Vahid Mardani; Masood Khoshsaligheh
Abstract
Audiovisual translation has received considerable attention from translation scholars in recent years. However, subtitling and specifically non-professional subtitling, due to the dominance of dubbing in Iranian national and state media, has received less attention in Iranian academia. This study examines ...
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Audiovisual translation has received considerable attention from translation scholars in recent years. However, subtitling and specifically non-professional subtitling, due to the dominance of dubbing in Iranian national and state media, has received less attention in Iranian academia. This study examines the attitudes of non-professional subtitlers towards ethical principles in subtitling English language films into Persian. The statistical population included all non-professional subtitlers active on the Internet, among whom 15 individuals were selected through purposive sampling. A semi-structured interview was conducted as the main research tool, and its items were online-based and available to the interviewees by email or in person. Findings showed that the ethical principles were limited to faithfulness to the original audiovisual translation (AVT) material and avoiding any manipulation, resulting in the transfer of many Western cultural and linguistic taboos in subtitling. Moreover, novice translators placed more emphasis on complete faithfulness to the original text regardless of any cultural and linguistic filters.
Sima Imani; Masood Khoshsaligheh
Abstract
Dubbing is the prevalent modality of audiovisual translation in Iran. Although dubbing uses both acoustic and visual channels, the acoustic dimension has not been thoroughly researched. Since dubbing primarily deals with voice, researching paralinguistic code (e.g., voice quality and tone) is of primary ...
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Dubbing is the prevalent modality of audiovisual translation in Iran. Although dubbing uses both acoustic and visual channels, the acoustic dimension has not been thoroughly researched. Since dubbing primarily deals with voice, researching paralinguistic code (e.g., voice quality and tone) is of primary significance as changes in voice quality play a pivotal role in recreating the character differently in the dubbed version and affect dubbing overall quality and audience perception. Therefore, this mixed-methods research aims to determine effects of voice quality change through dubbing on characterization from audiences’ viewpoint by examining the official Persian dubbing of the BBC One’s Sherlock series. In doing so, Van Leeuwen’s (1999) categorization of voice quality characteristics was selected to design a self-made questionnaire and compare the original actor and the dubbing actor’s voice qualities. Accordingly, the views of 32 participants were collected and analyzed. Finally, the comparison of the actor and dubbing actor’s voice quality characteristics showed that out of seven pairs of voice quality features (tension, breathiness, vibrato, nasality, roughness, loudness and pitch), the dubbing actor’s voice was similar to that of the original actor in only four features, and it was different in three features (roughness, loudness and pitch). Based on the current research findings, these slight changes in the dubbing actor’s voice quality resulted in minor changes in the dubbed version’s characterization, as it made the dubbed character look more aggressive and less attractive to the target audiences’ eyes. The results suggest that voice is a significant quality issue for the audience and the right choice of dubbing talent can enhance audience reception of cinematic products.
Masood Khoshsaligheh; Shilan Shafiei
Abstract
A survey of recent studies in audiovisual translation reveals that audio description (AD), as a service of empowerment and accessibility to media for blind or partially sighted audiences, has been increasingly investigated and researched internationally mostly in European counties and the United State, ...
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A survey of recent studies in audiovisual translation reveals that audio description (AD), as a service of empowerment and accessibility to media for blind or partially sighted audiences, has been increasingly investigated and researched internationally mostly in European counties and the United State, however. This service is newly developing and rarely offered in Iran. This article aims to initially introduce developments and advancements in AD globally and discuss its production process in the world. The article then explores the current status of AD in Iran and reviews the preliminary measures which have recently been taken in this regard. Within an exploratory approach, the required data were obtained through document analysis and semi-structured interviews with AD practitioners in Iran. The findings are classified and presented in six categories. The findings show that the highest proportion of AD production goes to radio and a non-governmental group, Sevina, respectively, and television as a national mass media has not taken any measure in this regard. Besides, the production of AD on the radio has been limited to Iranian feature films, while the products of Sevina group are more diverse. A number of suggestions for future investigations are also presented.
Elnaz Pakar; Masood Khoshsaligheh; Zahra Khozaei Ravari
Abstract
The present article investigated the themes and topics, which were deemed unsuitable to the Iranian society, in an American film series The Godfather, which has been broadcast on Iranian mainstream Television several times. This series contains many controversial issues such as love, violence, religion, ...
