Changing the Structure of Paragraphs and Texts in Arabic: A Case from News Reporting

This study explores the textual alterations of Arabic news structure and how it has been influenced by news texts produced in English. The paper precisely examines sentence, paragraph and text structures in terms of form and content in relation to news translation. It analyses news articles collated from Aljazeera and Al-Arabiya news networks. The collated corpus is translations from English into Arabic by these two media outlets. The analysis showed considerable changes that the form of Arabic textual structures has incurred, especially in the general layout of texts. Although it confirm Hatim’s (1997) text-type categorisation with regard to argumentation in Arabic news texts that Arabic lacks argumentative elements it news content, it exhibited significant shift in internal cohesion, paragraph transitions, and syntactic patterns. These changes could emanate from many other influencing factors, but translation is definitely one.


INTRODUCTION
Translation Studies is a dynamic field. It vigorously works with other fields as diverse as linguistics, anthropology, media, political science, cultural studies, etc. In the process of translation, many factors can influence the final product. It is something of a cliché to only focus on the linguistic patterns and attempt to highlight differences, problems or difficulties. This is because the factors, be it political, ideological, cultural, institutional, seem to have eclipsed all other linguistic ones. The dynamicity of translation can make a product grow in the target language with all features of the source language. This can be evident in news reporting in Arabic which seems to have gone through dramatic changes in their organisation and texture. Kaplan (1966) states that the organisation of paragraphs among languages can be tellingly different and language instructors should display these differences to their learners. Similarly, in translation, translators are encouraged to produce texts that adequate to the target culture, even if they needed to camouflage some linguistic patterns. But to produce a translated text with features of the source culture in relation to a specific genre and then make it adequate and acceptable to the target culture is something of a phenomenon that needs investigation. What follows is not only this, but that to find writers of news stories begin to follow or impose a style that is different from their own culture is something new. This is what this study is attempt- ing to make, to see whether news writing in Arabic has been influenced by translation or not. In addition, it explores the generic conventions and paragraph structure of Arabic news reporting to see if they have incurred positive alterations.
Given that news is a product of multifaceted cultural practices, it goes without saying that the practices of producing and consuming news are culturally determined and cannot be context-free. In other words, the context when disseminating a news item can neither be neglected nor evaded. Mellor (2005) explains that readers in a given society expect certain textual features and conventions that give them clues to assign a text to a particular genre. Those textual markers and sentence structures differ significantly among cultural contexts. A more important point raised by Mellor (2005) is that the structures and textual features might, indeed, vary within the same culture with the passage of time. Hatim (1997), who shares the same opinion, argues that such differences within the same culture can also indicate 'deep divisions among the various subcultures within a society ' (p. 35). The way news texts are structured and presented to the audience is greatly influenced by the use and origin of language. Such scene is also articulated by Mohamed & Majzoub (2000) who point out that 'texts written in different languages display culture-specific organisational patterns ' (p. 45). In other words, Arabic has its own sentence and paragraph structures, in which the flow of information and ideas has its own system of development and that is inescapably different from English. It is widely believed that such style of thinking in Arabic rhetoric, with its close interrelationship with culture, has been influenced by the classical Arabic poetry, oratory, and oral traditions. With the passage of time, those factors were present in all aspects of transmitting knowledge, as well as in the teaching policies of Arabic writing in the educational systems (Mohamed & Majzoub, 2000).
Arabic is, indeed, a Semitic language and belongs to Semitic culture, whereas English is a Germanic language. Cuypers (2015) argues that belonging to the Semitic culture impacted on the manner of expressing things and thinking in Arabic. He contends that what makes comprehension of Semiotic texts difficult is that they do not follow the classical progression of writing as an introduction, main body and concluding remark, but what he called symmetry progression. This means that the author, translator or editor has more freedom to structure their texts. Furthermore, a number of syntactic and textual differences between English and Arabic will allow us explore how each language expresses itself and whether English has influenced Arabic in writing journalistic texts.
Before addressing some issues pertaining to the news structure in Arabic, it is worth offering a brief account of Arabic language. Most countries in the Arab world use standard Arabic in their newspapers, magazines, books, literary works and all other publications (Abdulaziz, 1978). Regional news organisations such as Aljazeera and Al-Arabiya use Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) in their online news articles as well as their news channels. However, there are some instances of dialect and idiolect uses in some local newspapers and TV channels. This is because each country has its own local dialects, and sub-dialects. It is estimated that Arabic is the native language of over 200 million people and the liturgical language for a billion Muslims across the globe (Ryding, 2005). MSA was preceded by Classical Arabic (CA) period which lasted from the sixth century until the eighteenth century.

