Translating

Difficulties and Strategies in Translating Collocations in BBC Political Texts




Khetam W. Shraideh
Dept. of English, University of Jordan,
Amman, Jordan

Radwan S. Mahadin
Dept. of English, University of Jordan,
Amman, Jordan



Abstract
This paper investigates the most common difficulties, the different types of strategies used by the BA and MA students when translating collocations in political texts into Arabic. A questionnaire of 20 collocations taken from BBC political texts was designed and distributed to a sample of 80 students from two Jordanian universities: the University of Jordan and Yarmouk University. The participants were asked to translate English collocations into Arabic. The findings reveal that many participants used synonymy and literal translation as primary strategies to render collocations followed by paraphrasing and transposition respectively. However, approximation, elaboration and explication, and omission occupied the lowest rank in terms of frequency of use. The findings also indicate that many MA students have a good knowledge of collocations, whereas most BA students show a lack of knowledge of collocations in both universities. More importantly, the findings show that there is a significant difference among the means of all the students' responses in the strategies they used in translating the collocations. The study concludes with some recommendations that can help students develop their competence of collocations.

Keywords: BBC political texts, collocations, difficulties, strategies, translating

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