Canon, Bestseller, and Peripheral Novels:Does the Position of Literary Works in the English Literary Polysystem Influence the Iranian Translators’ Translational Behavior at the Textual Level?

Abstract

The present study sets out to investigate whether the position of literary works in the English literary polysystem influences the Iranian translators’ translational behavior at the textual level. Given the prominent position of canon and bestseller novels in English literary polysystem, the study intends to find out whether the translators of canon and bestseller novels are faithful to theirsource texts, and whether the translators of peripheral novels tend to adopt target language norms and translate much more freely than the translators of canon and bestsellers novels. To this end, based on a descriptive-comparative method, nine English novels comprising three canons, three bestsellers, and three peripherals were selected and compared with their Persian translations using Berman’s (1985) deforming tendencies. The comparison showed that the position of literary works in English literary polysystem does not have a considerable role in the Iranian translators’ translational behavior at the textual level, and the translators attempt to produce a target language-oriented translation to suit the needs of target readers.