Problems of Translating American Business Jargons into Arabic
Abstract
This paper tackles the translation of American business jargons into Arabic.
Based on the fact that American dialect as a form of non-standard English language is characterized by special vocabularies and linguistic forms which makes it's translation into Arabic a relatively difficult task for novice and incompetent translators. Thus, when handling the task of translating such jargons into Arabic, the translator will encounter a twofold challenge, first he should be fully aware of the American dialect before he would be able to translate it into standard English, secondly, the translator will then convey the resulting meaning from English into Arabic.
The rationale behind this research is that translating business jargons in general and American ones in particular has not yet been given the proper attention. This lack of interest might be attributed to the complexity and sophistication associated with the translation of such jargons.
The translation model of Vinay and Darbelnet (1958) has been adopted, since it provides an appropriate framework for this study.
The study hypothesizes that there is no one to one translation equivalence between the meanings of some lexical items in the translation of American business jargons from English into Arabic. It also hypothesizes that translating these jargons represents a complicated task that only competent translators can tackle.
The study aims at defining the main problems of translating American business jargons into Arabic, in addition to exploring the main translation strategies used in the translation process.
To verify the accuracy of the hypotheses, the study includes a practical chapter which tackles the translation and analysis of 8 American business jargons into Arabic. The translation task has been assigned to (5) 4th class translation students at the (Translation Department/ College of Arts/ University of Mosul). Their renderings have been thoroughly verified and assessed to specify errors and misinterpretations.
Based on the results attained, a number of conclusions are outlined.
