Strategies of Translating Idioms in English-Arabic Dictionaries

Abstract

This study examines the strategies of translating English idioms into Arabic in three of the most widely used general English-Arabic dictionaries. A total of fifty English idioms have been selected by a panel of three professors of linguistics and translation out of a hundred idioms culled from various English-Arabic translation studies on idioms in the light of an operational definition of idioms attempted by the researcher. It was found that of the five commonly used strategies of translating idioms, paraphrase was the most dominant one counting for 73-87% of the renditions of the idioms listed in those dictionaries. The second commonest strategy was "using equivalent idioms that are dissimilar in words and structure to their English counterparts", followed by "calquing". The adequacy of the translation strategies employed in rendering those idioms and the extent of appropriateness of the Arabic renditions proposed in such dictionaries as equivalent to those idioms as well as their usefulness to the translator are then discussed. The researcher concludes by making some recommendations aimed at a more adequate handling of English idioms in English-Arabic dictionaries and a more efficient utilization, by translators, of such dictionaries in rendering English idioms occurring in different types of texts..