INVESTIGATING KURDISH EFL STUDENT’S TRANSLATION OF METAPHORICAL EXPRESSIONS AT THE UNIVERSITY LEVEL
Bahzad Amin Rasul
College of Basic Education, English Department, University of Sulaimani
Abbas Mustafa Abbas
College of Basic Education, English Department, University of Sulaimani
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25130/jls.6.3.2.5
Keywords: metaphorical expression, metaphor, Kurdish EFL students, translation, strategy
Abstract
The current study is an extracted paper from an MA thesis that relates to exploring the ability of Kurdish undergraduate students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to translate English metaphorical expressions into Kurdish Language and vice versa. Furthermore, it aims to highlight the most frequently applied strategies in translating English and Kurdish metaphorical expressions and the challenges that EFL students encounter in their translations. The study adopts three models: Lakoff and Jonson (1980), Larson (1984), and Farahzad (1992). Based on these models, a test is administered to 143 students to gather the quantitative data. Additionally, a semi-structured interview was conducted with six university lecturers to collect the qualitative data. The results show that the ability of Kurdish EFL students at the Colleges of Basic Education/English Department to translate English and Kurdish metaphorical expressions is very low and minimal. Moreover, the most frequently applied strategies are metaphor to another metaphor with the same meaning and transference of meaning without the metaphorical image for Kurdish and English metaphorical expressions, respectively. It also reveals that the majority of the students have difficulty in translating ontological types of metaphorical expressions, and the inability to find appropriate or near-like equivalents, insufficient Kurdish resources and cultural differences between the source and target languages are challenges that EFL university students face in their translations.
