Volume: 9  Number: 1  Page: 19–32

Difficulties Encountered by Bilingual Arab Learners in Translating Arabic ‘fa’ into English

Aziz Thabit Saeed and Shehdeh Fareh Department of English Language and Literature, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Sharjah, Sharjah

This study investigates the problems that translators and Arab learners of English encounter in translating Arabic sentences containing the Arabic discourse marker ‘fa’ into English. Several types of texts were surveyed in order to identify the salient functions that this marker has in Arabic discourse. Five major functions were identified: Explanatory, Consequential, Causal, Sequential and Adversative. A translation task was designed to find out how this marker translates into English. The subjects were 50 English-major Arab students studying at the University of Sharjah. The difficulties that Arab learners encounter in translating Arabic ‘fa’ into English were identified and rank ordered in terms of difficulty.

Keywords: Arabic–English contrastive linguistics, Arabic ‘fa’, bilingual students, EFL students, intercultural communication, translation

© 2006 A.T. Saeed & S. Fareh

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