The Importance of Collocation in Translating Arabic Metaphorical Connotations into Malay

Abstract

While the modern linguistic studies emphasizes the importance of an understanding of the collocation in order to achieve non-violation of the rules of language use by the community, the translation studies concern with the roles of collocation in ensuring a precise translation. Collocation is regarded as one of the crucial parts in translating metaphorical connotations as it captures the meaning that transcends its literal translation and it cannot be quoted literally otherwise it will spoil the intended meaning. This study aims to highlight the importance of collocation in achieving an exact translation especially in translating the Arabic metaphorical connotations into the Malay language based on semantic equivalence between the source and target text to the closest possible to the meaning of the original Arabic text. This study employs descriptive and analytical methods. Based on the examples, the study concludes the need of taking into account the role of collocation in the translation of the Arabic metaphorical connotation to the Malay language in order to achieve the precise translation as well as to determine the semantic equivalence. Therefore, this research suggests that the translator should choose the correct combination of words in the target language so that he does not come out with a correlation that is incompatible with the nature of the target language.