Translating idiomatic expressions from English into Arabic

Other Title(s)

ترجمة التعابير الاصطلاحية من اللغة الإنجليزية إلى العربية

Dissertant

Jumah, Uthman Sajid

Thesis advisor

al-Duwayk, Badr Said

Comitee Members

Abu Shihab, Ibrahim Muhammad
Jafar, Fatimah Abd al-Halim

University

Middle East University

Faculty

Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of English

University Country

Jordan

Degree

Master

Degree Date

2014

English Abstract

This study aimed at investigating the challenges that M.A students encounter when translating idiomatic expressions.

Particularly, it aimed at answering the following questions: 1- What are the major challenges that M.A students encounter in translating idiomatic expressions? 2- What factors cause such challenges? 3- What recommendations can be suggested to handle these challenges? To achieve the goal of this study, the researcher selected a purposive sample that comprised 40 M.A students who were enrolled in the M.A program in two Jordanian Universities (i.e.

Middle East University and Petra University) during the second semester 2013/2014.

The researcher designed a translation test that consisted of 20 statements which M.A students were asked to translate from English to Arabic.

Each statement contained an idiomatic expression based on O'Dell and McCarthy's (2010) categorization of idioms namely: proverbs, metaphors, similes, and binomials.

These statements represented different fields i.e.

social, sports, scientific, media, educational, economic, political, and business.

The researcher also conducted semi-structured interviews with students and experts in the field of translation to compile more information.

The results revealed that M.A students encounter different kinds of challenges when translating idiomatic expressions.

These challenges are mostly related to inability to find a target language equivalent and unawareness of pragmatic, formal and semantic characteristics of idiomatic expressions, unawareness of the cultural differences between English and Arabic and unawareness of idioms’ categorization namely (proverbs, metaphor, similes and binomials).

Students and experts elaborated on the factors behind these challenges and through their answers it is clear that lack of awareness in the source language cultural patterns (traditions, habits, customs, ceremonies entertainments and social patterns and religious background), unawareness of the cultural differences, misusing the appropriate technique and the tendency to use literal translation that is in most cases not successful, using the paraphrasing technique rather than giving the target language equivalent and the use of idiomatic expressions in colloquial rather than standard language are the main reasons behind the failure in translating idiomatic expressions .

Main Subjects

Languages & Comparative Literature

No. of Pages

107

Table of Contents

• APA
• MLA
• AMA

Language

English

Data Type

Arab Theses

Record ID

BIM-693136