The Use Of Explicitation In Multiple Persian Translations Of Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret
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Date
2015-07
Authors
RAHBAR, MOHAMMAD
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Abstract
Explicitation as a universal phenomenon in translation has been investigated by
many scholars through the adoption of parallel and comparable corpora during the recent
decades. Scholars, however, have noted a number of shortcomings with current
approaches in the study of explicitation, such as the translators' level of proficiency and
text types. This necessitates a study which addresses these shortcomings. Adopting an
approach which uses a special multiple translation corpora, this study aims to explore the
different forms and elements of explicitation which might be employed in the translations
of an English text into Persian in order to determine whether explicitation is a universa l
phenomenon or an individual strategy. More specifically, this study has the following
aims: (1) to identify and explain elements of explicitation in five Persian translations of
an English text, (2) to identify and explain forms of explicitation in the translations, (3) to
classify the explicitated incidents in order to identify the strategies applied by the
translators, and (4) to establish, on the basis of the data gathered, a profile in order to
determine whether explicitation is a universal or an idiosyncratic feature. For this purpose,
House's (2004) functional model along with Toury's (1995) coupled-pairs model are
adopted in the analysis of the multiple translation corpora that was developed, which is
made up of a contemporary self-help non-literary English text The Secret by Rhonda
Byrne (2006) and its five translations into Persian, Raz ( را ), translated by Fath-Ali (2008),
Mo'takef (2007), Qarachedaghi (2007), Rahimi (2008), and Sabt-al-Sheikh (2008). Each
individual sub-corpus is first compared with the source text, and subsequently with each
other. Incidents of explicitation are then extracted and analyzed. The analysis reveals that
in spite of the inconsistency in the adoption of the elements and forms of explicitation,
there is a particular pattern with regard to the use of explicitation. The elements of
specifying and conditional element are the most and the least frequently exploited
elements by all the translators respectively. Among the different strategies adopted by the
translators, nominalization was a strongly preferred strategy and replacing metaphor with
simile was the least preferred strategy. With such distribution, elaboration may be
considered as universal because of the fact that it is strongly preferred by all five
translators and also considering the ratio of translators who adopted it. Enhancement,
however, is the least preferred form, and as such it might be considered as an idiosyncrat ic
form. The use of the developed multiple translation corpora to investigate the notion of
universality not only shows an improvement over current approaches but also provides a
more reliable data to generalize the universality of explicitation through a non-litera ry
text. This study, along with other studies along the same line, may lead to the
establishment of clear patterns of translation universals.
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The Use Of Explicitation In Multiple Persian , Translations Of Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret