Language and Translation Studies (LTS)

Abstract Like people, ideas and theories travel from person to person, from situation to situation, and from one period to another. The question that arises is whether traveling theory stays as it is or it undergoes some changes as a result of its move. Drawing on the historiography of translation, we investigated one of the most important philosophical discourses of the twentieth century in the West and Iran, namely Foucault’s discourse. We tried to discover which part of Foucault’s work or ideas was the focus of translators in the Reformist period, stretching from 1997 to 2004. To this end, all Persian translations of Foucault’s works, together with Persian translations about Foucault and original writings in periodicals were selected and their common themes were extracted. The findings of this study show that translators were the main actors in importing Foucault’s ideas to Iran. Also, criticizing power relationship was the main theme in the analyzed corpus. Given the fact that Foucault took a controversial stance on the Islamic revolution in the early years of the Islamic Revolution, this study addresses another question related to the issue of Foucault’s reception. Indeed, the paper examines whether translators of Foucault’s works translated his works regardless of his stance on the revolution. For this purpose, all translated and original texts as well as articles in periodicals (1997-2004) were analyzed. The main themes were extracted and tagged according to Foucault’s thought on power. The results indicate that translators were the main actors in this discourse, and Foucault’s thought served as a tool for translators to criticize social phenomena, and the critique of power has been the most frequent concept in all Foucault-related publications (i.e., translations, writings, and magazines).

Abstract Exploring the role of teacher academic optimism and self-efficacy seems pivotal in teacher education. Therefore, this study was set to explore the relationship between teacher self-efficacy and teacher academic optimism among a sample of Iranian EFL teachers. More specifically, the predictive influence of EFL teachers’ academic optimism components consisting of academic emphasis, teacher trust, and teacher efficacy on the perceptions of their self-efficacy constituting student engagement, instructional practices, and classroom management was examined. In so doing, a total of 335 Iranian EFL teachers were recruited to fill out the measures of teacher self-efficacy and teacher academic optimism. Structural equation modeling was conducted to establish the hypothesized relationships. The results of confirmatory factor analysis on the dataset confirmed the fitness of all the employed measures and the structural model. In addition, inter-variable exploratory correlations were identified using the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, and path analysis was used to examine the predictive powers of academic optimism factors on teacher self-efficacy. The research findings revealed positive and significant relationships among teacher self-efficacy and teacher academic optimism components. It was also found that academic emphasis, teacher trust, and teacher efficacy could positively predict teacher self-efficacy. These findings have significant implications for practicing EFL teachers, teacher educators, and researchers.

Abstract This article focuses on the notions of ‘derealization’ and ‘violence’ to discuss the status of the racial ‘other’ in The Nickel Boys (2019), the acclaimed work of African-American writer, Colson Whitehead, from the perspective of new left thinkers and critics. Drawing on the views of Butler and Slovej Žižek, this paper argues why the United States of America, despite its democratic claims, has been torn by apartheid. To this end, the notions of ‘subjective’ violence, ‘objective’ violence, and ‘grief’ are discussed to depict such strategies as derealization which were deployed against the racial ‘other’ to eliminate him gradually from American society. It is argued that with the emergence of the ‘biopolitical’ structure and its focus on the management of the body, the hierarchy of ‘us and them’ was not done away with. On the contrary, it just replaced the old strategy of ethnic cleansing with a panopticon one which managed the racial ‘other’ by ‘derealizing’ and, thus, reducing him into a ghostly figure of ungrievable life who would be vanished soon. It can be drawn that in this system, the racial ‘other’ stands somewhere between death and life leading an Agambian ‘bare life’ of liminality in which he is treated as less than human.

