Collocational Partitive Constructions in English-Arabic Translation

Abstract

The present paper concentrates on the problems translators may face with English vocabulary use, in particular, with the appropriate combinations of words. This aspect of language called collocation. Our major focus in this study will be on collocational partitive constructions and how they are realized in Arabic. This study mainly aims at: (1) specifying and studying a number of different types and patterns of collocational partitive constructions in books of grammar, semantics, as well as syntactic, semantic and cultural periodicals, (2) testing the translatability of the constructions under investigation which are linguistically and culturally different, (3) showing how these constructions are realized in Arabic, (4) pin-pointing the areas of differences between these constructions in English and Arabic, (5) specifying the method of translation that has been used by the subject translators, and (6) proposing the most appropriate and accurate rendering in case of subjects' success and giving a new one in case of subjects' failure. To achieve the above-mentioned aims, the study hypothesizes that: (1) collocational partitive constructions cannot be successfully translated into Arabic without understanding the linguistic and semantic variations as well as cultural norms of both languages, and (2) using free translation results in giving appropriate, accurate and effective renderings. The main findings the study arrived at are: (1) more than 50% have been translated freely, whereas less than 50% have been translated literally, (2) the main problems and obstacles have been found to be due to the cultural differences between the two languages, collocational partitive constructions may have more than one equivalence in Arabic, and (4) there is no one-to-one formal correspondence between English collocational partitive constructions and their Arabic counterparts whether linguistically, semantically, pragmatically or culturally.