Strategies in Translating Collocations in Political Texts: Case study of the Beirut Port Explosion 2020

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.33806/ijaes.v23i2.461

Keywords:

collocations, Newmark (1988), political texts, translation strategies

Abstract

The present study examines the strategies used by Saudi undergraduate students when translating adjective plus noun collocations and verb plus object collocations in political texts from English into Arabic. An English proficiency test, along with a translation test, were conducted to evaluate the performance of the students. The translation test consisted of 10 English collocations selected from 53 random extracts from two online articles on the BBC and The Guardian websites, focusing on the Beirut port explosions in August 2020. The results show that the literal translation technique was highly dominant in translating both types of classification. This indicates that students encounter some obstacles when it comes to determining the correct equivalents in Arabic. However, the data show that sometimes literal translation can sometimes be adequate in translating the political collocations in both types. The data also reveal that a synonymy strategy was adopted more frequently in translating the verb + object than the noun + adjective. This is mainly because the frequency of (un)restrictedness of collocation errors may be limited in political texts because the structure of political texts is different from that of other texts, in the sense that it has a limited number of culture-specific collocations that are frequently translated, and therefore an equivalent can easily be found in the target language.

Author Biography

Wafaa Alrashidi, King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia

Department of European Languages and Literature

King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia

References

Abdul-Fattah, Muhammad and Hussein Zughoul. (2003). 'Translational collocational strategies of Arab learners of English'. Babel, 49(1): 57-77.

Abdul-Fattah, Hussein. (2011). 'Translability of collocations: A constant challenge to EFL learners'. Jordan Journal of Educational Sciences', 7(2): 209-219.

Abu Naba'h, Abdullah and Nayel Drweesh Al-Shara'h. (2011). 'An investigation of the English collocational knowledge of Jordanian graduate students'. Dirasat, Educational Sciences, 38(1): 425-437.

Al Ghazali, Fawzi. (2006). Collocations and word-combinations in English: Considerations, classifications, and pedagogic implications. Conference or Workshop Item (Paper). United Arab Emirates: TESOL Arabia.

Alshaje'a, Hilal. (2014). 'Strategies for translating metaphorical collocations in The Holy Qur'an'. Journal of Advances in Linguistics. 4(2): 388-396.

Bahns, Jens and Moira Eldaw. (1993). 'Should we teach EFL students collocations?' System, 21(1): 101-114.

Baker, Mona. (1992). In Other Words: A Course Book on Translation. New York: Routledge.

Barreiro, Anabela. (2008). Make it simple with paraphrases: Automated paraphrasing for authoring aids and machine translation. MA Thesis, New York University, New York.

Bartan, Özgür. (2019). 'Lexical collocation errors in literary translation'. Dil Dergisi-Ocak Language Journal, 170(1): 73-88.

BBC, News. (2020). Beirut blast: Dozens dead and thousands injured, health minister says. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53656220 (Retrieved on 7 April, 2020).

BBC, News. (2020). Beirut explosion: What we know so far. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53668493 (Retrieved on 3 April, 2020).

Benson, Morton, Evelyn Benson and Robert. F Ilson. (1986). Lexicographic Description of English. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Benson, Morton, Evelyn Benson and Robert. F Ilson. (1997). The BBI Dictionary of English Word Combinations. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Biskup, Danuta. (1992). 'L1 Influence on learners' renderings of English collocations: A Polish/German empirical study'. In Pierre. J. L. Arnaudd and Henri Bejoint (eds.), Vocabulary & Applied Linguistics: 1-9. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Brashi, Abbas. (2005). Arabic collocations: Implication for translation. Published PhD Dissertation, University of Western Sydney, Sydney.

Brashi, Abbas. (2009). 'Collocability as a problem in L2 production'. Reflections on English Language Teaching, 8(1): 21-34.

Carter, Ronald. (1998). Vocabulary: Applied Linguistics Perspectives. London: Routledge.

Chilton, Paul and Christina Schäffner. (1997). 'Discourse and politics'. In Teun Van Dijk (ed.), Discourse studies: A multidisciplinary introduction: 303-330. United States: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Dickins, James, Sándor Hervey and Ian Higgins. (2002). Thinking Arabic Translation: A Course in Translation Method: Arabic to English. London: Routledge.

