The conceptual mapping of the English preposition in into Arabic

In this paper the semantic extensions of the English preposition in and its translation into Arabic and vice-versa is discussed. It is argued that each domain of the English preposition in can be translated into different usage domain in the Arabic language. The translation can be explained using the conceptual mapping domains of the the underlying concept in the source language and finding its usage domain in the target language. The forward translation test is suggested in order to identify the concept of extension of different groups of four different domains (spatial, temporal, area and state), in three semantic mapping categories (SDM, ZDM and DDM).