Academic journal article Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods

A Cultural and Discoursal Prospect toward Persian Literary Translation Assessment

Academic journal article Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods

A Cultural and Discoursal Prospect toward Persian Literary Translation Assessment

Article excerpt



In the world of literature every nation has its own poems, novels, fables and other written masterpieces which inevitably reflect the discourse, ideology and cultures of that nation. Having subtle look or it is better to say having critical view towards these masterpieces reveals some facts either of different discourse or mere characteristics of the author or poet.

Meanwhile the Russian literature is not the exception. Regarding the Russian literature, one of the great prose writer is Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky who was close contemporary with Leo Tolstoy. Considerably twentieth-century thought and world literature is deeply influenced by his works. His novels mainly discover the psychology of human in the disturbing social, political and spiritual context of Russian society in 19th century. Most of his works present a preoccupation with Christianity, explore into the prism of the individual confrontation with beauties and hardships of life. A novel named The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is about a young teacher employed by a formerly wealthy Russian general. His addiction to roulette is reflected by the work. Under a strict deadline, Dostoyevsky completed the novel to pay off his gambling debts.

As Al-Mohannadi (2008) states in her research article, the translator is thought to transfer the concepts of the ST writer which were written in another language into TT. Translators have to accept the fact that "translation is a process of decoding and recoding, or analysis and restructuring, during which the translator tries to reach the author's ideas before putting them into words" [1]. Also she outlines that the translation process, "in turn, implies the transfer, consciously or unconsciously, of the author's discourse which carries his ideology, cultural and social attitudes to the target text readers and this discourse may or may not be the author's discourse" [1].

During this transfer and regarding the issue of discourse which carries ideology, cultural and social attitudes of the author, the intended meaning of the original author/poet sometimes distorted or altered due to some factors such as limitation of translator knowledge, unfamiliarity of the discourse of author, ideology, ST culture, different stances of the author/poet and translator and also being in different timeera with author. This study tries to assess the translator's intervention or manipulation in the translated text. The discourse analysis, nowadays, has brought into the field of translation studies and has become one of the crucial factors which influence the translation systematically.

1.1. Statement of the Problem

The problem is that sometimes in translation process, discoursal factors, textual elements and culturespecific concepts are inverted and distorted due to the translator's unfamiliarity with the ST; therefore, the intended meaning of the original author is changed or lost.

2.Review of Related Literature

In this part, the research may define and elaborate some key notions related in the subject matter.

2.1. Cultural Translation

In her book "Translation Studies", Susan Bassnett (2002) outlines that parts of a cultural turn that in the humanities generally in the late 19th century have made the cultural turn in translation studies, and the shape of many traditional subjects have been altered [4]. Bassnett (2002) believes that:

[C]ultural studies in its new internationalist phase turned to sociology, to ethnography and to history. And likewise, translation studies turned to ethnography and history and sociology to deepen the methods of analyzing what happens to texts in the process of what might be called 'intercultural transfer, or translation [4].

To sum up, it can be concluded that culture is a relational subject and scholars have dealt with it inversely. For example, some of the translation scholars does not believe in such a considerable opportunities and restrict culture to a complex of attitudes, beliefs, rules, and values which a society share. …

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