Canonical Forms in Arabic: Bilingual Lexicographic Implementations ()
1. Introduction
Zgusta’s (1971) and numerous other authors adapted discussions on the needs and interests in topics significant to bilingual lexicography. This includes organizational arrangements, functions of bilingual lexicography, culture-bound aspects and selection of equivalence (Hausmann, 1986). However, little attention has been given to constraints on equivalents of canonical forms and the translational culture bound elements from a lexicographic-linguistic perspectives. As Arabic might be considered one of the richest languages in words based on its complexity and versatility, bilingual lexicographers are expected to pay careful attention to the infinitude of canonical equivalences. Hence, this study hopes to find convenient translational equivalence strategies based on Zgusta’s (1971) model of paradigmatic classification of English canonical forms in relation to bilingual lexicography. By the presentation of a comparative exemplification background, this study could implement necessary tools for semantic translatability with paradigmatic dimensions in bilingual lexicography in relation to Arabic language. It could also provide valuable insights to effective methods used by translators in association with lexicographers to transfer equivalent meanings successfully with regard to paradigmatic entries of L1 and L2 languages comparatively.
One of the main theories of lexicography is related to writing dictionaries, including bilingual ones. Many studies have proven that linguistics could be a helping tool in finding the functional method of selection of equivalents. It could also guide, in a way, the most effective principle in choosing the representations of data in bilingual dictionaries (Hausmann, 1986). In semitic languages, for example, root-and-pattern morphology is a fundamental element in lexicographic compositions. The root in Arabic language is consonantal and it cannot stand on its own as a word. It indicates meaning but it needs the support of a pattern, i.e., one or more vowels, to form a word. Unlike English, the morphemes in Arabic content words are discontinuous (Watson, 2002). On the other hand, function words, pronouns and loanwords are solid stems because they cannot be reduced or analyzed into the root-pattern paradigm (Ryding, 2005). A root is identified by Zgusta (1971) as the canonical form which means the basic form of a word, as the paradigmatic form of words cannot be indicated in a dictionary (Zgusta, 1971). In English, paradigms are limited, but in other languages like Arabic, a word’s paradigm can comprise many forms. This is why this phenomenon of canonical forms should be explored carefully in bilingual dictionaries dealing with Semitic languages like Arabic. For example, in English the plural from “study” could refer to two or more than one person; “Ahmad and Ali study well” and refers to only two persons and plural that refers to more than one person. In Arabic, the duel and plural has different forms that refer to masculine and feminine uses. For instance, when talking about boys we say; “ الولدان يدرسان”/al-awladān yadrusnān/, “الأولاد يدرسون”/al-awlādu yadrusūn/, but when talking about girls we say; “البنتان تدرسان”/al-bentān tadrusān/“البنات يدرسن”/al-banāt yadrusn/. Canonical forms of different paradigms are usually established by tradition (Haywood and Nahmad, 1965). In Arabic, for example, the canonical form of the verb is the third person singular of the perfect tense, e.g. “أكل”/akala/as it is the simplest verbal form. The canonical form of Arabic nouns is the nominal singular indicated with the definate (ال)/al/article, e.g. “الأرض”/alarḍ/, “القمر”/alqamar/, “الولد”/alwalad/. The main purpose of this study is to explore the notion of Arabic paradigms based on Zgusta’s (1971) identification of formal, lexical meaning and compositional variation. It examines the application of translational equivalence theory to explore how these categories could overlap and differ from one language to another.
2. Research Objectives
1) To examine the representations of formal and lexical variations of Arabic canonical forms within the paradigm.
2) To explore how variation of derivational representations of Arabic canonical forms could overlap with lexical meaning.
3) To investigate compositional constructions of Arabic canonical forms.
4) To introduce semantic-formal translational equivalence insights that could help bilingual lexicographers cope with paradigmatic distinctions.
5) To manifest paradigmatic relations between L1 and L2 lexical items and their translational equivalents.
