Figurative Competence of Jordanian Graduate Students of English: An Analysis of Their Errors and Strategies

Abstract

This study uses a translation task consisting of 15 sentences to examine the figurative competence of Jordanian graduate students majoring in English. It also attempts at shedding some lights on their strategies and errors when translating fixed figurative expressions into Arabic. The sample of this study consists of 36 Jordanian graduate students in the English department of two Jordanian universities. Half of the participants are M.A. students, while the other half are Ph.D. students. The findings of the study indicate that Ph.D. students have a slightly higher idiomatic competence than M.A. students, though the two groups perform poorly in the translation task. The findings also suggest that graduate students of English often rely on the context, metaphor, and knowledge of L1 to approach the meaning of English figurative expressions. Furthermore, the findings show that paraphrasing and giving an Arabic equivalent are the most common translation strategies used by graduate students.