SENTENCE STRUCTURE IN ARABIC
The structure of Arabic sentence is basically a VSO (verb-subject-object) (Ryding, 2005, p. 65). This is the dominant unmarked word-order in Arabic -here dominant means the most common word order (El-Yasin, 1985). However, SVO (subject-verb-object) sentence structure is an alternative word order in Arabic and can occur in certain instances such as in journalistic texts. Arabic can also structure sentences with OVS (object-verb-subject). Yet, SVO and OVS are used less frequently than VSO (Hetzron & Kaye, 2009).
Arabic sentence is essentially of two types: nominal and verbal. Nominal sentences (jumal ismiyya -‫أسمية‬ ‫)جمل‬ begin with a noun or nominal elements, whereas verbal sentences (jumal fi'liyya -‫فعلية‬ ‫)جمل‬ start with a verb (Ryding, 2005). Traditional grammarians of Arabic explain that sentence type is determined by word-order variance on the basis of the word appearing in the initial place. This categorisation of sentence-initial is not established on whether the sentence contains a verb or not, but explicitly on whether the verb occupies an initial position or not (Ryding, 2005). Moreover, in Arabic a sentence must not necessarily contain a verb. Abboud and Ernest (1983) state that sentences without a verb are known as 'equational sentences' (p. 102). Equational sentences are not to be confused with nominal sentences which start with a noun and may or may not contain a verb -where equational sentences are verbless.
The mubtada is what the sentence begins with and the xabar is the piece of information; new (information) (Khalil 2000, p. 136). These sentences usually contain two nouns and the reason for being verbless is that the verb 'to be' (kaan-a) in Arabic is not included in the present tense indicative. In this case, the verb 'to be' is simply understood and not written/ mentioned (Ryding 2005, p. 59). Further, Beeston (2016) notes that this type of structure is also known as a thematic structure. That is, it begins with a noun phrase or a pronoun followed by a comment or predicate which can be a different word class or noun, an adjective or prepositional phrase. On the other hand, the verb-initial sentences are divided into two components: verb (Fi'l ‫)فعل-‬ and agent, actor or doer (Fa'il ‫.)فاعل-‬ The subject in this case is inflected with the verb and as a result it is not written separately, but incorporated within the verb into one word (Beeston, 2016). In news reporting, the headline will usually take the form of SVO; a nominal sentence. However, the lead which follows the headline will be VSO; verbal sentences. Table 1 illustrates these types of Arabic sentences: Verbs in Arabic basically fall into two major morphological categories: three-consonant roots and four-consonant roots. Every verb of these types has a lexical root. A root is a set of morphemes or consonants that a verb contains. Furthermore, the root of the verb can take different possible verb forms -the verb stem and prefixed and/or suffixed morphemes (Ryding, 2005). These roots inflect with affixation according to person (first, second, third), number (singular, dual, plural), gender (masculine, feminine), tense (past, present, future), mood (indicative, jussive, subjunctive, imperative) and voice (active, passive) (Khalil, 2000). The verb has to agree with its subject in the first three categories (person, number, gender) and inflects accordingly. The Arabic verb, by itself, can form a complete verbal sentence as the affixed elements will be included in its morphological structure. For example, the root for the Arabic verb ‫سمع‬ (hear) constitutes three consonants and can incorporate its subject within its structure; ‫سمعوا‬ (they heard). Every verb stem in Arabic can mushroom into different word classes and express tenses. The Arabic tense, on the other hand, falls into three forms which locate events in time: past, present and future. The inflectional marker of the past tense is usually a suffix, the present tense inflectional marker can either be a prefix or suffix and the future marker is usually a prefix (Khalil, 2000, p. 137). Within the sphere of the Arabic tense system, a range of tenses may appear through the use of morphemes and word combinations. Hence, among the ways of expressing tense are the verb including its inflected forms, the verb plus an auxiliary, a particle, lexical and contextual factors, and temporal adverbial factors (Dawood, 1982). However, two of them are considered the basics: past and present. The past is also referred to as perfect/perfective and the present as imperfect/imperfective when mentioned in relation to aspect -whether the action is completed or not, ongoing or yet to happen (Ryding 2005, p. 52). With regards to the future tense, it is expressed by the present tense indicative verb and preceded by the prefixes sa and sawfa, indicating its futurity. The sa marking particle is used to express an event taking place in the near future, whereas sawfa is used to express the far future (Dawood, 1982). The verb indicating future tense may be expressed in active or passive voice in Arabic.

PARAGRAPH STRUCTURE IN ARABIC
According to Kaplan (1966), the structure of Arabic paragraph is more of parallelism; this is to a certain degree true to all Semitic languages. Arabic structure of paragraph is said to prefer coordination to subordination -the latter is a feature of English rhetoric. Kaplan (1966) offers an example of a short text of 210 words, containing thirteen coordinating elements. One of the most contrasting features to English is the flow of ideas in Arabic, in which paragraphs are developed with scattered ideas rather than following a linear style. By way of explanation, a topic or a rhetoric focus in a paragraph can be viewed from different angles and then it reappears somewhere else in the text without subordination from other views. Allen (1970, 94 -cited in Sa'Adeddin's (1989) observes that it is notably true to find "the same point two or three times from different angles" in the text, which in many cases perplexes the native English reader. This digressiveness in developing paragraphs results in that the main idea or thesis is not supported or argued through (AL-Saraireh & Aljeradaat, 2014).
Arabic is commonly considered a repetitive language in its structure of all kinds of texts. No doubt, this affects the argumentative momentum in the text, especially in news. Connor (2002) infers that repetition is carried out through presentation, in which an argument is expressed by paraphrasing, and offering synonymous words -parallelism. This is of course consistent with Sa' Adeddin's (1989) take that the Arabic paragraph is loosely organised, focusing on overemphasis, repetition, addition and accumulation. The prevalence of such features in developing paragraphs has presumably its roots and influences from the earlier development of the Arabic language (Fakhri, 2009).
To explore the all aspects of paragraph structure in Arabic, it is necessary to discuss some observable features of paragraph outline. The quintessential type of paragraph in Arabic is that the one which usually unnecessary long, with as few punctuation marks as possible. The lack of efficiently used punctuations sometimes makes the information discussed extraneous. It is no wonder to find the whole text (of news, at times) written in one paragraph. The punctuation system is significantly absent from the lower education levels, and hardly highlighted in the tertiary education. Further, it is not surprising to find one long paragraph expressed in one sentence. In such cases, one would risk losing focus of the main point and how it develops. It is, however, in keeping with this continuum one should note that these features of paragraph structure are always discussed in relation to differences and contrastive rhetoric between Arabic and English. The most important point that I am trying to present here is that these features have been changing with the age of information and globalisation due to translation practices that is taking place among news institutions in particular, and cultural activities among societies in general. This study, therefore, draws on a text type model in relation to translation discussed by Hatim and Mason (1990) and Hatim (1997) which offers a detailed analysis of journalistic texts between Arabic and English.

