Strategies Employed by Jordanian and Saudi University Students in Translating Idiomatic Expressions : A Comparative Study

| ABSTRACT This study investigates the most utilized strategies applied by Saudi and Jordanian university male translation students in translating English idiomatic expressions into Arabic. The participants of the study were all B.A. translation students at King Saud University and Yarmouk University who were selected purposefully. The total number of students was 50 (25 Saudis and 25 Jordanians) who participated in a translation test that contained 50 idioms of different categories. The study's quantitative findings revealed that Saudi and Jordanian university translation students use certain shared strategies in translating idioms regardless of their awareness of the use of these strategies.


Introduction
At King Saud University, Saudi Arabia, and Yarmouk University, Jordan, two prominent universities in the Arab World, translation is offered as a series of courses in different fields (viz. medicine, politics, media, economics, science, technology, finance, literature, law, etc.).This study deals with the strategies Saudi and Jordanian translation students employ when translating idiomatic expressions from English into Arabic, hoping that shedding light on this issue might help students improve the quality of their translation and, as a result, improve their translation achievement.
The process of translation is no easy task, so problems and challenges are expected throughout the translation process. The translator has to deal with various kinds of translation problems during translation: semantic, syntactic and textual problems, among others. The translator's challenge is finding a way to handle such problems and find appropriate strategies so that the target text would be as natural as possible to the readership. However, addressing problems resulting from translating idiomatic expressions may be more difficult and challenging than other types of translation problems, as the translator has to deal with linguistic and semantic and cultural issues.
Scholars have addressed the various kinds of problems (difficulties) faced by translators during translation. Such problems become more difficult when translating between two different language systems. Here comes the role of the translator to choose the most appropriate translation strategies to deal with such problems so that the outcome would appear natural to target language readers. This poses a challenge to translators to find the most suitable equivalence that fits both context and the target text, especially when dealing with idiomatic expressions.
Discussing difficulties of translating idiomatic expressions, Baker (1992) classifies such problems into four categories: (1) An idiom (or fixed expression) may have no equivalent in the target language, (2) an idiom may have a similar equivalent in the target language, but its context of use may be different, (3) an idiom may be used in the source text in both its literal and idiomatic senses at the same time, and (4) the very convention of using idioms in written discourse, the contexts in which they can be used, and their frequency of use may be different in the source and target languages.
What makes idiomatic expressions significant in translation studies is the fact that idioms are used frequently by speakers of the language, being part of the culture and everyday usage. Furthermore, what makes idioms a problematic area of translation is that there is mostly no one-to-one equivalence when attempting to translate them from one language to another, as is the case between English and Arabic, which have two significantly different styles and cultures. This lack of equivalence due to the cultural differences may be accompanied by the difficulty of comprehending the idiom in the source text itself, for idioms, as Baker (1992) puts it, would "allow little or no variation in form and often carry meaning which cannot be deduced from their individual components." Therefore, it is characteristic of idioms that they have fixed structures. Fromkin, Rodman, and Hyams (2007) emphasize that "idioms are similar in structure to ordinary phrases except they tend to be frozen in form and do not readily enter into other combinations or allow the word order to change". While native speakers can use idioms naturally and intuitively, learners and, hence, translators would use them depending on judgment and interpretation of idioms, whether being the literal or figurative sense of the idiom, and their cultural knowledge of both the source text and the target text. This would double the challenge to the translator as he has to first discern the meaning of the idiom according to the context in the source text and then appropriately transfer the intended meaning to the target text.
To this end, the translator should make use of various strategies for translating idioms. Such strategies can help limit the difficulties facing translators while addressing idioms. The most frequently utilized strategies seem to be a translation by equivalence, paraphrasing, omission, and literal translation. According to Baker (1992), the main translation strategies of idioms are using an idiom of similar meaning and form, using an idiom of similar meaning but different form, translation by paraphrase, and translation by omission.
As referred to above, idioms relate to a cultural aspect of language. The cultural problem in translation would be a crucial problem as translation is mainly all about transferring meaning from the ST to the TT. Although the translator can deal with the ST as he deems appropriate, this freedom is restricted because he has to transfer the words of the ST to their nearest equivalents in the TT. For this reason, Nida and Taber (1969) confirm that translation is about "reproducing in the receptor language the closest equivalent of the source language message." Equivalence can be a cause of the problem in translation at different levels. Translation problems would become more complicated if the source language and the target language are different at the linguistic and cultural levels, just as in translating an English text into Arabic and vice versa. So, in many cases, the translator needs to deal with equivalence at different levels at the same time. This fact led Newmark (1988) to assert that, in seeking equivalence, the translator renders the "same situation … by two texts using completely different stylistic and structural methods.
If it is impossible to find a suitable equivalent in the target text, paraphrasing seems to be a good solution, where the translator provides a brief explanation of the idiom in the source text. It is noteworthy that opting for this strategy, although a solution, would affect the stylistic effect and the natural impact of the source text as the image behind the idiom would be largely lost. The omission is a strategy that can also be employed by translators to avoid lengthy explanation or paraphrasing that would be perplexing to target language readers, or paraphrasing is never easy. Redundant and taboo expressions seem to be justifiable examples of the omission strategy.

