Lexicographic Treatment of Idiomatic Expressions: The Example of Two Bilingual French-Arabic Dictionaries

In this article, we examine the treatment of idiomatic expressions as it appears in bilingual French-Arabic dictionaries, intended for public use. To do so, we will base ourselves on a corpus of idiomatic expressions and lexicalized turns identified from lexicographic sources. We consider the idiomatic expressions in order to examine their mode of treatment and classification, their variants, their polysemy and their correspondences in Arabic. Due to the shortcomings of the lexicographic tools, we were able to become aware of the triple need to clearly define the relationship between translation and lexicographic tools, then to restrict the role of the dictionary by reasoned choices, and finally to review the suspicions of translators with regard to dictionaries. At the same time, we will be discussing the verification of our idiomatic expressions through two French-Arabic general dictionaries.