TEXT TYPES
Having discussed syntactic and paragraph development patterns in Arabic, I will now address the concept of argumentation in both Arabic and English from a news reporting point of view. To start with, there are obviously different kinds of texts. However, attempts to develop text typologies have been of a limited usefulness. For example, the distinction between texts as literary, scientific, political or journalistic is too extensive (Hatim, 1997). Reiss (1971) is probably the first to write about text types and translation, distinguished three types of text according to their underlying functions. Texts can be informative such as scientific reports, expressive such as poetry, and operative such as advertisements. However, she later began to include another type of text, which was audio-medial -that later became multi-medial. This type is, in fact, not seen as a fourth type, but may include elements of those three text types. The multi-medial type is concerned with texts written to be spoken or sung such as film scripts or songs (Snell-Hornby, 1997).
In investigating texts, analysts stress the function of the whole text. They argue that there has to be one main focus or purpose for the text. Utterances have been described in their contextual habitat, taking into account the pragmatical-ly intended meaning which in turn communicates a message between interlocutors. From this perspective, Hatim (1997, pp. 36-38) divides texts into three basic text types: instruction, exposition, and argumentation.
The Instructional text type echoes certain features in its structure from official bodies, whether these are private or governmental organisations. Those types of texts have acquired conventional structure formats with a highly non-evaluative rhetoric and a highly formulaic nature (Hatim, 1997). Instruction is subdivided (Hatim & Mason, 1990, p. 156) into two subclasses: instruction with options, which includes advertisements, manuals, recipes, etc. and instruction without options, which includes laws, degrees, legislations and contracts (Trosborg, 1997).
By highlighting the nature of translating news, one can argue that news texts definitely do not fall into this text type as they tend to be translated more literally due to their conventional, instructional material as well as the intended function.
The next text type is exposition, which is subdivided into conceptual exposition, description and narration. A typical expository text contains the following elements in its structure: the first paragraph is usually a scene-setter, it introduces the topic and sets the framework for it; then, it begins by discussing one or more aspects of these scenes, each aspect on its own is a paragraph; in the end, it concludes and sums up the story in a final paragraph. The three sub-types of exposition are differentiated by the function of the text -the text focus or the rhetorical purpose. It is the realisation of the communicative goal that the words, phrases and clauses of a text exhibit (Hatim, 1997). For example, a conceptual expository text would include a synthesis and analysis of a topic. A descriptive text deals with objects and situations, and features of an object, for instance, will be exhibited. Descriptive texts may present the whole thing or enumerate parts of it in order to convey a thorough depiction of a situation. Finally, a narrative text would handle actions and events. It presents a sequence of events in chronological order or may offer an account of certain circumstances in a cause-and-effect manner (Enos, 1996). Some static formats of writing news reports can be typified as expository texts, but they will be signalled as less evaluative and more marked in terms of style and purpose (Hatim & Mason, 1990).
The third text type -argumentation -is much more related to news texts. Argumentative texts mainly evaluate 'relations between concepts' and they are used by writers to argue a concept by means of attracting approval for an idea or by evaluating a concept as true or false (Hatim,1997, p. 38). Unlike expository texts, which are initiated by a scene-setter, argumentative texts are characterised by a tone-setter, which introduces a certain stance for an evaluative discourse -the writer attempts to persuade or influence the reader (Trosborg 1997, p. 16). Argumentation is divided into two variants: through-argumentation and counter-argumentation. The through-argumentation subtype is devoted to the writer's point of view. It usually does not include any reference to conjunctive adverbs of contrast or an ad-versary such as yet, however, etc. A general structure of a through-argument text begins with (1) a thesis cited to be supported -that states the main point or idea of the writer, (2) substantiation of the thesis -bringing in evidence for the idea, and (3) a conclusion. The counter-argumentation, on the other hand, relates to a 'selective summary of someone else's viewpoint' that a writer cites for the sake of counter-arguing it (Hatim, 1997, p. 40). Under this subtype, the text begins with (1) citing a thesis to be opposed -bringing in a belief or an idea to be debated and disputed by the text author, (2) opposition -invoking opposing views to the thesis, (3) substantiation of a counter-claim -recalling evidence that supports a counter-claim, and (4) a conclusion (Hatim, 1997).
Further, the counter-argumentative text-type is subdivided into two categories, which are the balance and the explicit concessive. First, the balanced argument text is adopted by text authors when they choose to counter argue a point of view by implicitly or explicitly 'signalling contrastive shifts' (Hatim, 1997, p. 41). This is done explicitly when an adversary or conjunctive adverb in the text is directly mentioned, meaning the use of 'but' is there, or implicitly when the use of an adversary is not stated but is compensated by a phrase or a sentence. Second, in the explicit concessive text the author chooses the option of making readers anticipate the counter argument by using explicit concessive text such as while, although, despite, etc. (Hatim, 1997). This classification of text type is important for understanding how English and Arabic texts are authored and the way text producers argue their points of view. It is important to mention that there is likely to be more than one argumentation text variant present in a text. In other words, sometimes one can witness features of more than one text type in one piece of writing, which means a text might be multifunctional. However, one rhetorical focus or function will normally dominate (see Hatim, 1997, p. 41 for text hybridisation).

ARGUMENTATION IN NEWS TEXTS -ENGLISH AND ARABIC
The overall structure of a text would conventionally subscribe it to a particular genre. However, the text structure of the same genre might differ in discourse context among cultures, which is a point every translator should be aware of (Janzen, 2005). That is, the audience of a given culture, Arabic for instance, comes into contact with texts written in the native language in ways disparate from other cultures. In the news context, for example, news writers and text producers of Arabic news seem to manifest a structure that is different from English. This section explores some of the norms behind structuring a news text in English and Arabic. Hatim (1997) posits that English has a tendency towards counter-argumentative news texts, whereas Arabic's structure is more likely to be through-argumentative. Of the two subtypes of counter-argumentation, English prefers the balance subtype to the explicit excessive one. Modern Standard Arabic certainly moves towards counter-argumentation. However, it is more likely to be an explicit excessive argu-

