ABSTRACT
The incapacity proper in a language arises when its users encounter meanings which its words cannot express, then its structures prove too narrow to produce new words for these meanings which become a lack afflicting this language, which only worsens over time. Thus, the language becomes incapable of providing the tools of expression that its users need, or it becomes unfit for their purposes. With discourses of linguistic conservativism during the Nahda going beyond boundaries of historical and religious identities, al-Yaziji’s article clearly situates his “politics of translation” within a “conservative” frame of linguistic reform: linking normative translation practices of the (Classical Abbasid) past to the prosperity and progress of the Arab people.
