Multi-word Items in Dictionaries from a Translator's Perspective

Abstract

Translation dictionaries are the tools of translators who use them to transfer from the source text to the target text, as they use them whenever they encounter puzzling words. Thus, this research investigates the degree of usefulness of these dictionaries when rendering English and Arabic multi-word items, such as idioms, collocations, phrasal/prepositional verbs, and compounds/iḍāfas. The aforementioned multi-word items are known for their metaphorical meanings and fixed structures, as both characteristics cause confusion to the translator/foreign language learner. The usefulness of the translation dictionaries was determined based on two criteria. First, by evaluating the use of these dictionaries for the rendering of the aforementioned multi-word items in undergraduate translation and lexicography classes. Second, by assessing the lexicographical documentation and treatment of these items in those dictionaries. It has been concluded that the percentages of dictionary use in advanced classes of translation were higher, which indicates the awareness of the importance of dictionaries in these classes. In addition, students of Arabic-English translation classes used dictionaries less than the English-Arabic classes since they dealt with texts of their native language and that English multi-word items were more difficult to render than the Arabic ones. Moreover, findings show that Arabic multi-word items were treated better than the English multi-word items in their respective dictionaries even though the English-Arabic dictionaries document more than the Arabic-English dictionaries.