Hossein Shamsabadi Shamsabadi; Fereshteh Afzali
Volume 3, Issue 6 , March 2013, , Pages 29-48
Abstract
Different languages have different systems and any language has its own specific lexical elements, grammatical structures, expressions, and idioms. This implies that not all elements can be literally reproduced in another language. Therefore, for our translation to be natural and understandable in the ...
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Different languages have different systems and any language has its own specific lexical elements, grammatical structures, expressions, and idioms. This implies that not all elements can be literally reproduced in another language. Therefore, for our translation to be natural and understandable in the target language, we should make changes and transformations to the source text. One of the most important principles to be observed in such translations is finding exact and proper lexical, structural, and contextual equivalents in the process of transferring message from the source to the target language. To understand shifts present in the process of finding equivalents in the target language, the concept of equivalence is studied in the translation of a story on the three levels of similarity, shift, and transfer. Inspired by these shifts and techniques, the study aims to explore the methods of finding equivalents in the translation of Arabic stories into Persian on three levels, including: lexicon (colloquial, slang, loan, and communicative words), structure (literary writings, rhyming, and communicative and expressive translation), and context (paralinguistic elements, presuppositions, and semantic elements). A number of the stories by Naguib Mahfouz, including The Honeymoon, Midaq Alley, Under the Umbrella, The Thief and the Dogs, and The Beggar, are analyzed as the sample translations of the study.