Statement of the Problem
From the researchers' personal experience and observation, many university professors complain about translation students' inability to translate idiomatic expressions; in fact, they have noticed that translating idiomatic expressions represents a real challenge to EFL students in general and translation students in particular, especially when translation occurs between languages that are different linguistically and culturally, like English and Arabic. These difficulties and inability usually result in poorly translated texts. This could be due to the lack of knowledge of translation strategies that help them to render the source expressions into the target language and the poor competence of different idioms. This has empowered the researchers to try to explore, investigate, and compare the strategies utilized by Saudi and Jordanian university male translation students in translating English idiomatic expressions into Arabic.

Significance of the Study
Learners' awareness of translation strategies plays a vital role in enhancing their learning and use of translation strategies, a matter which is emphasized by many theorists, researchers and educators. However, the idiomatic expressions translation strategies of Saudi and Jordanian University students have not been studied, a notable reason why it has been chosen to investigate in this study. Therefore, it is hoped that: a. It will provide translation instructors and students with information on the commonest strategies used in translating idiomatic expressions.

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b. It may encourage instructors to use these strategies in the process of teaching the translation of idiomatic expressions in particular.
c. It will raise the students' awareness of these strategies when introduced to them to utilize in translating idiomatic expressions.
d. It may encourage further research, which in turn may lead to the enrichment of the field of translation strategies in general and translation strategies of idiomatic expressions in particular.
e. It will help researchers involved in the educational process gain insights into the strategies used in translating idiomatic expressions and seek to improve them over time.
f. It will direct courses' designers to give more attention to idiomatic expressions and the strategies used in translating them.
g. It will help translation students improve their translation skills and competencies by providing the commonest strategies utilized in translating idiomatic expressions that usually represents a great challenge for them.

Objective of the Study
Translating idiomatic expressions successfully is considered one of the most challenging areas in the field of translation. In fact, conveying similar connotations, conceptualization, and meaning is really difficult and requires applying appropriate translation strategies. Therefore, the present study attempts to identify, classify, and compare Saudi and Jordanian university translation students' translation strategies when translating idiomatic expressions.

Questions of the Study
The present study attempts to answer the following questions: 1. What are the strategies that Saudi University translation students utilize in translating English idiomatic expressions into Arabic?
2. What are the strategies that Jordanian University translation students utilize in translating English idiomatic expressions into Arabic?
3. Are there any statistically significant differences in the strategies employed by Saudi and Jordanian male translation students in translating English idiomatic expressions into Arabic?

Limitations of the Study
Although the findings of the present study may be sound and significant to the field of translation in general and translation of idiomatic expressions in particular, it has some limitations. The first limitation is that the study is restricted to two groups; one group is Saudi male translation students at the Department of English Language and Translation, King Saud University, and another is Jordanian male translation students at the Department of Translation Yarmouk University. Another obvious limitation of the present study is the limited sample size. Therefore, generalizations should remain tentative. A third limitation is that the data of the study were collected from one university in Saudi Arabia, namely, King Saud University, and from one University in Jordan, namely, Yarmouk University; other universities in both countries were not involved in the study. A fourth limitation is a female absence. All of the participants were males. If female students participated, the results might be different.

