ome Pragmatic Implications of Failure in Conceiving the Concept of Time in Translating Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

Abstract

No doubt time is an abstract notion. However, we perceive it through an event at the NOW moment, and through what precedes and follows it (McTagart, 1993:456). Moreover, the perception of time is determined by our background knowledge (Wold, 1978:26) and inferences that enable us to relate events together through sequences of time and all the variables of the context, including assumptions about the socio-cultural structure of the society in which one lives (cf. Macfarlane, 1978;5). Eventually, time is a psychological phenomenon (Nyphus, 2003:3); it is built on man's experience through which he/she can perceive it. This psychological factor, as Al-Ramli (2005:22) asserts, determines any pragmatic interpretation of a text or a stretch of text in actual discourses and interactions.