Difficulties in Translating Kurdish Sport Collocations into English by Kurdish Translators

Abstract

Collocations are found in all fields of life and all languages. When it comes to translating collocations between two languages, certain difficulties arise. These difficulties could be due to various factors such as cultural, structural and/or linguistic differences. This paper aims at identifying the difficulties encountered by Kurdish translators when they attempt to translate Kurdish sports collocations into English. It also tries to explain the underlying factors of such difficulties and how to overcome them. A sample of 100 Kurdish sport collocations was collected from five Kurdish websites and the researchers have added Kurdish sentences containing each of the collocations. Then, the sentences were selected based on the most relevant sports collocations and were sent out to Kurdish translators across the Kurdistan region to be translated into English. The lists were sent to the translators through Google form links and personal emails. The translated sentences were analysed; the difficulties were identified and discussed to arrive at the underlying factors. The results show that the Kurdish collocations in question are the most challenging for translators because they are culture-bound. The other types are also difficult to translate to varying degrees. The most practical strategy to deal with translating collocations is semantic translation adoption.