IJCLTS 7(3):8-25
ment. Figure 1 below shows a diagram of the English and Arabic preferences for news text types: Hatim's suggestion here is that within English speaking cultures, news text producers present their argumentative stance by presenting the view they are more likely to counter, followed by a potential opposing argument which the writer believes in and then substantiates his/her belief with evidence. Janzen (2005) states that this seems to be the common progression in Western culture text structure. In an Arabic speaking culture, however, this is a bit different, because it lacks the opposition part of the argumentation. Arab news text producers generally follow a direct argumentation for the purpose of convincing readers of their argumentative or ideological stance without bringing in a contrasting view. Nonetheless, important distinctions have to be made in this discussion. Firstly, most of the examples that Hatim uses in his investigation are taken from news reports, but he rarely states that this type of argumentation is restricted to news. In other words, he tends to generalise them to argumentation in Arabic, but the examples are only news text genres and no other genres exhibiting argumentation in Arabic have been explored. Having said that, I believe what Hatim has introduced can be a potential site for investigation of translating news texts. Secondly, what Hatim introduces is a style of structuring texts among cultures. In other words, writing texts in one's own language, social practices and culture, but not the effects of English in influencing the style of Arabic news writing. Of course, many news texts are written directly in Arabic and are not a result of translation. The distinction here is whether translated texts into Arabic are still written with the argumentation types Hatim discusses or not. For example, do balanced argumentative texts become explicit excessive texts when translated into Arabic? Probably not. Therefore, due to the nature of translating news, one cannot answer this question unless a thorough investigation in this respect is carried out. Notwithstanding, it is vital to discuss news structure in Arabic as an English reader of news would probably feel less satisfied as a counter-argument is not fully evident. On the contrary, an Arabic speaker of news translated from English would feel affronted by the presence of the counter-argument (Janzen, 2005). The subject that this study put under scrutiny was the change of Arabic textual features with a special focus on news texts. It also demonstrates dif-fering Arabic styles when Arab news writers arguing their points of view, something which would ultimately affect the news translation process.

METHODOLOGY
This study draws on the aforementioned concepts to analyse 25 news articles translated from English into Arabic by two news organisations: Aljazeera and Al-Arabiya. Both news platforms can offer insightful responses to the present investigation of influence of paragraph and text structures to the writing of Arabic news articles, and show the extent to which a source text may interfere in the textual structure of the target text. In other words, the extent to which the translation of news differs from other types of translation in Arabic context with regard to the practices adopted in the translation of journalistic texts. The following paragraphs provide a brief accounts on the two news organisations used in this study.
Aljazeera was launched in November 1996 in Qatar. The Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, took the initiative of liberating the press and supporting free speech by separating the press from the Information Ministry and lifting censorship on the media (Zayani, 2005). Aljazeera, at its inception, broadcast in Arabic and gained a wide popularity in the Arab world (ibid). It has kept on developing and new bureaus have been opened across the globe. At its birth, Aljazeera's staff were mostly from the BBC Arabic (Lahlali, 2011). In fact, the editorial spirit of independence, the style and programmes had been imported from the BBC (Richardson, 2003).
Al-Arabiya, on the other hand, was launched in March 2003 in Dubai, UAE. It belongs to the Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC), operating from London. The MBC is a television group owned by the Saudi Arabia and its allies such as UAE and Kuwait. Walid al-Ibrahim, a brother-inlaw of the then King Fahd of Saudi Arabia established the MBC Group to control the media in the Arab World and to influence the minds of the peoples in the region (Cochrane, 2007). The launch of Al-Arabiya was also made by Sheikh Walid al-Ibrahim, with the aim of focusing on political news in the region. The goal was objective broadcasting of news (Lahlali, 2011). The Al-Arabiya channel is currently based in Dubai and funded by Saudi Arabia (Lynch, 2006 These two media outlets provide typical examples of how translation in news is being conducted in real-life surroundings. Aljazeera and Al-Arabiya are considered leading regional news providers in the region (Elmasry et al., 2013). An article published on Aljazeera's website shows that it is the most-watched news channel in the Middle East and North Africa, according to the research agencies IPSOS and SIGMA (Aljazeera, 2013). Similarly, Forbes Middle East released a report (2012) underlining Al-Arabiya's website the most visited with a score of 306.63,000 visits and Aljazeera with 277.88,000 visits for the period from 31 August 2011 and 31 August 2012 (Seksek, 2012). Being the most popular in the region, both networks are involved in a high level of translation activities. Translation of news in Aljazeera and Al-Arabiya is occurring in a number of articles, and it is done on a daily basis. Examining these two cases from a translation perspective helps to develop a wider understanding of the process of news translation. This paper examines the paragraph and internal structures of news articles produced by English wires such as Reuters, The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse (AFP) and then were re-produced by Aljazeera and Al-Arabiya.

Data Collection
The main objective of this study is to explore the structure of Arabic news that resulted from translations. For this purpose, criteria were set to decide what articles should be selected for the research. The text is chosen if: a. Parts of the English text were translated in a full Arabic article. b. Most of the Arabic text was translated in a full Arabic article. c. The whole English text was translated in a full Arabic article. d. Parts of the English text were translated in an Arabic article with addition. e. The full Arabic text was translated from more than one English Article. The procedures for selecting the articles from Aljazeera and Al-Arabiya's websites described below tell us how these two major Arab media organisations construct their reports. At this point, it might be important to summarise the procedural steps selecting the corpus data used in this study: 1. Collecting all the news articles on Aljazeera and Al-Arabiya webpages that reported Egypt during the period (July 2013 to June 2014) allocated for this study. 2. Choosing news articles that have been taken from non-Arabic media providers. 3. Singling out the translated news articles from those collected in stage two. An essential observation shows that Aljazeera, for instance, has been reporting from several news agencies, meaning they translate from foreign news wires but they do not state it was a translation. Aljazeera (this also applies to Al-Arabiya) always mentions the source at the end of the article albeit in rather a vague way. The main subject and concern of this research is when the news article is a translation by Aljazeera or Al-Arabiya from a non-Arabic news outlet.
Having conducted the said procedures in selecting the news articles to be used in this study, it can be seen that Al-Arabiya translated 18 news articles; whereas Aljazeera translated 7 news articles (see primary sources under references). These are the corpus data collated for this research study. This outcome of the corpus data is a result of the strategies followed to reach the news articles.
The corpus data was not that huge, consisting of 25 articles of varying lengths. Each of these articles has its Arabic counterpart version, also, of varying lengths. The Aljazeera articles were codified as Alj and Al-Arabiya are as Alr. After that, each article in these groups was further given a number. For example, the Aljazeera contains seven articles, so the codes were Alj-1 to Alj-7. This also applies to Al-Arabiya.
If two examples are taken from one article, then the code appears as Alj-1a, and Alj-1b. The selection process was to carefully examine all the news articles and their translated Arabic versions in order to find out the behaviour of translators in rewriting and translating news reports.

ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
Translation of news has been gaining an increasing interest by translation studies scholars. For example, there are a number for works have been devoted to the translation of news, such as Conway and Bassnett (2006), and Bielsa andBassnett (2009), Valdeón (2010), and a special issue by Meta (Valdeón, 2012). These works have covered a wide range of diverse topics in translating news from the political and ideological to the conventional and stylistic. Although journalists and news writers heavily work with other languages to produce a news story, they are reluctant to express that their products are translations. The data and examples used in this analytic section show that journalists or news writers (called translators in this study) sometimes translate a text from start to finish, and almost literally. This section analyses the structure of sentences, paragraphs and texts of Arabic news items which have been adapted from English texts. It also discusses argumentation in Arabic in light of Hatim's (1997) text-type foci.

Sentential Influence on Arabic
As has been earlier discussed, Arabic is flexible in its sentence structure, though VSO is the most frequent structure. The Arabic translation of example Alr-8 below starts with the verb ‫'أعلنت'‬ (has announced). Apart from this, it follows the original text very closely. The Arabic sentence is appropriately short with two commas indicating pauses. It is almost a rule in Arabic that if 'and' is used, then the comma is unnecessary, but the influence of English on Arabic news writing is somehow evident.
Alr-8: A new Islamist group has announced its formation in Egypt, calling the army's ousting of President Mohamed Mursi a declaration of war on its faith and threatening to use violence to impose Islamic law.

LT:
A new Islamist group has announced its formation in Egypt, and describing the army's intervention to isolate President Mohamed Mursi as a declaration of war over its beliefs, and threatening to use violence to impose Sharia law.
The source text in example Alj-2 is a news article produced by the Associated Press and then reproduced by Aljazeera. Although the translation remains closely to the original, there are a few cohesive devices used to better link the Arabic sentence. Aljazeera attributes the statement to the 'agency' which is the Associated Press and structures the sentence with ‫الوكالة'‬ ‫'وقالت‬ (The agency said). The coordinator ‫'و'‬ (and) is a paragraph introducer linking this sentence with the previous one. The sentence appears to be properly structured and punctuation marks and cohesion added where necessary such as ‫'لكن'‬ (but).
Alj-2: No date has been set for a presidential election or whether it should be held before or after parliamentary elections, also slated for this year. There are growing signs that the presidential vote will be held first, as early as April.
The translation of news is highly marked with stylistic and conventional patterns. It exhibits a quite number of foregrounding and backgrounding of news segments. In Alj-3 below shows the heavily used connector ‫'و'‬ (and) at the start of almost each new paragraph which function as a linking device. Apart from the foregrounding segment, which is probably for stylistic reasons, the translation shows no deviation from the source. The punctuation marks are used appropriately and effectively. The argument I am trying to make here is that Arabic sentence structure in news writing seems to gain the privilege of universal standards and this is attributed to translation practice between Arabic and English that is happening on a great amount on a daily basis.
Alj-3: 'General Sisi has a very strong popular support and definitely he is a candidate who we can count on but of course the final judge is the people,' Beblawi told Reuters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
‫دافوس،‬ ‫في‬ ‫العالمي‬ ‫االقتصادي‬ ‫المنتدى‬ ‫هامش‬ ‫على‬ ‫لرويترز‬ ‫الببالوي‬ ‫وقال‬ ‫لكن‬ ‫عليه،‬ ‫االعتماد‬ ‫يمكن‬ ‫مرشحا‬ ‫وسيكون‬ ‫كبيرة‬ ‫بشعبية‬ ‫يحظى‬ ‫السيسي‬ ‫'إن‬ ‫للشعب‬ ‫سيكون‬ ‫النهائي‬ ‫.'القرار‬ LT: And Beblawi told Reuters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, 'Sisi enjoys huge popularity and will be candidate who can be counted on, but the final decision will be for the people.' Example Alr-10 by Al-Arabiya demonstrates the vitality of the Arabic sentence structure, in which many cohesive devices can be added and the linkage of two sentences into one without substantial deviation of the source text. The translation exhibits that the sense and meaning are still the same, though foregrounding of initiative segment is present. The Arabic sentences in this example begin with the verbs ‫'أعلن'‬ (announced) and ‫'قال'‬ (said) in their past tenses and linked with ‫'و'‬ (and). There are items that have been silenced such as 'after bloody unrest in Cairo', 'We call for dialogue' and the 'political crisis' is replaced by ‫'الوضع'‬ (The situation). Omission could have ideological effects, but structure of these two sentences in one paragraph informs us of a great deal of the textual changes that Arabic has experienced/been experiencing.
Alr-10: France's foreign minister demanded Tuesday that Egypt's ousted president Mohamed Morsi be freed, describing the political crisis as 'very critical' after bloody unrest in Cairo. ' Since we are interested in sentence structure at this section, let us explore the function of ‫'و'‬ (and) in some detail. Badawi et al (2016) explain that it is a textual marker, working on linking sentences and paragraphs. It can have the function of summing up a 'preceding narrative' and assuming an 'adversative sense.' This is what explains their repetitive use at the start of almost each paragraph in news texts. In Alr-1 below, again the news translator opens the paragraph with ‫'و'‬ (and) followed by the verb ‫,'يعد'‬ which can best be rendered into English in this context as 'is' so that the translation is smooth and understandable. This is part of the connectivity system in Arabic which enforces uses of coordinators. The source text is two sentences which are rendered into one in Arabic with comma separation. This is of course apart of the parenthetical phrase ‫بإنهاء'‬ ‫الشعبية‬ ‫لإلرادة‬ ‫استجاب‬ ‫الذي‬ ‫شعبية‬ ‫اكتسابه‬ ‫إلى‬ ‫أدى‬ ‫ما‬ ‫الماضي‬ ‫يوليو‬ ‫في‬ ‫مرسي‬ ‫محمد‬ ‫السابق‬ ‫الرئيس‬ ‫حكم‬ ‫'كبيرة‬ (who responded to the will of the people to end the rule of former President Mohamed Morsi last July and gained great popularity) which remained in Arabic with incurrence of subtle alteration.
Alr-1: The retired field marshal, who toppled elected Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July, is expected to sweep the May 26-27 election. His only rival is leftist politician Hamdeen Sabbahi.
Of course, sentences cannot be investigated in isolation when studying the developments and structures of Arabic news text. Paragraphs and texts also need to be in the center of such research. Badawi et al (2016, p. 803) state that the paragraph structure of Modern Written Arabic is 'showing signs of Western influence.' This is to a certain degree is evident in news articles. As it has been mentioned earlier, Arabic is used to construct long paragraphs with long sentences. However, this case seems to be diminishing in Arabic news production with an overriding frequency of expressing each new idea of news story into a separate paragraph. The case in example Alj-5 below is worth discussion, in which one paragraph is divided into two. This act, in fact, contradicts the statement that Arabic texts usually run 'without paragraph division' (Badawi et al. 2016, 26). The example shows signs of additions such as ‫وشامخ'‬ ‫مستقل‬ ‫المصري‬ ‫القضاء‬ ‫'ألن‬ (judiciary because the Egyptian judiciary is independent and high), and ‫حكومته'‬ ‫في‬ ‫العدل‬ ‫وزير‬ ‫أبلغ‬ ‫أنه‬ ‫'وأكد‬ (He affirmed that he had informed the Minister of Justice in the government). These additions appear to be adding background information and cohere the two paragraphs which discuss the same point. Some stylistic features such as ‫السيسي'‬ ‫وصرح‬ ' (Sisi stated) and ‫أنه'‬ ‫'وأضاف‬ (and added that) are added to express cohesive effects with complete rendition of the source message.

