TRANSLATION STUDIES
Year:2006 | Volume:4 | Issue:15|Papers Count:8

In the literature of translation studies and in translation classrooms, students and learners are required to read Persian classics and modern fiction to master the ability to write Persian; little mention is made of functions and advantages of comparing and contrasting translations with their originals. It, being one of the fields of contrastive textology, is of vital importance in language learning, translation education, translation studies, lexicography, finding equivalents for SL expressions and terms, standardization of neologisms, etc. The paper attempts to introduce the concept, enumerating its uses and privileges and giving examples of its uses in learning morphology and syntax of SL and TL.

This paper offers a brief historical overview of the pre-Ottoman and Ottoman periods in order to explore and provide for the first time a lexicon of Turkish terms/concepts for translation. The examination of various primary and secondary materials and their extratextual discourse regaled to translation here will serve as a small-scale genealogy as well as a background for observing multiple translational practices in Ottoman culture. My argument in this paper is that Turkish terms/concepts of translation are various and that translation in Ottoman culture should be considered within a broad scale without excluding its heterogeneity and culture-specific aspects and practices. This argument will entail, in retrospect, a wide-ranging perspective in identifying a variety of translation (terceme) practices. In this paper, I will first focus on translational terms/concepts in east Turkic or Old Turkic, particularly on Uyghur Turkish, which was recorded in runiform script and documented in manuscripts of frequently religious character produced in central Asia. Then I will examine those in west Turkic (Oghuz Turkishl, i.e. old Anatolian Turkish, which evolved later info Ottoman Turkish in Asia Minor. Finally, I will analyze the late nineteenth century definitions of translation in Ottoman Turkish lexicons.

Performance of the interpreters could in many ways be assessed by the audience, whether professional, or not. Coming out of a conference, or a negotiating session in which an interpreter performed as a mediator between and among a number of individuals involved, s/he may hear a number of different types of comments on his/her performance, such as "had it not been for the quick wit of the interpreter, we wouldn't have come out of the session with agreement.", or " what a talented interpreter. He perfectly handled both sides so swiftly and authoritatively," One thing we must bear in mind is that not all comments are in favor of the interpreters and their performances. It is possible that the interpreters will be the target of strong criticisms by the audience of a lecture delivered, or the negotiating members of a delegation. It is thus the objective of the present paper to glance at the performance of interpreters and find out why some of them prove weak in their performances. In other words, the present paper is aimed at providing interpreter trainees and probably novice interpreters with certain dues so that they can overcome their weaknesses and prove successful mediators in probably all sessions their performance is required. Now, let us investigate the probable weaknesses of interpreters and find out if it is possible to categorize them. Attempts will also be made to/ provide possible solution to the probable problems in this connection.

The process of representing works from a literally tradition in a different cultural framework through translation is not determined exclusively by the translator or the one who seems to be selecting the works to be translated. In fad, in the majority of cases, this process is greatly in Huenced by elements of the culture which is going to host these works. In the case of modem Persian literature and its representation in the West through translation, some of these elements which function through the market are highlighted by an approach which, under the guise of postmodemism/post colonialism, perpetuates the old orientalist cliches and concepts. An examination of some of the Persian literally works translated and published in anthologies during the past two decades in the United States clearly demonstrates how neo-orientalist cliches hove succeeded in imposing themselves on the process of selecting which works are to be translated. These clichés are constructed based on the notion that literally works of Persian literature (and many other literally traditions of the region) are useful to the West only because they could reveal social and political issues in Iran. This notion informs and is informed by preconceived views about those social and political issues. Accordingly, therefore, specific and limited expectations about Persian literature are instituted. Such a market is further defined by another approach which assumes that Persian literally work is in an elementally stage and that thus readers can have only limited literary expectations from it. Clearly this image also in Huences the selection process, but the main consequence of such an approach is that it ignores the need to study the unique characteristics of the Persian literally tradition and that the translated works are then almost never subject to rigorous critical examination; and so the vicious cycle continues. Considering these obstacles which frustrate efforts to use translation as a tool to present a true image of the Persian literary tradition, I argue that the ad of translation should be accompanied by a theoretical undertaking aimed at establishing concepts and structures through which works of Persian literature in translation can be explored. It is only in this context that the ad of translation could lead to the presentation of true examples of the Persian literary tradition within Western cultures.

The present paper attempts to explore the issue of representation by focusing on two major translations of Persian poetry and literature, one produced in mid 19th century and the other produced in late 2th century. The First part is devoted to Edward Fitzgerald's so-called translation of Khayyam's Rubaiyat, and his strategies of appropriation, which range from adding new verses and quatrains of his own to the Rubaiyat, to alteration of symbols and images, and exclusion of significant cultural elements, all of which have transformed Khayyam into a Western poet-philosopher. The second port briefly discusses the rather recent translations of Rumi's works by Coleman Barks, who seems to be following the same path as Fitzgerald after more than a century, and somehow contributing to a rather similar representation of Persian literature. It further concludes that Western image of Persian literature produced over time still persists, and defines translation within the some old framework of power relations rather than literary exchange.

As Iranians became more interested in and attracted to understanding the philosophical and religious schools of thought after the revolution, many translations of important Western books and articles appeared on those schools. But these translations and their contents have encountered serious challenges. If those challenges are neglected we will experience a kind of misunderstanding of Western thoughts as well as some irrelevant cultural influences of those thoughts. In this paper, I will present some vulnerabilities of translation of philosophical and religious texts; and focus on the necessity of seriously considering the hermeneutic foundations of these translations so that it will be possible to have suitable interpretation of the translated ideas.

The present paper addresses a few major questions concerning the politics of selection, translation and distribution of the works of the Middle Eastern women writers, such as:1. How does the knowledge on Middle Eastern women's literature shape geopolitical and gendered hierarchies, or is it shaped by it?2. What is the location of these texts within the academic hierarchy of knowledge? 3. How can these texts that travel through translation be, in Spivak's words, deanthropologised? The paper, therefore, examines the distribution of the works of women authors of the Arab, Persian and Turkic worlds translated into English and published in the U.S. recently. It focuses on the ways in which these texts, informed by the politics of reception and representation, and confined to a certain mode of discourse, are appropriated to symbolize gendered otherness in the curriculum of a diverse body of academic disciplines. The paper also discusses the ways in which these texts, depending on their success, move back to the Middle East, translated into other Middle Eastern languages once they are packaged in the West to be further appropriated in otherizing the other in the Middle East.

The Natural Semantic Meta-language Theory (NSM) presented by A. Wierzbicka introduces a list of universal semantic primes and the syntactic rules which create other complex concepts out of these universal basic semantic components. After introducing the NSM theoretical framework, the present paper puts forward the idea of the existence of the innate and universal translatable semantic components across languages.