Translating adjectives across languages and cultures: Accuracy, omission, and error patterns In student renderings

This study investigates the challenges faced by student translators when rendering English adjectives into Arabic, using selected passages from Midaq Alley as a corpus. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the analysis combines quantitative assessment of accuracy with qualitative examination of error types. Translations were classified as similar, different, or unattempted, allowing for a systematic evaluation of both correctness and omission. The findings reveal recurrent difficulties related to agreement, syntactic placement, semantic nuance, and figurative meaning. Complex noun phrases and culturally embedded adjectives produced the highest error rates, while omissions frequently occurred when adjectival meaning depended on contextual inference. The study highlights the need for targeted pedagogical strategies that integrate contrastive grammar, contextual interpretation, and stylistic awareness in translator training.