Episode Hypothesis and its Impact on the Students' translation of Idiomatic Expressions in selected short stories

Abstract

This paper aims at highlighting the vital function of the “episodic Hypothesis” in comprehending and translating idiomatic expressions particularly when they are episodically organized in a text. It also shows that written texts that are episodically structured are able to be handled and recalled by students than those non-episodically. The paper, also, offers ideas as to how students can comprehend a text particularly when they deal with a text episodically organized. To achieve the aim, Oller’s (1983) model has been adopted. The participants of the study were 80 undergraduate students (40 males and 40 females), their ages ranged between (23-26) years. They were randomly chosen from the third year, department of translation, college of arts at university of Basra of the academic year (2021-2022) as the sample group who took two tests. In the pre-test, the students were provided with decontextualized idiomatic expressions. Then they were asked to translate these idioms as isolated expressions. For the post test, the idiomatic expressions were given to the students within connected texts of two short stories. Data analysis and the results of statistical procedures indicated that there was a significant difference in the comprehending and translating the idiomatic expressions of the students who dealt with the text episodically. The study concluded that the episodic hypothesis works well in comprehending and translating the idiomatic expressions particularly when they are episodically organized in texts like short stories.