Dweik, Bader and Mariam Abu Shakra. (2011). 'Problems in translating collocations in religious texts from Arabic into English'. The Linguistics Journal, 5(1): 1-4.

Farghal, Mohammed and Hussein Obieda. (1995). 'Collocations: A Neglected Variable in EFL'. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching'. 33(4): 315-331.

Firth, John. (1968). Selected papers of JR. Firth 1952- 1959. In Frank Palmer (ed.), Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Ghazala, Hasan. (1993a). 'Translating collocations: English-Arabic (in Arabic)'. Turjuman, 2(1): 7-44.

Ghazala, Hasan. (1993b). 'Translating collocations: English-Arabic (in Arabic)'. Turjuman, 2(2): 7-33.

Ghazala, Hasan. (1995). Translation as Problems and Solutions.Valetta: Elga.

The Guardian. (2020). Beirut families search for loved ones feared trapped under rubble. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/05/beirut-families-search-for-loved-ones-feared- (Retrieved on 14 March, 2020).

Habtoor, Hussein and Raisah Al-Swaidan. (2019). 'Familiarity with collocations in EFL context and strategies utilized in translating them into Arabic'. Journal of Language Teaching and Research. 10(4): 724-737.

Halliday, Micheal. (1966). 'Lexis as a linguistic level'. In Charles E. Bazell, John Catford, Micheal Halliday and Robert Robins (eds.), In Memory of J. R. Firth, 148- 162. London: Longman.

Hamdan, Jihad M., Randa Naser & Hady Hamdan. (2021). ‘Arabic-English translation in the Palestinian–Israeli ‘conflict’: Ideology in the wings’. SKASE Journal of Translation and Interpretation, 14(2): 80-96.

Hassan, Bahaa-Eddin. (2014). Between English and Arabic: A Practical Course in Translation. United Kingdom: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Hatim, Basil and Ian Mason. (2014). Discourse and the Translator (2nd ed). Routledge: London.

Hussein, Riyad. (1990). 'Collocations: The missing link in vocabulary acquisition amongst English foreign learners'. In Jack Fisiak (ed.), Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics.The Polish - English Contrastive Project, 123-136. Pozan: Adam Mickiewicz University.

Ibrahim, Yaser. (2003). The translation of collocation into Arabic: Problems and solutions. Published PhD Dessertation, The University of Leeds, Leeds, Uk.

Lauscher, Susanne. (2001). 'Translation quality assessment: Where can theory and practice meet?'. The Translator. 6(2): 149-168.

Lennon, Paul. (1996). 'Getting "easy" verbs Wrong at the advanced level'. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 34(1), 23-36.

Newmark, Peter. (1981). Approaches to Translation. Oxford: Pergamon.

Newmark, Peter. (1988). A Textbook of Translation. London: Prentice Hall.

Newmark, Peter. (1991). About Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Palmer, Frank. (1981). Semantics: A New Outline. London: Cambridge University Press.

Qishta, Ghada. (2018). Palestinian professional translators' strategies when rendering political collocations in British news websites. MA Thesis. Islamic University Gazah, Gazah.

Schaffner, Christina. (2004). 'Political discourse analysis of translation studies political discourse analysis'. Journal of Language and Politics, 3(1): 117–150.

Shammas, Nafez. (2013). 'Collocation in English: Comprehension and use by students at Arab universities'. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science. 3(9):107-122.

Shraideh, Khetam and Radwan Mahadin. (2015). 'Difficulties and strategies in translating collocations in BBC political texts'. Arab World English Journal, 6(3): 320-356.

Vinay, Jean-Paul and Jean Darbelnet. (1995). Comparative stylistics of French and English: A methodology for translation. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Zinel’aabdin, Sana Abdelhai and Ghada Dafallah. (2017). 'The problem of translating English collocations into Arabic language'. International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities, 5(3): 200-209.

Appendix

Dear students, kindly answer the following questions: https://www.englishtag.com/tests_with_answers/level_test_elementary_A1.asp

Your time, participation and efforts are highly appreciated.

Downloads

Date of Publication

2023-06-20

How to Cite

Alrashidi, W. (2023). Strategies in Translating Collocations in Political Texts: Case study of the Beirut Port Explosion 2020. International Journal of Arabic-English Studies, 23(2), 211–232. https://doi.org/10.33806/ijaes.v23i2.461

Issue

Section

Table of Contents