The Linguistic and Translational Aspects of Onomatopoeia: English and Arabic as a Case in Point

The present study investigates the linguistic and translational aspects of onomatopoeia. English and Arabic have been areas for investigation. It aims at finding out appropriate techniques to translate onomatopoeic words and expressions .It is found here that Arabic uses less onomatopoeia than English , because the former has well-established terms for sounding characteristics of most animals, people or things. It is also found that there are three translation techniques to render onomatopoeic expressions, namely, translating onomatopoeia by an equivalent onomatopoeia, translating onomatopoeia by paraphrasing or rewording it , and translating onomatopoeia by giving its phonemic translation and providing an explanatory gloss between brackets.