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The present article investigated the themes and topics, which were deemed unsuitable to the Iranian society, in an American film series The Godfather, which has been broadcast on Iranian mainstream Television several times. This series contains many controversial issues such as love, violence, religion, and politics that have undergone heavy censorship in order to adhere to the target ideological and cultural norms. The film is however the greatest films of all time. A comparative study of the original and dubbed versions revealed that discrepancies between the two were at visual, content, and auditory levels, and at each level, numerous instances of religious, political, and moral appropriations were detected and classified. For example, scenes or dialogues that promote Christianity and American values, or contain illegitimate relationships, sexuality, violence, dancing, singing, women’s smoking, women’s inappropriate clothes, and alcoholic beverages were eradicated or concealed through substitution strategies. Then, five interviews were conducted with outstanding dubbing artists and dubbing directors to see if they confirm the findings as recurrent censorship themes in Persian official dubbing and to ask why this series was broadcast with such heavy censorship.
Masood Khoshsaligheh; Binazir Mohammad Alizadeh
Abstract
Song translation as a subcategory of Audiovisual translation has been welcomed by the dubbing industry in Iran. It is a translation in which both linguistic and musical dimensions are closely integrated, therefore such a strong connection adds to its translation difficulties. This study determines the ...
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Song translation as a subcategory of Audiovisual translation has been welcomed by the dubbing industry in Iran. It is a translation in which both linguistic and musical dimensions are closely integrated, therefore such a strong connection adds to its translation difficulties. This study determines the significance of the musical dimension as a major constraint in the translation of songs. Producing singable translation has been the most challenging task for song translators. The purpose of the present study is to take into account the musical dimension of musical animation The Lorax (Reaud and Balda, 2012) dubbed into Persian based on Franzon (2008) song translation model, determining the methods of producing singable translation of songs. As the results suggest, according to the adopted model, there was not an absolute translation method in the translation of songs dubbed into Persian, instead integrated methods of song translation were applied. To illustrate, the original music in four pieces of songs of the animation The Lorax (2012) was preserved. Therefore, the Persian lyrics were rewritten or translated but in one piece of song, the original music was changed to adapt to the rewritten Persian lyrics. This is the combination of the third and fifth as well as third and fourth approaches of song translation.
Elham Fazel Haghpanah; Masood Khoshsaligheh
Abstract
The current qualitative research was an attempt to discover the reasons that led to the interest in watching Korean films and TV series among Iranian audiences as well as making fan-produced subtitles for these products. To this end, 26 select participants (20 women and 6 men) who have been active in ...
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The current qualitative research was an attempt to discover the reasons that led to the interest in watching Korean films and TV series among Iranian audiences as well as making fan-produced subtitles for these products. To this end, 26 select participants (20 women and 6 men) who have been active in translating and subtitling Korean films and TV series in Iran were qualitatively interviewed. Observational data also were collected by the researchers in the fansubbing Iranian atmosphere. As for the data analysis, grounded theory procedure was mainly used. Participants ranged from 14 to 45 years of age and have been working as a fansubber from one to ten years. The academic background of the majority of these fansubbers was in engineering or natural sciences. According to the results, these Iranian fansubbers are keen enthusiasts of Korean culture and cinematic fiction. They state that their interest in Korean audiovisual fiction is due to a wide range of shared cultural similarities between the two nations as opposed to the western culture. They also point to the non-physical sexuality of the Korean films and series that seem to have an appeal to the Iranian public audiences. The Iranian audiences are also interested in use of the best and the most advanced cinematography technologies as well as the eastern color and philosophy in the Korean television products. Iranian fansubbers proport to intended to help their Persian speaking friends and fellow-enthusiasts to access these foreign language films and TV series so as to enjoy watching such programs. In addition, they also feel motivated to support their favorite Korean film actors as well as their work.
Masood Khoshsaligheh; Elmira Soleimani Rad
Abstract
1. Introduction
Collocations are defined as syntagmatic and lexical structures that tend to go together repeatedly (Afshinpoor & Ibn al-Rasul, 2014). In other words, they are a sequence of words whose occurrence together is frequent, and this frequency is to a degree that cannot be considered accidental. ...
