Abstract
The aim of this study is to explore levels of satisfaction on the part of female university students in Saudi Arabia with the bilingual English-Arabic dictionaries they use, along with common problems encountered with such dictionaries. The study also aims to examine the necessity for making a bilingual dictionary especially for translation purposes. To achieve this goal, sixty-three undergraduate female university students from Junior and Senior levels at Prince Sultan University for Women and Imam Mohammed Ibn-Saud Islamic University participated in answering a questionnaire designed specifically for the present study. Both qualitative and quantitative data were elicited by posing close-ended and open-ended questions. In addition, statistical descriptive analysis was employed to analyze the answers to the close-ended questions and a content analysis was undertaken with regard to the open-ended responses. The results revealed that the participants were not fully satisfied with the bilingual English-Arabic dictionaries they use due to several shortcomings. In their current status, bilingual dictionaries have been found to waste much of the students' time, money and effort. Furthermore, the university students were found to support enthusiastically the idea of a bilingual dictionary compiled especially for translation purposes. Consequently, suggestions for improving the available bilingual dictionaries were offered by the students, and studied by the researcher, with a view to compiling a dictionary better geared for translation purposes.
