Résumé:
The present study investigated the difficulties third year EFL learners face when translating
similes from Arabic literary prose into English. In this case, figures of speech, similes, have
an important role, as they include figurative meaning besides their literary meaning. This
study aims to provide an acount of similes in Arabic as well as in English. It is a humble
attempt that may serve as an exploration of the problems caused by Arabic similes when
translating them into English. It also tries to find out the strategies the students would follow
when dealing with Similes, and how they fail to notice this rhetorical device may lead to
wrong translations. The study hypothesizes that the difficulties the students encounter when
translating literary prose are resulting from their ignorance of the importance of using
appropriate methods provide a high quality translation, in addition to their failure in chosing
good images.To achieve the aims of the study and investigate the validity of the hypotheses,
similes have been studied in the works of Gebran khalil Gibran, then passages and
expressions from Gebran’s complete works has been selected and given to 40 of 3rd year
students in a form of a test to be the data of the study, in addition to an interview with 02
teachers of translation and a students questionnaire
