Cultural and Sociolinguistic Issues in English-Arabic Translation of Collocations

Collocations are words that must accompany each other. When it comes to translation, collocations usually pose problematic cultural and sociolinguistic issues. This paper attempts to shed light on some of these problems that participants of this study faced in the English-Arabic translation of collocations. In order to examine these issues, a questionnaire was given out to 40 MA students majoring in English Language at The Hashemite University, Yarmouk University, and Al-al-Bayt University: 15 males and 25 females. The results showed that translators faced these cultural and sociolinguistic problematic issues: The word order within the same collocation, the availability of acceptable equivalents in the target language (TL), and linguistic issues related to religious words. The results also revealed that participants had not enough proficiency in collocations. Data were tabulated and analyzed. In addition, this study concludes with some recommendations, including offering at least two courses related to English and Arabic collocations in order to solve the problematic issues in translating collocations in Jordanian universities