Arabic's Change of Grouping Paragraphs
Alj-5: 'We will not interfere in judicial rulings,' Sisi said in a televised speech at a military graduation ceremony in Cairo. ' Sisi stated -at a speech during a graduation ceremony at the Military Academy -'We will not interfere in the affairs of the Egyptian judiciary because the Egyptian judiciary is independent and high.' He affirmed that he had informed the Minister of Justice in the government not intervene in the judicial rulings, and added that we must 'respect the judicial rulings and not to criticise them' even if others do not understand them.
Although news translation is usually characterised with significant deviations from the source text and intervention of the editorial guidelines in diverse cases, there seem to be examples that texts are translated in full. This is an interesting point to note, especially with the perception of news editors that their work is not a translation. The following two examples show considerable variations in the system of Arabic paragraph structure that Arabic linguists should study. The influence of translating news into Arabic has spurred on its structure. Example Alr-15 shows that the general layout of paragraphs of source text is similar to their Arabic coun-terparts. The message and the information in each paragraph are explicitly conveyed into Arabic. There are foregrounding paragraph opening segments in the Arabic text which start with verbs and the coordinator ‫'و'‬ (and) such as ' ‫'قال‬ (said), ' ‫'وتشير‬ (indicate), and ‫'ورفض'‬ (declined). These function as transitional devices to connect the ideas between paragraphs.
Alr-15: Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and its allies suffered a heavy blow from the state security crackdown, their central coordination has been lost and the bloodshed means anger is now 'beyond control,' the group said on Thursday.
The comments by spokesman Gehad El-Haddad pointed to the depth of the crisis facing the movement that just six weeks ago controlled the presidency but is now struggling to keep a grip over its base with hundreds killed by the police in 24 hours.
Declining to give his location as he spoke to Reuters by Skype, Haddad said he did not know where all of the group's leaders were following the attack on two protest camps that had become hubs of opposition to the army-backed government.
‫مصر،‬ LT: Jihad El-Haddad, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, said, on Thursday, that the Group and its allies had received a heavy blow from the campaign of the security forces against them, and they lost their ability of central coordination, and the violence means that anger is 'beyond control' now.
Haddad's remarks indicate the depth of the crisis facing the Group, which had control over the presidency only six weeks ago, but is now struggling to control its base after the killing of hundreds by police within 24 hours.
And El-Haddad declined to state his location while he was speaking to 'Reuters' via Skype, said he did not know the locations of all the group leaders following a raid by security forces on protesters supporting ousted President Mohamed Morsi.
This subsection discusses the structure of the paragraph in Arabic and how it transforms to have the form of its English counterpart. The text type and argumentation issues are explored in the coming subsections. Example Alr-5 below also presents the same structuring features of Alr-15 in terms of paragraph openers and efficient use of punctuation marks. In the Arabic version below, the first sentence can be completely functional without the comma insertion after 'Tuesday'. However, this separation, which was arguably adopted from English, is helpful for readers. It, in fact, has become a habit of writing news in Arabic even if the text is not based on translation. Although the case of killing of the 51 people appeared twice in the Arabic version, repetition is vanishing in Arabic news texts, cases of repetition are hardly noticed in the data.
Alr-5: Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies called for more protests on Tuesday, after 51 people were killed in Cairo on Monday when the army opened fire on supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.
Mursi supporters blame the military for opening fire on them outside the Republican Guard compound where the former president is believed to be held. He was ousted by the military on Wednesday. The army said it opened fire in response to an attack on its soldiers.
'In protest against the military coup that was followed by suppressive actions, topped by the Republican Guard massacre that took place at dawn, we call on all citizens and honourable people to protest on Tuesday across Egypt,' Hatem Azam, a spokesman for a coalition led by the Muslim Brotherhood, told a news conference.
‫من‬ The Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies called for more protests on Tuesday, after 51 people were killed in clashes in front of the Republican Guard headquarters in Cairo on Monday morning.
Supporters of deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi blamed the army, accusing it of opening fire outside the room where Morsi is believed to be held.
A statement, by the National Alliance Supporting Legitimacy, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, was read out at a press conference: 'We call on Egyptians to rally on Tuesday in a Million-Man March of 'Martyrs' as well as in funeral marches.' The Republican Guard headquarters witnessed this morning a break-in attempt by the supporters of the former president, taking the lives of 51 people and leaving tens of people wounded.
The Arabic version seems also to be following the English in its development of ideas. They began with a call by the Muslim brotherhood as a result of the clashes of the Republican Guard. The paragraphs that follow in both versions contributed to this main idea by offering more details and background information. Of course, they differ in their internal syntactic structure by foregrounding segments, backgrounding others, and deleting words or phrases or adding them for, as it appears, stylistic reasons. Such internal alterations can definitely be carried out for ideological purposes.

