TRANSLATION STUDIES
Year:2008 | Volume:6 | Issue:22|Papers Count:8

The inevitable changes that all aspects of a language undergo require lexicographers, especially those who compile bilingual dictionaries, to stay abreast of the latest changes. Each dictionary, indirectly, reveals the compiler's style, his knowledge of the source and target languages, and his knowledge of lexicography. This paper endeavors to undertake a contrastive study of four English-Persian dictionaries: Aryanpour (1377), Baleni (1369), Ja'fari (1383) and Haghshenas (1381). The contrastive study focuses on three areas 1. Semantic categorization, accuracy in choosing equivalents, and semantic domain 2. Grammatical usage and abbreviations, and 3. Phonetic transcription. At the end of each chapter a brief assessment of the above mentioned dictionaries will be provided. The wide-range uses of these dictionaries by students, language learners, researchers and, most especially, translators make such studies indispensable. However, this paper is not to find faults in the dictionaries, since the painstaking task of dictionary writing is clear to the users.

It is generally accepted that collocational problems are present in the process of language learning, and they play an important role in the process of second language learning as well as translation. In spite of the fact that a majority of EFL learners have a good knowledge of grammar and vocabulary in English, they lack necessary knowledge of the collocational patterns.Moreover, collocations and restrictions related to their use are not considered important by teachers and learners. This study is a two-process study in which concerning the importance of linguistic issues in translation, the matter of collocational clashes in translation is investigated. The focus of the reseorch is on how and to what extent SL collocations affect TL collocations and in what areas of translation we observe clashes between the two languages of English and Persian as we consider the choice of collocations. How selection of collocations in TLis affected by SL? Are natives and non-natives aware of the collocations in their language?In order to answer these questions six Persian translations of two English novels were studied. The clashes of collocations were collected. They were used in two multiple-choice tests that were prepared to show the fundamental factors which result in unacceptable collocations. They were given to the students of Persian literature and students of English language. The results were analyzed for further study. During this study it was found out that some causes for collocational clashes were more frequent as compared to other causes. The most frequent ones were as follows:type-setting errors MistranslationNon-observance of colloctional possibilities TL.

Through a survey on historical and philosophical traces of the phenomenon of "repetition" in the West, this paper deals with the significance and role of rhetorical repetitions in literary texts from the perspective of discourse analysis and translation studies. Addressing the issue of translating repeated elements in texts from a discourse analysis perspective and pointing out the crucial role that proper rendering of such elements can play in relaying the content, style, and diction of the source text (ST) into the target text (TIL to underline the rhetorical significance of repetition, the author presents instances of repetition from the fields of oration, religious discourse, and literature. The paper finally compares portions of a number of published Persian translations of a few literary texts, including parts of a few plays by William Shakespeare, to indicate to what extent the translators have appropriately relayed rhetorical repetitions in the source text to the target text.

The present paper takes the discourse concept of cohesion, as one of the textuality standards, to evaluate the accuracy of a live SI corpus consisting of several SL (Persian) speeches and their TL(English)interpretations in terms of the degree of cohesion constituted. Different components of cohesion broadly dichotomized into grammatical and lexical types along with their sub-components have been detected both in the SL and TL texts and, then, compared. Finally, some recommendations are made as to the exigency for observing cohesion in the Speaker's and Interpreter’s speeches so as to secure mutual understanding.

It is absolutely indispensable to translate without resorting to extralingustic factors. Process of Translation is under the pressure of ideology (as an extra linguistic factor) concerning all linguistic factors including syntax, lexicon, phonology, etc. Ideology itself establishes a foundation (loose or taught) in background which directs (consciously or unconsciously) translators into the linguistic choices yielding different products. Moreover, it is not language system choices per se which is under the in influence of ideology. Implications and implicatures are determined and controlled on a par with ideological presuppositions as well. It is, however, crucial to note that no component of language per se may be ideological. In return, ideology is reflected in language system. This article, too, aims at delving into the role of different ideological backgrounds on translation; though exclusively focusing on the Holy Quran. Critical discourse analysis views are powerful enough to account for such approaches because they take into account textual form and extralinguistic factors simultaneously in tandem.

In general one can claim that translation is an activity that poses many problems for translators. The present study is going to touch upon metaphors in the Divan of Hafez (1310) in its English translation by Wilberforce Clarke (IBB I), to investigate how procedures employed by the translators can help TT readers in perceiving the implied meanings associated with metaphors in Hafez poetry. As far as the translation of metaphors in the Divan is concerned, it was observed that the most frequently· employed procedure (literal translation) could not be considered as the most effective one. The procedure 'couplets' (literal translation plus notes of any kind) seems to be one of the best procedures of translating metaphors since it makes the IT reader aware of the concepts and meanings underlying ST metaphors.

Iranians were the first non-Arab nation who translated the whole Quran and its single words. Their endeavour from the early Islamic era to compile the Quranic Persian glossaries is admirable. This paper intends to demonstrate an Iranian translator's strategies adopted in translating Quranic single words into Persian. The said translator, who lived about seven hundred years ago, like any modern translator, used the same strategies known to translation scholars today. Some of these strategies were: providing suitable equivalents for each word that could preserve its function and structure, accompanying translated words with a short or long description, translating a word into an Arabic-Persian compound phrase and finally annotating the untranslatable borrowed words (i.e. Arabic loan words) that were used in the Qura'n.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nature of fiction translation and to explore the impact of application of sociosemiotic approach on translation of fiction. The applicability of the sociosemiotic approach to translation of fiction is examined from two perspectives: theory basis and translation practice. Four qualified professors with pho degrees in Teaching, Linguistics, Literature and Translation participated in this study by completing three surveys about translations of Joyce's "Araby" and giving scores to them according to certain criteria such as: title, genre (myth and archetype), setting and atmosphere, point of view, tone, symbolism, epiphany, allusion, imagery and intertexuality. The findings confirm significant effects. The conclusion may be drawn that this type of translation method deserves significant attention during the development in other sciences.