Arabic and English Dar (&quot;House&quot;) and Bayt (&quot;Home&quot;) Expressions: Linguistic, Translation and Cultural Issues
Author: Al-Jarf, Reima
Date: 2022-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Arabic,Translation,Cultural Differences,Contrastive Linguistics,Language Usage,Language Processing,Semantics,Naming,Error Analysis (Language),Error Patterns,Computational Linguistics,Teaching Methods,Figurative Language,Phrase Structure,Undergraduate Students,English (Second Language),Second Language Learning,Second Language Instruction,Foreign Countries,Difficulty Level

This study aims to: (i) describe the different meanings and contexts in which Arabic &quot;dar&quot; and &quot;bayt&quot; and English &quot;house&quot; and &quot;home&quot; expressions are used; (ii) compare &quot;dar,&quot; &quot;bayt,&quot; &quot;house&quot; and &quot;home&quot; expressions and give examples of expressions that are identical in form and meaning, examples where English &quot;house&quot; expressions are translated into &quot;bayt&quot; in Arabic, Arabic expressions in which &quot;dar&quot; is translated to &quot;home&quot; in English, those that are similar in meaning but different in form, and those that exist in English only or Arabic only and have no equivalents in the other language; (iii) shed light on student translators' ability to comprehend and translate the &quot;dar,&quot; &quot;bayt,&quot; &quot;house&quot; and &quot;home&quot; expressions; (iv) identify the strategies utilized in translating &quot;dar,&quot; &quot;bayt,&quot; &quot;house&quot; and &quot;home&quot; expressions; and (v) identify the sources of errors in translating &quot;dar,&quot; &quot;bayt,&quot; &quot;house,&quot; and &quot;home&quot; expressions. For purposes of the current study, a corpus of 200 Arabic expressions containing &quot;dar&quot; (house) and &quot;bayt&quot; (home) was collected and analyzed. Although &quot;dar&quot; and &quot;bayt&quot; literally mean &quot;house&quot; and &quot;home&quot;, they have several meanings and are used in many contexts. They mean family of [Arabic characters omitted] and origin of [Arabic characters omitted]. Some are used in names of cities [Arabic characters omitted], monuments [Arabic characters omitted], bird, insect, animal homes [Arabic characters omitted], companies commercial, industrial activity or organization [Arabic characters omitted], hotel, accommodation [Arabic characters omitted], stores, restaurants, [Arabic characters omitted], schools and universities [Arabic characters omitted], publishers and bookstores [Arabic characters omitted] and types of homes [Arabic characters omitted]. They are used in religious contexts [Arabic characters omitted]; financial contexts [Arabic characters omitted], literature [Arabic characters omitted], metonyms [Arabic characters omitted], and in describing the physical appearance of a home [Arabic characters omitted]. A translation test showed that students translated less than 25% correctly. Those where Arabic expressions and their English equivalents are similar such as &quot;courthouse&quot; and &quot;publishing house&quot;. Many items were left blank. Literal translation was the most common strategy. Implications for translation pedagogy are given.