Marzieh Malekshahi; Ali Khazaifarid
Abstract
1. IntroductionDiscourses and theories are produced in different ways, whether they are produced within the borders of a culture, or imported from a different culture through the channel of translation or other forms of rewriting (e.g. original writing on the imported discourse). In Iran, many modern ...
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1. IntroductionDiscourses and theories are produced in different ways, whether they are produced within the borders of a culture, or imported from a different culture through the channel of translation or other forms of rewriting (e.g. original writing on the imported discourse). In Iran, many modern discourses and theories are products of different types of translations. This does not mean that some elements of these discourses have not been previously present in Persian literary and philosophical works, but it means that such discourses and theories as coherent sets of knowledge, philosophy and theory and with a specific purpose and worldview are products of translation and importation from different cultures. However, few historical studies have been carried out in this regard and even in those few studies the role of translation in introducing new discourses has been totally ignored.2. Theoretical frameworkThe present study aimed to use, as Bandia (2006) suggests, the current theories and methodologies which are developed in the field of history. Thus, among the current theories, Reception Theory, proposed by Jauss (1970), has been suggested and modified to account for the way modern discourses in Iran are received. Following Rundle's (2012) distinction between historical and scientific methods in historical translation studies, the present study aimed to avoid yielding a general account of the role of translation in the immigration of theories and discourses and instead focused on the history of the reception of modern discourses in Iran with a focus on the role of translation among other forms of rewritings. Thus, as Rundle (2012) suggested the results may interest a wider range of audience, historians as well as translation studies scholars.3. DiscussionThe present paper sought to emphasize the transfer of contemporary discourses as an important area in Historical Translation Studies in Iran and suggested it be an essential area for research among Translation Studies scholars in Iran. To this end, first, some of the ideas on the transfer of discourses and the current discussions in the field of historiography were briefly reviewed, and then an attempt was made to adapt Jauss's (1970) Reception Theory to the needs of Historical Translation Studies scholars interested in studying the transfer of discourses.4. ConclusionConsidering the importance of translation in the transfer and development of contemporary discourses, this paper attempted to propose a historical approach to address the issue of the transfer of contemporary discourses in Iran. Adopting a historical approach helps us avoid imposing a pre-existing theory on the data, and thus emphasizes the specific characteristics of the transfer of each discourse. In addition, the emphasis put on using the “Reception Theory” distinguishes it from similar approaches to the problem of the transfer of discourses which seek to examine the impact of imported discourses on the target culture.
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.
Zahra Salari; Ali Khazaee Farid
Abstract
This paper is going to suggest a suitable syllabus according to the market needs in Iran. To achieve this goal, the people who directly and indirectly involve in the translation market (including translation offices, travel agencies, translation students, translation professors, bank’s clerks and ...
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This paper is going to suggest a suitable syllabus according to the market needs in Iran. To achieve this goal, the people who directly and indirectly involve in the translation market (including translation offices, travel agencies, translation students, translation professors, bank’s clerks and publishers) have been interviewed. Then by analyzing these interviews and also considering some foreign Universities’ programs, some suggestions are presented for updating the existing syllabus which has been remained fixed for a long period of time.
Elnaz Pakar; Ali Khazaee Farid
Abstract
Over the past one hundred and fifty years, due to a huge number of translations from different languages into Persian, certain norms of language use have changed and certain others are in the process of changing. As one of the most frequent syntactic properties of most languages, especially English, ...
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Over the past one hundred and fifty years, due to a huge number of translations from different languages into Persian, certain norms of language use have changed and certain others are in the process of changing. As one of the most frequent syntactic properties of most languages, especially English, the nominal style is a most likely candidate for transfer through translation into Persian, a language in which the use of the verbal style is admittedly more dominant. This research addresses the following question: since literalism is the prevailing translation method in Iran, is there a tendency towards the nominal style in non-literary translated texts? To this end, two large corpora of translated and original Persian texts of expository nature were selected. The former group consisted of translations done by both famous and not very famous translators. The purpose of examining the translations was to find out which style was dominant: nominal or verbal. A comparison of the corpora showed that in original Persian books as well as translated books done by well-known translators, there was a tendency toward the verbal style as the number of nominal sentences found in these books was very low. But in the texts translated by not very famous translators, the number of nominal sentences was significantly higher than the number of verbal sentences.
