Abstract
Idioms have been defined as groups of words or phrases used together to have fixed meanings. No doubt, ideas or thoughts have been expressed differently in different languages. Using the idiomatic expressions is one of the ways that can be used to convey the intended meaning indirectly. Many researches have been carried out in this respect to show the importance of idioms and how problematic it is the process of translating them from one language into another knowing that this phenomenon is culture-specific. This research paper aims at translating idiomatic expressions from English into Arabic. The current study ends with the following conclusions: (1) idioms are culture specific, (2) Idioms are of two kinds. They are a: transparent and b: opaque, and (3) most idiomatic expressions were translated communicatively and in certain cases adaptation was used. These two types of translations result in effective renderings.
Highlights
Idioms are defined as phrases or expressions that have fixed structures
Speaking, Ulman (1962:45) distinguishes between transparent and opaque words and believes that the transparent words have meaning which can be understood from the meaning of their parts, while the meaning of the opaque words can be determined in the same way as the transparent ones
As it is mentioned earlier that the idiomatic expressions have fixed meaning and structure, ; they can be considered as opaque expressions since their meaning cannot be predicted from the meaning of the individual words
Summary
Idioms are defined as phrases or expressions that have fixed structures. The meaning that can be conveyed by using the idiomatic expressions is either literal or figurative. Hockett (1970: 303) states that idioms are constantly created in any living language, some of them are used for a long time, others might be forgotten. He mentions that formation of new idioms is important even if it is small, because it will have an essential effect on the field of linguistics. People from different cultures may not understand some expressions like the idiomatic ones. Another factor related to the idiomatic expressions which is the social class. Regarding Chomsky’s theory (1975:57) of generating sentences with formal and semantic properties, the meaning of a sentence is determined by the rules of syntax and semantics as well as the intention of the participant which makes the sentence understandable
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