Practicality and usefulness of English- Arabic dictionaries in translating English metaphors

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This study aims at investigating the nature and scope of the problems that Arab learners encounter in translating English metaphorical expressions into Arabic using English-Arabic dictionaries. The strategies involved in translating English metaphors into Arabic have been identified and described. The study also aims at determining the extent to which English-Arabic dictionaries are helpful to.learners in translating English metaphors. The findings of the study reveal that learners resort to a number of strategies induding finding the idiomatic translation equivalents, literal translation, interpretation and guessing. Bilingual dictionaries have been found to be a potential source of error for learners. These dictionaries offer inadequate help to translators in terms of providing equivalents to metaphorical expressions.