Translation Strategies of Arabic and English Collocations: A Case Study of Algerian EFL Learners

Abstract

Objectives: This paper aims to study the main challenges associated with translating idioms between English and Arabic, as well as the strategies used by Algerian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners to overcome difficulties in translating idioms from one language to another. Methods: A translation test consisting of 18 sentences, 9 in English and 9 in Arabic, collected from Benson (1985), Mahmoud (1994), and Usama (1998), and As-Safi (2016), was administered to thirty Algerian postgraduate EFL students at Oran University in Algeria. Based on the translations provided in these sources, the accuracy of collocation translation was evaluated, and translation strategies were identified and entered into the Excel program, where frequencies and percentages were calculated. Results: The participants’ overall performance was unsatisfactory, with 11,85% accurate equivalent renditions of collocations from Arabic to English, and 27,03% from English to Arabic. Collocations displaying the "Adjective + Noun" pattern were particularly problematic for the participants. This can be attributed to a lack of knowledge of adjectives in the target language (TL) and their semantic differences, as evident in their excessive use of near-synonymous adjectives. Translating collocations from English to Arabic proved to be more challenging for them than translating collocations from Arabic to English. To compensate for their lack of familiarity with collocations, the EFL learners used the strategies of literal translation, synonymy, reduction, deletion, paraphrasing, and over-generalization. Conclusions: These findings call for integrating English collocations in the school curricula in Algeria, the development of suitable instructional materials and programs for teaching collocations and prioritizing the teaching of collocations or word combinations in classrooms.