awej 5 no.4 full issue 2014

AWEJ Volume.5 Number.3, 2014The Arab translation students’ hindrances in translating political cultureQassem6. inability to use the dictionary and context to recognize the meaning of such conceptsTypes of ErrorsOmissionIt was one of the most common errors in translating the three English culture-based texts intoArabic. The students relied heavily on omission to solve the translation problem. Omission heremeans leaving parts of the whole items or sections to make the meaning acceptable or because ofcomprehension problems. The table below is divided into four groups- the items translated by thestudents, the frequency of errors, the error and the model of translation. It is clear that thestudents' use of the dictionary facilitate to some extent the students’ task in translating thepolitical concepts.As for the political terms, the students committed errors of omission in translating 'chancellor','shadow minister', 'shadow cabinet' and 'MP'. They did this because of the lack of schemata ofsuch terms. The students might not realize that these are specific concepts in the political systemof the English society. Unlike the political culture, these terms are lexicalized into Arabic. To putit another way, their functional equivalents exist in Arabic. However, the students did not knowhow to deal with such items to solve their problematicity either in the process of comprehensionor production into Arabic. The items 'shadow minister' and 'shadow cabinet' were translated as" '' and '' الوزراء ‏''مجلس respectively by about 70% of the students. The problem was that thestudents did not comprehend the meaning of such concepts and this was reflected in theirtranslations. Besides, the students' use of omission indicates that they did not use omissionproperly. This means that they did not know the meaning of the item, so they omitted it, which isnot a right procedure.وزيرTable .2 The Students' Errors of OmissionThe item The Error Model of Translationوزير الماليح وزير .1 Chancellorوزير الحسب المعارض وزير .2 Shadow ministerمجلس حكومح المعارضح مجلس الوزراء .3 Shadow cabinetعضو الثرلمان عضو .4 MPDeviationDeviation means that the students' translations did not have any relation with the SLmeaning. Besides, the students' procedure in solving translation problem is not correct since itresults in deviation from the SL meaning Table (3) shows the students' errors of deviation.Table .3 DeviationArab World English JournalISSN: 2229-9327www.awej.org248