Text Structure
As has been explored, news texts fall into the argumentation type of texts. This section examines the Arabic news articles to see if their content has been influenced by the English at the translation process. Table 2 below illustrates characteristics of the data of this research. It points out features of the source texts and whether they were carried over to the target texts. As adumbrated in Table 2, the target texts which are the Arabic versions show fewer cases of rendition of evaluative and argumentative elements. There are only two cases of evaluation in Arabic that the translator seems to have conveyed some of evaluation of the English texts. This to a certain degree meets Hatim's categorisation of text type in which he states that Arabic news texts are through-argumentative, featured with thesis, substantiation, and then conclusion. There are 13 examples in the data that Arabic translations follow the English texts very closely. The source texts in these examples usually have no argumentative elements: Due to space limitation in the present paper, it was only possible to use one example of the research data to further illustrate the text type differences between Arabic and English. However, links to the data are available in the primary sources section under the references. In example Alr-18 below, the translation follows the source text very closely. The same idea in each paragraph is conveyed systematically. Paragraphs are almost the same length, which, in fact, run opposite to the claims discussed above regarding structure of paragraphs in Arabic. Punctuations are properly employed. Repetition is almost absent. There was an instance of paragraph deletion -the one that begins with: (Morsi appeared in court on Monday…). The Arabic version is to a certain degree identical to the English with regard to form and content -an instance which reflects the influence of English news writing on Arabic.
Alr-18: CAIRO, November 8, 2013 (AFP) -A child and another person died Friday in clashes between supporters and opponents of Egypt's ousted president in Cairo, state news agency MENA said, as Mohamed Morsi's backers protested in several cities.
The 12-year-old boy and a man died in Cairo's southern Giza neighbourhood, MENA quoted emergency services as saying.
Protesters with firearms wounded three others there before police intervened to separate the two sides, arresting arrested several people, the interior ministry said.
In all, 20 people were wounded in violence around Egypt, particularly in cities in the Nile Delta, MENA reported.
Security officials also told AFP that police had fired tear gas to break up protests in Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt's second city.
Morsi's supporters have held near-daily protests since his overthrow and arrest by the military on July 3.
Several thousand marched on Friday in different provinces across the country.
Morsi appeared in court on Monday on the first day of his trial for inciting the murder of protesters outside the presidential palace in December 2012. It was his first public appearance since his ouster.
Despite regular calls to protest, Morsi's Islamist supporters have been battered by a police crackdown that has severely hit their ability to stage large-scale demonstrations.
About 1,000 of them have been killed in clashes and more than 2,000 arrested.
‫معارضي‬ The Agency, reporting the Egyptian Emergency Units, said that a man, and a 12-year-old boy were killed during clashes in Giza, south of Cairo.
The Egyptian Interior Ministry reported use of firearms in the clashes, as police intervened to disperse the two camps and arrested several people.
The agency said another 20 people were wounded across the country, on Friday, especially in clashes between Morsi supporters and opponents in several Nile Delta Governorates north of Cairo.
Security officials said police fired teargas to separate clashes between Morsi's opponents and supporters, particularly in Cairo and Alexandria.
Morsi supporters have been calling for protests, since his removal on July 3 by the army, on almost a daily basis, especially on Fridays. Thousands of them demonstrated today in different parts of the country.
And Morsi's supporters have been subject to a severe crackdown by the security forces in the last four months, during which more than a thousand people have been killed, and nearly two thousand others have been arrested, including leaders of the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

IJCLTS 7(3):8-25
The general appearance of Arabic textual structure seems to have incurred the most alterations to look as close as possible to the structure of news articles written in English by global news agencies. However, the content, especially the argumentative aspects and views, seems to be left out. The section to follow outlines some aspects of differences between Arabic and English in relation to evaluative and argumentative items that Arabic is more likely to intentionally ignore or replace them.