3. Literature Review
Lexicography is a complex field known by traditionalism. However, a proper approach to its theory is to evolve a flexible framework which could include as many different approaches as possible (Hanks, 1987). The idea of adequacy of lexicographic description and classification of words is still arguable, and a bilingual dictionary could even be more unnatural (Bolinger, 1985 and Frawley, 1985). Yet, an effective way to conduct a bilingual dictionary could be applying the translational equivalence theory. According to the description views of Manley, Jacobsen, & Pedersen (1991), in bilingual dictionaries, examples are used to show equivalents. They argue that examples with a lot of functions are useless to readers. What matters mostly is the use of the equivalents of these examples in their canonical forms in an explicit with regard to word entry. The idea of this could be useful if the possible similarities and differences of canonical forms in both languages are studied by the lexicographer. The notion of equivalence, can be understood in two ways: either as a relation between units in L1 and L2 language systems (cognitive equivalence), or as a relation between constituents in L1 and L2 texts based on adequate substitutability in relevant contexts (translational equivalence) (Lissance, 1949).
This study tries to illustrate how translational equivalence could be applicable in relational to Arabic canonical forms with reference to formal and lexical, derivational and compositional variation. There are four qualitative classifications of translational equivalence that a lexicographer could consider: 1. partial equivalence, i.e. overlap. 2. full equivalence, i.e. identity 3. inclusion 4. nil equivalence, i.e. disjunction. The difference between contrastive linguistics and translation theories in Bilingual dictionaries is that contrastive linguistics studies language-systems, while translation theories on texts’ lexical meaning with paradigmatic dimensions (Koller, 1987). It is worth mentioning that the possibility of translating canonical forms of a language may depend on cultural overlap as stated by (Lenneberg, 1953). However, the idea of qualitative translational equivalence theory could be semantically and culturally complete and translationally adequate (Kromann, Riiber, & Rosbach, 1984; Steiner, 1971).
The paradigm is one of the basis of the lexicographer’s work, that assumes that such words like (come, comes, coming, came), (book, books), or in Arabic (يكتب-كتب-اكتب)/uktub-kataba-yaktub/or (قلم-أقلام)/qalam-/aqlām/belong together. In the word—and—paradigm model, the lexicographer assumes that the lexical meaning of every lexical series of forms remain the same, while only grammatical categories are expressed by different forms (Zgusta, 1971). For example, (كتاب-كتب)/kitāb-kutub/have the same lexical meaning “literary composition of considerable length”, and the form (كتاب)/kitāb/belongs to the grammatical category “singular” and the (كتب)/kutub/to that of “plural”. The grammatical function of a word in a sentence manifests itself clearly in terms of either word inflectional ending as in Arabic, or word position in a sentence as in English (Thakur, 1997). The syntactic relationship that a word has with the other words in the sentence manifests itself in its inflectional endings and not in the place that it occupies in relation to the other words in that sentence. Arabic language is one of the inflectional languages, whereas, English shows only a few features of these languages (Watson, 2002). According to (Zgusta, 1971), canonical form is the representation of the whole paradigm. This representation includes formal variation within the paradigm, variation of lexical meaning within the paradigm, derivation and composition. There should be no ambiguity about the word’s whole paradigm. For example in the English dictionary, it is not necessary to indicate further forms of substantives as their paradigm is so simple and regular (Zgusta, 1971). The morphophonemic variants like (book, books) or in Arabic (ورقة، أوراق)/waraqa-awrāq/are put in the grammatical appendix of the dictionary. Only the canonical form and the category of substantive the word belongs to should be included (Ferhi, 2012). As far as derivation is concerned, there are cases that must be studied by the lexicographer with greater care than the purely grammatical categories (McCarthy, 2002). An adverb like (well), also must be listed, where the meaning is regular and predicted of the adjective (good) but the form is suppletive (Thackston, 1997). (Palmer, 1974) suggested that all types of compound words are eligible for selection for inclusion in the dictionary wither with unpredictable meanings or with predictable ones. When dealing with a big monolingual dictionary, the aim is to give a full description of the lexicon of a language. If the space is limited in a bilingual dictionary, the main aim is to help to understand the text in the source language, and practical consideration will lead to omit compound of which the meaning is understood from the meaning of their constituent parts (Lyons, 1968). Therefore, this paper is an attempt to present the gap that could not be filled unless the lexicographer is familiar to an extent to language variation. It aims to give an insight on more probable linguistic expressions and discriminations of meaning in given contexts, though users do not necessarily behave like native users. This study hopes to identify some lexicographic representation of Arabic paradigmatic variations that could give insights of paradigms in Arabic in relation to lexicographic insights based on the study of (Zgusta, 1971). It examines formal and lexical variations within the paradigm as well as derivational and compositional components. In addition, it introduces translational equivalence insights in relation to paradigmatic distinctions in bilingual lexicography.
