Categorization of the fiction translation expectancy norms to Iranian undergraduate readership

Abstract

The notion of translation norms has been advocated by scholars like Gideon Toury since late 1970s. There are different types of norms concerning different dimensions of the translational phenomenon. The current research addresses expectancy norms which relate to the expectations of the potential TT readership. The purpose of the study was to identify and to categorize the main expectancy norms of Iranian university students as a large part of Iranian translation readership in terms of foreign fiction in Persian. The study comprises two phases. In the first phase, qualitative data were collected through focus groups which were analyzed to provide for the pool of information according to which the questions of the questionnaire were selected and applied. Later, in the second phase, the questionnaire data collected were analyzed using a number of inferential statistics in order to address the research questions. The findings provided insights into the expectancy norms of the sample participants (n = 424), which using exploratory factor analysis were summarized into six basic categories of visualization, source cultural items, target culture, authorial loyalty, TT preface, and TT language, from the most to the least important, and the results of t-tests showed that expectancy norms are not mainly gender-specific drawing on the male (n = 112) and female (n = 312) subgroups.