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A Study of the Problems of Learning and Translating Idioms
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Idioms are a very important part of the English language: you are told that if you want to go far (succeed) you should pull your socks up (make a serious effort to improve your behaviour, the quality of your work, etc.) and use your grey matter (brain).1 Learning and translating idioms have always been very difficult for foreign language learners. The present paper explores some of the reasons why English idiomatic expressions are difficult to learn and translate. It is not the aim of this paper to attempt a comprehensive survey of the vast amount of material that has appeared on idioms in Adams and Kuder (1984), Alexander (1984), Dixon (1983), Kirkpatrick (2001), Langlotz (2006), McCarthy and O'Dell (2002), and Wray (2002), among others. The paper concentrates on idioms as a learning-translation problem; it makes no claim to be comprehensive or academically rigorous. Leech (1989) defines an idiom as follows: “An idiom is a group of two or more words which we have to treat as a unit in learning a language. We cannot arrive at the meaning of the idiom just by adding together the meanings of the words inside it. E.g.John and Mary usedto be hardup (='They had very little money'.)”(P.186) To be more exact, an idiom is a sequence of words which is semantically and syntactically restricted, so that they function as a single unit. From a semantic point of view, the meanings of the individual words cannot be summed to produce the meanings of the idiomatic expression as a whole. Thus, fly off the handle, which means lose one's temper, cannot be understood in terms of the meanings of fly, off, or handle. The idiom phrase hot air, which means empty or boastful talk, is neither hot nor air; with hot air we are dealing with a set phrase where the meaning cannot be suggested on the basis of the two constituent words. The idiomatic meaning of spill the beans in So who spilt the beans (=told the secret) about her affair with David? has nothing to do with beans or with spilling in its literal sense. The foreign-language learner is left trying to figure out where and how the beans were spilt. From a syntactic viewpoint, the constituent parts of an idiom often do not permit the usual variability they display in other contexts. The point to be emphasized here is this: most idioms do not lend themselves easily to manipulation by speakers and writers; they are invariable and must be learned as wholes, but concord ofnumber, person and gender in the idiom phrase is still necessary, i.e. the verbs must be put into the correct form, and pronouns must agree with their antecedents: I don't give a hoot for her opinion! 2 • She doesn't give a hoot for my opinion! etc.)║He won, but only by the skin of his teeth2• She won, but only by the skin of her teeth• Iwon, but only by the skin ofmy teeth,I had to run for the train, and caught it by the skin of myteeth, etc.║He kept pullingmy arm, throwing me off my balance 2 • She kept pulling his arm, throwing him off his balance • We kept pullingher arm, throwingher offher balance, etc.2 The present paper is divided into five parts, as follows: Part I: An Overview; PART II: Learner’s Difficulties with Idioms; PART III: Some Pedagogical recommendations and Suggestions about Idioms; Part IV: Activities to Practice Idiomatic Expressions; Part V: Summary and Conclusion.

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Publication Date
Tue Aug 26 2025
Journal Name
Biobacta Journal Of Biochemistry And Molecular Biology
How Pantoea can help solve modern agriculture problems: A Review
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Modern agriculture is challenged by soil degradation, nutrient depletion, plant diseases, and excessive dependence on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. By examining different strains of Pantoea, the study highlights their role in promoting plant growth, improving their tolerance to stress, reducing reliance on synthetic agricultural inputs, and contributing to more sustainable and environmentally friendly agricultural practices. Using a combination of practical qualitative methods and reliable quantitative data, the research gathers extensive information on how these microbes impact various crops and key soil health indicators. The improvements in plant growth statistics and nutrient levels are often quite astonishing. The result

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Publication Date
Sat May 01 2021
Journal Name
Journal Of Physics: Conference Series
A New Hybrid Meta-Heuristics Algorithms to Solve APP Problems
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Abstract<p>In this paper, a new hybrid algorithm for linear programming model based on Aggregate production planning problems is proposed. The new hybrid algorithm of a simulated annealing (SA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithms. PSO algorithm employed for a good balance between exploration and exploitation in SA in order to be effective and efficient (speed and quality) for solving linear programming model. Finding results show that the proposed approach is achieving within a reasonable computational time comparing with PSO and SA algorithms.</p>
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Publication Date
Wed Sep 01 2010
Journal Name
Journal Of Accounting And Financial Studies ( Jafs )
Contemporary accounting thought problems and its Roles in creation Global financial crises: An analytical study
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  With occurrence of any financial crises, regardless at global or regional levels such as the great economic crises during 1929 – 1933 and the Asian financial crises at the end of twentieth century as well as the current global financial crises that started during second half 2008, we acknowledge that there are some critics loudly articulated accusing accountants and auditors for disparences, and they are numerical partner of financial manipulation as well as corrupted administrators with the company's administrators that they are difficulty. At this point, many suggestions and recommendation for upgrading the accounting system has been made.              &nbsp

