Investigating the Impact of Prepositional Errors on the Sudanese University Translation Students' Performance (English – Arabic)

Abstract

As a matter of fact, translation university students wherever and whenever they are do necessarily need to master the systems of both the source language and the target language when they translate texts. Lack of such mastery will surely lead to poor performance. They are expected to make errors if they do not master these two systems. This paper aimed at investigating the impact of prepositional errors on Sudanese university translation students' performance using English and Arabic languages. The researchers used two tools to achieve the purpose of this paper. Firstly, the targeted students were tested and many prepositional errors in their works were found, described and analyzed. Then they designed a questionnaire to be filled by a number of Sudanese university translation teachers in Khartoum, Sudan. In the course of this paper, some reviews of the related interest from some parts of the world were surveyed to make use of them and to support the researchers' hypothesis. It was found out that some differences between English and Arabic prepositional systems cause difficulties that drive such students to make errors. At the end of the paper, the researchers presented some recommendations as an attempt to overcome such errors. For example, mother tongue prepositional system must be kept aside when translating into English language.