English and Arabic have different types of collocations, i.e., groups of words that go together. This study aims to explore the difficulties that Saudi undergraduate student-translators have in translating English word + preposition collocations such as verb + preposition, noun + preposition, and adjective + preposition collocations to Arabic. A…

When inferring the meaning of unknown words in a second language, learners make use of a variety of cues including the cross-linguistic formal similarities of loanwords and cognates. However, because learners do not always recognize these cross-linguistic relationships, cognate strategy training has been recommended. The present study investigated…

This study used an eye-tracking method to examine whether Chinese translation equivalents activated by English prime words can continue to activate their Chinese homophones. With 30 English prime words, and 60 Chinese target words as materials, the experiment used a Tobii eye-tracking device to collect data from 30 university students while…

Freshman students at the College of Languages and Translation received direct instruction in plural formation. Instruction covered regular plural nouns, irregular plural nouns, plural formation of words ending in -f, and -o, nouns that have the same plural and singular form, and words with Latin and foreign plurals. The students did all the…

This paper provides a developmental perspective on the concept of source text (ST) influence in translation. ST influence is regarded as any influence a ST may have on the production of a target text (TT); as positive transfer, in which case the similarities between working languages are exploited in translation, and as negative transfer, in which…

First language (L1) has been an affecting factor in learning English as a foreign language (EFL) that causes negative transfer including in thesis writing. The effect can be observed by looking at English productive skills, more specifically written form, as well as thesis writing. This research investigated how L1 interfered student's English…

Prepositions form a hurdle for several EFL learners, Arabs in particular. One major catalyst is that the preposition systems in English and Arabic rarely correspond to one another. Most scholars who researched this area concentrated on the problem itself, rather than finding a successful remedy that can empower these students to masterfully handle…

This research aims to address the syntactic problems that Saudi students confront when translating. The significance of the study is to detect syntactic issues among Saudi Arabian undergraduate students. The question is addressed in the study: what are the syntactic problems that Saudi students confront when translating? The researcher used a…

The English past counterfactuality is difficult for non-native learners to learn and understand due to cross-language discrepancies. Oftentimes, individuals unavoidably develop the interlanguage and this language system becomes fossilized regardless of the amount of exposed time and input. The purpose of the study was twofold: (a) to examine 126…

The present paper examined the errors occurring in the use of English in the linguistic landscape of Tehran, the capital of Iran. To this end, a total of 400 bilingual (Persian and English) and multilingual signs (Persian, English and Arabic) were culled from the landscape of the city in a course of eighteen months. Having analysed all the signs,…

This study aimed at the analysis of syntactic errors in translation done by both bilingual and monolingual EFL learners. Research on the subject of the study implied that there might be differences between monolinguals and bilingual learners of foreign languages. The gaps of studies on differences between monolinguals and bilingual's translations…

It has long been debated whether interpretation should be performed only from a foreign language to the mother tongue or whether it should be performed from the mother tongue to a foreign language. Those in favor of the foreign to native language direction posit that such directionality allows the interpreter to produce more natural target…

Purpose: This study examines the response patterns of 278 Spanish-English dual language learners (DLLs) on a standardized test of receptive English vocabulary. Method: Investigators analyzed responses to 131 items on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test--Fourth Edition (Dunn & Dunn, 2007) focusing on differential accuracy on items influenced by…

The present study examines when second language (L2) learners read words in the L2, whether the orthography and/or phonology of the translation words in the first language (L1) is activated and whether the patterns would be modulated by the proficiency in the L2. In two experiments, two groups of Chinese learners of English immersed in the L1…

This study examines the difficulty shown by Spanish-speaking university students in decoding pre-modified noun phrases (NPs) in English. NPs carry a heavy lexical and conceptual load and foreign language (L2) readers may be challenged by first language (L1) crosslinguistic influence triggered by cognate NPs. Therefore, this study also attempts to…