Translating semantic features between English and Arabic

This study aims to investigate the treatment of semantic features at word and phraseology levels in Arabic/English translation. It demonstrates by using enough textual data that translation involves significant decision-making at the levels of lexis and phraseology when considering semantic features. The Arabic/English corpus includes mismatches in both word and multi-word units. The translator's awareness of semantic symmetries and asymmetries in the language pair constitutes a foundation stone in his work. At the word level, special attention should be paid to lexical and referential/cultural gaps. While the former represents a gap in the semantic blanket of the target language, the latter constitute gaps in the world of experience. Therefore, translators must employ different translation procedures when handling such gaps, such as cultural approximation and descriptive translation. Likewise, at the phraseology level, utmost care should be taken when handling collocations and idiomatic expressions. While collocations may present several problems at the production level, idiomatic expressions are more challenging at the reception level.