What is it about?

About idiomatic expressions that have the same form in English and Arabic, but have different meanings or different stylistic effects.

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Why is it important?

False friends have usually been associated with single words. This study is about false friends at the higher level of set phrases such as idioms and collocations. False friends have also been generally discussed with reference to genetically related languages. This paper shows that they can also exist in languages from different families. The results are useful for translators, language teachers, and students of English and Arabic.

Perspectives

Readers can find the taxonomy of idiomatic false friends useful as a framework for studying the same phenomenon in different languages, especially those that have been influenced by English. They can also add to or modify this taxonomy as appropriate for their data.

Dr Ahmed Seddik Al-Wahy
Faculty of Al-Alsun, Ain Shams University

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Idiomatic false friends in English and Modern Standard Arabic, Babel Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation / Revista Internacional de Traducción, June 2009, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/babel.55.2.01wah.
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