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1. Introduction
Collocations are defined as syntagmatic and lexical structures that tend to go together repeatedly (Afshinpoor & Ibn al-Rasul, 2014). In other words, they are a sequence of words whose occurrence together is frequent, and this frequency is to a degree that cannot be considered accidental. Collocations, which play a crucial role in the coherence of various types of texts, are regarded as one of the most important properties of each language (Sharifi & Namvar Fargi, 2012). There are different ways of analyzing translated texts. One way is to examine translations as independent texts with regard to the elements involved in their production. The current study examined a corpus of translated texts, with focus on collocations and their role in the coherence and fluency of translation.
2. MethodologyIn this study, the importance of collocations and their role in contributing to the coherence and fluency of the translated texts were investigated. To this end, the book Twenty Stories by Twenty Nobel Prize Winners was purposively selected. This book consists of twenty stories by twenty different authors, translated into Persian by Asadollah Amraie. The sample of study, including word combinations, were collected randomly from all twenty stories. The analysis of the data was carried out in three phases: 1) the quantitative phase, 2) the qualitative phase, and 3) the descriptive phase. In the quantitative phase, the collocations were examined from the viewpoint of the audience. So, a questionnaire was designed and distributed among 150 participants. The participants were asked to evaluate the collocations both from the perspectives of understandability and commonality. In the qualitative phase, an in-depth interview was conducted with five participants who were professional literary books’ readers. In the descriptive phase, the word combinations were analyzed based on the kinds of lexical combinations that appear in collocation dictionaries.
3- Result and Discussion The results of the quantitative phase indicated that none of the selected collocations were rated as either fully understandable or commonly used. The data from the interview phase indicated that there are ambiguities in some parts of the text. So, the participants considered the translated text as awkward. This tends to indicate inadequate considerations on the part of the the translator in his lexical choices which led to the pitfall of negative transfer of source language structures. This was due to the fact that the words were not collocated commonly, and this challenged the naturalness and fluency of the translation. The readers are forced to read and reread certain segments of the text to make sense of it. It also was revealed that the word combinations are relatively comprehensible but not common and prevalent in Farsi language speech community. It can also be inferred the translator’ choices cannot be attributed to the translator’s creativity in constructing new word combinations, as they are prevalent neither in non-translated texts nor translated texts by professional authors and translators.The study inferred that the translated text as an independent text should be fluid and comprehensible to the target language readers rather than merely reproduce the linguistic structures of the source text. That is why the use of appropriate collocations in the way native speakers use language is a very important issue in the clarity and fluency of translation. It seems imperative that translators should have sufficient knowledge of the target language.The findings showed that one of the most important factors for choosing and accepting a translation is the fluency of the text. The translation should be written in a natural language that conforms to the conventions of the target language. Using unfamiliar and unusual structures should be avoided, and the text should be written in a consistent style. The results of the different phases of the study indicated that the translator has used word combinations that have a low frequency in everyday speeches. As the frequency of these collocational structures is low in Farsi, the text does not enjoy coherence. It is worth mentioning that the study of collocations in translation can have a significant role in the production of natural word combinations that can contribute to more acceptable translated texts.
Milad Mehdizadkhani; Masood Khoshsaligheh
Abstract
1. IntroductionOne of the four channels of expression of meaning in audiovisual translation (AVT), with which translators have to deal, is verbal information in written forms on the screen. Although it has also been referred to in terms such as “integrated subtitles” (Fox, 2016) and “TELOP” ...
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1. IntroductionOne of the four channels of expression of meaning in audiovisual translation (AVT), with which translators have to deal, is verbal information in written forms on the screen. Although it has also been referred to in terms such as “integrated subtitles” (Fox, 2016) and “TELOP” (O’Hagan & Sasamoto, 2016), Chaume (2004a) prefers to use the term “graphic code” borrowing from the school of Film Semiotics for such verbal visual information on the screen. This school claims that cinema is composed of several meaning codes, thus Chaume (2004a, 2012) has worked on a taxonomy of film codes which apply to translation operations. Despite the considerable significance and rising number of graphic codes in an accurate understanding of the course of a dubbed movie, it has received relatively little attention in the literature on AVT. Hence, this study aims at examining and comparing the rendition of graphic codes in two of the methods, namely voice-off and insertion in two Persian versions of the new Sherlock Holmes TV series dubbed by an official Iranian TV network and a BBC Persian TV network. The study also attempts to provide answers to the research questions adopted from Chaume (2012).The audiovisual text is a complex medium and the audiovisual translator ought to handle verbal and non-verbal information, meanings openly expressed and meanings that are inferred by subtler forms of communication such as a rise in intonation or a gesture accompanying the utterance (Pettit, 2004). Therefore, the screen products are made up of complex visual codes comprising elements such as costumes, gesture, body movements, and facial expressions, or as Chiaro (2009, p. 142) names them “polysemiotic” elements. In general, graphic codes may be classified into two categories: static graphic codes – written information in newspapers and on computers which cannot be separated from the screen – and moving graphic codes – pop-up written information on the screen (O’Hagan, 2010) which can be possibly separated from the screen. Most studies have only focused on graphic codes as one of the communication channels in AVT (e.g., Chiaro 2009; Delabastita 1989). Other studies have also investigated graphic codes from a non-translational and filmmaking perspective (Pérez-González 2013; Sasamoto 2014); a few others have also examined them in terms of translational functions (Khoshsaligheh & Fazeli Haghpanah, 2016; O’Sullivan, 2013). Additionally, some research has also studied graphic codes using eye tracking (Fox, 2016; O’Hagan & Sasamoto, 2016). They have also been the focus of some experimental research as well (Mehdizadkhani & Khoshsaligheh, 2018 in-press).2. MethodologyThis qualitative research is a case study which aims to investigate and compare two translation techniques, namely voice-off and insertion in the rendition of graphic codes in two official Persian dubbed versions of the case of Sherlock (Gattis, Moffat, & Vertue, 2010), a British TV series. The main reason for the choice of this case as the subject of the study was the availability of two professionally produced Persian dubbed versions, and in each version the graphic codes are rendered in the two different methods. The second reason was “the prominent role that digital technologies play in the actual adaptation of the series” (Pérez-González, 2013, p. 14) shown by moving graphic codes. Moreover, McMillan (2014) refers to Sherlock as the “best use” of graphic codes in the TV series. The researchers also classified moving graphic codes into three categories: SMS language, Sherlock’s web searches, and his unverbalized inner thoughts. 3. Discussion It was revealed that BBC Persian TV network rendered all of the graphic codes using the insertion technique. Voice-off technique, instead, was used by the Iranian TV network, but it left five scenes with graphic codes untranslated. The most common justification in such situations is the case of “code interaction” discussed by Chaume (2012, p. 107). That is, the voice-off method cannot be applied when graphic codes overlap with a close-up shot in which one or more characters are speaking.The results also indicated that the rendered graphic codes in the insertion technique remained on the screen for a fair amount of time giving the opportunity of rereading (see also Szarkowska, Krejtz, Krejtz, & Duchowski, 2013). Hence, Mehdizadkhani and Khoshsaligheh (2018 in-press) argue that this fair amount of time in the insertion technique could lead to better comprehension of graphic codes in comparison to when the voice-off technique is used. However, if the rendition of graphic codes in voice-off could be considered as normal dubbing (see Koolstra, Peeters, & Spinhof, 2002), the findings revealed that the dubbing team have not dealt with problems such as lip-synchronization (see Chaume, 2004b, 2013). Therefore, in comparison with insertion, this technique allows the dubbing team more freedom in modifying the stress, tone, and accent, and it helps the viewers to better focus on the film content (Mehdizadkhani & Khoshsaligheh, 2018 in-press).Iran is known as a dominantly dubbing country (Khoshsaligheh & Ameri, 2016; Naficy, 2011), but still in some cases, dubbers have to deal with (sub-)titles, intertitles, and written texts on the screen. Despite numerous instances and relying on the significance of graphic codes for the complete comprehension of Sherlock series (Pérez-González, 2013; McMillan, 2014), the findings seem to recommend that when dubbing translators encounter “code interaction” (Chaume, 2012, p. 107), they may use the insertion technique in rendition of graphic codes.4. Conclusions It was beyond the scope of this study to examine the static graphic codes. On the other hand, to the researchers’ best knowledge, no previous study has investigated the translation of these codes in AVT of Iranian context. Therefore, a further study is recommended to explore and compare strategies used in translation of static graphic codes in different modes of AVT, such as in subtitling based on the frameworks introduced by Gottlieb (1992), Bogucki (2004) or Díaz-Cintas and Remael (2014). Moreover, this study did not address the translation quality of translated graphic codes. Although the two versions are professionally dubbed into Persian, the translation approach toward factors such as censorship and cultural references are very likely to be different. A further study on these issues with further focus on graphic codes is therefore suggested. Having divided the moving graphic codes into the three categories, the research questions that could be asked in audio description research area include how audio describers render those moving graphic codes and if the methods of translation of different types of graphic codes are similar.
