The Effect of Collocational and Synonym Awareness on Translation Accuracy among EFL Translation Students

The role of vocabulary in listening, speaking, reading and writing cannot be ignored. The use of synonym in vocabulary teaching activities can effectively enhance the vocabulary knowledge of students. However, there has been a paucity of experimental studies on the effect of collocational and synonym awareness on translation accuracy among EFL translation students. The purpose of this study is to add to the limited information in this field. This article examines the effect of synonym awareness on translation accuracy among EFL translation students. It employs a pre-test/post-test control group design. 30 Bachelor of Art (BA) male and female senior translation students were selected through convenient sampling. They were divided into two groups of 15. In the experimental group Persian – English translation was instructed by means of collocational techniques then students were required to paraphrase their translation by the use of finding synonyms in thesaurus dictionary, while in the control group classical techniques of translation instruction were used. After the instruction post-test was taken and translations were rated holistically by three experienced instructors. The result indicated that students were more satisfied about their translations and the translation of experimental groups outperformed the control group.

Keywords:

Collocational and Synonym Awareness , Translation Accuracy , Translation Students