4. Methodology
The notion of paradigm is explored qualitatively based on the study of (Zgusta, 1971). It examines the representations of formal variations and lexical meanings within the paradigms in Arabic language along with cases of derivation and composition components. This is done to explore how these Arabic paradigmatic variations could overlap and differ from English by applying the translational equivalence theory. In addition, it illustrates how peculiar representations could be challenging for lexicographers in particular contexts. The study is not concerned with the organization of bilingual lexicography, but rather represents a qualitative methodology of Arabic paradigmatic manifestations.
5. Results and Discussion
5.1. Particular Forms of the Paradigm
5.1.1. Formal Variation
There are a number of forms of paradigms that a lexicographer should take into consideration. In Arabic, word paradigms are restricted to their canonical forms (Zgusta, 1971). For example, there are Arabic substantives that have only plural not singular like (أبابيل)/(abābīl عبابيد)/cabābīd/which mean “groups”, (قوم)/qawm/( أناس)/unās/which mean “people”. In these examples, the nominal plural is the canonical form. Also, other paradigms lack different forms. For example, the imperative of Arabic (رأى)/raā/“to see” is never used. Instead, the imperative (أنظر)/un ẓ ur/is formed. Also, for the imperative form of (راح)/rāḥ/, the word (اذهب)/i ðhab/is formed. In addition, there are parallel forms that shre the core meaning but with semantic distinctions in Arabic. For example, the verbs (توضح- اتضح-وضح)/tawaḍḍaḥa-ittaḍaḥa-waḍaḥa/ and (اتسخ-توسخ-استوسخ)/ittasaxa-istawsaxatawassaxa/, (قدر، -اقتدر)/qadarai-qtadara/, (نزل-أنزل)/nazala-anzala/are parallel forms even though they differ in morphological structure. Another canonical form that should be considered is suppletivism: absolutely different forms combine to form one paradigm with one lexical meaning (Zgusta, 1971). In Arabic (امرأة)/imraa/is “woman”, but the plural is (نساء)/nisā/“women”. Also, (انسان)/insān/is “person” but (أناس)/ʔunās/“people”, (فرد)/fard/is “one” but (جماعة)/jamāca/is “more than one”. Similarly, singular (شخص)/šaxṣ/“person” has the plural (قوم)/qawm/“people”. According to the translational equivalence theory, what establishes the equivalence between the expressions of two languages (L1 and L2) is the lexical context that best suits the lexeme. The contribution of the situation could then be recorded as a label, gloss, or comment (Koller, 1987). Thus, in formal analysis of paradigms, equivalence between L1 and L2 words or utterances is found on the basis of context applicability.
5.1.2. Lexical Meaning Variation
Two categories are distinguished in this construction:
1) The category of polysemous words with different senses is partially distinguished by differences in their paradigm (Zgusta, 1971). This phenomenon is frequent in Arabic as it is rich with morphological paradigms. For example:
(بيت)/bayt/“house” plural (بيوت)/buyūt/“houses”
“verse” plural (أبيات)/abyāt/“verses”
(عين)/cayn/“eye” plural (عيون)/cuyūn/“eyes”
“important person” plural (أعين)/acyun/“important persons”
(الساعة)/a-ssāca/“clock” plural (الساعات)/a-ssācāt/“clocks”
“the day of judgment” no plural form
(خال)/xāl/“mole” plural (خيلان)/xīlān/“moles”
“uncle” plural (أخوال)/axwāl/“uncles”
(المدينة)/al-madīna/“city” plural (المدن)//al-mudun/“cities”
“Almadinah Almunawarah” no plural form
Sometimes forms and meanings could be on the borderline between lexicon and grammar. This happens mostly with inflectional languages like Arabic (Zgusta, 1971). For example,
(أبواي)/abawāy/“my parents”
(أبوينا)/abawaynā/“our parents”
(أبواك)/abawāk/“your parents”
(أبواهما)/abawāhumā/“their parents”
(أبويهما)/abawayhimā/“his parents”
The grammatical categories that pertain to verbs in Arabic are: tense, number, person, mood, gender and voice. There is an agreement between the verb and the subject of the sentence in terms of number, person and gender (Ryding, 2005).