Binazir Khajepoor; Ali Khazaee Farid; Masood Khoshsaligheh
Abstract
1. IntroductionThis study investigates the relationship between culture and translation. The concept of Culture Repertoire advocated by Even-Zohar was used as the framework of the study, and the English translation of the Persian novel My Uncle Napoleon was selected as the case study. This novel as the ...
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1. IntroductionThis study investigates the relationship between culture and translation. The concept of Culture Repertoire advocated by Even-Zohar was used as the framework of the study, and the English translation of the Persian novel My Uncle Napoleon was selected as the case study. This novel as the corpus under investigation contains over 230,000 words in 462 pages. Given the focus and attention the book has received, it is an appropriate case for investigating the Iranian culture as it is obviously rich with symbols representing the local culture. The theoretical framework elaborates on the root and the origin of Culture Repertoire by drawing on the Jacobsen’s linguistic model. In addition, the concept of Culture Repertoire as a part of Even-Zohar’ cultural conception is delineated with examples and clarifying explanations.2. MethodologyThis descriptive study is an attempt to address two questions. First, it explores the categories of Iranian culture repertoremes and secondly the attitude of the Iranian translators towards them. To explore the fixed expressions in Persian language, a number of specialized websites in Persian poetry, the Holy Quran, and a number of major religious-literary texts were reviewed. In addition to these sources, some software programs for literary and religious texts were also benefitted. To obtain the translated English phrases, the Coca Corpus, which is the largest available English corpus was used in addition to Webster’s Big Dictionary. But to collect the data from the original text and the translated one, taking notes was benefited. Due to the qualitative nature of the study, purposive sampling technique was used for forming the sample and later grounded theory procedures were employed to analyze the data. That is, the culture repertoremes in the source text along with their translations were extracted, and then using grounded theory, the Iranian cultural repertoire diagram was plotted. More specifically, each repertoreme, depending on the type, got a label and the given labels were in the same category, and the resulting chart thus was formed from the bottom up. For example, the label ‘religious proper names’ including items like Imam Reza and the label ‘historic proper names’ including items such as Muhammad Ali Shah were placed under the general subsidiary label ‘proper names’.3. DiscussionThe achieved diagram comprises two main branches of material and semiotic repertoremes at the highest level which is consistent with the Even-Zohar’s conceptualization. Material items included repertoremes from which the materials are formed such as certain types of food in different cultures, or conventional clothing items such as the repertoreme Charghad in the Iranian culture. Semiotic repertoremes consist of items which hearing, reading, expressing, or using them strike an idea in the mind of the people of a particular culture whereas the people of other cultures are not reminded of anything. For example, a location-related proper name label such as Ahwaz has special connotations and indications with itself for the Iranian people—the concepts of the south, heat, war, etc. But for someone who was born and raised in London, for example, Ahwaz does not stimulate anything in particular because that person draws on a different cultural repertoire. In the branch of semiotic repertoremes, all fixed expressions, innuendos, proverbs and collocations which are frequently used in Persian colloquial conversations, are accounted as Iranian culture repertoremes. Examples in Persian language could include the collocation spoon and fork, the equivalents of which in English is knife and fork. Such collocations in each of these languages have been created, formed and fixed based on the eating traditions in those cultures. Thus, fixed expressions in languages are considered as culture repertoremes. In the Poly-system theory advocated by Even-Zohar, human social life consists of different systems that overlap. Naturally in the cultural system, some components are found from the religious and literary systems.4. ConclusionAfter the achieved classification, the data were analyzed by reviewing the English translation of these Persian repertoremes. The translator of the novel had used the strategies of addition, transcription, familiarization, exclusion, expansion and neutralization. The descriptive information including frequency and percentage of the repertoremes, groups and their translation strategies are calculated and presented. Moreover, the strategy groups are compared and contrasted. The overall strategy is also illustrated in a diagram for further clarity. The findings reveal that the translator’s most frequently used strategies in terms of the Persian culture repertoremes are neutralization and familiarization strategy, respectively.
