Translation of hybrid texts: translator’s strategies and ideologies in translation ofFunny in Farsiby Dumas
Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies, 2015
This study aimed at identifying and comparing the signs of hybridity in immigration literature pr... more This study aimed at identifying and comparing the signs of hybridity in immigration literature produced by an Iranian immigrant writer and its Persian translation to find out whether the translator saved the elements of hybridity in translation of the text or dehybridized it, and also to find out whether the ideology of the translator had any effects on dehybridizing the text. To this aim, the researcher adopted an analytical comparative corpus-based approach. The corpus of this study consisted of two subcorpora: the English collection of short stories, Funny in Farsi, produced by Dumas and its Persian translation. The signs of hybridity were defined both in ST and TT and the frequency of their transfer was studied. Finally, it was found that there were many elements of hybridity transferred from American culture and language to Persian, but there were also some dehybridized elements affected by the ideology or strategy of the translator in order to make the translation more familiar and domesticated to t...
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Papers by Fateme Zand
Different scholars have provided different definitions, categorizations and translation strategies for taboo terms. In the following the categorization of taboo terms and the strategies of translating them are presented.
In the following some of the classifications on taboo terms are presented: A. Anderson and Hirsch (1985, p. 79): 1. sexual organs, sexual relations, 2. religion, church, 3. excrement, 4. death, 5. the physically or mentally disabled, 6. prostitution, 7. narcotics, crime; B. Allan and Burridge (2006, p. 1): 1. bodies and their effluvia (sweat, snot, faeces, menstrual fluid, etc.), 2. the organs and acts of sex, micturition and defecation; 3. diseases, death and killing (including hunting and fishing), 4. religion and church, naming and addressing sacred persons, beings, objects, and places, 5. food gathering, preparation and consumption, 6. prostitution, narcotics, and criminal activity; C. Habibovic (2010, p. 7): 1. sex, 2. religion, 3. bodily functions, 4. ethnic groups, 5. Food, 6. dirt 7. death ; D. Gao (2013, p. 2): 1. bodily excretions, 2. death and disease, 3. Sex, 4. four-letter words, 5. swear words, 6. privacy, 7. discriminatory language; E. Avila Cabrera (2014): 1. animal name, 2. death/killing, 3. drugs/excessive alcohol consumption, 4. ethnic/racial/gender slur, 5. filth, 6. profane/blasphemous, 7. psychological/physical condition, 8. sexual reference/body part, 9. urination/scatology, 10. violence.
As taboos are part of the culture of each language, to translate a taboo, the translator must be familiar with both source and target languages in order to know whether the taboo word in the SL, is known as taboo in the TL or not. According to Behzad and Salmani (2013, p. 227) three possibilities may arise in the process of translating taboo terms: a) the taboo term in L1 is not taboo in L2, b) the taboo term in L1 is taboo in L2 too, and c) the term which is not taboo in L1 is considered as taboo in L2. Facing these situations, in part (a), the translator has no problem and can translate the word easily, but in parts (b) and (c), there are some choices to render if not exact but similar and acceptable meaning and feeling of the word into the second language. There are different strategies for translating taboo terms. Each translator can use one of them according to the context. The following are some of these strategies: A. Allan & Burridge (2006): 1. euphemism, 2. dysphemism, 3. orthophemism; B. Vossoughi & Etemadhosseini (2013, p. 3): 1. Omission, 2. manipulation of segmentation, 3.euphemism; C. Venuti (as cited in Hashemian, Mirzaei, & Hosseini, 2015, p. 25): 1. domestication, 2. foreignization. D. Davoodi (2009): 1. censorship, 2. substitution, 3. taboo for taboo, 4. euphemism, E. Tanriverdi Kaya (2015): 1. substitution, 2. taboo for taboo, 3. omission. 4. euphemism, 5. addition, 6. explication, 7. Dyphemism. In the present study, the strategies proposed by Davoodi were applied. According to Davoodi (2009), there are four possible strategies in translating taboo terms: Censorship: it is the first possible way that a translator can choose when facing a taboo term in translation. As Davoodi asserted: “In this case, the translator ignores the term easily and censors it as an extra term” (2009, p. 1). But that’s not an appropriate choice, “because in some occasions, the taboo term is a key term in the source text and the omission of it will distort the meaning of the text”. (ibid.) Substitution: another way in translating a taboo term is by substituting the word with another one in target language. But Davoodi believed that “it often certainly distorts the meaning” (ibid.). Taboo for taboo: to Davoodi, “On the other hand, although the translator knows the expressions are not acceptable to target people and society, s/he prefers to translate them into taboo” (ibid.). Euphemism: according to Davoodi: “euphemism is the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression to replace one that offends or suggests something unpleasant” (ibid.)
To address the questions of the study, taboo terms relating to words drunk, fuck, shit, dead and hell were found in both dictionaries. Then their frequency was also studied. Next, the applied strategies based on Davoodi’s strategies were compared. To conduct this comparison two 5 columns tables including no., taboo term in English, taboo term in Persian and the applied strategy for each of dictionaries were prepared. Of the 51 taboos of the corpus, Hezareh has provided translation for 49 taboos and Arianpur for only 9 taboos; thus, Hezareh dictionary has more taboo terms in comparson to Arianpur dictionary. On euphemism and translation of taboo for taboo term, an acceptable translation for the target receivers have been provided, while in the Arianpur dictionary less taboos are presented and the effect of taboos is lessened using censoring strategy. Concerning the frequency, as the preferred strategy in Arianpur is censoring thus the frequency of taboo terms is lesser in Arianpur in comparison to Hezareh dictionary.