2) The existence of parallel forms in the paradigm does not always imply distribution of the different sense of a polysemous word (Zgusta, 1971). As mention previously (formal variation), for example, in Arabic, the perfect tense of one root can be either (قشف)/qašaf/or (قشف)/qašifa/“to live in dirt or poverty”, or (بدع)/badaca/and (ابتدع)/ibtadaca/“invented”, (بل)/bal/(بلل)/ballala/“got wet”, (ساغ)/sāġa/(استساغ)/istasāġa/“like”, (قدر)/qadira/(اقتدر)/iqtadara/“could” are all parallel in meaning with semantic dinctions based on addition of morphological structure. However, there are polysemous parallel words that have different meanings. For example, (عين)/cayn/may have two different meanings; “eye” or “important person”. Besides the regular meaning (عين)/cayn/there is also a parallel form (بصر)/baṣar/“sight” which is restricted only to the first sense “eye”. Words could have diffenet meanings as they in additional cases, as in: (رجل الكرسي)/rijl-alkursī/, (رجل الطاولة)/rijl-uṭṭāwila/where (رجل)/rijl/by itself means “foot” by in this expression “leg of table” and “leg of chair” (قدم)/qad-am/“came” and not (قدم)/qadim/“become old”.
3) Another category of lexical meaning within the paradigm comprises cases where one from of paradigm, wither regular or irregular, shows a peculiarity in lexical meaning that is not observable in the lexical meaning of the other form (Zgusta, 1971). For example, in Arabic, (خطوة)/xuṭwa/“step” has not only the meaning “by the step” but can also mean “slowly” when used as an adverb as in (خطوة يمشي خطوة)/yamšī xuṭwatan xuṭwa/. Other examples, (في)/fī/“in” (فو)/fū/“mouth”, (على)/calā/“in”, and (على)/calā/“rise up”.
In all categories of lexical meaning variation, according to the translational equivalence theory, the English-Arabic lexicography can include both versions of lexical paradigms, but the best place could be the entries of the relevant concrete meanings rather (than the abstract one). Words should be used in a collocational-colligational pattern to make use of the situational analysis. This is done to achieve better results in bilingual lexicography (Ryding, 2005) as the following Table 1 illustrates:
5.1.3. Derivation
It is necessary to distinguish two cases according to (Zgusta, 1971):
1) Morphological inflections with no change in meaning. For example, in Arabic (طريق، -طرق)/ṭarīq-ṭuruq/“way, ways”, (بيت-بيوت)/bayt-butyūt/“house, houses”.
2) Word derivation with change in meaning. For example, in Arabic, (- طفل، طفولي)/ṭifl-ṭufūli/“child, childish”, (جنون-جنوني)/junūn-junūnī/“craziness, crazy”, (بطل،-بطولي)/baṭal-buṭūlī/“hero, heroic”.
There are few other subcategories that should be considered;
1) The basic difference between grammatical morphology, inflection, and morphological word formation, derivation, is that the grammatical morphology is more abstract. The difficulty is that derivation is similar to inflection (Zgusta, 1971). The Arabic similarity is that derivation is almost as regular as inflection. For example:
(كلب)/kalb/“dog” (كليب)/kulayb/“little doge”
(كتاب)/kitāb/“book” (كتيب)/kutayb/“small book”
(ورقة)/waraqa/“paper” (وريقة)/wurayqa/“small paper”
(لقمة)/luqma/“piece of food” (لقيمات)/luqaymāt/“small pieces of food)”
2) Word formation or derivation is not as regular as uniform in all cases. For example,
(لحم)/laḥam/“meat” (لحام)/laḥḥām/“welder”
(جزر)/juzar/“carrot” (جزار)/jazzār/“butcher”
3) There are cases where the difference of meaning is not so great but should be considered (Zgusta, 1971), e.g.;
(نساء -نسائي)/nisā-nisāī/“women, womanish”
(أجرام-اجرامي)/jrām-/jrām ī/“crime, criminal-like”
In lexicography, derivation cases should be distinguished from grammatical forms as they go under different classifications compared to inflections. Function words, pronouns and loanwords are regarded as solid stems because they cannot be reduced or analyzed into the root-pattern paradigm (Ryding, 2005). To derive or inflect words from that root, vowels are usually inserted into it. In other cases consonants can be affixed to that root to derive other words. In addition, Watson (2002) stated that the plural form in Arabic has three kinds: broken plural, sound masculine plural and sound feminine plural. Arab grammarians have presented different patterns for the broken plural. In bilingual lexicography, the morphophonemic variants are put in the grammatical appendix of the dictionary. Based on the translational equivalence theory, only the canonical form and the category of substantive the word belongs to should be included (Ferhi, 2012). If there are irregularities, then they are indicated with the canonical form. If the canonical form belongs to different paradigms, the lexicographer should indicate the canonical form and the information that makes the rest of the paradigm clear and unambiguous even if this requires further specifications and indications (Zgusta, 1971). Haywood and Nahmad (1965) stated that the procedure of giving the paradigm is either by knowing the grammar of language or printed in the appendix of dictionary or by classifying canonical forms based on paradigm relevance. As far as derivation is concerned, according to translational equivalence theory, there are cases that must be studied by the lexicographer with greater care than the purely grammatical categories (McCarthy, 2002).
