Arabic term (edited): يتقافز بعض البشر على أكتاف الخصوم

This is not a very well-written sentence, which is usually a challenge in translation, but it is not the only challenge. A second challenge is the presence of a figure of speech gone awry, which, in this case, can be dispensed with altogether. The third challenge is the dearth of context. The fragment presented as context is too limited to give ProZ colleagues a fair opportunity to figure out what the full picture is, but, in the end, it probably won't matter much.

The fragment appears to portray horses when they run headlong, giving no heed to whatever stands in their way.

In this portrayal, the writer uses the verb تركل, by which the writer probably meant ترفس (to kick). But we all know that this is not what horses do to obstacles on their way. Horses jump over barriers or, if the barriers are too high, simply break through them, not by a kick with their hooves, mind you, but by the sheer momentum of their forward movement. Objects on the ground (like bodies in a battleground, for instance) are simply trampled over. In Arabic, we use the verb تدوس, as in the famous poem by Muzhaffar Al-Nawwab:

ولم يكُ أشمخ منك وأنت تدوس عليك الخيول

None of these actions (jumping over, breaking through, and trampling) can be described as kicking.

As if that was not bad enough, the writer presented an analogy between running horses and madly competitive people seeking to get ahead of everybody else. To make the analogy more lively, the writer portrayed such people figuratively as jumping over other people's "shoulders." At this point, the imagery becomes very complex: the instinctive drive of horses is given color and depth by an analogy with the madness of human competitiveness, while human competitiveness itself is given color and depth by the use of the figure of jumping over other people. While such complexity may be alright in itself, and may even be welcome if handled adroitly, the complexity here, in the fumbling hands of a less adroit writer, causes the portrayal to fall apart: humans jump over each other, while horses kick their way through (which, of course, we know they don't). By now, the analogy, which initially made some sense, has crumbled.

Can one make it worse? This write was able to do so by using the word الخصوم. The life arena in which humans jump over each other has nothing to do with الخصومة. It is simply the instinctive drive to get ahead that makes people jump over each other, not any particular animus. The writer is correct in drawing a parallel between hard-driven people and wildly running horses, but neither side of the analogy calls for invoking الخصوم or الخصومة.

What's a translator to do?

My approach is to respect the writer's right to write poorly, as follows:

1. The writer wanted to portray humans (or "some people") as jumping, not kicking or trampling. I will respect that.

2. The writer wanted to invoke a sense of animus as an extra motivator for the jumping. I will respect that as well, but I will exercise my translator's prerogative to choose the right word for الخصوم. In this case, I will use the word "rivals," because the main motivator is rivalry, not some other vengeful animosity.

3. I will give no deference to shoulders. "Jumping over shoulders" may sound fine in Arabic (at least to the writer's ears), but not so fine in English. People simply jump over each other, not over each other's shoulders. The only exception I can think of is when this is a move in gymnastics.