TRANSLATION STUDIES
Year:2010 | Volume:8 | Issue:30|Papers Count:18

This paper examines translation of personal deixis in three Persian translations of To the Lighthouse. Firstly, the theoretical framework and the related literature are reviewed.In fact, as a means for determining spatiotemporal point of view in narrative fiction and for revealing the relationship between characters' utterances and their point of view, deixis shows whether narrator's or characters' perspectives are realized in the story or not. Secondly, translation of personal deixis of To the Lighthouse is examined by comparing and contrasting the original with selected samples of its three translations into Persian. Finally, it is discussed that by reducing the narrator's and characters' duet to a single voice, Hosseini has translated indirect discourse into direct discourse (80%) while the two other translators have preserved the quality of the original discourse.

As a temporal aspect of simultaneous interpreting (51) and a variable susceptible to source language (SL) factors, ear-voice span (EVS) has been used as a reliable measure of both interpreter's cognitive processing and the quality of his output (Barik, 2002; Gile, 2008; Goldman-Eisler, 1980). This study sets out to measure temporally and linguistically the EVS patterns adopted by a professional interpreter during Persian-English51alongside a strategic assessment of his EVS regulation. The speaker's and interpreter's outputs were collected in a real conference setting. With the aid of Sound Forge, a comparative analysis was made on synchronized SL-TL wave files to detect different EVS patterns adopted by the interpreter.Following the detection of EVS patterns, an intertextual assessment of interpretations was carried out to detect the types of EVS regulation strategies.Quite commensurate with Goldman-Eisler's (1972) findings, the results from linguistic EVS measurement indicated that the SL verb is a main determinant of meaning and a reliable point of departure for the interpreter to commence interpreting. However, shorter EVS patterns like NP, NP+NP and NP+PP were also found to act as interpretation openers and the interpreter facing the verb-last structure of Persian input did not always give out long EVS patterns, but strategically opted for short and optimal VP-Iess EVS patterns with reliance on a set of regulation strategies to eschew insidious cognitive overload and present a successful 51performance. From didactic optique, it is recommended that the EVS regulation strategies detected in this study like skipping, filtering, generalization, stalling, chunking and anticipation could be wisely incorporated into an interpreter training syllabus.

Word order is one of the most important elements in the structure of any language. Some translators believe that in the Holy Qur' an, word order plays a significant part in conveying meaning and thus any change in the word order results in distortion of divine words; they therefore try their best to preserve the word order of the original in their translations. The present paper investigates word order in a number of Persian and English translations of the Holy Qur' an. It is discussed that some language peculiarities are effective in opting for SLor TLword order in translation.It is argued that some of the peculiarities of ~rsian language enable the translators to preserve the word order of the source language; in fact, even in cases where a marked word order in the target language makes the translation closer to the original, translators have preferred the marked TL word order. As regards English translations, most of them have used a natural TL word order; this is because English is case assigner, i.e. any change in its word order may result in a change in meaning or an ungramm1tical structure.

Without translation, the style and technique of an author will not go beyond the borders of the author's country. Thus translators have an important responsibility for making known the style and technique of authors worldwide. In this study, based on Toury's notion of 'adequacy' and 'acceptability', it is tried to highlight the significance of the role of translators in transferring the style of the author. To this end, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and its two translations, one by Saleh Hosseini and the other by Silvia Bejaniyan, are chosen as the corpus of the study.Woolfs style in To the Lighthouse, known as free indirect discourse, is discussed to see how the translators have treated her style in Persian. It is observed that Hosseini, having subjected himself to the ST, has been more watchful of Woolfs style creating an adequate translation rather than Bejaniyan, who, by moving towards IT, has domesticated the original text producing an acceptable translation hence ignoring Woolfs style.

