Factors affecting translation of realia in classical literary masterpieces: access to the previous translations, the SL natives, and the SL experts

Abstract

Literary works of each nation have their roots in that nation’s culture. Because of the uniqueness of all cultures, various kinds of realia can be found in the literature of almost all nations. Persian literature is not an exception. The study aimed to discover the impact of accessibility to the SL natives, the SL experts, and the previous translations on the quality of rendering realia embedded in the classical Persian literary-text. The corpus included the translation of realia in Sa’di’s The Gulistan by Rehatsek (1888), Eastwick (1880), Anderson (1861), and Ross (1823). The findings revealed that a mixture of three factors (consulting previous translations, as well as consulting an expert SL native speaker) would provide a great help for translators. Although the results did not confirm that the mere accessibility to the SL natives would tremendously boost the quality of rendering realia, further research is required to investigate the issue by focusing on various classical literary texts, including those of other language pairs.