Strategies of Translating Lexical Collocations in Literary Texts from English into Arabic

Abstract

The present study investigates the translation of lexical collocations in literary texts from English into Arabic in light of the translation strategies used by some translators. Two English literary works have been translated into Arabic are used. (151) Lexical collocations were extracted from the two literary works. The study attempts to shed light on how translators deal with collocations when transferring them to the target language, and whether the target text fulfills the linguistic and stylistic characteristics of the collocations or not. Three questions are investigated: 1- What happens to collocations when they are translated?. 2- How do translators deal with collocations?. 3- What strategies do translators adopt in translating collocations in literary texts?. The findings of the study indicate that collocations can be translated through using different strategies. The literal translation strategy is used as the most frequent strategy in translating collocations in literary texts. The second strategy is modulation, etc. In some cases, collocations are translated into one word that represents a target text equivalent of the source text word combination.