Translation Strategies Employed by EFL Learners and the Impact of That on Their Translation Skills Development

Abstract

The present cross-sectional empirical study investigates the different types of strategies and methods that the undergraduate students employ when translating from their native language into the target language and vice versa. The study was conducted on one hundred twenty, third and fourth year, students at the College of Science and Arts, King Khalid University. The data were collected through translation tasks and questionnaires. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to analyze and interpret the data collected to achieve the objectives of this study. The study revealed valuable information. The most favored strategies by Arab college students were literal translation, free translation and word-for-word translation respectively. More than half of the all used strategies were literal translation with a percentage of about fifty-five. The mixed translation strategies were found to be about twenty one percent for all the three levels. Free translation strategy was only fourteen percent which is, somehow, a low percentage. The students showed considerable improvement as they progress from one level to a higher one. It is expected that translation instructors as well as course designers will reflect on the findings of this study by raising the learners' awareness of the great differences between English and Arabic when teaching or designing translation courses. Parallel texts that include literal translation as well as free translation have to be included to show the deficiency and ungrammaticality of the texts produced when applying literal translation.Like Nida, Catford (1965) states that translation is a process in which a text in one language is replaced by another text that has the same meaning in another language. However, Catford (1965) lays more emphasis on the linguistic aspect of the language than on the cultural one.Similarly, Hatem and Mason (1990) see translation as transferring of the meaning from the source language to the target language. Newmark (2001, p. 7) even went further when he claims that translation is 'a craft' in which the

Translation Equivalence Degrees among Indonesian EFL Undergraduate Students

“…The findings clearly reflect that students' translation skills need to be enhanced, considering none of their results are optimal. Furthermore, this current study conforms to previous works, such as those conducted by (Asgarian & Vefali, 2510), (Askari & Nikoopour, 2518), (Hassan, 2525), (Husna, et al, 2521), (Karjo & Metta, 2519), (Mohammad, 2519), (Rosyidah, et al, 2525), (Sari, et al, 2522), and (Sundari & Febriyanti, 2512), who prove several weaknesses of EFL learners ' competencies and processes in translating;and (Al-Kindi, et al, 2525), (Romios, 2525), and (Sinambela, et al, 2524), ) investigated some main hurdles to EFL students' translation outcomes. These works are crucial since the learning outcome for translation courses in the EFL environment is to generate an optimal and equivalent translation among students , (Calis & Dikilitas, 2512), and (Mollaei, et al, 2512).…”

“…Previous research has looked into how translation can help EFL students improve their English mastery and skills. This can be discussed based on past works (Putrawan, et al, 2519) and (Siregar, 2518) which examined the issue of EFL undergraduate students perceptions and beliefs on translation; (Asgarian & Vefali, 2510), (Askari & Nikoopour, 2518), (Hassan, 2525), (Husna, et al, 2521), (Karjo & Metta, 2519), (Mohammad, 2519), (Rosyidah, et al, 2525), (Sari, et al, 2522), and (Sundari & Febriyanti, 2512) who investigated the issue of EFL learners' competencies and processes in translating; and (Al-Kindi, et al, 2525), (Romios, 2525), and (Sinambela, et al, 2524), who studied the issue of EFL students' translation results. Considering the previous works had insufficiently discussed the EFL students' equivalence degrees, this current work, therefore, promotes the issue regarding: how is a translation equivalence degree among Indonesian EFL undergraduate students?…”

Loss and Compensation Strategies in the Arabic Translation of Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible

“…The translated works of "Ibn Sina" and "Ibn Rushd" from Arabic into Latin have also had the greatest impact in shaping central European thinking. (Hassan, 2020)…”

Students’ Perceptions of Using Machine Translation Tools In the EFL Classroom

“…He rightly states that for an accurate and appropriate translation, translators need to understand the meaning of the source text fully. In line with him, all aspects of language like meaning, grammar, style, and sounds enjoy equal importance within the translation, where failing to watch anybody of them will cause distorting of meaning (Hassan, 2020). These new utterly different from traditional translation models have also expedited what translators do since they need accelerating the interpretation method and redoubled productivity still as developing cooperation skills (Pym, 2003).…”