Cultural Bound of “Owl and Fox” Idioms Translation from English into Arabic

This study aims to investigate the difficulties that high school students studying translation courses encounter when translating some idiomatic and culturally bound expressions from English into Arabic. It also attempts to identify the strategies that they use to respond to and handle such challenges and what they would do to overcome such challenges and foster their translation skills in both general texts and idiomatic expressions. The researchers found thatcontext is essential for interpreting the meaning of idioms; it is not enough to rely on it as it might lead to misinterpretation. They also found that teachers need to raise students' awareness that idioms are culture-bound, yet it is not always difficult to provide a functional equivalent of many idioms. Furthermore, students need to know that although paraphrasing is a good translation strategy, providing an idiom of similar meaning and form can be more effective in conveying the meaning.