TRANSLATION STUDIES
Year:2003 | Volume:1 | Issue:1|Papers Count:9

It is now the 15th century A.H.and the Holy Quran,the only divine book, free from distortion, continues to shed light on the world and provide guidance for people of the world-Muslims in particular-throughout their lives. This boundless divine ocean plays a significant role in promoting moral, cultural, social, and other aspects of the society; provided that God"s Word is utilized properly. In order to benefit from this divine revelation, attempts should be made to grasp and digest the Quranic concepts and teachings. Today, translation is considered as a way of understanding the Quranic teachings though in the past there were some objections against the translation of the Quran.Unfortunately,most of the existingtranslations of this holy book do not contribute to our objective, i.e., understandingthe Quran properly for they do not establish communication between the message of the Book and the readership. Thus, the author of the present paper intends to deal with the existing problems and challenges, as well as presenting the strategies necessary in the translation of the Quran.

This paper discusses the distinguishing features of two major approaches to translation that have been dominant during the second half of the 20th century and are still the most influentialones: linguistics-basedand culture-based translation approaches. The two approaches have their own characteristics that have led them to movein two opposingdirections. Some major features of linguistics-based translation approachesusually known as "scientific"- are source-orientedness, use of linguistic models, paradigms and findings in devising translation theories, a reluctance for analysing literary texts, development of the concept of "equivalence" and replacingit for the old traditionaldispute between the translator"s "faithfulness versus freedom" and a general tendency towards prescriptiveness. Culture-based approaches to translation studies have different features that have put them at odds with linguistics-based translation approaches.These features include the "empirical nature" of translation studies, the recognition of different interpretations as well as several possible translations of a single text, target-orientedness and descriptive study of the "actual translational behaviour" (the product and function of real translated texts).It also explains the cultural views towards translation as a subsystem of the target-language (literary) polysystem that study translation in its historical context of situation and relate the translated texts to the socio-cultural norms and constraints. This paper also deals with the concepts of "norms", "domestication", "foreignization", "heterogeneity", "analogy , and "opacity" developed by culture-based translation scholars such as Susan Bassnett, Andre Lefevere, Theo Hermans, Gideon Toury, Andrew Chesterman, Lawrence Venuti and Tejaswini Niranjana.

In poetry the writing is in a compact and condensed form and the language is more emotionaland connotationalrather than referentialor denotational. In this kind of writing and language the content and containerare so inseparably linked to gether that if separated from one another in the process of translation,much willbe lost of the ineffable emotional meaning and the formal features and delicacies of the original, as most of the poetic characteristics resist translation and remain untranslatable. One cannot translate the musical sound, the inner rhythm, the connotational information, and other essential characteristics of a poetic discourse without radical adjustments and transformations, in which almost all the poetic devices and innate subtleties of the source text willbe lost. The scope of translatability in poetic discourse is a major debate within translation studies. Robert Frost maintains that "poetry is what is lost in translation; Roman Jakobson"s resolute belief is that poetry is by definition untranslatable, and Shelley believes essentially in the impossibility of poetical translation. Some other scholars, however, argue that all meanings are always translatable and what can be conveyed in one language can be conveyed in another, too. In this article we survey different theories regarding the translatability and/or untranslatability of poetry and come to this conclusion that neither possibility nor impossibility of poetry translation should be recognized in an absolute sense. A message can essentially be conveyed in any natural language; it is only the form of communication which differs in different languages as well as in poetry and prose. Thus, although it is possible to translate a poetic discourse in a way acceptable in. the target language, it is impossible to convey all the poetic features and subtleties of the original in the translation.

The objective of this paper is to introduce the challenges that face the lexicography"s process in Iran in order to caution those who are interested in lexicography that as long as modem principles and methods of monolingual and bilingual lexicography are not observed and the lexicographer is not equipped with the necessary expertise and skill of the field, these shortcomings of the standard principles and consequent critical reviews will persist in the lexicography and dictionary-related domains in Iran. This complicated disorder will constantly increase until some logicai -and scientific solution can be found for the above-mentioned fundamental challenges. Admittedly,it is not enough to discuss this matter injust a single paper.The objectivesof this survey are to providea relatively different attitude, to find out a standard method of compiling better dictionaries, to look for new horizons and professional strategies of editing dictionaries based on modern scientific up-to-date principles and to remove existing shortcomings.

A major issue in teaching translation courses is how to sequence the texts designed for the practice of translation in a translator training course. The general policy is to sequence them in terms of difficulty. In the practice of translati on, text difficulty is of two types, one concerning comprehension (of the SL) and the other concerning translation-specific difficulties. Both types function at three levels: the lexical, the syntactic and the concept/evels, the last of which seems to form the greatest source of difficulty. Concepts, either concrete-referenced (CRC) or abstract referenced (ARC), may be universal or non-universal. Universal CRCs and ARCs are easier both to comprehend and to translate. Non-universal ones are not necessarily difficult to translate, particularly after the comprehension problems are solved. As for sequencing the material designed for practice, the article provides a framework for determining difficulty at lexical and syntactic levels, and suggests that the most effective technique is to rank the texts first on the basis to the type and category of their general concepts (CRCs/ARCs), and then on, the basis of their lexical and syntactic difficulty as determined by the scales given in the article.

The aim of the present paper is to probe into the possible similarities and differences between translating and interpreting which naturally involves translations and interpretations as well. Though seemingly performed under different circumstances/ the two come to share a lot in common as indicated by the paper, leaving room for one major factor which gives way to a good many differences between the two conducts.

The present paper attempts to investigate the relationship between translatology, the scientific study of translating/translation,and linguisticsand determine where it stands as opposed to other sciences within the framework of humanities. To achieve this, the paper will embark on introducing private and social languages. Then, reference will be made to translating and types of translation. Later, the manner in which message is interpreted will be dealt with, leading to posing the main question, the answer to which will indicate whether or not translatology should necessarily be considered as a sub-branch of the study of language.