Dictionary of Collocations (English-Arabic) Reviews

Precision is key. Translation involves more than furnishing a literal string of characters that "equate" some string of characters in another language. It is hardly ever a one-to-one science. At least that's my opinion. And if I was wrong, then we could all just use Google Translate to study Japanese, Korean or Arabic. Countless are the instances in which literal translations are unintelligible gibberish.

This book here tries to help bridge the "understanding" gap in otherwise common ideas between our culture (American and English) and Arab culture. It takes phrases from our language, ascertains the meaning and selects the appropriate terms in Arabic to convey that meaning. Sometimes the translations are more or less literal. Often, they're not.

This book is immense. As the title states, it is for English-to-Arabic, so it's not surprising that its main audience is Arab. You can find this 1500+ page juggernaut, if you're interested, online for a reasonable price.