A Comparative Study of Culture Specific Items in Two English Translations of Savushun

Journal of English Language Studies

مقاله 8، دوره 1، شماره 4، شهریور 2010، صفحه 157-168   

نویسندگان

Kourosh Akef¹؛ Tahmineh Vakili²

¹Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics, Islamic Azad University Central Tehran Branch, Iran

²MA in Translation Studies, Islamic Azad University Central Tehran Branch, Iran

چکیده

This study was conducted to identify and compare the strategies applied by two native Farsi translators in rendering the culture specific items (CSIs) of a literary text titled Savushun in their English translations. In this study, CSIs refer to the materials, social customs, religious concepts, and traditions available in one language and culture but nonexistent in the other language and culture. Aixelá’s proposed strategies of translation of CSIs (as cited in Alvarez & Vidal, 1996) were taken as the model of this study and 191 extracted CSIs the original novel were categorized accordingly. The researchers compared the two translated versions, one of them titled Savushun translated by Ghanoonparvar (1990), and the other one translated by Zand (1991), titled Persian Requiem. The results of the comparison revealed that while the most frequently used strategy by Ghanoonparvar was extra-textual gloss, Zand was keen on using linguistic translation. Furthermore, neither of the translators used a single strategy in rendering CSIs under a specific subcategory and both had different trends towards using conservative or substitutive strategies.

کلیدواژه‌ها

culture؛ culture specific items (CSIs)؛ Translation strategies؛ inverse translation؛ Literary Translation؛ translation into non-mother tongue