Abstract The concept of “intelligence” lost its one-dimensional sense many years ago and is now considered a multidimensional concept that encompasses all abilities of individuals. One type of intelligence that is based on time-related individual differences is “temporal intelligence”, which refers to the thoughts, views, and behaviors of people in relation to time. Although this variable has been researched in the field of managerial science, it has not received much attention in the field of education. Since the concept of time is closely related to culture and language, the present study attempted to compare the effects of studying three different languages on students’ temporal intelligence. Two objectives were considered in this study: first, to investigate the effects of studying English, Persian and Arabic languages on students’ temporal intelligence by considering the Applied ELT approach, activity theory, and habitual theory; and second, to investigate the possibility of significant differences among undergraduate students in English, Persian and Arabic in terms of temporal intelligence. For this purpose, the General Temporal Intelligence Scale was completed by 100 students of English language and literature, 100 students of Persian language and literature, and 90 students of Arabic language and literature. The results of the independent samples t-test on the data showed a significantly-negative effect of studying Persian and English on the temporal intelligence of students in these fields (p < 0.05), meaning that the temporal intelligence of second-semester students was higher than the temporal intelligence of eighth-semester students. Regarding the second purpose of the study, the findings indicated that there was a significant difference among these three groups in terms of temporal intelligence; in other words, English students had higher temporal intelligence (p < 0.05). Finally, the results and implications of this study were discussed in the context of language education.

Abstract In the last two decades, self-translators’ agency and their freedom in translation have attracted many scholars’ attention in translation studies. However, how their self-freedom is represented has been under-researched. To this end, the present study intends to investigate how self-translators’ freedom is manifested in their self-translation. Employing a qualitative approach assisted by corpus linguistic techniques, the original English version of the book Modern Persian Prose Literature together with its Persian translation were selected as the corpus of the study. Close examination of the books at paratextual as well as textual levels revealed that self-translators’ freedom can be represented as five translatorial behaviours, namely, addition, deletion and shortening at textual and paratextual levels, domestication, granularity and specification, and modification. It seems that what lie behind such translatorial behavior is the ownership of the authored and translated texts by the same person and a deep appreciation of the readers and their knowledge. As the author and translator of his book, Kamshad enjoys and applies his agency and freedom to grab his readers’ attention to the content he is creating. It can be suggested that self-translators’ considerable freedom in recreating their self-translation may move the border of loyalty in translation.

Abstract Given the growth of new technologies in the field of education, further research and development in this field can lead to the emergence of new educational methods for curriculum providers and teachers. Most teachers aim at raising learners’ noticing and developing their language learning competencies. The present paper investigates learners’ noticing and their achievement in certain grammatical structures in two cognitive and ecological perspectives on language learning. In doing so, the learners were assigned to four experimental groups and were taught certain grammatical structures in two different cognitive and ecological approaches through oral and writing modalities. The sample of the study included 120 students from Islamic Azad University and University of Applied Science and Technology in Tehran. Tools used to gather data were observation, interviews after each session, and one grammar test including target structures. The results of the study showed that there was a statistically significant association between learners’ noticing and the cognitive approach to language learning. However, the ecological approach was more effective in learning the given structures. The results of the analysis also revealed that learners’ noticing and their grammar learning were not statistically different in writing and oral groups. The ecological perspective, which is a new educational and ecological-driven approach and focuses on language tools in the space and environment and learners’ interactions, can act as an innovative approach in the education system of Iran.

Abstract The significance of the present study is that it emphasizes the decisive role of linguistic, pragmatic and cognitive parameters in the occurrence of di- and/or con-vergence in translation. The present study aims at evaluating discursive representations of ‘Other’ in institutional translations of political discourses. This paper strives to probe into the underlying factors and incentives in the rise of di- and/or con-vergence in the source and target texts as construing the ‘Others’ and their emerging threats. Employing Proximisation Theory, we embarked upon analyzing 20 instances of the Iranian Supreme Leader’s speeches in which he characterizes the ‘Other’ and construes their threats against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Our analyses of data indicated that the institutional translations of the original speeches enjoy maximum con-vergence with the source texts even though there was only meager di-vergence between source and target texts in modal and aspectual structures. However, the reported instances of di-vergence brought about less significant semantic and conceptual differences in construing the threats. Furthermore, regarding the underpinning factors and incentives for the emergence of di- and/or con-vergence, we argued that there was a strong dialectic relationship between linguistic and extra-linguistic factors, such as the subject position of the text producer, the translating institution and objectives of translating, providing a base ground for the translator to follow divergence or convergence.