Investigating Nonliterary Translation Shifts by Concentrating on United Nations Texts Using Pekkanen’s (2010) Model

Abstract

Translation shift especially within UN texts is a new area of interest in the field of translation studies. The concept uses linguistic translation as a tool or metaphor in analyzing the nature of transformation and interchange in the political text. The main objective of the present study was to study translation shifts in non-literary texts – those from the UN documents. The study intended to compare strategy application in translation of shifts by Pekkanen (2010), extracted from three UN documents, between two English-Persian dictionaries (one by Khiyabani (2013) and the other one by Aryanpoor (2006)). The contraction strategy was the most frequent strategy applied by Khiyabani (85 times, 56.7%) and the least frequent strategy was shift in order (11 times, 7.3%). The expansion strategy was the most frequent strategy applied by Aryanpoor (66 times, 44%) and the least frequent strategy was shift in order (6 times, 4%). The findings of the present study were in line with those reported by Pekkanen (2010). The two translators were not significantly different with regard to application of miscellaneous and shift in order strategies and were significantly different with regard to application of contraction and expansion strategies. The results obtained in this thesis could in general be useful for students of translation, instructors and university professors, syllabus designers, freelancers, book compilers and all those who are involved in one way or another in translation issues.