A Generic Assessment of Persian Translations of English Fairy Tales and Fairy Tales Written in Persian: From a Cultural Perspective

Abstract

It is a commonly held belief that fairy tales as a major literary genre play a pivotal role in children's literature. Accordingly, the present study sought to investigate how the generic skeleton of fairy tales influences the quality of their translations into Persian for the children between 6 and 12 years old. To achieve this purpose, from among the English fairy tales translated into Persian, 15 works were selected based on a purposive sampling method. The contrastive analysis of the targeted texts written in both English and Persian revealed insightful facts about the interconnection between translators’ consideration of SL text generic sensitivities and the quality of translation. The findings revealed that there were no significant differences between English fairy tales and their corresponding Persian translations, in general. However, the results reflected particular cultural variations existing between SL and TL texts- that is, English fairy tales and fairy tales written in Persian. Notably, the results of the study may have important implications for both translation students and translation trainers.