Problems BA Students Face During the Process of Translating Prepositions of Movement from English into Arabic

Abstract

Prepositions are unique closed-class grammatical forms that have syntactic and semantic qualities. They act as vital markers to the structure of a sentence and reveal the spatial, temporal, or logical relationship of their object to another part of the sentence. This study investigates the difficulties that BA students face when translating prepositions. The sample consisted of 60 students from three private universities. To achieve the objectives a translation Cloze Test consisting of 30-statements was used. The data resulting was concluded using the Level of Achievement Score. The results showed that students fail to recognize prepositions as parts of multiword expressions. Understanding prepositions involve understanding their interpersonal, textual, and ideational meaning, which requires understanding their semantic and syntactic role. There are many differences between prepositions in the way they are conceptualized in each language.  It also revealed that communicative translation is one of the most successful techniques in translation.