Exploring the Challenges Faced by Translator Trainees in Translating Scientific and Technical Texts between Arabic and English: An Error Analysis Approach

This study investigated the challenges faced by translator trainees in translating scientific and technical texts between Arabic and English. A mixed-methods approach was utilized for this purpose. At first a structured questionnaire was administered to 46 trainees from three Yemeni universities to collect data on their translation experiences and challenges. Following this, a translation test was conducted with 40 trainees to generate a corpus of translation samples, comprising excerpts from a variety of scientific and technical texts. A total of 724 errors were identified through an error analysis of those translations, with 228 errors in English-to-Arabic and 496 in Arabic-to-English translations. The results indicated that lexical errors were most frequent, along with significant syntactic and orthographic errors. Findings suggest that linguistic, cultural, and cognitive factors contribute to these challenges. The analysis revealed that strengthening vocabulary and syntactic skills, alongside media-specific training, is critical for improving translation accuracy. The study underscores the need for specialized training programs addressing these identified areas, emphasizing that concerted efforts from both training institutions and researchers are essential to enhance the competencies of translator trainees working with the Arabic-English language pair.