Masood Khoshsaligheh; Elham Fazeli Haghpanah
Abstract
1. IntroductionThe current advancement of technology has significantly influenced various fields such as audiovisual translation. The emergence of fansub groups is among the most important effects of technological development in the translation world. Easy access to various types of computers as well ...
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1. IntroductionThe current advancement of technology has significantly influenced various fields such as audiovisual translation. The emergence of fansub groups is among the most important effects of technological development in the translation world. Easy access to various types of computers as well as free subtitling software programs have resulted in an increasing number of fansubs on a daily basis. A fansub is a non-professional subtitled version of an anime or movie, carried out collaboratively by an unpaid group of volunteers which will be available to users for free. Several reasons have been mentioned for fansubbing such as: providing translation for people who are not familiar with the source language, reluctance or failure regarding the official and commercial subtitling in portraying cultural issues and unique features of foreign products and also, introducing a cultural product that is not so well-known in other parts of the world. Primary studies in this field have been conducted during the late 1990s; over time, the number of such studies have been increased and their various aspects have been discussed. A number of studies have been conducted during the first decade of the current century, introducing specific features concerning this type of audiovisual translation and explaining the process, people involved, and technical requirements. Furthermore, some researchers have studied fansub from different perspectives such as: its distribution, comparison between the processes involved in fansubbing and professional subtitling, quality of translation, fansubbing norms, and political subtitling networks. 2. MethodThe process of producing fansub for anime and other forms of animations, common challenges, and the applied equipment and facilities in Iran have been investigated in this qualitative phenomenological study. To achieve this purpose, a few number of active users in fansubbing field were selected through the snowball sampling technique. By conducting interviews, a set of descriptive information have been gathered regarding technical dimensions of the production process such as timing, typesetting, encoding, among others. The interviews, consisting of almost 20 questions (general and specialized), were conducted individually through either face- to-face or telephone conversations. The seven participants were anime fansubbers in Iranian online forums who took on different responsibilities such as anime translation, editing, timing. Their educational backgrounds were very different from each other and often irrelevant to translation. Their ages ranged from 18 to 30 years with an average of 23.7 years old. These seven participants including three men and four women, have been working in this field for 7 to 10 years. Moreover, using a sample selection of products with non-professional Persian subtitles, some of the mistakes in translations were presented and discussed.3. ResultsBased on the results of interviews, fansubbers carry out this process through several steps using various software and hardware equipment. These steps include: 1) original anime acquisition, 2) translation, 3) translation check, 4) timing, 5) typesetting and karaoke, 6) final edit 7) encoding, 8) quality control and 9) distribution of final product. Active fansubbers are usually members of the anime and manga fandom who are quite skilled in working with different software programs. Iranian fansubbers’ motivation is to provide top anime masterpieces with Persian subtitles for Persian speakers as soon as possible. In the past, due to the low age range of anime and manga fans, their activities in producing fansubs had also started in an early age; they have been studying in middle school or high school when they began their activities. During the last few years, growth in the age range of anime and manga fans has resulted in older fansubbers working in this field who often study different majors in universities. The majority of active fansubbers in translation and editing sections are older than those active in technical and software related areas. Various software programs are used for different parts of fansubbing process; some are more popular and more useful: a) original anime acquisition: a peer to peer program like Bittorrent or direct link; b) translation: a text editor such as Notepad or Microsoft Word and a video player software like KMPlayer is sufficient; c) timing: Sub Station Alpha has been mostly used in the past but currently, Aegisub, JacoSub and Sabbu are also widely used. However, it is worth mentioning that the timing stage is no longer necessary, because many official companies release English subtitles in softsub format for anime series; d) typesetting and karaoke: Aegisub software has all the requirements for typesetting. Though Sub Station Alpha also meets all of typesetters’ needs; e) final edit: Similar to the translation stage, a text editor and a video player software are needed; f) encoding: softwares such as Format Factory, Freemake Video Converter and Virtual Dub; g) distribution of final product: softwares like Bittorent.4. Discussion and ConclusionThe results of this study reveal the non-professional dimensions of fansubbing process as a voluntary and collaborative activity and indicate that fansubbers are only involved in such a process because of personal interests. They do not have educational backgrounds in fansubbing field and their only intention is to translate their favorite works of anime for their Persian speaking friends who are not familiar with a foreign language. Fansubbers do not expect to make money form this profession and if someone were to do so by selling these products, the fansub community would regard such actions as improper and inappropriate. Due to the non-professional nature of producing this form of subtitling, the products’ quality are often too low and far from professional subtitling standards. Fansubbers usually decide to quit the fansubbing scene after a while; because fansubbing is a complicated and time-consuming task. Furthermore, fansub groups work for free and hence, the activity is not economically viable. However, we have to consider the fact that there is a wide range of audio visual productions including anime, animations, movies, TV series and even educational films with Persian fansub accessible for native Persian speakers. Certainly, Fansub is not a new phenomenon and has a long history in the world; it has been studied extensively in other countries yet in Iran, it seems to have passed unnoticed by our scholars and only a few have studied in this field.
