TRANSLATION STUDIES
Year:2005 | Volume:3 | Issue:10|Papers Count:10

Translation movement and generation of science have a deep root in Iranian history. In order to acquire various sciences and technologies in different periods, Iranians acquainted themselves with other nations' achievements and subsequently initiated their own innovations. Therefore, we witness a cultural and scientific blossoming in Iran's society following the translation movements. In the second and third centuries after Hejira, Iranians were, in their part, effectively triggered the translation movement in which translators translated from Pahlavi,Greek, Syriac and other languages into Arabic, and prompted the Golden Era of the Islamic civilization. In this period, Iranians accomplished remarkable and landmark scientific achievements and innovations in many fields. However, the most important period when translation activity could have significant effect on the development of scientific generation was Qajar Period. At this period Iranians attempted to acquire western technologies after getting acquainted with western civilization and progress. Therefore, the best way for them to attain success in this regard was through translation movement. When fighting the wars against Russia in the early 19thcentury, Abbas Mirza, the Qajar Crown Prince, felt the need for obtaining western sciences through translation. He was the first patron of translation who ordered translation of western texts. His next step was to dispatch students to Europe. He believed that these students would be a source of scientific developments in Iran upon acquisition of western sciences and technologies. Another development that helped improve and modernize Iran's level of science was establishment of the printing press and journals. Iranians familiarized themselves with new scientific discoveries through these media. During Naser ud-Din Shah's period, with the establishment of the Dar ul-Fonoon Polytechnic College, as the first Iranian academy, western sciences began to be taught. With the establishment of modem schools, scientific development began in Iran and proper grounds were prepared for scientific and cultural developments.

This paper deals with the translation of humor in subtitling. The research attempts to explore notions of subtitling and humor in theory and to manipulate the strategies used in practice. The study used a descriptive approach in answering the two questions: Is subtitling target language/culture oriented or not? And are there any certain types of strategies employed by subtitlers in translating humor in subtitling? In this article, a short theoretical discussion about the main topics: audiovisual translation especially subtitling, and humor will be given. The material for the study consists of two American feature films 'Dumb and Dumber' (1994) and 'LiarLiar' (1997) both with Persian subtitles. In the analysis a classification of humor is made and then based on them, the strategies which were employed by the subtitlers in translating humor are analyzed and discussed.

The first part of this paper introduces different approaches adopted towards 'quality' and 'assessment' as two technical terms frequently employed by many translation scholars and evaluators when discussing theoretical and practical aspects of translation quality assessment. Presented in the second part are five different evaluation methods and procedures most-frequently applied by translation instructors and raters for educational purposes in educational settings. The paper concludes with suggestions for some comparative/contrasted studies aimed at measuring time-effectiveness, accuracy, user-friendliness and degree of objectivity of ratings performed using each and every one of the five methods introduced.

The translator of a literary text observes the semantic sense of the words, the weight, the cultural setting, and other technical features of the original text to yield an acceptable translation in the TL. The accomplishment however is not that easy, for the translator meets some major impediments in performing the task. A translator who is familiar with different critical approaches, first, interprets the text and then sees how the message can be conveyed in the TL, from which the reader is likely to elicit the same interpretation. Being open to interpretation on different levels, a literary text challenges the translator who explores the text meaning and reshapes it in another system. The translator of a literary text also interprets the text according to the cultural setting it was written in. The dominant ideology of the time does not leave literature unaffected and much of the semantic weight of the text might have been shaped accordingly. The style and structure of a literary text are different from those of the ordinary language because the intentions lying behind them are different and each style is correspondent with the purpose of the writer. Due to the sundry implications and connotations words have, translators of literary texts need to find equivalents that are the most precise and capable of conveying the implied meanings. Sincere attempt is needed to transfer culture-bound idioms and proverbs from SL to TL. Literary texts are abundant with idioms and proverbs that are meaningful in the context of the culture they are part of. With all such things in mind, a satisfactory literary translation should crave creativity and knowledge on the side of the translator if the unity and pleasure of literary texts is to be kept and conveyed.

Religious texts codify aspects of highly culture-specific characteristics which call for translation in favor of peace and freedom. Rendering religious texts faces translators with non-indigenous difficulties both in linguistic and culture-specific aspects by and large. To come up with drawbacks in linguistic and problems, strategies and the theories inter alia. The dispute is not over the detraction of neither SL nor TL, but over the priviso that there are more than one choice at lexical level and above to choose from in translating each, with its ad hoc merits.

Translation criticism is the act of making judgments on a translation. It is carried out, in the strict sense, through assessing the quality of the target text and evaluating it in comparison with the original. One-sided criticism, which is based solely on the translation without comparing it with the source text, is not a thorough process, since it is the source text which is considered as the yardstick in translation evaluation. A translation may be natural in its language, normal in its style, intelligible in its content, and fluent in its readability, but it may not be faithful to the original in communicating its message. Thus, naturalness of language in the target text and faithfulness to the source text in conveying its message with the intended purpose or function are the basic criteria in translation criticism. The present article is an attempt to discuss these criteria in detail.

Literature, as one of the constituents of a macro-system called 'Culture', is involved in various disciplines. It takes form in a 'Language System', manifests itself in the 'literary System', and reveals its identity in a 'Socio-cultural System'. The literary text, as a result of the interaction of these systems, goes through a process of engagement and disengagement. This process provides the discipline-oriented text with the capacity to go beyond the existing disciplines in order to establish the new ones. That is why the works of literature are multi-faceted texts. Although it is said that any translation is - by definition- a kind of 'appropriation', the literary translation, as a process of working on an ever-changing text, can never be defined by mere 'appropriation'. In fact, for the very reason of dealing with a mutable text, the literary translation loses its ability to give a clear-cut definition of itself, because, like the literary text, it turns out to be multi-faceted. If the écriture- as the specific form of writing, or the personal style of the writer - determines the double desire of the text for the discipline, and for going beyond it, literary translation will be an écriture that with the aim of coming as close as possible to the text, keeps its inevitable distance from it.

This article grew out of a class for graduate students of Persian Literature in 2003. In the course, I used classical and modem Persian texts and their English translations. This approach revealed many semantic subtleties, structural oddities, and cultural differences between the Persian source texts and the English target texts which pinpointed about translations in relation to national literature. In the first part of this article I discuss some general points in translation with special reference to contrasting literary works and their English renditions, and I then illustrate how the source messages, especially literary works, when passing through another linguistic prism, will reveal some new, unwonted aspects of meaning and form which captivate readers and help them find new facets in their interpretation of the text. By means of examples in Persian and English it is shown how a juxtaposition of source texts with target texts is an invaluable source of linguistic information and cultural illumination not only to target-language audiences but also to source-language readers.

The present study investigates the application of different methods of statistical analysis in translation studies. The question this study seeks to answer is how using statistics can help the researcher in translation define and measure different variables of translation, especially the abstract ones. To answer the question, the concept of abstraction has been elaborated on in which different applications of statistics in translation have been explained and exemplified, then, the statistical processes of hypothesis testing in translation studies has been discussed with examples. Finally, the concept of probability in such studies has been explained in terms of variables mostly used in translation. As a result, the factors reviewed agree on more compatibility of statistical analysis in translation studies. Thus, it is recommended that translation studies be equipped with statistical analysis of data.