One method for sharing idioms and learning about other cultures is translation. Because most idioms are rooted in culture, there is always a need to research the strategies of translating such language and culture-specific items.
The difference between the cultures of SL and the TL plays a key role in the course of interpreting an idiom. Only by having a good knowledge of the SL and the TL culture can translators understand the implied meaning of an idiom. Being knowledgeable of the culture of the language he or she is translating from and into, a translator can, in many cases, catch the meaning of an idiom, especially that with a non-literal meaning because such an idiom demands a translator to be accurate and highly sensitive to the rhetorical hints of the source text (Al-Shawi & Mahdi 2012: 141).
22 2.4.1 Culture-Bound Idioms in English
Like all aspects in any given language, idioms can be classified into two types in accordance with their meaning; the first is universal and the second is language or culture-bound. According to the first type, an idiom may have a universal meaning which is common to many languages; while the second type refers to an idiom of a specific meaning, which, due to cultural and/or linguistic restrictions, is restricted to that specific language speaker and cannot be recognized by a speaker of any other language.
Therefore, a translator should be aware of the culture of the language he is translating from in order to render the meaning of the idiom appropriately to the language he is translating into. For instance, “to carry coals to Newcastle” is an English culture-bound idiom which means supplying the city of Newcastle with coals and this city is already known of having plenty of coal (Grauberg, 1989, cited in Baker, 1992: 82). This idiom is similar to an idiom in Arabic, cited in Aldahesh (2013), which is:
شعْ ٗنا شًرنا ملاُك Transliteration
Kanaqil(Like someone who carries) al-tamr (date) ila Hjr (city of Hjr) Back Translation
Like someone who carries date to the city of Hjr
The Arabic idiom means “carrying dates to the city of Hjr”, a city known to have plenty of dates. Unless a translator is aware of the meaning of the English idiom, which is a culture-specific one, he or she will not be able to translate it effectively into Arabic without distorting its meaning.
Mowafi (1985: 156, cited in Aldehesh, 2013) illustrates more culture-bound examples of idioms such as “Jack is as good as his master”, which is an English culture-bound idiom meaning “men with power are not necessarily better than those without power”.
This idiom has a similar idiomatic expression in Arabic which is also a culture-specific one “ةيساوس سانلا ،دحأ نم نسحأ دحأ لا” la ahad ahsan min ahad, alnas sawasiya which
23 means “peoples are equal and nobody is better than the other”. In both cases, only a translator‟s awareness of the English and the Arabic culture can help in rendering the meaning of the idiom in an effective and sufficient way (Aldehesh, 2013).
2.4.2 Culture-Bound Idioms in Arabic
The concept of culture cannot be separated from the process of translation, because translators are not simply translating texts from one language to another, but communicating cultural messages as well. The Arabic language has its own culture-bound expressions that cannot be understood from the meanings of their parts. Consider the following two examples from Howwar (2013):
بجاحلا نع لاعتب نيعلا له Transliteration
Hal (can) alain (the eye) biti‟la (higher than) „an (the) alhajib (eyebrow)?
Back Translation
Can the eye be higher than the eyebrow?!
For native speakers of Arabic this idiom is clearly understood as its meaning is intended to refer to a noble individual who has the most sublime and high status. However, an individual from another culture may understand the idiom in a wrong way. A non-Arabic native speaker may perceive that the speaker looks for illogical scientific information (Howwar 2013).
ءامسلا موجن نم دعبا Transliteration
Abaad( very far) min (from) nujoum (stars) alsama (the sky) Back Translation
Very far from the stars of the sky
A native speaker of Arabic would easily recognize the meaning of this idiomatic expression which refers to something impossible to get or achieve. According to Howwar (2013), a listener who is not familiar and aware of the speaker‟s culture cannot understand the real meaning behind this culture-bound expression and may perceive this idiom as if the speaker is referring to some planets in the sky, other than the stars seen
24 clearly in the sky. Cultural differences between English and Arabic constitute some difficulties and problems to translators who are not so familiar with the culture of both languages.
According to Culler (1976), one of the main problems in translating texts from one language into another is the difference among the ST and the TT. The bigger the disparity between the two languages, the more problematic is the operation of translating messages from the SL to the TL. Since there is disparity between English and Arabic language, the more problematic is the operation of translating messages from the original to the target text.
Consequently, linguists and scholars have stated that an idiomatic expression whose meaning is opaque cannot be decoded from the meanings of its constituents. An idioms‟
syntactic and semantic complexity emerges from the fact that they are characterized by being language and culture-bound expressions.
To sum up, translators are to enhance their degree of awareness of the cultural concepts of both English and Arabic language to overcome the difficulties emerging in the process of translating culture-bound terms. The more a translator is aware of, and satisfactorily well informed about, and acquainted with the cultural background of both the source as well as the target language, the better and more effectively is the translation from English into Arabic and vice versa (Al-Shawi & Mahdi 2012: 141).