A Comparative Study on the English to Persian Translation of Hedges in the Abstracts of M.A. Theses in English Translation Studies

Journal of Language and Translation

مقاله 5، دوره 8، شماره 3، مهر 2018، صفحه 57-67   

نوع مقاله: Research Articles

نویسندگان

Elham Azarbad^{* 1}؛ Vahid Ghahraman²

¹MA candidate in English Language Translation Studies, Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, Islamic Azad University, South Tehran Branch, Tehran, Iran

²Assistant Professor of Applied linguistics/TESL at Iran Encyclopedia Compiling Foundation, Tehran, Iran

چکیده

The purpose of this study was to investigate the distribution of functions and forms of hedging devices in the abstracts of master’s theses in two languages (English and Persian) written by Iranian students. To this end, 70 abstracts of M.A. theses were selected as the corpus. The total number of words in both English and Persian abstracts were 19,933 and 23,073, respectively. The categories of hedges were extracted based on Hyland’s taxonomy of hedge. The data were analysed using a number of Chi-Square analyses. The results showed that there was a significant difference between English and Persian texts in the use of hedging. There were more hedging devices in English abstracts, while the Persian versions employed fewer hedge devices. The differences were interpreted to be related to the degree of awareness, purpose, cultural background of the learners, etc. The findings of this study can be helpful in teaching academic writing, teaching Persian to speakers of other languages, and translation instructors.
 

کلیدواژه‌ها

Form؛ Function؛ Hedging؛ Metadiscourse

مراجع

Behnam, B., Naeimi, A., &Darvishzade, A. (2012). A Comparative Genre Analysis of Hedging Expressions in Research Articles: Is Fuzziness Forever Wicked. English Language and Literature Studies, 2(2), 20.

Chan, S. H., & Tan, H. (2017). MAYBE, PERHAPS, I BELIEVE YOU COULD-MAKING CLAIMS AND THE USE OF HEDGES. THE ENGLISH TEACHER, 9.

Clemen, G. (1997). The concept of hedging: Origins, approaches and definitions. Markkanen, R. & Schroder, H.(eds), 235-248.

Coates, J. (1991). Women talk: Conversation between women friends. Wiley-Blackwell.

Crompton, P. (1997). Hedging in academic writing: Some theoretical problems. English for specific purposes, 16(4), 271-287.

Davoodifard, M. (2006). A contrastive analysis of hedging in English and Persian research Articles: Linguistic and cultural variations across languages and disciplines. Unpublished master's thesis, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran.

Donohue, J. P. (2006). How to support a one-handed economist: The role of modalisation in economic forecasting. English for Specific Purposes, 25(2), 200-216.

Falahati, R. (2008). A contrastive study of hedging in English and Farsi academic discourse.ESP Across Cultures, 5, 49-67.

Gillaerts, P., & Van de Velde, F. (2010). Interactional metadiscourse in research article abstracts. Journal of English for Academic purposes, 9(2), 128-139.

Hassani, M. T., &DastjaniFarahani, M. (2014).A Discourse Analysis of Gender Differences in the Use of Hedging Devices in Applied Linguistics Research Articles.English Language Teaching, 1(1), 59-73.

Holmes, J. (1982). Expressing doubt and certainty in English.RELC journal, 13(2), 9-28.

Hu, G., & Cao, F. (2011). Hedging and boosting in abstracts of applied linguistics articles: A comparative study of English-and Chinese-medium journals. Journal of pragmatics, 43(11), 2795-2809.

Hyland, K. (1994). Hedging in academic writing and EAF textbooks.English for specific purposes, 13(3), 239-256.

Hyland, K. (1996). Writing without conviction? Hedging in science research articles.Applied linguistics, 17(4), 433-454.

Hyland, K. (1998). Hedging in scientific research articles (Vol. 54). John Benjamins Publishing.

Hyland, K. (2000). Hedges, boosters and lexical invisibility: Noticing modifiers in academic texts. Language Awareness, 9(4), 179-197.

Hyland, K. (2005). Metadiscourse. John Wiley & Sons, Inc..

Jalilifar, A., Shooshtari, Z. G., &Mutaqid, S. (2011). The Effect of Hedging 

Instruction on Reading Comprehension for Iranian University Students.Research in Applied Linguistics, 2(1), 69-89.

Lakoff, G. (1973). Hedges: A study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts. Journal of philosophical logic, 2(4), 458-508.

Mauranen, A. (1997). Hedging in language revisers' hands.RESEARCH IN TEXT THEORY, 115-133.

Meyer, P. G. (1991). Hedging Strategies in Written Academic Discourse: Strengthening the Argument by Weakening the Claim.Hedging and Discourse: Approaches to the Analysis of a Pragmatic Phenomenon in Academic Texts, 24, 21.

Nikroo, P. (2010). The relationship between the knowledge of sentence structure and quality of translation.International Journal of Language Studies, 4(1).

Salager-Meyer, F. (1994).Hedges and textual communicative function in medical English written discourse.English for specific purposes, 13(2), 149-170.

Tahririan, M. H., &Shahzamani, M. (2009).Hedging in English and Persian editorials: A contrastive study.

Varttala, T. (2001).Hedging in scientifically oriented discourse.Exploring variation according to discipline and intended audience, Tampere University Dissertations. Electronic Dissertation< http://acta.uta. fi/pdf/951-44-5195-3. pdf (10.10. 2003).

Zarei, G. R., &ofTechnology, I. (2011). Func-tional analysis of Iranian learners’ L2: Complimenting in written discourse. International Journal of Language Studies (IJLS), 5(2), 109-122.