Therefore, the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the corpus in the present study showed that, Hezareh dictionsry is more suitable than Arianpour dictionary regarding finding equivalents of taboo terms.
Different scholars have provided different definitions, categorizations and translation strategies for taboo terms. In the following the categorization of taboo terms and the strategies of translating them are presented.
In the following some of the classifications on taboo terms are presented: A. Anderson and Hirsch (1985, p. 79): 1. sexual organs, sexual relations, 2. religion, church, 3. excrement, 4. death, 5. the physically or mentally disabled, 6. prostitution, 7. narcotics, crime; B. Allan and Burridge (2006, p. 1): 1. bodies and their effluvia (sweat, snot, faeces, menstrual fluid, etc.), 2. the organs and acts of sex, micturition and defecation; 3. diseases, death and killing (including hunting and fishing), 4. religion and church, naming and addressing sacred persons, beings, objects, and places, 5. food gathering, preparation and consumption, 6. prostitution, narcotics, and criminal activity; C. Habibovic (2010, p. 7): 1. sex, 2. religion, 3. bodily functions, 4. ethnic groups, 5. Food, 6. dirt 7. death ; D. Gao (2013, p. 2): 1. bodily excretions, 2. death and disease, 3. Sex, 4. four-letter words, 5. swear words, 6. privacy, 7. discriminatory language; E. Avila Cabrera (2014): 1. animal name, 2. death/killing, 3. drugs/excessive alcohol consumption, 4. ethnic/racial/gender slur, 5. filth, 6. profane/blasphemous, 7. psychological/physical condition, 8. sexual reference/body part, 9. urination/scatology, 10. violence.
As taboos are part of the culture of each language, to translate a taboo, the translator must be familiar with both source and target languages in order to know whether the taboo word in the SL, is known as taboo in the TL or not. According to Behzad and Salmani (2013, p. 227) three possibilities may arise in the process of translating taboo terms: a) the taboo term in L1 is not taboo in L2, b) the taboo term in L1 is taboo in L2 too, and c) the term which is not taboo in L1 is considered as taboo in L2. Facing these situations, in part (a), the translator has no problem and can translate the word easily, but in parts (b) and (c), there are some choices to render if not exact but similar and acceptable meaning and feeling of the word into the second language. There are different strategies for translating taboo terms. Each translator can use one of them according to the context. The following are some of these strategies: A. Allan & Burridge (2006): 1. euphemism, 2. dysphemism, 3. orthophemism; B. Vossoughi & Etemadhosseini (2013, p. 3): 1. Omission, 2. manipulation of segmentation, 3.euphemism; C. Venuti (as cited in Hashemian, Mirzaei, & Hosseini, 2015, p. 25): 1. domestication, 2. foreignization. D. Davoodi (2009): 1. censorship, 2. substitution, 3. taboo for taboo, 4. euphemism, E. Tanriverdi Kaya (2015): 1. substitution, 2. taboo for taboo, 3. omission. 4. euphemism, 5. addition, 6. explication, 7. Dyphemism. In the present study, the strategies proposed by Davoodi were applied. According to Davoodi (2009), there are four possible strategies in translating taboo terms: Censorship: it is the first possible way that a translator can choose when facing a taboo term in translation. As Davoodi asserted: “In this case, the translator ignores the term easily and censors it as an extra term” (2009, p. 1). But that’s not an appropriate choice, “because in some occasions, the taboo term is a key term in the source text and the omission of it will distort the meaning of the text”. (ibid.) Substitution: another way in translating a taboo term is by substituting the word with another one in target language. But Davoodi believed that “it often certainly distorts the meaning” (ibid.). Taboo for taboo: to Davoodi, “On the other hand, although the translator knows the expressions are not acceptable to target people and society, s/he prefers to translate them into taboo” (ibid.). Euphemism: according to Davoodi: “euphemism is the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression to replace one that offends or suggests something unpleasant” (ibid.)
To address the questions of the study, taboo terms relating to words drunk, fuck, shit, dead and hell were found in both dictionaries. Then their frequency was also studied. Next, the applied strategies based on Davoodi’s strategies were compared. To conduct this comparison two 5 columns tables including no., taboo term in English, taboo term in Persian and the applied strategy for each of dictionaries were prepared. Of the 51 taboos of the corpus, Hezareh has provided translation for 49 taboos and Arianpur for only 9 taboos; thus, Hezareh dictionary has more taboo terms in comparson to Arianpur dictionary. On euphemism and translation of taboo for taboo term, an acceptable translation for the target receivers have been provided, while in the Arianpur dictionary less taboos are presented and the effect of taboos is lessened using censoring strategy. Concerning the frequency, as the preferred strategy in Arianpur is censoring thus the frequency of taboo terms is lesser in Arianpur in comparison to Hezareh dictionary.
Therefore, the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the corpus in the present study showed that, Hezareh dictionsry is more suitable than Arianpour dictionary regarding finding equivalents of taboo terms.