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A Study of the Problems of Learning and Translating Idioms

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
Sun Sep 27 2020
Journal Name
Journal Of The College Of Education For Women
Problems Facing Working Women in the Labor Market (The Mall) as a Model:a Field Study in Al-RusafaArea/ Baghdad

Most studies and research have tried to shed light on unemployment and employment in general, with less focus on the problems facing working women and the resulting social and economic consequences that threaten their human and professional lives. For women, working is one of the basic necessities for the sustainability of human life, and it constitutes an essential axis for both sexes and through it. It also gives a person the status and social status where the individual finds a ready opportunity to practice his intentions and desires, test his abilities and talents, and achieve his ambitions. The availability of full employment in general and the joining of women to the labor market is an important and fundamental factor in the sustai

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Publication Date
Sun Feb 10 2019
Journal Name
Journal Of The College Of Education For Women
The Geopolitical Problems of Eritrea

The subject of multi- ethnics is one of the most important subjects in the study of political
geography, as multi- ethnics and its consequent problems are global geopolitical phenomena
that started early and reached its peak with the beginning of the twentieth century, because of
major changes in the political landscape that resulted by wars and led to the collapse of many
empires and major powers, a matter which led to put new political maps according to certain
considerations of the colonial powers, especially in Africa and Asia. All these things led to
the most serious challenges based on ethnic and sectarian conflict and led to the development
of geopolitical problems. Among the examples what most countries in th

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Publication Date
Wed Sep 18 2019
Journal Name
Journal Of The College Of Education For Women
The Linguistic Term and the Problems of the Arabic Reception

     

        The linguistic researcher reads a systematic crisis, idiomatic problems within the linguistic term coming to the Arab culture. Where most of them return back to problems of receiving these sciences which are represented by phenomena like the multiplicity linguistic term, disturbance translated idiomatic concept and its duality.

Aims of the research :

1-Initializing new textbooks to form linguistic project and Arabic linguistic theory.

2-Determination adjusted knowledge, concepts of Arabian heritage linguistics subject

3-Observation  the causes of disturbance crisis of linguistic term and its relation to

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Publication Date
Mon Jan 01 2018
Journal Name
Journal Of The College Of Languages (jcl)
Estudio en la traducción del lenguaje de los horóscopos en la prensa del idioma español al árabe A study in translating the language of the horoscope in the press from Spanish into Arabic

Resumen:

        El horóscopo que es una predicción deducida de la posición de los astros del sistema solar y de los signos de Zodiaco, intenta no sólo predecir el futuro, sino también influir en el comportamiento del lector, orientándolo para que actúe adecuadamente y la invitación a actuar ante ese futuro que se aconseja mediante imperativos, perífrasis y otros recursos lingüísticos. Los horóscopos se caracterizan por su gran popularidad que existen en periódico o revista en columnas enteras dedicadas al tema, en donde se detallan la influencia que tendrá el día o el mes de cada uno de los signos correspondientes al zodíaco, siempre teniendo en cuenta la posici

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Publication Date
Sat Jan 02 2021
Journal Name
Journal Of The College Of Languages (jcl)
Translating Food and Drink-Related Insults in Shakespeare’s (Henry IV) into Arabic

        This study highlights the problems of translating Shakespeare's food and drink-related insults (henceforth FDRIs) in (Henry IV, Parts I&II) into Arabic. It adopts (Vinay & Darbelnet's:1950s) model, namely (Direct& Oblique) to highlight the applicability of the different methods and procedures made by the two selected translators (Mashati:1990 & Habeeb:1905) .The present study tries to answer the following questions:(i) To what extent the FDRIs in Henry IV might pose a translational problem for the selected translators to find suitable cultural equivalents for them? (ii) Why do the translators, in many cases, resort to a literal procedure which is almost not worka

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Publication Date
Wed Dec 01 2021
Journal Name
Journal Of Economics And Administrative Sciences
The Effect of Using Information and Communication Technology to Improving the Quality of Blended Learning Elements’, a Survey Study at the Technical College of Management /Baghdad

 The research has been based on two main variables (information and communication technology) and the quality of blended education (physical and electronic), aiming to reveal the relationship between four dimensions (physical devices, software, databases, communication networks) and the elements of education represented by (the teacher, the student, the teaching process, curriculum).  The methodology and post-analysis-based research were conducted at the Technical College of Management / Baghdad through polling the opinions of a random sample that included (80) teachers out of (86) and the number of students (276) representing a random sample from all departments of the college (for the morning study) out of (3500) stud

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Publication Date
Thu Dec 30 2021
Journal Name
Iraqi Journal Of Science
Learning Evolution: a Survey

     Learning is the process of gaining knowledge and implementing this knowledge on behavior. The concept of learning is not strict to just human being, it expanded to include machine also. Now the machines can behave based on the gained knowledge learned from the environment. The learning process is evolving in both human and machine, to keep up with the technology in the world, the human learning evolved into micro-learning and the machine learning evolved to deep learning. In this paper, the evolution of learning is discussed as a formal survey accomplished with the foundation of machine learning and its evolved version of learning which is deep learning and micro-learning as a new learning technology can be imple

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Publication Date
Wed Aug 31 2022
Journal Name
Al-kindy College Medical Journal
A Spotlight on the Experience of E-learning as a Learning Method for the Undergraduate Pediatric Nursing Students in Iraq during the COVID-19 Pandemic

    The emergence of COVID-19 has resulted in an unprecedented escalation in different aspects of human activities, including medical education. Students and educators across academic institutions have confronted various challenges in following the guidelines of protection against the disease on one hand and accomplishing learning curricula on the other hand. In this short view, we presented our experience in implementing e-learning to the undergraduate nursing students during the present COVID-19 pandemic emphasizing the learning content, barriers, and feedback of students and educators. We hope that this view will trigger the preparedness of nursing faculties in Iraq to deal with this new modality of learning and improve it should t

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Publication Date
Sun Feb 03 2019
Journal Name
Journal Of Accounting And Financial Studies ( Jafs )
The Effect of Orgnizational Learning in gnizational Effectifness: An Applied Study

The purpose of this study is testing the effect of orgnizational learning in orgnizational Effectivness an applied study in Al-hiqma Jordinan Medecine Company . study sosiety 88 manegers sleect 80 of them .study used SPSS to test the hypothesis.study reachs to significant conculctions

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Publication Date
Thu Oct 20 2022
Journal Name
Ibn Al-haitham Journal For Pure And Applied Sciences
Solving of the Quadratic Fractional Programming Problems by a Modified Symmetric Fuzzy Approach

The aims of the paper are to present a modified symmetric fuzzy approach to find the best workable compromise solution for quadratic fractional programming problems (QFPP) with fuzzy crisp in both the objective functions and the constraints. We introduced a modified symmetric fuzzy by proposing a procedure, that starts first by converting the quadratic fractional programming problems that exist in the objective functions to crisp numbers and then converts the linear function that exists in the constraints to crisp numbers. After that, we applied the fuzzy approach to determine the optimal solution for our quadratic fractional programming problem which is supported theoretically and practically. The computer application for the algo

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