Easy Tips to Find a Topic for a Research Paper

The first thing you have to keep in mind is that you are not asked to write a PhD thesis. The aim of the Master research paper is to evaluate the student ability to use what he learned during the three semesters and his competences in writing and analyzing. Thus, your topic must be as clear and specified as possible, your arguments well exposed and your examples very relevant. 

Don’t look for very complex topics especially if you don’t master them. Remember that you only have few weeks to finish your research paper and that the most important is how you deal with the subject, not the subject itself. 

The followings are some very easy tips that can help you to find a topic or inspire you to find one:

1. The easiest way is to start with an existing bilingual corpus. The best one is the dictionary. Take a good dictionary, for example Oxfor English-Arabic Dictionary and look for expressions. Put them into categories. For example: expressions about animals, part of the body, anger, fear, joy, ... and so on, then compare them with the Arabic equivalents already given or with expressions in other Arabic dictionaries. For example: what is the symbol of an animal in English and which animal expresses the same symbol in Arabic? That leads you to a cultural study of symbols and their equivalents. 

2. Think about famous authors and the main characteristic of their style. For example: Mark Twain is known for his sarcasm = ترجمة التهكم في رواية مارك تواين . James Thurber is known for using irony = ترجمة السخرية في رواية جيمس ثوربر . Remember to always choose very famous authors so you can find the translation of their novels more easily. 

3. Use translation procedures. For example: استعمال الاقتراض في ترجمة المصطلحات الطبية / في الترجمة التجارية، الترجمة الحرفية ومدى تأثيرها في الحفاظ على الخصائص الثقافية للنص الأصلي، التكافؤ الوظيفي في الترجمة (functional equivalence: some translation theories think that A and B are equivalents because B has the same function as A, not because it has the same meaning). 

4. Focus on the translator, not the translation. This implies: subjectivity in translation, decision making in translation, influence of education, culture, ideology, environment and so on. To get information about Arab translators, you can use websites like WATA (World Association of Arab Translators and Linguists الجمعية الدولية للمترجمين واللغويين العرب ).

5. Finally, read articles about translation that will inspire you. You can use a similar topic and apply it to your Arabic corpus. It is not considered as plagiarism as long as you don’t copy the content literally. Use your own examples, don’t forget to express your own opinion about the topic and of course, mention the article in your references. 

Good luck!