TRANSLATION STUDIES
Year:2013 | Volume:11 | Issue:42|Papers Count:24

Quronic Arabic includes VSO structure which plays a pivotal role in configuration of the discourse and transfer of the messages. VSO structure is in contrast to other non-verb initial structures like SVO, OVS, etc. It also contrasts with other non-verb initial constructions in information structure. The information structure for VSO is not the same as that of NP-initial sentences. Of challenges translators may face, one canrefer to markedness which proves quite problematic when rendering VSO structure into such languages as Persian which in their unmarked word order are subject initial. But Persian, due to its relatively free word order and pro-drop nature, accommodates VSO structure. As opposed to Persian, such languages as English have problem preserving markedness and discourse features of the source language. There seems to be only few studies on the translation of VSO structure. Hence, it sounds necessary for translators to be aware of such structures and their translation challenges.

The current study aims to identify norms used in the translation of ironic expressions in Persian translated novels, as well as their impact on the characterization and theme of them. To this end, initially verbal ironies in Austen's Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility and Fielding's Tom Jones were analyzed. Next, the ironic utterances of these novels were categorized into nonce and common ironies. The ironic utterances were then compared with their Persian translations in order to identify Persian socio-cultural norms employed by the translators to translate ironic expressions. To this end, Barbe's model of strategies for translating ironies was employed. The findings revealed that there are four Persian socio-cultural norms used in the translation of ironies including adding irony markers, reproducing SL image with TL image, reproducing the same irony, and omission. The findings also indicated that while applying the socio-cultural norm of adding irony markers was frequent in the translation of nonce ironies, the norm of reproducing SL image with TL image and reproducing the same irony were the most frequent norms used by translators in translating common ironies.

History of Translation Studies shows that, for a long time, translators' prefaces to canonic literary and philosophical works were an important part of the theoretical foundation of translation. The aim of the present study is to introduce one of the early translator's prefaces in the history of translation in Iran. This preface to Tanksugh Nama manuscript was written by Khajeh Rashid Al-Din Fazlullah Hamedani at the time of Ilkhanids. This study, firstly, introduces the situation of literature and language and Khajeh Rashid Al-Din Fazlullah Hamedani as the first translator and the patron of translation of medical books, particularly Tanksugh Nama, at the time of Ilkhanids. In the second part, the preface to Tanksugh Nama is investigated from the perspective of translation studies and its details regarding the issue of translation are presented. This study concludes that the preface Khajeh Rashid Al-Din Fazlullah wrote to Tanksugh Nama can be considered as an early foundational statement in the history of translation theory and practice in Iran which can show the depth of theory and practice of translation in the history of translation in Iran.

The present study aimed at investigating the orientations of Iranian MA students of English Translation between 2002 and 2012 based on the key words used in their theses abstracts. To do so, a data bank of four-hundred abstracts from six universities out of eleven was developed. Then, using Customer Magnetism software, the most frequently used key words and their lemma were extracted out of 3750 key words and were then converted into a more compact list of key words through human processing. The results indicated that there were twelve main key wording categories with the highest frequency among the others. The results also revealed that out of twelve key areas in Translation Studies presented by Williams and Chesterman (2002), six areas still remained more or less untouched in Iran.

Following new developments in translation research, intersemiotic translation has opened a new perspective in translation studies and research for examining paratextual elements. The present study was designed to extendprior works on intersemiotic translations of book covers, which can be considered a paratext of a book. The corpus of the study included 42 book covers of two sets of novels translated before the Islamic Revolution of Iran and their retranslated and/or reprinted versions after the Islamic Revolution by the same or different translators. These book covers were analyzed based on Farahzad's model of translation criticism (2011) and the 10 criteria proposed by Kress and Van Leeuwen's (1996 and 2001) and Van Leeuwen's (2005) semiotic analysis. The criteria were reclassified by the researchers into three subclasses: graphic features, content-related features and linguistic information. The results of the study showed that the cover design of these novels changed before and after the Revolution and that these changes were subject to the ideological settings of the country, rather than the translators' or publishers' tastes.

Given what was suggested by Reiss and Vermeer in the late 1970s and early 1980s, translation has to effectively create the communicative and pragmatic purposes of the source text in the context of the target language. Accordingly, their theory postulates that translation has to comply primarily with the "skopos" intended by the original in its source context. To do so, Nord (1997) suggested applying translation brief or a set of strategies in order to create the intended skopos of the source text in the target language and moreover to satisfy the needs of the client or commissioner.Therefore, it remains to be seen whether or not such briefing can actually affect the quality of translations. The present study was carried out in the framework of skopos theory and it draws on Nord's textual analysis while considering the two needed measuring stones namely "adequacy" and "acceptability" as of contributing evaluative criteria in this regard.

