TRANSLATION STUDIES
Year:2004 | Volume:2 | Issue:6|Papers Count:8

This paper tries to present a diachronic review of the literature on how to establish a stylistic equivalence in literary translation. To this end, firstly the term "style" is taken into consideration as it has been dealt with both in "literary theory" and "linguistic theory" and then present approaches to "translational equivalence", in general, and "stylistic equivalence", in particular are examined.

Translation brings cultures closer. In our globalized world, translation is the key to understanding and learning foreign cultures. This study is an attempt to show the mutual relationship existing between culture and language and to review various opinions in this respect.Differences among cultures and civilizations as well as the effect of translation in linking different beliefs, languages, religions, thoughts and cultures and in facilitating the process of dialogue among civilizations are studied considering anthropological aspects of cultural differences and translatability vs. untranslatability of cultural elements within Whorf's and Chomsky's theoretical frameworks.

Communication between and among bilinguals does not always take place in the same manner. In fact, interaction among bilingual individuals depends on the circumstances, topics under discussion, and even the mood of the interlocutors. For this reason, upon careful consideration of the communication between and among bilinguals, one will definitely have to deal with bilingualism in general and code-switching and code-mixing in particular. It is the objective of the present paper to introduce bilingualism in brief, and deal with code-switching and code mixing in detail, for bilinguals may follow different patterns in their conversation and adhere to one of the possible choices. Attempts will also be made to provide examples in either one of the cases when deemed necessary.

This paper aims at introducing "untranslatability" and examining its dimensions. Focusing on the issue is noticeable and significant in that any comment on its various aspects may lead us to provide a solution for the attainment of a closer TL equivalent for different units of translation which lack an exact equivalent, or which seems very difficult to find an equivalent for. Here, untranslatability is defined from different scholars' points of view, then, its refutability conditions are discussed with a focus on some reasons.

The concept of translation movement is controversial, and brings several questions to mind. In this article, an attempt is made to investigate the debates around the concept throughout the translation history. While surveying this phenomenon, historically, in Iran and the word, we will discuss its definition, necessity, effect (advantages and disadvantages), the socio-cultural and political factors making the ground for it, and also the prerequisites for the emergence (or establishment) of translation movement.

In view of the significance of accuracy in translation of religious texts, this paper briefly discusses the theoretical foundations of translation. Then two approaches toward translatability or untranslatability of religious texts are introduced. According to the first approach, based on a belief that there exists a relationship between religious texts and the divine revelation and that it is out of the reach and authority of humans to determine and manipulate the linguistic form of revelation, it is deemed impossible to translate religious texts. Conversely, according to the second approach, as it is deemed necessary for all humans to understand the message of divine revelation and as the message of the divine revelation does not exclusively belong to the speakers of a certain language, it is inevitable to translate religious texts.Relying on the arguments set forth by these two approaches, a third approach is proposed in this paper, trying to observe the requirements and limitations prescribed by these two contradictory approaches. According to this view, the so-called "conditional translatability of religious texts", new definitions are provided for the "translator" of religious texts, "readership" of translated religious texts, "religious text" and its varieties.

Translation is defined as the transfer of meaning from a language system into another without any change or reduction in meaning. Chomsky's model, as a framework for translation, would render meaning from SL D-structure into TL D-structure, but Chomsky's methodology in distinguishing competence from performance poses certain serious implications for transfer of meaning. D-structure is a level of conceptual meaning, containing simply those aspects of meaning which are lexicalized and which are incorporated in the D-structure through lexical registration rules. However, contextual meanings which are treated under pragmatics will be capable of transfer, unless they either are lexicalized both in SL and TL, or are arbitrarily represented in a word or lexical item in SL and TL.

The term 'hybrid' in translation studies refers to texts that are mixture of two different languages and   cultures. It applies both to translated texts, i.e. target texts where linguistic and cultural traces of the SL. are preserved, and text particularly literary works, which are a blending of the languages of the ex-colonized and ex-colonized, e.g. a poem or novel written in English by an Indian poet author in which s/he preserves her/his cultural signs.The article shows that immigration literature constitutes a body of hybrid texts written by immigrant writers. It concludes that the post-colonial writer share certain qualities with the immigrant writer: they both are hybrid and in search of new identities, in an in-between world. This gives rise to linguistically and culturally texts which belong to the in-between world, a world located between the native and the colonizer’s/host culture.