Exploring the Translation of English Compounds into Arabic: A Contrastive Analytical Study
Abdul-Ilah Niama As-Saadi
College of Education for Women- Al-Iraqia University
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25130/Lang.8.10.15
Keywords: Translating, English compounds, Linguistic methods, Contrastive study, Analytical study
Abstract
This study examines the translation of English compounds into Arabic, highlighting the lexical challenges posed by English compounding, which is more prevalent than in Arabic. A comprehensive review of English and Arabic compounding practices provides the theoretical foundation for this analysis. In Arabic, the distinction between compound lexical items and other syntactic structures remains unclear, making compounding a contentious subject.
The study aims to classify English compounds into nouns, adjectives, and verbs, and further into endocentric and exocentric types, based on form and meaning. Differentiate between common and esoteric compounds to clarify their uses. Quantitative data is analysed using statistical analysis to identify and assess the translation methods used for each compound type and their frequency and to propose translations for English compounds lacking Arabic equivalents in existing dictionaries.
The main objectives of the study lie in classifying and analysing different types of English compounds to understand their structural and semantic properties. The study explores the various strategies and methods adopted in translating English compounds into Arabic to determine if certain compounds are more challenging based on cultural or contextual nuances.
The lack of Arabic equivalents, as a TL, for providing corresponding processes of compounding and the discrepancies between English, as a SL, and Arabic as a TL almost poses problems in translating compounds where rendering them into Arabic requires special treatment. It is, therefore, hypothesised that rendering English compounds into Arabic is one of the problematic areas in translation. This problem can be attributed to linguistic and/or extra-linguistic differences between the two languages.
Findings reveal that translating English compounds into Arabic is challenging due to both linguistic and extralinguistic factors, with exocentric compounds being particularly problematic. Besides, the most frequent translation methods are calque or loan translation, single lexical-item equivalent, paraphrase, one-to-one translation, and definition.
The study concludes that exocentric compounds, which lack direct Arabic counterparts, require translators to understand their contextual meanings. Many English compounds have entered Arabic through translation, enriching the Arabic lexicon.
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