Fatemeh Heidari; Masoud Khoshsaligheh; Mohamad Reaza Hashemi
Abstract
Apart from the linguistic ability in translation which has constantly been the focus of scholars in the past decades, many recent arguments and research on translation quality point to the indispensable effect of mental and cognitive aspects of translator on his translation performance. In this paper ...
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Apart from the linguistic ability in translation which has constantly been the focus of scholars in the past decades, many recent arguments and research on translation quality point to the indispensable effect of mental and cognitive aspects of translator on his translation performance. In this paper we sought to implement this psychological approach and to investigate the probable relationship between the new-fangled cognitive concept of narrative intelligence in the area of Translation Studies and translation quality (TQ). The likely relationship between narrative intelligence and translation quality from first language (Persian) to foreign language (English) was probed. In this research 104 undergraduate translation students took part. The findings showed that there exist a significant relationship between students' TQ and their narrative intelligence. All the subcategories of narrative intelligence also proved a significant relation between TQ and narrative intelligence. In addition, there was a significant difference between high and low narrative intelligence translation students participating in this study in regards to their TQ. In the end, the findings were discussed and some implications were indicated.
Masood Khoshsaligheh
Abstract
Negligent of the recent findings of translation studies in the past decades, the undergraduate curriculum of English translation in Iranian universities has not been updated since over two decades ago. The comparison of this curriculum with its international rival curricula indicates to a substantial ...
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Negligent of the recent findings of translation studies in the past decades, the undergraduate curriculum of English translation in Iranian universities has not been updated since over two decades ago. The comparison of this curriculum with its international rival curricula indicates to a substantial discrepancy which cannot be solely due to contextual or cultural reasons. It is also suspected that this lack of renewal is one of the several factors which have resulted in the failure of this program in educating world-level qualified translators. Because of the significance of benefiting the views and criticism of the translation educators on the current curriculum for a revised and updated version, the present study investigated the evaluation and criticism of the nationally recognized translation teachers on the academic board of major universities of Iran regarding the current and necessary components of translation competence in the undergraduate curriculum for English translation. Data collected through open-ended, semi-structured, in-depth interview technique was analyzed using Grounded Theory procedures. The findings indicate to the necessity of a major revision by incorporating more modules on CAT tools, improving the quality and quantity of translation workshops, reducing foreign language emphasis among others.
Aynaz Samir; Masood Khoshsaligheh ; Khalil Ghazizadeh
Abstract
This qualitative study attempted to determine the approaches of select Iranian translator educators for assessing students’ translation quality. So, a purposive sample of twelve experienced, specialist translator educatorsat major universities across Iran was invited for interviews. ...
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This qualitative study attempted to determine the approaches of select Iranian translator educators for assessing students’ translation quality. So, a purposive sample of twelve experienced, specialist translator educatorsat major universities across Iran was invited for interviews. The analysis of the interview data revealed the approaches they advocated and so applied to assessment of students’ translation quality. The Iranian translator educators’ approaches were then compared and contrasted with distinguished models and approaches to translation assessment. Using the procedure of grounded theory, a method of qualitative data analysis, theinterview data was coded and analyzed. The results showed that there are many similarities and common areas among the translator educators in approaching students’ translation quality assessment. To a great extent, these approaches conform to the approaches and models of translation quality assessment presented by international TQA theorists and that the only difference lies in the degree of importance of the assessment criteria depending on different translation courses, the text type and genre.
