Introduction

Translation is seen as a mean of cultures and knowledge exchange. The technological, the

scientific and the cultural development could not reach all the corners of the universe without

translation. Each language has a system that differs from others, what makes translation a

challenge when translating some stretches of information like idiomatic expressions. Nida

stated that “the role of a translator is to facilitate the transfer of the message, meaning, and

cultural elements from one language into another and create an equivalent response to the

receivers» (1964:13), as the matter of the fact that, people of all races and places use language

as the most important mean of communication and consequently affected and influenced by

other’s cultures and beliefs consciously or unconsciously.

Idioms may represent a problem for translators, it can be the lack of equivalence

corresponding in the TL, or cultural specific items that are peculiar to a specific tongue

.English and Arabic languages belong to two different cultural settings ,naturally , people

may use completely different expressions to convey similar meanings .This linguistic

phenomenon still pose a challenge for translators concerning finding suitable equivalences for

Arabic idioms in English and vice versa.In the light of the above, the absence of the

appropriate equivalent may cause a misunderstanding for the intended message by non- native

speakers of a language. The translator can only reach the implied meaning of those

expressions by having solid knowledge of both source and target cultures and languages.

The translation of Algerian Arabic idioms into English is considered as a challenging task

because of the specificity of the Algerian dialect and culture, as well as the gap between the

Arabic language system and the English language system. In this dissertation entitled:

Translation of Arabic Algerian Idioms into English: analytic study of"‫ "وقائع سنين الجمر‬movie

of Mohamed Al Akhder Hamina. The movie“ ‫ «وقائع سنين الجمر‬is chosen as the corpus of this

research because it depicts the nomadic life of Algerians, that makes it a movie rich of

Algerian idiomatic expressions, proverbs and slangs. The director of the film succeeds in

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conveying the Algerian culture and lifestyle to the foreign audience. Baker’s strategies of

translating idioms are adopted in the analysis of the selected patterns. They are chosen

because of their appropriateness, and because these strategies are applied mostly in the

translation of idioms between two languages that have a completely two different linguistic

systems as the case of our study.

The aim of this research is to shed light on the idiomatic expressions in the Arabic Algerian

dialect and to analyse them in a deep way. This piece of work also discusses their types and

the strategies adopted in their translation, in the Algerian English subtitled film « ‫وقائع سنين‬

‫» الجمر‬. Hajajj and Kharma’s categorization of Arabic idioms, Fernando‘s types of English

idioms and Baker’s strategies of translating idioms are applied. In addition, it aims to outline

the main challenges that face the translator while translating Arabic Algerian idioms. This

dissertation also aims to find out the most used strategies for translating Algerian Arabic

idioms to English.

Our research seeks to find an answer to the following main question:

 How are the Algerian Arabic idioms translated into English in the film

« ‫» وقائع سنين الجمر‬. ?

It also seeks to answer a set of secondary questions which are:

 What are the strategies adopted in translating the Algerian Arabic idioms into English

in the film?

 What are the main challenges and difficulties of translating Algerian Arabic idioms

into English in the film « ‫?» وقائع سنين الجمر‬

We hypothesize the following:

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 Introduction

 Mona Baker’s strategies of translating idiomatic expressions might be the

appropriate strategies to translate Algerian Arabic idioms into English.

 The linguistic, cultural and religious differences between the two languages and

cultures might be the main challenges which make the translation of Algerian

Arabic idioms into English a hard task.

The dissertation includes two chapters; a theoretical chapter and a practical one. The first

chapter contains information related to idioms in both English and Arabic; definition of

idiom, origin and the relation of each culture to idioms. It also covers the main challenges

which encounter the translator while translating idiomatic expressions and the available

strategies to use to translate idioms. The second chapter is the practical one. It holds an

analytic study of fifteen (15) examples taken from the corpus. The selected idiomatic

expressions are explained and their translation is evaluated to conclude the chapter by

graphics which represent the results of the analysis.

The study attempts to analyse idiomatic expressions; as one of the cultural aspects of any

language. The specificity of this research is manifested on studying idioms in the Arabic

Algerian dialect. Different studies have discussed the notion of idioms, from different aspects;

there are some dissertations on the translation of idioms; Like, Mezmaz Meryem from

Constantine university, with a dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment for the requirements

of a Master degree in English (Applied Languages Studies) entitled “Problems of Idioms in

Translation Case study : First Year Master” and, Arar Rihana and Gherbal Djebra from the

University of Ouargla with a dissertation for Academic Masterentitled “Translating Time

Idioms from English into Arabic In “The Green Mile” novel”.

The main books that our work is based on are: “Idioms and Idiomaticity” of Chitra Fernando

(1996) and, “In Other Words: A Course Book on Translation Routledge” of Mona Baker

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(1992). Through preparing our dissertation we meet some obstacles that all the researchers

face. The lack of books and dictionaries about the Algerian dialect makes the research more

difficult and drives us to look for online references. Another obstacle that we face while

preparing our research is the lack of Arabic scholars who discussed idioms )‫)التعبير ااصطا حي‬.