Literary Translation

In this research, different English translations of Sa‘di’s Bustan were studied. An anecdote was selected randomly with its three English translations to identify whether or not the translators have managed to convey the messages of the original poem. The three selected translations were examined according to two of the criteria that Larson (1984) has proposed (accuracy and naturalness) for testing a translation. By accuracy, the researcher intended to see whether, the translators have been successful in rendering the SL text accurately and precisely without radical changes, omission and addition; and by naturalness, it was meant whether the translations sound natural or they contain strange and foreign words. The results of the study show that Edwards has been successful in understanding the main idea of the original poem and conveying it into prose. Clarke’s translation is word-for-word and being literal, the natural criterion has been breached in some instances. Wickens’s has attempted to transfer the exact meaning of the original to the target text. Among the three translations studied, that of Wickens is considered to be the most accurate one.

This research studied the creativity in Persian translation of The Remains of the Day by Najaf Daryabandari and the influence of creativity on a more successful literary translation. To this end, Schjoldager (2008) and Holst (2010) models were introduced and definitions of the micro-strategies and macro-strategies of these models were presented. The main questions with regard to the purpose of the study were whether the Persian translation of this novel is creative and whether creativity is influential in a more successful literary translation. In this study, the translator's creativity was studied through examples that were obtained by means of comparative analysis of the source and target texts as well as features defined in the eight creative micro-strategies of the Holst model. In addition, the features of translated text in terms of using Qajar prose were considered the macro-strategy, which was adopted by the translator. The findings of the study were as follows: The Persian translation of The Remains of the Day by the translator, Najaf Daryabandari, was a creative translation. In the research process, it could be inferred that the translator was able to present a successful literary translation in a meaningful and tactile manner in the target language by using creativity and by comparing and understanding the similarities of the nineteenth century classic English and Qajar dialects. Among extracted samples in this study, the most frequent one was the micro-strategy of adaptation, which was one of the most creative micro-strategies of the Holst model.

Culture-specific items (CSIs) abound in languages. Sometimes these items are peculiar to one culture and sometimes they may be shared across several cultures. Every translator encounters a variety of CSIs in different texts ​​and may face difficulties in translating them, particularly in literary translation (e.g. children’s literature). To overcome the problem of finding the right equivalent, the translator has to rely on different strategies. This study investigates the strategies used to render CSIs in two Persian translations of Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and Chocolate Factory”, following Newmark’s (1988) model (which includes categories such as cultural equivalent , transference , functional equivalent , through-translation , etc.). The study also compares the two translations, inspecting and explaining the strategies used in each one to translate the CSIs observed. Based on the data analysis and the results of the study, the most widely used strategies was “cultural equivalent”, followed by “through-translation” and “recognized translation.”

Translating literary works is a difficult task, especially when it comes to cultural elements. It gets more difficult when words have ambiguities and multiple layers of meaning. The present study sought to examine the adequacy of witticism in the English renderings of Sa'di's clever remarks in Golistan (The Rose Garden). To this purpose, the researchers selected three English translations of Golistan by different translators; namely, Rehatsek (1964), Gladwin (1806), and Ross (1890). A sample of 20 anecdotes containing wittical elements were randomly taken from Golistan and compared with their English translations. The collected data were then analyzed based on Delabastita's (1993) hierarchy of pun translation strategy model. The obtained results revealed that the three translations were at best similar in terms of the applied strategies, i.e. in all the translations, the most frequently used strategies were: Pun/Non-Pun translation strategy, Non-Pun/Pun strategy, and Pun/Related Rhetorical Translation strategy, respectively. Moreover, it was indicated that all the three translations used the strategies to the same extent, though slight differences were found among them in terms of the overall use of the strategies. Since adequacy in Delabastita’ framework (1993) is hierarchically defined, it can be concluded that higher level strategies lead to more adequate translations. Generally, it was observed that the three translations were the same in terms of semantic and humorous adequacy; i.e. they transferred the source text effect in translating wittical elements of the Golistan. The findings of the study would have implications for translation students as well as translators of literary works.

    Munday asserts that there exist particular norms belonging to each specific time. In other words, each era is of distinguishing norms; sometimes, transgressing these norms results in unsatisfactory outcomes. On this account, translators ought to apply appropriate norms in each era in the act of translation. The present study aimed to investigate the application of Toury’s initial norms in two different translations of The Catcher in the Rye before and after the Islamic Revolution. Firstly, the study investigated the orientation of adequacy and acceptability in both pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary translations. Then, it questioned the appropriateness of the applied norms in these two translations to each era. Accordingly, the results revealed that in the pre-Islamic Revolution translation, acceptability greatly predominated over adequacy; quite the contrary, in the post-Islamic Revolution rendering, adequacy chiefly prevailed over acceptability.      

Recently translation researchers have endeavored to adopt new directions in the current translation quality assessment (TQA) approaches. To this end, they made them more congruent with the desired requirements of a translator’s competence, especially considering the latest paradigm shifts, including ideological skewing and localization (Tiselius & Hild, 2017). Thus, such frameworks as Angelelli’s (2009) definition of translation competence (TC), as the study’s theoretical framework, need to be improved. An attempt was made in this study to design a rubric based on the proposed TQA model representing the TC construct with its comprehensive sub-components and finally, to test its applicability to the Persian translation of The Catcher in the Rye . The assessment procedure through which the obtained results were textually analyzed based on the proposed rubric specifically for each sub-component, revealed the inadequacy of the translation quality on the whole and the underlying implications of the rubric’s applicability to other translation products.                                                                                                                                                                   

Sentiment analysis, as one of the text-mining techniques, has been widely used in many research areas related to public opinions. The present work seeks to examine the reception of the translations of  Louis Cha’s martial arts novels in the English and French worlds through sentiment analyses of readers’ online book reviews in popular book reviewing websites such as Amazon and Belio. The results show that the English and French versions of Louis Cha’s martial arts novels are mostly well received by readers since both English and French readers had given the highest ratings to the narrative features, plots and characterization features of the translated novels. Furthermore, between the translations in English and French, the reception level of the Anna Holmwood’s English version is higher than that of the French version by Jiann-yuh Wang. Overall, the findings of the study suggest that translations maintaining original Chinese cultural elements have been well-received in the Western community.

The purpose of this study is to analyze Basil Bunting's literary translation. It turns to the theories of translation by Steiner, Benjamin, and Eco, among others, to study Bunting’s translation of Rūdhakī’s ‘Dandaniyyeh’ poem, a 10 th century qaṣīdah replete with mesmerizing musicality and with a form galvanized in its originating language, time, and locale. A deep contrastive analysis of its translation into English by the poet, Bunting, shows the difficulties that can arise from literal translations of classical Persian poetry.