Investigating Color Idioms and their Translation from English into Arabic

Abstract

Colors are universal, and throughout the ages, they have been associated with
various religious, social and spiritual meanings. They symbolize a galaxy of things
to designate certain ideas or symbols that are sometimes contradictory.
The present study is an attempt to investigate colors, their meanings and
symbolism, and the approaches to translating color idioms from English into
Arabic. It fathoms one of the thorny areas for translation theorists let alone
practitioners. Various definitions, classifications of types and symbolism across
cultures are provided. After reviewing idioms and methods of translating them, a
survey of 114 sentences that include color idioms was conducted to see which
method is mostly adopted by professionals. The survey has revealed that, among
the methods available for the translator, the most common strategy in translating
color idioms from English into Arabic is paraphrase, followed by loan translation.
In addition, the equivalent effect principle sought by Nida (1964) would not be
achieved and the color element found in the source language is lost in translation,
simply because it has neither linguistic nor cultural correspondent equivalent in the
target language.