options, particularly when other approaches may lead to memory overload, omission or information failure.

Translation outside the context of Language Service Providers (LSPs) represents a sizeable share of the translation market. However, this facet of the activity remains less visible and less open to monitoring. This study investigates translation as a situated practice in the context of Oman within institutions where the translation activity does not represent a primary purpose. Adopting a quantitative approach, the study employed an online survey to investigate indicators of the institutionalization of translation, such as resourcing, working conditions, distribution of work, interaction, workflows, and quality management policies. The findings show that translation activities within institutions in Oman are thriving. However, the study revealed that translation practices are subject to considerable variation and that, despite notable exceptions, translation is frequently affected by challenges related to inadequate staffing, resources, and quality assurance procedures. These practices are mainly ad hoc, providing little evidence that translation needs are treated as an integral part of the institution’s functioning. These findings align with observations in other contexts and underscore the need to recognise the significant role translation plays in the functioning of the institution and the need to effectively integrate translation activities within their institutional environments to enhance quality standards in this often-overlooked segment of the translation industry. More generally, the findings confirm the necessity for Translation Studies to appreciate the significance of institutional translation as a facet of translation as a situated activity.

One of the major challenges in English>Arabic simultaneous interpreting (SI) is the handling of structural asymmetry between subject-verb-object (SVO) English and the verb-subject-object (VSO) structure in Modern Standard Arabic (henceforth Arabic). In Arabic, a VSO word order is dominant although a nominal clause with several variations is also available, including a marked SVO structure with a preverbal subject followed by a verbal predicate (VPr.) functioning as its khabar (rheme/comment). This paper reports on an empirical study of the handling of structural asymmetry between English SVO and Arabic VSO structures in English>Arabic SI. The study uses a parallel corpus consisting of the transcription of 10 multiple Arabic SI versions of three political English speeches. We hypothesize that the Arabic simultaneous interpreters are more likely to use the English-mimicking SVO structure since it is easier to process and requires less cognitive load on their memory. The results of our corpus-based analysis indicate that the marked SVO structure was used more frequently than the unmarked VSO structure. These results lead to the conclusion that the use of the SVO clause is a feature of English>Arabic SI. We also conclude that the Arabic simultaneous interpreters were effectively engaged in «form-based processing» by opting for the structure that has the closest match to English SVO structures as a tactic to cope with syntactic asymmetry. Our conclusions lend support to the «language-pair specificity» hypothesis since the lack of need for restructuring is only available in SI between language pairs with similar or flexible structures. Keywords: Language-pair specificity, Syntactic asymmetry, VSO-SVO ratio, Simultaneous interpreting, Corpus analysis

Novice translation graduates are often found to be slow translators. The fact that this deficiency is usually rectified through professional experience implies that initial performance issues are the outcome of a complex interplay of factors, which do not involve intrinsic abilities. Based on insights from cognitively oriented research on students’ beliefs about language learning and the impact these beliefs have on students’ performance, the present study posits that the beliefs students have towards the question of translation speed represent one of the factors that fashion their productivity. Targeting graduates from the English Language and Translation programme at a private university in an Arab Gulf State, a mixed method approach, including a survey and a semi-structured interview, was adopted to explore the beliefs students have towards the question of speed and to identify the sources of these beliefs in their training programme. Analysis reveals that productivity awareness among the investigated population is almost non-existent and points at the predominantly product-oriented approach that characterises their learning experience as the main source of this condition. This article argues that improving students’ awareness of productivity requirements is not just a case of integrating timed activities, but calls for the adoption of multi-layered process-oriented training principles and practices at the level of delivery, feedback, and assessment criteria.

In multilingual communication, dialectal differences, code-switching, and culturally influenced persuasive approaches make phishing and social engineering attacks more widespread, testing existing detection technologies. Traditional monolingual and multilingual transformer-based methods concentrate on lexical and semantic similarities and are less resistant to paraphrase or translation-induced semantic changes. TRIDENT-SE (Translation-Divergence and Intent Graph-based Detection of Social Engineering) is a hybrid cross-lingual cyber threat detection system that uses massive language models and graph-based behavioral reasoning. An instruction-tuned Large Language Model contextualizes English, Modern Standard Arabic, regional Arabic dialects, and romanized Arabic phrases. TDE modules assess semantic differences between original and translated messages, enhancing translation noise and language change resilience. An Intent–Action Graph Reasoning (IAGR) module simulates attacker strategies by correlating urgency, impersonation, credential solicitation, authority exploitation, and money demands. TRIDENT-SE increases F1-score by 9.4% over monolingual baselines and 5.1% over state-of-the-art multilingual transformer models in code-switching, dialect-shift, and adversarial paraphrase situations on an annotated Arabic–English dataset. Arabic-speaking human-centered evaluation participants had 18.7% more correct risk assessments and 22.3% less harmful user responses. Multilingual phishing and social engineering detection is robust and interpretable using translation-aware semantic analysis and intent-driven graph learning.