A Sociological Look at Translators’ Behavior: A Case Study of English Fiction Translated to Persian in Iran

مطالعات زبان و ترجمه

Article 7, Volume 53, Issue 1, April 2020, Pages 197-228   

Document Type: Research Article

DOI: 10.22067/lts.v53i1.84761

Authors

Fahime Mohammadpour; Mohammadtaghi Shahnazari-Dorcheh^* ; Mahmoud Afrouz

Department of English Language and Literature, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

Abstract

Habitus is one of the key concepts of the Bourdieusian sociology from which translation studies has benefited. Based on the Bourdieusian sociological model, this study investigated the translatorial habitus of the Iranian translators of English romance novels as far as the translation strategies of culture-specific items (CSIs) are concerned before and after the Cultural Revolution of 1980 in Iran. The research data include 3429 sentences containing CSIs extracted from A Farewell to Arms, Wuthering Heights, and The Notebook, and their two Persian translations. The extracted data were analyzed, adopting a consolidated typology of translation procedures for CSIs. The strategies employed for translating CSIs are presented with frequencies and percentages using descriptive statistics. Moreover, the results were corroborated with a qualitative analysis of some archived interviews printed in Motarjem [the translator] journal. The investigation revealed three essential findings: a marked source-oriented tendency between Iranian translators of the English romance novels when translating CSIs in the Pre-Cultural Revolution era, maintaining the same tendency in the Post-Cultural Revolution era, and finally a growing tendency in moving from Pre- to Post-Cultural Revolution era. The results of the Chi-square test highlighted a significant difference between various strategies used in two eras.

Keywords

English Romance Translation; Bourdieusian Approach; Habitus; Culture-Specific Items (CSIs); Pre/ Post-Cultural Revolution Era; Sociology of Translation

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