The Problem of Translating English Collocations into Arabic (original) (raw)
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The Problem of Translating English Collocations into Arabic Language
The present study investigates the problem of translating English collocations into Arabic among Saudi EFL students. Twenty undergraduate students of fourth year are involved to participate as subjects in this experiment during the academic year 2016-2017. Their ages are between 20-24.All participants are native Arabic speakers learning English as a foreign language. The data collection procedure were a test of fourteen collocation expressions; the most commonly used ones. The students were asked to translate them into Arabic within one hour. The result revealed that Saudi EFL students were incompetent in translating English collocations into Arabic. They relied completely on the literal translation strategy. Their translation of English collocations is poor and unnatural collocations as well. The result revealed also that the students were even incompetent in understanding English collocations as well due to linguistic and cultural difficulties. Therefore, the solution of the problem depends upon raising students' awareness of the process of translating English collocations because it is not a replacement of word-for-word between the two languages as well as paying great attention to the learning process of English collocations; linguistically and culturally.
SSRN Electronic Journal
The present study aimed at exploring the difficulty that was encountered by a sample of Saudi undergraduate students when they translated collocations from Arabic into English. The researchers attempted to identify the reasons behind such a difficulty and find practical solutions to this difficulty. They followed an experimental descriptive method in the study. They also designed a quiz on collocations and administered it to the students as part of the requirements of a course the students were taking at that time. The quiz was given to 50 Saudi undergraduate students at the Department of English at Teachers College of King Saud University in the second semester of the academic year 20015. The quiz consisted of 15 Arabic sentences which apparently included collocations. The research data and findings revealed that the majority of the students could not translate collocations correctly because they adopted literal translation, used bilingual dictionaries and had very little knowledge of the concept of collocations in both languages. To help Arab students overcome this enormous difficulty, the researchers offered some recommendations and suggestions at the end of their study.
Familiarity with Collocations in EFL Context and Strategies Utilized in Translating Them into Arabic
Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2019
This paper aims at examining the familiarity of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners at Najran University with English collocations and the strategies being used when translating them into Arabic. The data of this study are collected from 40 female EFL learners of the English Department at Najran University. The participants’ familiarity with English collocations is measured by means of a two-part test adopted from Gyllstad (2007). A translation test consisting of 48 collocations in both short texts and short sentences has been used to determine the participants’ familiarity with translation strategies when translating English collocations into Arabic. Results show that Najran University EFL learners’ knowledge of collocations is unsatisfactory and below what is expected from them as English language major students. The results of the Pearson correlation test indicate a positive relationship between the learners’ familiarity with English collocations and their ability to tra...
The study aims at exploring the difficulties that face the students of Al Quds Open University in collocations translation process from English to Arabic and vice versa. The researcher attempted to find suitable solutions for such difficulties and problems. The researcher followed an experimental descriptive method in the study. The researcher designed a test in order to explore the difficulties and problems that face such students. The test is composed of five questions ,the first one is Common collocations - nouns which naturally follow verbs (multiple choice) , the second one is "Choose the most suitable Arabic word combination to correct collocation" , the third one is " Choose most suitable English word combination to correct collocation" the fourth one is " Translate the following collocations from Arabic to English" ,the fifth one is "Translate the following collocations from English to Arabic". Such study was applied on English students of Al Quds Open University in Gaza Branch during the second course of the academic year 2013/2014. The researcher chose and selected a random sample of Al Quds Open University students in Gaza Branch. The researcher will follow a suitable statistical methods for such study. At the end of the study ,the researcher adopted a group of recommendations and suggestions.
This study aimed to investigate the knowledge of undergraduate students in rendering a range of Arabic lexical collocations into English in different contexts properly, depending on the students' mental linguistic repertoire. It also examined the strategies practiced in their translation to come up with the proper collocation. The study used two main tools. A questionnaire was responded by students and teachers, also a test for students only. The participants were thirty (30) Yemeni students studying at the Department of English, Faculty of Education-Saber and six (6) of the translation course university teachers. The students' knowledge of collocations was measured by a Translation Test of three Arabic lexical collocational items (ضرب-حصر-تخفيف) which were contextualized in fifteen sentences, each of which contained a verb-noun collocation. The results of the statistical analysis showed that there was a negative knowledge of collocations and that the third year B.A. students face difficulty in finding out the exact equivalents and collocation. They were not collocationally competent and they really found difficulty in selecting the words that come together to form good English sentences. Therefore, they violated the system of collocations. As a result, they were not able to produce correct English sentence. The results also showed that the students tend to depend on different language strategies to facilitate their translation such as L1 transfer, synonymy, avoidance and paraphrasing. These strategies lead to poor English translation. Accordingly, some suggestions are put forward to overcome the stated problems.
