How Cold Are Your “Cold Feet”? The Effect of Context and Level of Training on the Translation of Idioms

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12114635
AutoresSuhad Sonbul (0000-0001-5517-3521, Umm Al‐Qura University Makkah Saudi Arabia, autor de correspondencia), Dina Abdel Salam El-Dakhs (0000-0003-2943-987X, Prince Sultan University Riyadh Saudi Arabia), Abbas Brashi (0000-0003-2224-0526, Umm Al‐Qura University Makkah Saudi Arabia), Rezan Alharbi (0000-0003-1872-2362, Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs Riyadh Saudi Arabia)
Año2025
Volumen35
Número4
Páginas2172-2182
Fecha de publicación2025-04-30
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInternational Journal of Applied Linguistics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0802-6106 • E-ISSN: 1473-4192
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/ijal.12763
OpenAlexW4410017505
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas24

Research on the translation of idioms is scarce. The present study aims to examine how translation trainees render figurative idioms. A total of 131 translation trainees were recruited from two universities in Saudi to represent two levels of training (novice vs. advanced). The participants were administered a translation task involving 18 idioms (e.g., “cold feet”, “old hat”, “fat cat”) and were instructed to translate them from English to Arabic. In addition to the level of training, the study examined the effect of context informativeness on the naturalness of the renderings provided. Finally, we administered a vocabulary size measure in English to assess any modulating effect of vocabulary size on the two main factors. Results showed no effect of the level of training. However, there was a significant effect of contextual clues; more informative contexts led to more natural renderings of idioms than less informative ones. Interestingly, vocabulary size interacted with informativeness; smaller differences between levels of informativeness as vocabulary size increased. The study has important implications for the training of translators

Archaeology · Cold war · Context (archaeology · Geography · Linguistics · Meteorology · Political science · Training (meteorology · Translation (biology · Chemistry · History · linguistics and terminology studies · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Psychology · Translation Studies and Practices