Abstract
This paper discusses the feasibility of employing a discourse-based approach in examining the (un)successful portrayal of a given socio-cultural context through translation. In so doing, instances of two Persian translations of Chinua Achebe’s post-colonial novel “ Things Fall Apart ” were selected to illustrate the congruence as well as incongruence of translations with their source text. Van Leeuwen’s (1996, 2008) model of representation of social actors was used as the analytical framework and proved to work well for the aims of the study. The implications of using a discourse-based approach, along with possible future directions, are discussed.
Highlights
Until recently, translation was primarily regarded as a mimicry act of replacing the author’s words and linguistic codes with words and linguistic codes in another language, but thanks to recent developments in translation studies and under the influence of other disciplines, the myth has been challenged, and translation is considered a communicative event
Translation as ‘intercultural mediation’, to use Katan’s term (2013, p. 84), should establish a coordination between two different languages with non-identical socio-cultural contexts. This emphasis on context entails and justifies highlighting the contribution of discourse analysis in translation studies
The critical discourse analysis (CDA) model used for the analysis provides a systematic categorization of the representation of social actors and promises to reveal how colonizers and colonized are depicted in the novel and its translations
Summary
Translation was primarily regarded as a mimicry act of replacing the author’s words and linguistic codes with words and linguistic codes in another language, but thanks to recent developments in translation studies and under the influence of other disciplines, the myth has been challenged, and translation is considered a communicative event. Translations are never produced in a vacuum, and that they are never received in a vacuum This development that started in the mid-1980s, according to SnellHornby (2006), and was given the official name of ‘cultural turn’ in the 1990s by Bassnett & Lefevere (1990), has continued to influence the field by highlighting the role of cultural embeddedness of the act of translation. 84), should establish a coordination between two different languages with non-identical socio-cultural contexts This emphasis on context entails and justifies highlighting the contribution of discourse analysis in translation studies. 136) states, “interest in human communicative activity in sociocultural settings” is the commonality between translation studies and CDA She considers the interaction between the two fields quite fruitful, and offers several examples where certain translation strategies have revealed or concealed the power relations in ST. More information is provided about the corpus and the analytical model used
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