Perceptions on L2 Lexical Collocation Translation with a Focus on English-Arabic

Abstract

This paper aims to shed light on recent research concerning translating English-Arabic lexical collocations. It begins with a brief overview of English and Arabic lexical collocations with reference to specialized dictionaries. Research views on translating lexical collocations are presented, with the focus on English-Arabic collocations. These views have supported the notion that translating English-Arabic lexical collocations by second language learners is a problematic matter that needs attention. Then, highlighting second language learners’ errors when translating English lexical collocations is due to inaccessible collocation dictionaries, semantic, syntactic differences between the L1 and L2. This paper concludes with an overview of how teacher instruction can facilitate collocation translation through dictionaries, and a scaffolding method.

Keywords: Collocation, translation, dictionary, and different lexical and grammatical systems.