INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRANSLATION VOL. 26, NO. 2, JUL-DEC 2014 Translation of Cultural Bound Color-Based Idioms: A Case Study of Jordanian BA English Students BELAL A. RAKHIEH EMAD M. AL-SAIDAT Al-Hussein Bin Talal University, Jordan JABER N. ALSHAMMARI KHALID A. RABAB’AH University of Hail, Saudi Arabia ABSTRACT This study aims at investigating the translation of some English cultural bound color idioms to Arabic by Jordanian students of English. English cultural bound color idioms are used to describe those expressions which are connected with western culture and may not have equivalents in Jordanian culture. To achieve the aim, the researchers selected a sample of 40 undergraduate English Jordanian students enrolled in AHU. The researchers designed a culture-based translation test (CBTT) that consists of 20 statements as test items; each statement contained a culture-bound color term within its contextual meaning. The results of the study revealed that AHU English majors’ performance in translating English cultural bound color idioms is very poor as reflected by their scores on CBTT. In addition, the results show that this poor performance in this particular context is due to the lack of the knowledge of English cultural bound color idioms, the absence of Jordanian Arabic equivalence, and the inappropriate selection of translation methods by the participants. Keywords: Culture, cultural-bound expressions, idioms, translation, colors