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.
There is a mutual relationship between the form of a text and its meaning so as separating these two or devaluating the role of one of them leads to the absence of the value therein. Thus, a translation is important as to how it relates the details of a text. That is, the text has special features which go beyond form, and these set out its distinctiveness. Here, we tackle Saleh al-Jafari's Arabic translation of "Rubbayat al-Khayyam" of Naysapour descriptively and analytically by depending on extracts from the original text. This translation is evaluated on the basis of Spanish critic Maria Carmen Valero Garces. Herein, we discuss the effectiveness of this theory in the criticism of literary texts. It has been concluded that al-Jaf
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Reflect the sustainable development of the interaction of three key elements are the economic component and the social component and the environmental component while focusing economic component to achieve economic growth and focuses social element to achieve social justice in the distribution of income and achieve prosperity, the environmental component related fields and including emphasizes the protection of the environment and to ensure the continuation and sustainability of resources physical, biological and form in which it believes the interaction required for development process real and effective and sustainable, and is considered the province of Kurdistan Iraq of important areas where the movement of developmental mount
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The internationalization of the Libyan crisis and its accompanying militarization of the conflict have played a vital role in hindering to reach a comprehensive political settlement solution in Libya. The increasing international greediness in the Libyan energy resources and the geopolitical importance of the Libyan State led to the involvement of many international and regional powers in this crisis and transformed the Libyan crisis into “proxy war”. Moreover, the Turkish direct military intervention in the Libyan crisis is considered as one of the main constraints facing the international and regional efforts to settle the Libyan crisis as a result of the Turkish insistence on its military existence in Libya to preserve i
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the Current research aims to identify the psychological stressors coping strategies and their relationship to the cognitive motivation among Al-Anbar University students through the following hypotheses: 1) no statistically significant differences at a level (0.05) among the sample according to the instrumental support strategy depending on the variable type and specialization, 2) No statistically significant differences at a level (0.05) among the sample in regard of coping avoiding strategy depending on the variable type and specialization, 3) There is no statistically significant difference at a level (0.05) in cognitive motivation level among Al-Anbar University students, 4) No statistically significant differences at a level (0.05)
... Show MoreThe aim of this scientific study is to diagnose the nature of the relationship between academic education in the field of media, communication and media practice. The university offers theoretical and practical lessons to students on the concepts of communication sciences, theories, models, legislations, ethics, and techniques over three years or more. And the diploma in the field of communication and Media Sciences gives students the opportunity to work in the field of journalism and media in the future, this is what many academics and media thinkers in Algeria believe, while another trend sees the exact opposite: The study of information and communication sciences within the university in the form of theoretical lessons cannot contribu
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The current study aims to examine the level of problems faced by university students in distance learning, in addition to identify the differences in these problems in terms of the availability of internet services, gender, college, GPA, interactions, academic cohort, and family economic status. The study sample consisted of (3172) students (57.3% females). The researchers developed a questionnaire with (32) items to measure distance learning problems in four areas: Psychological (9 items), academic (10 items), technological (7 items), and study environment (6 items). The responses are scored on a (5) point Likert Scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Means, standard deviations, and Multivariate Analysis of Vari
... Show MoreThis research was distributed into two sections, the first section was concerned with the concept of value for De Saussair and its methodological impact on his linguistic structural conceptions with respect of the distinction between synchronism and diachronism, the value role of linking function between the sounds and the though, the basing of his theoretical conception on the language being a form and not a material according to this principle and the value impact on the demonstration that the linguistic element acquires its functional importance from the relations inside the language system. It also stopped at the methodological impact of value on defining the analytical linguistic unit and the value role in semantics through the prin
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