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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 Dec 09 2025
Journal Name
Journal Of Al-farahidi’s Arts
Artificial Intelligence Applications in Machine Translation and Their Role in Bridging Semantic Gaps Across Languages: A Comparative Analytical Study of Chat GPT and Deep Seek
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With the fast-growing of neural machine translation (NMT), there is still a lack of insight into the performance of these models on semantically and culturally rich texts, especially between linguistically distant languages like Arabic and English. In this paper, we investigate the performance of two state-of-the-art AI translation systems (ChatGPT, DeepSeek) when translating Arabic texts to English in three different genres: journalistic, literary, and technical. The study utilizes a mixed-method evaluation methodology based on a balanced corpus of 60 Arabic source texts from the three genres. Objective measures, including BLEU and TER, and subjective evaluations from human translators were employed to determine the semantic, contextual an

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Publication Date
Sat Sep 02 2017
Journal Name
Dissertation
Integrating Biophysical and Socio-Economic Approaches to Identify Suitable Policy Incentives for Enhancing Sustainable Water and Land Use (WLI project a case study of Iraq)
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Publication Date
Fri Jun 07 2024
Journal Name
Medicine
Impact of TYMS gene polymorphism on the outcome of methotrexate treatment in a sample of Iraqi rheumatoid arthritis patients – identification of novel single nucleotide polymorphism: Cross-sectional study
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The current work aims to evaluate the association between genetic mutations in thymidylate synthetase (TYMS gene in exon1 and partial regions of promotor and intron 1 [877 bp, 657,220–658,096 bp]) and the therapeutic outcomes for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) Iraqi patients. An observational cross-sectional study involving 95 RA patients with established RA patients based on their methotrexate treatment responsiveness. Genetic sequencing of the TYMS gene was performed for all patients according to the instruction manuals of the sequencing company (Macrogen Inc. Geumchen, South Korea). Four polymorphisms were identified by sequencing 95 randomly selected patients in the noncoding region of TYMS

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Publication Date
Sat Dec 01 2018
Journal Name
Journal Of Accounting And Financial Studies ( Jafs )
The Impact of the Application of Corporate Governance On the Financial Performance Evaluation in Banks: Applied Study- Sample of the Conventional and Islamic Banks in the Kingdom of Bahrain
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 The aim of this research is to identify the extent to which the Conventional and Islamic banks are committed to implement the requirements of the corporate governance in its financial reports. In addition to its commitment to transparency and clarity in dealing with the shareholders and stockholders to protect their interests and to determine the impact of the commitment of the corporate governance on assessing the financial performance of the conventional and Islamic banks that participate in Bahrain Stock Exchange.

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Publication Date
Tue Nov 24 2015
Journal Name
Iraqi Journal Of Market Research And Consumer Protection
The Impact of External Environment Factors on the Quality of Educational Services (An Empirical Study): The Impact of External Environment Factors on the Quality of Educational Services (An Empirical Study)
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This research aims to identify the role of external environment factors on the quality of educational services, from the academic point of view, where the distribution of a questionnaire to a random sample of (100) university professors, and then analyzing a model, and test the validity of this model using structural modeling (SEM) (Structural Equation Modeling).
And then test the relationships between variables using the software of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS V.18), the research found a number of conclusions, the most important conclusion is: the external environment factors has significant impact on the quality of educational services.

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Publication Date
Fri Dec 31 2021
Journal Name
Iraqi Journal Of Market Research And Consumer Protection
AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF VORTEX GENERATOR ON THE FLAT-PLATE BOUNDARY LAYER: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF VORTEX GENERATOR ON THE FLAT-PLATE BOUNDARY LAYER
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This paper is dealing with an experimental study to show the influence of the geometric characteristics of the vortex generators VG son the thickness of the boundary layer (∂) and drag coefficients (CD) of the flat plate. Vortex generators work effectively on medium and high angles of attack, since they are "hidden" under the boundary layer and practically ineffective at low angles.

            The height of VGs relative to the thickness of the boundary layer enables us to study the efficacy of VGs in delaying boundary layer separation. The distance between two VGs also has an effect on the boundary layer if we take into

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Publication Date
Sun Dec 02 2018
Journal Name
Journal Of The College Of Education For Women
The Famous Muslims' Graveyards in the Persian Country in the Islamic Ages: A Historical Study in the Maraqid Al-Maaraf Book for Harz Aldeen
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There are many studies that discussed the famous museum's graveyards in the Islamic worlds, to study the lives of these figures, there are many difficulties for their studies because the first we need the regularity and history information, and many sciences support, such as in language, geography information.

I am studying the research from Maraqid Al-Maaraf book by Harz Aldeen, the book has large members about the persons have graved in Persian Country in the middle ages, there are more than (30) figures in my study, I have studied every figure in this research depending on the sources and references books.

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Publication Date
Wed Jun 30 2021
Journal Name
College Of Islamic Sciences
The Economic Role of Sultan Al-Nasir Muhammad Ibn Qalawun in Egypt and the Levant Documentary Study through Writings and Inscriptions
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The people lived under Mamluk rule, distress, poverty, famines, oppression of princes, rulers, And their domination and he always wished for a just ruler to relieve his misery, and remove the injustice

from him, so they found in Al-Nasser Mohammed tend to establish justice.

When Al-Nasser ascended the throne of the Sultanate, there was a rise or fall in prices, so he pursued Prices will end and punish those

who come out for it. And you talk about this search for a relationship

Sultan Al-Nasser with the poor classes in society and his keenness to pursue their affairs was compassionate On them, mer

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Publication Date
Fri Jul 10 2020
Journal Name
Int. J. Agricult. Stat. Sci
STUDY EVALUATION AND ANALYSIS OF THE PROPERTIES OF SOME PERFORMANCE STANDARDS FOR AGRICULTURAL TRACTOR AND SORGHUM BICOLOR (L.) MOENCH YIELD
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A field experiment was conducted in an agricultural field in Al-Hindia district, Karbala governorate in a silty clay soil during the year 2020. The research included a study of two factors, the first is the depth of plowing at two levels, namely 13 and 20 cm, which represented the main blocks. The second is the tire inflation pressure at two levels, namely (70 and 140 kPa), which represented the secondary blocks. Slippage percentage, field efficiency, leaf area, and 300 grain weight were studied. The experiment was carried out using a split-plot system under a Randomized complete block design, at three replications. The tillage depth of 13 cm exceeds/transcend by giving it the least slippage of (11.01%), the highest field efficiency of (50.

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Publication Date
Fri Jan 01 2021
Journal Name
University Of Southern Queensland
An Investigation of Leadership Style and the Strategic Planning Process of Public and Private Colleges in Iraq: An Empirical Study
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Globalisation and rapid environmental change have created many challenges for public and private organisations across Iraq as a developing country, particularly in the higher education sector. This includes, for example, decreases in government funding; increased demand for higher education; a need for economic transformation, and related competitiveness of organizations. Such challenges require exceptional leaders and strategic planning in order to take action to improve. In Iraq, the higher education sector is still one of the main foundations in progressing the knowledge economy. Studies into leadership style, strategic planning processes, and the importance of leadership and organisational culture to an organisation’s success have bee

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