Abstract

Arabic has always been in bad need of collocation dictionaries. However, the only two recent English/Arabic & Arabic/English dictionaries that emerged, Dar El-Ilm’s Dictionary of Collocations (DEDC) and Al-Hafiz Arabic Collocations Dictionary (AACD) suffer from serious problems. Although DEDC has a wide range of items covered, it suffers from the serious problem of disregarding the Arabic legacy of collocational equivalents while translating the English terms. English collocation structures, therefore, are translated into free Arabic word combinations. AACD, on the other hand, has the perceived problem of the deficiency in the range of items covered for each entry, ignoring that Arabic, a lexically rich language, can provide a remarkable range of collocational material on different word entries. The two dictionaries would be of greater help for language learners and translation practitioners if those problems were addressed. This paper focuses on those particular weaknesses putting forward alternative suggestions about how to tackle the deficiencies.

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