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Publication Date
Mon Apr 11 2022
Journal Name
Iraqi Journal Of Science
International Journal on Technical and Physical Problems of Engineering
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International Journal on Technical and Physical Problems of Engineering

Publication Date
Tue Mar 30 2021
Journal Name
College Of Islamic Sciences
Problems distorting the divine books in the light of revealing interpretation
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Abstract

The research is presented according to an objective study on the ideological problems, especially the distortions that the divine scriptures have been subjected to under a false pretext that does not pertain to religion, namely that the heavenly books of the Torah and the Bible have been damaged or lost as a result of apostasy and persecution, and the writing of these books has been entrusted by people who have been bestowed Holiness, they have the testimony of the Church, so they distorted and omitted it in a manner suitable for securing their good and worldly gains, and the Holy Qur’an mentioned this explicitly, and they continued later, especially the Jews, in distorting the verses of the Holy Qur’an. This researc

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Publication Date
Wed Aug 01 2018
Journal Name
Journal Of Economics And Administrative Sciences
ž (( The role of Organisational learning in building a talent management strategies Applied research in the Ministry of Science and Technology ))
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The aims of the research is to know the role of Organisational learning in building talent management strategies in the Ministry of Science and Technology , where we see the challenges facing organizations today dictate now and in the future activation of scientific expertise to meet these challenges and the dissemination of these concepts within the priorities and data organizational culture of these organizations despite having a lot of the importance of organizational knowledge and learning applications .Despite learning and adopting some of the organizations have to enhance their competitiveness, we find a lot of organizations, including (The ministry researched) still do not realize the importance of the role of organization

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Publication Date
Fri Apr 01 2016
Journal Name
Swift Journal Of Social Sciences And Humanity
Difficulties encountered in translating Some legal texts from Arabic into English
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Translation is both a social and cultural phenomenon, it can neither exist outside a social community and it is within society, nor it can be viewed as a medium of cross-cultural fertilization. This paper aims to investigate the difficulties that a translator may face when dealing with legal texts such as marriage and divorce contracts. These difficulties can be classified according to the present paper into syntactic, semantic, and cultural. The syntactic difficulties include word order, syntactic arrangement, unusual sentence structure, the use of model verbs in English, and difference in legal system. As to the semantic difficulties, they involve lack of established terminology, finding functional and lexical equivalence, word for word t

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Publication Date
Fri Mar 01 2019
Journal Name
حوليات اداب عين شمس
Difficulties Faced by Iraqi EFL Learners in Translating English Collective Nouns
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The current study is concerned with investigating the difficulties that Iraqi EFL learners of English may face when translating English collective nouns. Such collective nouns as committee, government, , jury , Parliament , etc. are considered singular when the concept of the unity as a group is emphasized , but when the concept of the individuals or numbers is emphasized they are treated as plural. A sample of twenty undergraduate students have been selected randomly to translate certain English collective nouns in some selected political texts in order to find out the difficulties they might face in rendering them into Arabic. It is hypothesized that most of the testees have used the singular form rather than the plural ignoring the

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Publication Date
Sun Sep 16 2018
Journal Name
Al-mustansiriya Journal Of Arts
Difficulties Faced by Iraqi EFL Learners in Translating English Barnyard Verbs
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Translation is a vital process that needs much more understanding and mutual background knowledge on the part of ESL or EFL learners in terms of grammar , meaning and context of both the SL and TL . Thus , the main aim of the current research paper is to identify and figure out the techniques used by ESL or EFL learners when translating English barnyard verbs into Arabic . The main problem of this study is attributed to the fact that ESL or EFL learners may not be able to identify and understand the connotative meaning of barnyard verbs since these verbs are onomatopoeic (i.e,) a word that phonetically imitates, or suggests the source of sound that it describes. Therefore they may be unable to translate these verbs appropriately and accura

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Publication Date
Mon Jan 01 2024
Journal Name
Bio Web Of Conferences
Concepts of statistical learning and classification in machine learning: An overview
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Statistical learning theory serves as the foundational bedrock of Machine learning (ML), which in turn represents the backbone of artificial intelligence, ushering in innovative solutions for real-world challenges. Its origins can be linked to the point where statistics and the field of computing meet, evolving into a distinct scientific discipline. Machine learning can be distinguished by its fundamental branches, encompassing supervised learning, unsupervised learning, semi-supervised learning, and reinforcement learning. Within this tapestry, supervised learning takes center stage, divided in two fundamental forms: classification and regression. Regression is tailored for continuous outcomes, while classification specializes in c

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