The role of feedback in changing behaviour and learning is one of the main principles of the Chaos Theory and Cybernetics. A positive or negative feedback loop can increase or decrease learning. According to the Attribution Theory, individuals attribute their success and failure to four factors: a. ability, b. effort, c. success and d. task difficulty. Due to the fact that the teacher plays an important role in enhancing students' learning ability, the effect of his educational comments and feedbacks on students' behaviour can be analyzed. This interdisciplinary research reports an investigation and analysis of teachers' educational comments and feedbacks on students' translation, based on "Chaos Complexity Theory", "Attribution Theory" and "Cybernetics". Suggestions are made for the enhancement of teaching translation.

Venuti (1995) defines domesticating translation as “a replacement of the linguistic and cultural differences of the foreign text with a text that is intelligible to the target-language reader” and foreignizing translation as “a translation that indicates the linguistic and cultural differences of the text by disrupting the cultural codes that prevail in the target language” The present study attempts to investigate two translations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to discover the relationship between domestication and comprehensibility of the text through comparing the frequency of domestication and foreignization translation strategies employed by two different translators: Pirzad and Soleymani.Since Pirzad presented a more domesticated translation, one group of subjects were provided with her translation, and the other with the translation of Soleymani who was more interested in foreignizing. After administering comprehensibility test and analyzing the results through t-test, it was revealed that the group of subjects who had received Pirzad’s translation came up with better scores and also there was a significant relationship between domestication and comprehensibility of the children at 0.01 level of significance.

The purpose of this paper is to apply the systematic model proposed by Munday, to a short Persian text (ST) and its English translation (IT) in an attempt to explain the impact that shifts have had on the IT at macro-level, and to interpret the IT using Lefevere's notion of rewriting.To this end, Munday's notion of shifts, Lefevere' snotion of rewriting and Lambert and Hendrik van Gorp's  notion of Macro-level are explained, and then, within Munday's framework, the original and the translated texts chosen for this purpose are described from a socio-cultural point of view and their ideational, interpersonal and textual functions are discussed. Finally, the translated text is explained in the light of Lefevere's notion of rewriting.

Collocations are regular co-occurrences of words. Getting familiar with collocations like sirat mustaqem (صراط المستقیم) and yawm den (صراط المستقیم) is a necessity for English translators of the Holy Qur'an. In this study, nine well-known English translations of the Holy Qur'an are analyzed with respect to semantic collocations.Frequent semantic collocations are extracted from the Qur'an and the componential analysis reveals the original concepts enclosed within sample collocations. The results indicate that some new meaning components are introduced into the contexts as collocational clashes. Therefore semantic collocations of the Holy Qur'an may not be translated into other languages word by word. A semantic collocation can be considered as a unit of translation.In this study, at first, the concept of collocation and its role in the translation of the Holy Qu'an is explained, and then Five kinds of collocations are discussed. The relevant tables showing the total number and frequencies of different kinds of collocations are also presented.

It goes without saying that to produce high-quality translations, competent translators are needed; those who have gained adequate expertise through university education. However, the translations offered by so-called translators and experts are most often of low quality. Despite this necessity, no serious research has been conducted to evaluate the criteria set for designing and offering translation courses taught at Iranian universities, and whether they are appropriate or not.This paper looks at the present situation of translation teaching in some Iranian universities from the following angles: the whys and wherefores of translation teaching at universities, the major weaknesses, and the necessity of viewing translation teaching as a learning process. Besides, an attempt has been made to introduce some remedies for healing the ailing system of teaching translation in some Iranian universities. The findings of this paper have been obtained through interviews and direct observation of translation classes held at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Imam Reza University as well as Sheikh Bahaeei University of Isfahan. Our findings revealed that: a. those who teach translation at universities in Iran lack professional background in translation; b. translation teachers have not received any kind of training in teaching translation; c. the processes of developing objectives and selecting material are carried out randomly; d. there is a severe shortage in resources and classroom facilities; e. there is severe lack of coordination in the program, and as a result the overall program is not very successful. These results imply the necessity to re-evaluate the criteria set for designing and implementing the translation courses taught at Iranian universities.