Techniques for Interpreting Abstruse English Phrasal Verbs into Arabic

In English traditional grammar, phrasal verbs might be defined as a combination of two or three words from different grammatical categories — a verb and a particle, such as an adverb or a preposition — to form a single semantic unit on a lexical or syntactic level. Examples: turn down, run into, sit up. There are tens of thousands of them, and they are in everyday constant use. These semantic units cannot be understood based upon the meanings of the individual parts alone, but must be taken as a whole. In other words, the meaning is non-compositional and thus unpredictable. This study is an attempt to supply professional interpreters with the necessary techniques that can help them while doing the process of interpreting English phrasal verbs, viz. the abstruse ones, into Arabic. The data of the study are collected and analyzed from a number of well-known specific mono-lingual and bi-lingual dictionaries. They are: Practical Everyday English: Advanced Vocabulary, Phrasal Verbs, Idioms and Expressions, Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied linguistics, Longman Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs, Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture, Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and AL-Mawrid AL-Hadeeth: A Modern English-Arabic Dictionary. The data analysis of this study reveals that there are many techniques can be used to help interpreters while interpreting abstruse English phrasal verbs into Arabic. These techniques are selected and graded according their own priorities.