Abstract
The present commentary aims at discussing from a pragmatic perspective the challenges that faced the translator when translating illocutionary forces from English into Arabic within the political context of a Republican Presidential Candidates debate. The debate was televised on CNN on the 13th of June, 2011 as part of an anthology of the American political activities for the election races. It was held at New Hampshire and revolved around seven republican candidates with the purpose of giving them the opportunity to introduce their political affiliations, ideologies and future plans. The translator was commissioned by the website of Egyptian State Information Service to translate this debate from English into Arabic in order for it to be published online on the 13th of July, 2011 then broadcast and televised by the National Egyptian Radio and TV on 20th of August, 2011. The translation was commissioned with a view to meeting the requirements of various groups in Arabic society such as politicians, students of politics and journalists who do not speak any English, but who are nevertheless keen deepen their understanding of American politics. The source text (ST) is an argumentative dialogue containing speech acts mostly performed indirectly and implicitly. The debate participants frequently produce utterances with implied intentions which make the translation quite challenging in order to provide an appropriate equivalence for the illocutionary force of the ST in the translated text (TT). For the purpose of tackling these challenges and commenting on them, the pragmatic theory of speech acts and its applications to translation was adopted. It could accordingly be stated in the conclusion that the realisation of the pragmatic meaning (illocutionary force) of the interlocutors’ speech acts through certain pragmatic devices significantly helped the translator to transfer the communicative message from the ST producer to the TT receptor appropriately.