Equivalence procedures for culture-specific words and their : application in the Arabic-English dictionary

الملخص EN

Despite the extensi\'e research carried out on the definition, classification and translation procedures of culture-specific words (CSWs) in text translation, little attention has been given to these procedures in the creation of equivalence in the bilingual dictionary.

This paper examines the nature and adequacy of the major CSWs translation procedures as well as their application in two Arabie-English dictionarie$: Wehr’s Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic and Munir Baalbald’s Al-Mawrid: A Modern Arabic-English Dictionary.

The analysis will show that, statistically, the most commonly used procedure is borrowing, followed by explanation, explanatory equivalence and a combination of these three procedures.

Other proeedures, namely cultural equivalence, functional equivalence and synonymy, are less frequently used and produce, for the most part, inadequate and/ 0آ inaccurate equivalents as evidenced by examples in sections B., c.

and E.

It will further demonstrate that the two dictionaries show inconsistencies, errors ofjudgment and oceasional failure to employ procedures that best capture the exact meaning of the word in the target language.

It will be concluded that if the dictionary intends to provide accuratc and unambiguous interlingual equivalents, the compiler will have to resort to procedures capable of accomplishing this task.

Such procedures ال؛'اا, more often than not, involve borrowing, explanation, explanatory C'quivalenec or a combination of these procedures.