Difficulties in Translating and Employing Word Collocation for Undergraduate Students at Al-Baha University

Abstract

The point of the study is to assess the difficulties that Al-Baha University undergraduate students face in implementing word collocation. The study aims to demonstrate how collocation was used in translations by thirty Arabian bilingual undergraduates in a translation class, as well as to identify barriers to using collocation with participants translating text during the fall semester of the 2020–2021 academic years. The descriptive analytical method was used in this study. In this research, descriptive and analytical methodologies are used. The research utilized 20 Arabic sentence exams to outline the research topic, and the 30 second-tier degree students, currently studying English at Al-Baha University in Beljurshi, participated. According to the data, students failed to translate word collocations because they employed the word-for-word translation technique, not comprehending that any word paired with another results in a distinct meaning of the collocation, a lack of social and cultural information in the language, and an inadequate awareness of each other. This is due to the variety of meanings of the same term in a language other than the mother tongue. There are many meanings in English, making collocation translation difficult, and students' ignorance of the differences between Arabic and an English collocation is blamed for the difficulties in translating collocations. Collocations that were not covered by the study, such as countable noun collocations, sound collocations, and simile collocations, should be researched further.