Literature Review
Several studies have investigated the use of translation strategies by EFL/ESL students in general and strategies used in translating idiomatic expressions in particular. Different researchers have investigated and described various types of translation strategies; the researchers of the present study will review the most related studies to the present topic.
The works of Al-Hassan (2007) assessed the ability of Bahraini EFL students' ability to guess the meanings of idioms and identify the techniques the participants used in translating idioms and the effectiveness of such techniques. The findings of the study reveal that (a) the students were unable to come up with the correct translation in nearly half the number of items that contained unfamiliar idioms; (b) the participants provided correct or partially correct translation in the rest of the items, and (c) the students used a wide range of techniques, such as idiom constituents, sentences, own mental images of idioms, metaphor, context, keywords and wide guessing.
A study by Badawi (2008) investigated 43 EFL Saudi prospective teachers' ability to translate culture-bound expressions (idioms) and their awareness of their translation strategies. The findings of the study indicate that 86.05% of EFL Saudi students were unable to translate the test items. The findings also show that students' translation strategy awareness was poor as they got 40.24% and that cut-off level was 50%.
The study by Balfaqeeh (2009) explored the most acceptable translation strategies to Arab readers. The findings show that domesticated translation strategies were more acceptable to Arab readers; Arab readers appreciate translated idioms and cultural expressions using Arabic equivalents; literal translation and deletion gained minor preferences.
The works of Meryem (2009) examined the difficulties M.A. students face while translating idioms and identified the strategies that may help them limit or avoid these difficulties. The findings of the study show that word-for-word translation is used most; paraphrasing and cultural substitution strategies are sometimes used.
The study by Bahumaid (2010) examined the strategies of translating English idioms into Arabic in three of the most widely used general English-Arabic dictionaries. The findings of the study reveal that there are five commonly used strategies: (1) paraphrase, (2) using equivalent idioms that are dissimilar in words and structure to their English counterparts, (3) calquing, (4) using equivalent idioms that are similar in words and structure to their English counterparts, and (5) literal translation.
Zenati (2010) studied the strategies used by English first-year master's degree students when translating idioms into Arabic and their efficiency in the translation process. The findings of the study reveal that the most frequent strategies used were paraphrasing (59.58%), word-for-word translation (36.26%), and translation by culture substitution (4. 14%).
Al-Shawi and Mahadi (2012) studied the problem of translating social and religious idioms from Arabic into English and vice versa and discussed the strategies that could contribute to overcoming the obstacles that face a translator in this respect. They propose that the following strategies may offer some solutions and may guide translators: (a) using a parallel idiom in the target language, (b) using similar meaning but dissimilar form, (c) paraphrasing the idiom, (d) using notes, and (e) consulting informants.
Mohseni and Mozafar (2013) studied the strategies employed in translating idioms in English subtitles of two Persian television series. The findings of the study indicate that the strategy of paraphrase was the most frequently used strategy in the translation of idioms, by 72% of the total occurrence; 8% of idioms were omitted totally; 13% of idioms were translated by using an idiom of similar meaning with dissimilar form; 5% of idioms were translated by using a false form of target language idioms, and 2% of idioms were translated in a false way. The present study is similar to the literature reviewed in the general aim of investigating the strategies EFL/ESL/TEFL/translation university students employ when translating idiomatic expressions. However, it differs from the reviewed studies that tackled the translation strategies of idiomatic expressions in the following perspectives: First of all, unlike other studies, this study compares the translation strategies of idiomatic expressions implemented by two groups of undergraduate translation, not EFL/ESL, students using their native language. Furthermore, it investigates how translation students, in particular, translate idioms while reading authentic texts, unlike many previous studies that presented idioms in isolation. It also focuses on one issue and investigates it thoroughly for better understanding, unlike other studies that tackle this issue, i.e. translation strategies of idiomatic expressions, along with other issues.

Participants
The population of the study consisted of all Saudi and Jordanian undergraduate translation students. The sample of the study consisted of 50 (22-24-year-old) Jordanian and Saudi male senior students, 25 Saudi students at the Department of English Language and Translation, College of Languages and Translation at King Saud University and 25 Jordanian students at the Department of Translation, College of Arts, Yarmouk University, in the first semester of the academic year 2020/2021. All participants are Arabic native speakers. The participants were assured that their responses would remain confidential and would be used for academic purposes only.