Collocation in English-Arabic Translation
Babel, 2006
Collocation is considered one of the major 'trouble spots' for translators. This may be ascribed to the relative difficulty in predicting the constituent elements of a collocation, the considerable variation in collocability across languages and the lack of adequate resources on collocation. However, few empirical studies have been made so far on the types of collocations that are particularly problematic to the translator, the specific sources of the problem and the procedures that translators actually resort to in handling such collocations. This paper investigates the areas just defined with special reference to collocation in English and Arabic. A translation test involving thirty sentence-contextualized collocations of different types was designed. The test was administered to four Arab university instructors who taught translation and did translation work for different periods of time. The participants' performance in the test was considerably low. A detailed analysis of the problem was conducted and the findings were then reported. It is hoped that a study of this kind would provide essential feedback for translation teachers and syllabus designers.
The aim of this study is to investigate the linguistic problems confronted by Saudi students majoring in English language and literature at Prince Sattam Bim Abdulaziz University (PSAU) when they translate from Arabic into English. The study adopted the quantitative approach in data collection. Students written assignments were linguistically analyzed. Results revealed that the students suffer from a variety of grammatical problems that hinder them from translating Arabic into English correctly. The students also have difficulty with vocabulary. They could not find the most suitable English equivalent of Arabic words that suits the context. This study provides some recommendations related to students' admission to the English department, the syllabus, teaching methodology, and assessment.
This study reports on the translation problems of English and Arabic languages' structure made by Saudi students of English. The population of this study is Saudi students who learn translation courses in Shaqra University in the College of Arts and community College, Dawadmi. Students' test, teachers' questionnaire, and experts' interview were used for data collection. Then, the researchers use SPSS to analyze the data. The study concluded that Saudi EFL students can not translate English structures properly because they do not have enough understanding of English grammar and structure. This creates so many problems when translating from English to Arabic or vise versa.
Abstract This study work aims to investigate the difficulties in translating the English collocation of verbs (do, make, and have) + noun into Arabic. Two tests were administered to a sample of (25) third year students of English Department at the Faculty of Education- Radfan, University of Aden. The purpose of this study is to find out whether students’ difficulties in translating collocation of (verb+ noun) are due to their literal translation, interference, or to unfamiliarity with English collocations. The first test was (a translation test) that involves ten English sentences which contain (verb+ noun) collocations. The second test was (a fill-in-the gaps test) which contains ten collocation phrases. The results revealed that the participants' performance in the two tests was considerably low. They show evidence of the students' unfamiliarity with English collocations of (verb+ noun) which is a reflection of their inability to translate the English Collocations as fixed combinations and their ignorance of their collocation meanings. In one hand, the results also give evidence of the students' lack of knowledge in phenomenon of Collocation. They used literal translation which leads them to mistranslate the intended meaning. The results in (T1) show that the majority of the students encountered pitfalls in translating this type of Collocations, because of their literal translation, and interference of (L1) with (L2). On the other hand, the results in (T2) revealed that many of the students were unable to select the suitable verb with a certain noun, because they were unfamiliar with Collocations. It seems necessary for the students to improve their collocational competence. Similarly, teachers should draw the students' attention to the complexity of translating Collocations in order to increase their awareness of this phenomenon and therefore to overcome the difficulties they face in translating Collocations. Some recommendations and suggestions are provided for improving the teaching of Collocations.
Translation of Collocations into Arabic: A Descriptive Corpus-Based Study
2020
Translation of collocations represents a constant translation problem, where extensive linguistic and cultural gaps between languages result in a lack of equivalence of specific-culture, and bound collocational patterns. This study aims to investigate a number of English collocations and their Arabic translations, in order to measure the degree of domestication versus foreignization in translated Arabic texts. This study applies Baker’s theoretical framework of equivalence and translation strategies (2018), and makes use of the parallel corpus: OPUS2, on the corpus analysis web-based tool Sketch Engine. This study has shown that domestication predominantly characterises the translation of collocations in Arabic, where equivalence is usually achieved using different translation