Argumentation in Arabic Texts
This is still the challenging part of news writing in Arabic. Argumentation texts are rarely authored in Arabic news. Apart from the form discussed above, Arabic news stories are frequently flavoured with summaries of events. They are in fact more purely informative than argumentative. The argumentative part in the source is wiped away in Arabic translation not only for political or ideological reasons, but also for habitual and conventional ones. This is because Arabic texts are more likely of through-argumentative type, which has no 'opposition' to the 'thesis' stated. Even though huge amount of news translated into Arabic on a daily basis, it seems to be difficult for Arabic news writers to acquire the argumentative style. They have to take it away probably due to the policy of the news institution. For example, Alj-3a below indicates that there is an evaluative sense in the source text with the use of 'who were happy', which has been taken off in the translation. Alj-3a, is a translation by Aljazeera, says that Egyptians are with the removal of Morsi and they support Sisi as he is strong and firm. Aljazeera's translation is a clear deviation as it says those campaigns supporting Sisi are 'organized', an implication that there are political parties behind them. There is also an added element in saying: 'some requested him to take power without elections,' which is absent in the source text. Aljazeera cites Reuters as the only source of the news which means that the Arab reader will think all information was stated by Reuters.
Alj-3a: Many Egyptians, who were happy to see an end to Mursi's Islamist rule, believe a firm hand is needed to steer the country through crisis and are calling for Sisi to run for president.
‫الرئاسة‬ ‫تولي‬ ‫في‬ ‫رغبته‬ ‫عدم‬ ‫مرارا‬ ‫أبدى‬ ‫قد‬ ‫المصري‬ ‫الدفاع‬ ‫وزير‬ ‫وكان‬ ‫بتوليته‬ ‫بعضها‬ ‫طالب‬ ‫للترشح‬ ‫تدعوه‬ ‫منظمة‬ ‫حمالت‬ ‫تصاعد‬ ‫مع‬ ‫بالتزامن‬ ‫انتخابات‬ ‫دون‬ ‫.المنصب‬ LT: The Egyptian Defence Minister has repeatedly expressed his unwillingness to run for office in conjunction with the escalation of organised campaigns calling him to run and some requested him to take power without elections.
Similarly, Alj-3b contains and evaluative item represented in 'one of the highest-level endorsements …' that Aljazeera silenced in its Arabic version. It only kept the informative part in this paragraph to fit the new non-evaluative textual environment.
Alj-3b: Egyptian interim Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi said on Thursday he backed General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for president, one of the highest-level endorsements for a widely expected presidential bid by the army chief. Example Alj-4 is another case in point of a change in the argumentation happening on a small scale in the transitivity patterns. In Halliday's (1985) terms, the verb 'pledge' belongs to the material processes type, which should have material results. It was altered by Aljazeera with a verbal processes type, which depicts lesser commitment by the sayer: Sisi. The translator also unpacked the phrase 'painful economic austerity' into 'to reduce the deficit of the fiscal year 2014-2015 and control the public debt', which offer more information.
Alj-4: Egypt's new president pledged on Tuesday to give up half his salary and property and called on the Egyptian people to make similar sacrifices, trying to prepare the public for a period of painful economic austerity.
Further, Alr-3 is a full news text produced by Reuters. The Arabic translated form is close to the original. Al-Arabiya took off a complete paragraph in the translation. It is the only paragraph arguing that Obama would not call what happened in Egypt a coup as it will lead to further repercussions between the United States and Egypt. Al-Arabiya has always been in support of President Sisi and all his actions. It, in fact, disfavors practices that could spoil the relations between these two countries. This is somehow evident in Alr-4 below where another paragraph was deleted by Al-Arabiya. The paragraph contains elements of President Morsi is 'besieged' to force him resign. Apart from this, the content and length of the two translated texts are close to the original. Chaal (2019) discusses news translating strategies between Arabic and English and attributes it to spatial constraints and stylistic conventions. The White House said that Obama called Sisi to congratulate him on his inauguration and 'to express his commitment to working together to advance the shared interests of both countries. ' It added: 'The president reiterated the United States' continuing support for the political, economic, and social aspirations of the Egyptian people, and respect for their universal rights.' Alr-4: The cost of insuring Egypt's debt against default rose sharply on Monday after millions of Egyptians rallied against President Mohamed Mursi.
Egypt's five-year credit default swaps rose 34 basis points to record highs of 900 bps, according to Markit. A CDS level of 1,000 bps typically indicates distressed debt.
Literally under fire overnight as its national headquarters were set alight, Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood remains besieged by liberals and others who want him to resign. Even some fellow Islamists say he must make concessions.
Egypt Markit Corporation mentioned that the cost of insuring debt rose 34 basis points to a record of 900 basis points, and the 1,000 point level means debt is high-risk and may be hard to settle.
The cost of debt insurance has risen 200 basis points since mid-June as political tensions escalated.
Argumentation in Arabic texts is almost completely absent. It is that tough to locate it in the data. I have made decent attempts to highlight some instances, though on a small scale. The production of argumentative news texts in Arabic is still a disfavored practice and English has not significantly influenced Arabic in this area, as the data showed. On the contrary, English has a great impact upon textual and conventional features of Arabic sentence, paragraph and text structures.

CONCLUSION
It has always been articulated and stressed that Arabic structures of sentence, paragraph, and text are different from English. This cannot be more evident than in the field of language teaching and learning -TESOL & TEFL for example, where researchers always focused on this point as it causes difficulty for Arab learners to produce a paragraph in English without being influenced by their mother tongue (Abu Rass, 2015). Language competence means the ability to produce utterances or texts that have spoken or written features of the culture of that language. This is also the goal of translation, which is always centered on the production of target texts belonging to the target culture, and keeping them as much away as possible from the source culture. In this article, I focused on a particular phenomenon related to the changing of textual structures of Arabic language with regard to news stories and news writing.
The activity of translating news is happening around the clock. Hamilton (2010, p. 652) renders that it is still cheaper to translate a news story than hiring field reporters to follow stories, investigate and produce them. Arabic media outlets heavily rely on foreign media as sources of information; especially those which produce reports in English such as Reuters, AFP, Associated Press, Washington Post, The Guardian, etc. This had triggered the assumption that while there are many news reports translated into Arabic on a daily basis, the structure of Arabic news texts must have been affected with the passage of time.
The study described in this article focused on data from two major news networks in the Arab world: Aljazeera and Al-Arabiya. The results support the assumption that Arabic textual structure in news has been changing, especially in their sentence and paragraph lengths, effective use of punctuations, and development of ideas. The analysis showed that the text type in Arabic has not been hugely affected as argumentative texts which have some evaluative element are silenced or substituted with other elements, perhaps, for ideological purposes. The content of Arabic news texts seems to still lack opposite view points. These are social-cultural practices that have been partially affected by translation. Although much more work is required in this area, my results have at least highlighted the issue.
It is acknowledged that the analysis was based on a small data set to make such statement regarding the structure of Arabic news texts; the study has thus, to a certain extent, practical contribution to the news translation in Arabic. I still believe though that much more text-and discourse-based research with different set of data is needed so that we get a broader picture of paragraph and text structures in Arabic. To reiterate, it is found that translation seems to have imposed the source journalistic conventions to the target culture to the point that those conventions are the only ones that are now accepted in the target culture in order for texts to get through the editorial gatekeeping. To further reiterate, I hope this has shed some light, with its limitation, on the issue and I wish to see further studies on Arabic text structure as it definitely on the move to universal conventions of news writing.