Instrument of the Study
In order to collect the data of the study, the researchers developed a test to investigate the translation strategies that Saudi and Jordanian translation students used in translating idiomatic expressions. The test consists of 50 idiomatic expressions that were chosen specifically from the Oxford Dictionary of Idioms and Cambridge Book (English Idioms in Use) to meet the requirements of the current study. The idiomatic expressions were from 25 different categories (2 idiomatic expressions on each category): age, animal, clothes, colors, death, food, home, health, language, Furniture, law, life, men and women, money, names, nature, numbers, parts of the body, relationship, sport, technology and science, time, travel, weather, and work.
The test also consists of two sections: a brief introduction of the study and instructions for answering the questions and a short section aiming at collecting demographic information about the respondents.
To ensure the validity of the instrument, the test was given to a jury of six professors (three at Yarmouk University and three at King Saud University) to elicit their views as to the accuracy, clarity, and appropriateness of it. Then the instrument was reviewed and modified according to their recommendations. For example, two categories were removed (love and beverages) due to cultural perspectives and two others were added (men and women and food) instead. Moreover, 32 participants (16 Saudis and 16 Jordanians) were piloted to establish the reliability of the instrument using Cronbach's Alpha, which was found to be 0.89.

Data Collection and Statistical Analysis
The researchers personally visited classes and oversaw the data collection process. They distributed the questionnaire, offered explanations and answered questions, and collected the completed questionnaires in the course of one two-hour class session. The participants were asked to translate the sentences from English into Arabic. The words of the sentences were simple to help students concentrate on the translation of the idioms only and not to divert their attention to other difficulties such as the meanings of different vocabularies. It is worth mentioning that no classification of adopted strategies in translating idioms was taken into consideration when analyzing the test's items. Three options were used in scoring the test: "Correct" if the idiomatic expression was translated by using an idiom of similar meaning and form or by using an idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form, "Acceptable" if the idiomatic expression was translated by paraphrasing or giving an explanation describing the idiomatic expression, and "Wrong" if the idiomatic expression was translated by using a literal translation that has no TL equivalent, by giving wrong translation, by committing some absolute linguistic errors that changed the meaning of statements, or by leaving the idiomatic expression untranslated, although the respondents were reminded of it by the researchers. The test was first rated by the researchers, and then it was given to two raters to check the accuracy of the researchers' rating. After that, the data were processed and statistically computed and analyzed using the SPSS statistical package; then, the outcomes were compared. Participants' answers were presented in tables, percentages and frequencies.

Results and Discussion
This study aims at investigating the strategies Jordanian and Saudi University translation students utilize in translating English idiomatic expressions into Arabic. It also attempts to find out if there are any statistically significant differences in the strategies employed by Jordanian and Saudi university translation students in translating English idiomatic expressions into Arabic. This section represents the findings as guided by the questions of the study.

First Question
The first question attempts to find out the strategies that Jordanian university translation students utilize in translating English idiomatic expressions into Arabic.   (24 mistakes), and furniture (24 mistakes) as the mistakes in translation committed in each of these domains were high; while the top five domains which the Jordanian participants find easy to translate are: life (1 mistake), relationships (1 mistake), health (2 mistakes), nature (2 mistakes), clothes (3 mistakes) as the mistakes in translation committed in each of these domains were low.

Second Question
The second question investigates the strategies that Saudi university translation students utilize in translating English idiomatic expressions into Arabic. Table (2) shows the frequencies and percentages of the strategies used by the Saudi participants to translate the study's idiomatic expressions.  (12 mistakes), and parts of the body (12 mistakes) as the mistakes in translation committed in each of these domains were high; while the top five domains which the Saudi participants find easy to translate are: language (no mistakes), nature (1 mistake), food, men and women and work (2 mistakes each), animals and clothes (3 mistakes each), and life and travel (4 mistakes each) as the mistakes in translation committed in each of these domains were low.

