This research addresses a gap in the literature regarding the use of parallel corpora in
Arabic-English legal translation pedagogy in the Saudi Arabian context. It investigates
how parallel corpora impact the quality of Arabic-English legal translation compared with
paper dictionaries, and explores the perceptions of translation teachers and students
regarding their integration into university translation programmes in Saudi Arabia.
An experiment was conducted with 15 male undergraduate students at Majmaah
University, Saudi Arabia. The participants used paper dictionaries in the pre-test and
parallel corpora in the post-test. The analysis showed a marked increase in the mean
weighted score out of 100 (from M=43.87 to M=77.47) and a reduction in translation
errors (from 593 to 276) in the post-test. The analysis also showed greater reductions in
the terminology, accuracy and mistranslation error categories, while the language error
category showed a smaller reduction and remained relatively common in the post-test.
Teachers’ perceptions of integrating corpora were collected through a survey distributed
to translation teachers in Saudi Arabian universities (N=49). The advantages included
improvements in translation skills and subject field knowledge, the promotion of
autonomous learning and the perceived credibility of corpus content. The reported
drawbacks included technical difficulties with using corpora, students’ over-reliance on
them and access limitations. Overall, the teachers expressed positive perceptions of
corpora while highlighting their training needs and the need for institutional support.
Students’ perceptions of integrating corpora were collected through a survey and a focus
group. The advantages comprised improvements in translation and language skills, an
increased sense of professionalism when using corpora and the perceived suitability of
corpora for pedagogical contexts. The drawbacks comprised usability issues, restricted
access to corpora and the limited corpus content. Overall, positive perceptions were
observed regarding the integration of corpora into translation pedagogy.
