Teaching translation at the undergraduate level in Saudi Arabia : the case of Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University

Translation teaching touches upon many issues that demand investigation and discussion in detail. This thesis examines the teaching of translation at undergraduate level in Saudi Arabia through a study of the programmes in language and translation being offered by some Saudi Universities. Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University is taken as an example. The aim is to identify some of the problems inherent in translation teaching to suggest strategies for improvement of these programmes. The following approach was adopted: (a) a thorough study of the existing programme, (b) two questionnaires personally administered to the teachers and students and ( c) identification of the main translation problems by analysing more than 1500 translations produced by the students from nine source texts. The thesis consists of six chapters, the first of which is an introduction. The second chapter is devoted to reviewing some related literature on aspects of translation teaching, such as university training, the ideal translator, the ideal translation teacher, the curriculum content of a translation teaching programme and an overview of translation teaching models. The third chapter is a study of the existing programme at Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University. The opinions of teachers and students on the programme at the University are analysed in Chapter four. Chapter five discusses the main problems revealed by the students' translations of the given texts, including: (I) comprehension problems of words, phrases, idioms and fixed expressions, and sentences, (2) problems of rendering at the lexical, syntactic, discourse and stylistic levels, and (3) problems related to reproducing and re-expressing texts in Arabic. Chapter six deals with suggestions and recommendations and concludes the study