The Treatment of English Idioms in English-Arabic Smartphone Dictionary Apps
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1602.10Keywords:
Arabic, dictionary app, English, idioms, online dictionaryAbstract
Researchers are more concerned now about the kind of information and consistency online dictionaries provide. This paper aims to study the treatment of English idioms in smartphone applications of English-Arabic dictionaries. The sample of this paper consists of five smartphone applications of English-Arabic dictionaries in the App Store. Eighteen English idioms were sampled based on their commonness in the English language. Oxford Wordpower Dictionary (English-English-Arabic) and Oxford English-Arabic Online Dictionary were used as references to compare the kind of information provided under each idiom. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The study revealed that, out of five English-Arabic dictionary applications, none of them provided results for all the sampled English idioms despite their commonness. The qualitative analysis revealed that the majority of the sampled dictionary apps provide information, such as pronunciation and definition in Arabic and English. The study concluded with highlighting helpful features in these apps which conventional dictionaries lack, such as interactive voice search, history, favorites and image search.
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