The Difficulties that Tertiary English Students Confront when Translating Relative Pronouns

Abstract

The study aims to alleviate the relative pronoun difficulties that Saudi students encounter whenever translating. The study’s significance is that it uncovers relative pronouns among Saudi Arabian college freshmen. The study seeks to address the question: what difficulties do Saudi students confront when translating relative pronouns? The researcher employed a descriptive analytical approach. The sampling unit of twenty-five undergraduate students, preferred from the boys’ section, were males in the first stage, attending university in the second semester of 2020 at the College of Arts and Sciences, getting a degree in English in Beljurshi, Al Baha University, and this study used a validated assessment of written Arabic sentences as a technique to gather a description of the research problem. The analysis was undertaken, and the issues that Saudi students had with relative pronouns were located and labeled as whose, who, whom, where, and where in the study. According to the study’s findings, “whom” obtained a high score and “which” received a low score. According to the discussion, the difficulties that students have are caused by a lack of the student’s failure to distinguish between subject and object pronouns, inaccuracy could be attributed to a lack of differentiation between relative pronouns, and the student’s inability to discern between relative value pronouns. The study suggests further research into other areas related to relative pronouns.