5.1.4. Composition
A compound word is a word made up of words that may have different meanings in their single forms (Haywood and Nahmad, 1965). For example, (software) is a computer program. Three important phenomena are considered in relation to compound words:
1) The dimension of jorm. This is related to forms that are identical (fully or partially) when used as part of compound words or non-compound words. For example, in English (businessman) compared to (business), (man). In Arabic, compounds are known as additional forms as for example; (ضوء النهار)/ḍawnnahār/“daylight”), (ظلام الليل)/ẓalāmu-llayl/“night darkness”. (سلسلة مفاتيح)/silsilatu mafātīḥ/“keychain”, (لوحة المفاتيح)/lawḥatu mafātīḥ/“key-board”, (دولاب السيارة)/dūlābussayyāra/“car wheels”.
2) The dimension of semantic full or partial depletion. Examples of fully depleted compounds in English, (houseboat), where “house” means a place to live in and “boat” means a small vessel for travelling in water, (houseboat) meant a boat equipped for living in. In Arabic, (فرشاة أسنان)/furšātu snān/“toothbrush”, (جريدة اليوم)/jarīdatu-lyawm/“today’s newspaper”, (كأس الماء)/kasu-lmā/“water glass”, (الشاي براد)/barrādu-ššāy/“teapot”, (الملعب أرض)/arḍulmalcab/“play-ground”, (دلة القهوة)/dallatulqahwa/“coffeepot”, (فنجان الشاي)/finjānuššāy/“teacup”, (سلة النفايات)/sallatunnifāyāt/“trashcan”. In some cases, the semantic depletion is partial. For example, in English (blackboard), this instrument may have a green color, or black color. Yet, it is called the same in both cases. These are cases where an unknown morpheme can be in a compound word. For example Arabic (سبخة أرض)/arḍun sabixa/“salted land”, (حبل الوريد)/ḥablu-lwarīd/“vein”.
There are three types of constructions with such component morphemes (Zgusta, 1971);
Morphophonemic substituent words. For example, (إشارة المرور)/išāratu-lmurūr/“traffic light”, (حديقة الحيوان)/ḥadīqatu-lḥaywān/“animal zoo”.
2) Divergent constituents. For example, (رأس الحكمة)/ra su-lḥikma/“the true wisdom”, (سيارة المرور)/sayyāratu-lmurūr/“police car” and not “the car that passes by”, (زهرة الشمس)/zahratu-ššams/“sunflower”, (صورة شمسية)/ṣūratun šamsiyya/“a solar photograph”, (حجر الرياض)/ḥajaru-rriyāḍ/“rock of Riyadh”, (حجر الأردن)/ḥajarulrdun/“rock of Jordon”.
3) None-substituent morphophonemic words. For example, (عقارب الساعة)/caqāribu-ssā ca/“hands of the clock”, (يد المساعدة)/yadu-lmusācada/“hand for help”. These are all dependent on structural conception of language (Zgusta, 1971).
It is not easy to predict compound meanings in a none-native language. For example, (redhead), that means “a man whose hair is red”, while (headache) means “pain in the head”. Meanings, however, could be derived from known words as they combine to form compounds. For example:
(housewife) (house + woman) + woman managing household
(Businessman) (business + man) = man who manages business
(mailman) (mail + man) = man who posts mail.
