Translating Civil Engineering Technical Terms: Strategies and Equivalence in English-Arabic Translation

The translation of technical terms in civil engineering from English to Arabic poses considerable difficulties, particularly in developing nations where rapid advancements in engineering have created a linguistic gap between the two languages. The absence of corresponding terms in Arabic, combined with the fundamental structural differences between English and Arabic, presents significant challenges in the translation process. This study aims to investigate the translation strategies employed by translators, assess the levels of equivalence achieved, and analyze the correlation between the strategies used and the levels of equivalence attained. The hypothesis posits that translators primarily utilize reduction and expansion strategies to achieve textual equivalence while relying on literal translation for word-level equivalence. The dataset comprises five texts extracted from civil engineering manuals translated by five M.A. students at Tikrit University during the academic year 2022-2023. The analysis of these texts was conducted using Newmark's and Baker's models.
The findings indicate that translators predominantly depend on the literal translation strategy when converting civil engineering terms from English to Arabic, largely due to the lack of equivalent terminology in Arabic. This reliance results in a higher frequency of achieving equivalence at the word level rather than the textual level. Furthermore, the study underscores the importance of selecting appropriate translation strategies for accurate and effective translations of complex technical terms. It reveals that while literal translation typically leads to word-level equivalence, employing reduction and expansion strategies is more effective for achieving textual-level equivalence.