Abstract
Background : Prepositions pose major problems when translated from English into Arabic. The accurate mappings between English-Arabic prepositions are sometimes very difficult to determine by Arab learners. Aims: This study is designed to identify the difficulties of translating the English prepositions at , in and on , which Saudi EFL students may face when translating them into Arabic. The purpose was to determine which type of the two sexes (males or females) can translate these three prepositions better. Methods: Fifty (50) Saudi EFL students (25 males, 25 females) were asked to translate twenty (20) sentences and phrases on English prepositions at , in , and on into Arabic. Conclusions: Findings revealed that Saudi EFL students face problems related to use and usage when transferring simple prepositions from English into Arabic. Significant differences related to the performances of both males and females where females scored higher marks than those scored by the males. These findings suggest that acquired skills and abilities involved in translation appear to be more strongly activated in the English-Arabic tasks in women as compared to men.
Highlights
Findings revealed that Saudi English as foreign language (EFL) students face problems related to use and usage when transferring simple prepositions from English into Arabic
These findings suggest that acquired skills and abilities involved in translation appear to be more strongly activated in the English-Arabic tasks in women as compared to men
The researchers investigated these differences in the performances of the Saudi EFL students while subjects (50 students of both sexes) performed an implicit self-esteem task, using a questionnaire
Summary
There is not a consensus in global and domain-specific self-esteem or even in the incidence of some definitions related to prepositions. The functional relationships among the students' responses found by direct translation to the given text were discussed based on the Arabic model of translating the sentences of the test These showed that, compared to time prepositions, English place prepositions more firmly store even the incongruent associations as part of their schematic self-knowledge, and such associations automatically activate the Arabic lore for linguistic responses and control, in which knowledge of both languages (source and target languages i.e., Arabic and English) plays a central role. During test conditioning, there were significantly greater changes in the performance of the students, namely in place prepositions compared with time prepositions These results indicate performance differences among participants despite similar peripheral autonomic responses. Such misunderstanding or misusing of all these factors cause what is known as the "systematicity of errors" be it in the use or usage of prepositions
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