Third Question
The third question aims to find out if there are any statistically significant differences in the strategies employed by Jordanian and Saudi university translation students in translating English idiomatic expressions into Arabic. Table (3) shows the frequencies and percentages of the strategies used by the Jordanian and Saudi participants to translate the study's idiomatic expressions.  1) As reported in the literature, paraphrasing is the most common strategy employed by the participants of the study. The high percentage of translation of idioms using paraphrase by both Jordanian and Saudi participants reflects the fact that English and Arabic belong to two different linguistic and cultural systems, so the paraphrasing strategy was employed to address such a translation problem. The percentages of this strategy as employed by both Jordanian and Saudi participants are close.
2) The participant's translation was marked as wrong if the idiom was translated wrongly by committing linguistic or semantic errors that changed the SL meaning of the idiom or by leaving the idiom untranslated, although the participant was reminded of it by the researchers. The study results show that erroneous translations are comparatively very high. This can be justified by the fact that idiomatic expressions are not easy to translate and that special attention should be given by both students and educators to this problematic aspect of translation. Students should be trained on how to translate idioms, and students themselves should pay more attention to idioms as regards comprehension and hence picking the most suitable equivalent in the target language. Erroneous translations by Jordanian participants were higher than those of Saudi participants.
3) Idiomatic translation refers to: a) using a TL idiom that has a similar form and meaning to the SL idiom, or b) using a TL idiom that has a similar meaning to the SL idiom but using a different form. Idiomatic translation has the third-highest percentage in the study. This can reveal the fact that the respondents may have relatively good knowledge of the TL idiomatic expressions. Nevertheless, this mostly applied when the respondents encountered SL idioms that have similar TL ones, as similarities can exist between languages at the cultural level. It happens that there are cases where English and Arabic have similar idiomatic correspondence. The percentages of this strategy as employed by both Jordanian and Saudi participants are close.
4) Literal translation utilized by respondents can reveal the fact that they are incompetent and that they lack the ability to handle idiomatic expressions properly, taking into account the fact that the participants already know they were translating idioms. Literal translations by Saudi participants were higher than those of Jordanian participants.

5)
Using a loanword (borrowing), though the least frequent in the survey, was also employed by the participants. Borrowing translations by Saudi participants were higher than those of Jordanian participants. The "remontada" example may be utilized by the participants as imitating some Arab sports commentators who use the expression to mean "come back" or victory after defeat.
The findings of the third question reveal that there are slight statistically significant differences between Jordanian and Saudi participants in the translation strategies employed in that both groups used paraphrasing, literal translation, idiomatic translation, and loanwords with different frequencies. This could be due to the cultural closeness between Jordanian and Saudi societies. Moreover, Jordanian participants committed more mistakes than their Saudi counterparts. This could be attributed to the fact that Saudi participants are in close contact with native speakers of English either in Saudi Arabia or abroad more than their Jordanian counterparts. This could have made them more competent linguistically in dealing with English idiomatic expressions. Another reason could be the study plan. In the Saudi context, students are exposed to more translation courses in various fields (viz. medicine, engineering, agriculture, economics, literature, education, religion, etc.), while in the Jordanian context, translation courses tend to be more limited in number and domain.

Conclusion
As this study showed, translating idioms seems to be one of the most problematic issues facing translators. This is expected as idiomatic expressions are culturally-bound and have fixed structures. The high percentages of wrong translation (28.72 % by Jordanian participants and 15.44 % by Saudi participants) can be attributed to various factors, including miscomprehension of idioms, culturally-bound meanings of SL idioms, and Arabic language interference.
Regarding the strategies used to solve the problems of translating idioms, the participants of this study utilized four strategies: paraphrasing, idiomatic translation (i.e. using an idiom of similar meaning and form or using an idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form), literal translation, and using a loanword (such as "remontada"). Besides, the study found that the participants mostly used the translation strategies discussed by scholars, namely paraphrasing, idiomatic translation, and literal translation. It is noteworthy that both Jordanian and Saudi participants mostly used colloquial, rather than standard, expressions to translate idioms in most domains.
Many cases of a mistranslation of idioms by the participants of this study can be attributed to miscomprehension of idioms and to the inability of participants to reproduce them in the TL. This corresponds to scholars' arguments that the perception of idioms by the translator is pivotal for the correct translation of idioms. For example, Baker's (1992) asserts that one of the problems regarding idiomatic expressions is that idiomatic expressions are difficult as they have fixed structures and have culturally-bound and nonliteral meanings and that the translator has difficulty in comprehending them and hence rendering them inappropriately to the TL.
Idiomatic expressions are a special case in translation as a number of factors come into play. It is important that the translator should be linguistically and culturally knowledgeable about both SL and TL. Besides, the translator should first comprehend the contextual meaning of the idiom before translating it and then choose the closest TL counterpart -preferably to translate an idiom with an idiom, if possible. If this is not possible, for equivalency reasons, the translator should opt for the most appropriate translation strategy so that the SL idiom is rendered properly and expresses the intended contextual meaning and that the TL idiom is linguistically and culturally comprehensible to the TL readership.