In Arabic:
(نور الغرفة)/nūru-lġurfa/( الغرفة)/alġurfa/ + /nūr/( نور) = “room’s light”
(سيارة الإسعاف)/sayyāratu-lisc āf/( سيارة)/sayyāra/ + (إسعاف)/isc āf/ = “acar that is used for urgent help”
(سقف المنزل)/saqfu-lmanzil/( سقف)/saqf/ + (المنزل)/almanzil/ = (ceiling of house)
(ساعة يد)/sācatu yad/( ساعة)/sāca/ + (يد)/yad/ = “a watch worn on a rest of hand”
(ساعة حائط)/sācatu ḥā ʔ iṭ/(ساعة)/sāca/ + (حائط)/ḥā iṭ/ = “a clock hanged on a wall”
4) The phenomenon of symptoms of their stability. For example, in English, (husband-wife), (four storied), (three-number). In Arabic (سداسي الشكل)/sudāsi-ššakl/“hexagon”, (خطاب إداري)/xiṭābun idāriy/“administrative speech”, (أحادي اللون)/u ḥādi-llawn/“monochromatic”.
Composition could be organic or inorganic. In inorganic compounds, mutilated parts of words or morphemes are put together to form a new word and the first phoneme or syllable of these words are used (Zgusta, 1971). For example, In Arabic (الخ)/ilā āxirihi/which means “etc”, and (ص)/ṣ/“peace be upon him”, (.م)/m/“engineer”, (د.)/d/“Dr.”, (د.أ)/d/“Professor”. Considering the translational equivalence theory, bilingual lexicographers could treat compound words according to semantic contexts. This could be based on collectability patterns. First, meanings of lexemes are considered in isolation. Second, meanings are presented in contexts or as collectability patterns with semantic features. In this way, meanings are not ambiguous as distinctive features are supplied under both equivalents of L1 and L2. Although no one can summarize all the categories as they overlap by which theses phenomena can be classified and they differ from one language to another, the best way to disambiguate paradigmatic compositions is by providing entry-equivalent examples in both languages with different contexts (Hausmann, 1986).
6. Conclusion
The descriptive insights of Arabic paradigmatic variation has found Zgusta’s (1971) model applicable in most cases of Arabic canonical representational forms. Differences in the predictability of the meaning of the formal, lexical and compositional variation could cause difficulty in assignment of word categories. It is not an easy task to find a representative linguistic frame to describe Arabic canonical forms in relation to lexicography. However, the findings of the study align with Ryding’s (2005) statement as he declared that using a model like Zgusta’s (1971) could show the necessary tools to differentiate between grammatical forms and lexical meanings needed for a lexicographical categorization in monolingual and bilingual cases of lexicography. As far as translational equivalence theory is concerned, the study showed that all qualitative types of equivalence occur in Arabic paradigmatic representations. Equivalence could be either full, partial or nil based on the category of paradigmatic distinction and relations to semantic contextual structures. Partial equivalence was found to be the most frequent case, as Arabic words have divergent distinctive semantic correlates. Nil equivalence was related to cultural-specific lexemes, which created lexical gaps in most cases. The findings of the study could suggest that distinction of language differences might help in designing dictionary entries more effectively. As stated by Atkins (2002), in the monolingual entry, for instance, the two representations of canonical forms could be separated, while in the bilingual entry they could be joined with reference to their contexts. In addition, Cultural overlap could be avoided by association of lexemes with different translation equivalents described by metalinguistic comments and glosses. Last but not least, translational equivalence theory could be a useful tool in bilingual lexicography in relation to paradigmatic distinctions based on Zgusta’s (1971) publications as he argues that two dimensions are significant in equivalence; meaning and translatability. This could also be an adequate source for translators as they would frequently deal with identical meanings of source expressions as well as relevant contexts.
7. Research Implications
Bilingual lexicography could be an effective aid in translation. Generally speaking, it could help translators, teachers and learners of ESL find adequate methods of equivalence of lexical and textual meanings and paradigmatic inclinations. In addition, comparative representations of canonical forms comparatively in bilingual lexicography could be a functional guidance for lexical semantic descriptions for EFL for it could be treated as a natural learning reference work. The fundamental insight of teaching paradigmatic variations in a target language lies in the importance of comprehending different linguistic and situational contexts to find appropriate equivalents in one’s mother tongue language. Further bilingual dictionaries (English-Arabic and Arabic-English) should be able to highlight the problematic features of translation to become a valuable resource of language learning and an effective method of communication. Moreover, understanding the semantic gap in bilingual lexicography could train future translators use equivalents more effectively at both interlingual and intralingual levels.