TRANSLATION STUDIES
Year:2008 | Volume:6 | Issue:23|Papers Count:6

Of the first steps in the academic learning of a language is gaining knowledge of its grammar. Likewise, those involved in learning Arabic language in universities and colleges have to first become skilled in its morphology and syntax. Evidently, as long as grammar is inculcated in learners as a list of points to be memorized, it soon gets forgotten and boring. A solution may be making a contrastive analysis of native and second (foreign) languages. It may result in learners' better understanding and learning of both languages.Comparative sentences constitute one of the grammatical categories of Persian and Arabic languages. Making a contrastive analysis of this type of sentences in Persian and Arabic may reveal a number of subtle points rarely referred to in grammar books that fail to help learners in translating from Persian to Arabic and vice versa.For example, Arabic comparatives are commonly defined as making comparison between two persons or objects whereas this definition cannot be generalized to all sentences. There are some instances of their application that involves no comparison but is used to determine the limits of something. Furthermore, comparison is sometimes made in the surface structure of sentences not their deep structure and also other points that are elaborated on in the article.The present paper aims to present these points not only to prepare the ground for their implementation in two languages but also to prove the fact that in many cases comparatives are manifested in the surface structure of sentences; however, their comparative features almost fades away in the deep structure of sentences.

The use of L1 in L2 performance is not deniable. This study investigates the effects of using translation as a means of testing L2 language writing. To be specific, it examines the effects of two test methods, Direct Composition test (DC) and Translation Composition Test (TCT) on students' writing performance. To conduct the study, 114 language learners studying at different universities of Tehran and majoring in English translation, literature and teaching were involved. Using a TOEFL test they were divided into three- proficiency levels low, intermediate and high. Then they were asked to perform on two writing test methods, Direct Composition and Translation Composition test. However, analyzing the finding of the study indicates that the two major factors of composing process and proficiency level were found to affect the quality of writing texts. Translations were rated significantly higher than direct compositions. All the three proficiency levels benefited according to the new test (translation composition), but this benefit was more significant with the low-proficiency level students. The study also scrutinized 'the effect of these test methods on various components of writing skill.

The first Our'an translators were Iranians, the biggest non-Arab Muslim nation with an ancient culture. In order to transfer the Our'an and Islamic teachings to the east Iranian population (Khorasanl, Iranians began to learn Arabic and excelled so much in Arabic that they wrote the first lexico-morphological and rhetorical books on Arabic mostly needed to understand the Our'an.From the second half of fourth century after hegira, following the order of Amir Nouh-e- Samani and consensus of east Iranian Ulama, the Our'an was translated into Persian. In those days the word "Translation" did not mean finding the synonym word in the target language. At first the words "commentary", "narration" or sometimes "paraphrase" were used, but from the second half of the third century after hegira Jahiz al-Basri used it with its today's usual meaning for the translation of literary and historical texts and from the fifth century after hegira this word was used for Our'an translation too.

The present study is concerned with objectively observable factors that facilitate acceptability of translated texts in Persian. It considers textual features like information load (also known as lexical density), range of vocabulary (also known as lexical variety or type-token ratio) and average sentence length to be arguably objective observable factors. The research, that has been carried out as an MA thesis in Translation Studies at Allameh Tabataba'i University, intends to determine whether a norm could be said to operate in the form of a significant relationship between these textual features and acceptance or popularity of translated texts with readers. A comparable corpus of Persian translational and non-translational fiction was built and used as the material for the study.

This paper provides a brief introduction to different kinds of hypotheses; explanatory, descriptive and interpretive, following which three approaches to the study of translation products, i.e. prescriptive, pejorative and descriptive, are discussed. The paper concludes elaborating on the potential relation between these approaches and the study of translation universals: specific characteristics which, it is hypothesized, are typical of the translated language as distinct from non-translated language. Such characteristics would be the same irrespective of the translation direction and/or whatever the language pair involved in the process of translation.

The meaning of modality has always been concerned with forces that either determine or condition the human action. The forces that are important for the use of modality are primarily of two kinds. Firstly, the free will of human being, secondly, the power of circumstances. According to Lyons the two main concepts of modality are "necessity" and "possibility". These concepts are dependent on the two forces mentioned above. Necessity and possibility may therefore be divided into other concepts such as intention, determination, persistence, compulsion, duty, hope, prediction, assumption. To express all these ideas, language mainly used modal auxiliaries. According to Palmer there are two basic assumptions concerning modality. The first is that modality may be regarded as a grammatical category just as we view aspect, tense, number, gender, etc. The second is that this category can be identified, described, and compared across different languages. This paper, therefore, concentrates on some major English- German modal auxiliaries through which modality may be expressed and compared. The concept of "wish" is excluded here and it will be dealt with in a separate paper.