The Holy Qur’an is the words of revelation and although the translation of this Holy Book has started since the advent of Islam, for scholars who do research with an intra-religious perspective, the religious validity of such translations has always been an issue.The present paper is a descriptive library research which aims at investigating the permit for Qur’an translation. It examines the concept of translation and focuses on factors that highlight the necessity of Qur’an translation. It mostly draws on the views of Ayatollah Golpoyegani. His views are analysed from different angels using rational reasons and historical evidence.

Following the shifts of views on text, communication and exchange of messages between various media, there have been refinements in views towards translation and its impacts. Given such shifts of ideas, the present paper aims at examining the significance of communication and intersemiotic translation in book cover designs, for they are seen as an important part of every book that can play a role in persuading readers to select and read a specific book. Besides offering a fresh look at the idea of intersemiotic translation, this paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach by borrowing some concepts and definitions from semiotics and incorporating them for its own purposes. Moreover, the main framework of this study is Kress and van Leeuwen's Social Semiotics. The results show interesting semiotic changes in the cover of translated books which in turn could have important socio-semiotic implications in the target culture.

This study investigated the selected hypotheses of Even-Zohar's originally cultural theory of Poly systems. Even-zohar (1990) believed that almost every literature has emerged through interference with a more established literature. In a multicultural society like Iran, where several communities live side by side, the possibility of interference heightens. In order to meet the objectives of the study, the following three questions were formulated: In the case of Azerbaijani of Iran: a) is interference mostly unilateral? b) Does interference occur for the unavailable items within the literary system? c) Does contact eventually generate interference in the absence of resisting condition? To answer these questions, the original and translated books in the repertoire of the Azerbaijani of Iran were collected, categorized and analyzed based on genre, source and target languages, and the year of publication. The findings of the research showed that in the case of Azerbaijani of Iran interference was mostly unilateral. Moreover, the need for unavailable items in the repertoire has not generated interference. And for the third question, a resisting condition was noticed which has affected interference.

Different aspects of translation can be analysed through translation theories. Although comprehensive theories of translation are very small in number, they have allowed translators and researchers to have a more profound understanding of this phenomenon. Interpretive theory of translation is one of these theories that started in Paris. This paper examines different aspects of this theory and highlights some. In the second part of the paper, some Ouronic names are analysed in the framework of the interpretive theory.

Speakers of all languages use different grammatical structures under different communicative circumstances to express the same propositional meaning. This phenomenon occurs when the grammatically acceptable word order of two propositionally identical sentences gets manipulated by the writer or the speaker in order to express a specific communicative meaning. Such issues lead to the area of study known as Information Structure (IS).Markedness phenomenon, as a sub-domain of IS, is addressed in the present descriptive corpus-based research. The purpose of this study was to compare the ratio of marked-unmarked translations in dubbing as opposed to subtitling. As a framework, Halliday's classification of foregrounding forms (marked structures) was adopted. Accordingly, It-cleft, pseudo-cleft, passivized, topicalized, scrambled and tonic stressed sentences were traced in the original English movie dialogues. Then a comparison was made between dubbed and subtitled translations of the original English marked sentences revealing the fact that there is a difference between the renderings of IS in dubbed versions as opposed to subtitled ones. Subtitled translations proved to be more function-preserving and to produce more marked structures in almost every foregrounding structure except for tonic foci. However, in general, it was the dubbed versions which ranked first in preserving markedness functions hidden in the original marked sentences as a result of producing more marked sentences through tonic stress.

Paul Ricoeur is one of the most famous theorists of literary hermeneutics of the 20th century. He defines hermeneutics as the art of decoding indirect meaning and asserts that there is a need for interpretation when we are faced with multiple meanings in the case of symbols. Robert Frost is a philosophical poet of the 20th century. Frost's poems cannot be understood without interpretation. They include philosophical and critical elements. Given the characteristics of Robert Frost' poems and Ricoeur's emphasis on the interpretation of symbols, it seems viable to study the translation of these poems from the hermeneutic perspective of Paul Ricoeur. Literary criticism tries to decode meaning for text interpretation. This decoding and text interpretation are the focus of hermeneutics. By removing the distance between the time of text production and its interpreter, hermeneutics helps readers understand a literary text without the need to make understanding methodological.