Translating English Animal Idioms into Arabic: Problems Encountered By UAE University Students

It was really my great pleasure to work close to students at the UAE University in Al Ain- UAE . I discovered many issues related to the problems of translating English animal idioms In 2008, third year students at the Translation Department constituted the subjects of the study. The sample used in this thesis included 75 female students of translation at the UAE University in Al Ain in the UAE. The following results were obtained from this study: 1-English animal idioms are difficult to be translated into Arabic because of the big gap between the two cultures, which are reflected in their languages. 2- English animal idioms are usually used in their figurative meaning; this is why translating them accurately, meaningfully and normally into Arabic is considered to be problematic. Following on from the results, it is suggested that exposure to target language culture is necessary in order to deal with what we refer to as cultural background. Errors occur when students fail to provide the appropriate equivalent to the English Animal idioms due to their lack of cultural background of the target language