Keywords: sl idiom, tl idiom, translation of texts
Seems its a big deal to make up the loss of idiomatic expressions in translating idioms in one language to another one. How do translators come up with this problem?
Considering an English novel as the foundation document and its own Persian translations as the prospective text, we mean to reply this concern. Extracting idioms and non-idioms from the 1st chapter of J. D. Salinger’s "The Catcher in the Rye", may be the first step to start out. Then we made a comparison of gathered information with their Persian translations by Najafi and Karimi for the next stage.
Following compensation strategy with the addition of target language idioms anywhere in the translated texts by the Persian translators, is an open door to control the idiomatic loss within their translations.
This indicates that, if regardless it’s not conceivable to translate a supply language idiom as an idiom in focus on terminology, the translator can compensate the increased loss of the idiom by adding a target language idiom to areas where there initially was a non-idiom.
Key words:
English Idiom, Persian Translation, Translation Strategies, Compensation Strategy, Source Text (ST), Concentrate on Text (TT), Source Vocabulary (SL), Target Words (TL).
Introduction:
Translation is generally explained as an activity where the translator transfers the meaning of a SL text message into TL beneath the circumstances of preserving the content and accuracy of original text, as far as it is possible.
Where there is absolutely no equivalent for a SL idiom in the TL, the translator gets throughout reimbursement strategy to fill up this incurred gap. The more qualified the translator is, the better will be the translation.
If you are enthusiastic to this issue as we are, this is the paper you can refer to and take your reply.
Theoretical Background:
Translation
Bell (ibid.: 6) argues that "a total equivalence between a origin language text and its translation is a thing that can’t ever be fully achieved. "
According to Bassnett-McGuire (1980: 2), the purpose of translation is that the meaning of the prospective language text is comparable to that of the foundation language text, and that "the structures of the SL will end up being preserved mainly because closely as possible, but not so carefully that the TL structures will get seriously distorted." In other words, the foundation language structure must not be imitated to this extent that the target language text becomes ungrammatical or appears normally unnatural or clumsy.
Idiom:
Idioms will be the major and natural part of all languages as well as a prominent part of our everyday discourse. Idioms happen to be such a standard part of our dialect use that people hardly even notice how vastly we use them in our everyday speech and publishing. English is a vocabulary full of idioms, hence, learners of English should become aware of their nature, types, and use.
Using various idioms in English language is one of the aspects that means it is somehow difficult to learn for a Persian learner. They can be utilized in formal style and in slang.
"Idiom is defined as several words which have numerous meaning when used collectively from the main one they would have in the event that you took the meaning of every word individually (Collins Cobuild dictionary, 1990 edition)."
Indeed, the meaning of idiom can only just become inferred through its meaning and function in context, as shown in the good examples below (from Fernando, 1996).
"bread and butter, as in `It was a straightforward bread and butter issue’ (see additional below); bless you, which is normally found in the context of cordial expressions; go to hell, which indicates that there surely is a conflict among interlocutors in an interpersonal contact; In sum, which shows relations among portions and parts of a text."
Idioms are a set of phrases have diverse meaning from its individual elements of the phrases. It is sometimes hard to recognize this is of a phrase simply by knowing the meaning of the words incorporating in it e.g. "paint the town red" is a term which has a meaning other than this is of its words individually, it means "having a great time!"
Moon (1998, p.4) claims that "idiom denotes a general term for many sorts of multi‐word expressions whether semantically opaque or certainly not."
Some traditional theories of idiomaticity assumed that "idioms will be frozen, semantic units that happen to be essentially non-compositional (Hambin & Gibbs, 1999, p.26)." However, "there have been several semantic classification devices proposed since 1980 for score the composition of idioms which essentially give differing titles to the same concepts (Grant & Bauer, 2004)." Fernando (as cited in Liu, 2003 hints and tips on how to write an opinion essay) developed a scale where to categorize "idiomatic expressions and habitual collocation" into 3 categories: clean (nonliteral), semi literal, and literal (p.673).
1. Pure Idioms. Fernando defines pure idiom "as being a type of conventionalized, non‐literal multiword expression (Fernando, 1996, p.36)." "Pure idioms happen to be always non literal, nonetheless they may be either invariable or may contain little variation. Furthermore, idioms are said to be opaque (Fernando, 1996, p.32)." For instance, Let the cat out from the bag (to reveal a solution or a surprise unintentionally).
2. Semi‐idioms. "Semi‐idioms may have one or more literal constituents and one with non‐literal sub sense. Therefore, this sort of idioms is considered partially opaque (Fernando, 1996, p.60)." For example, middle of nowhere (a very isolated place).
3. Literal idioms. This sub‐group of idioms possesses limited variance. They happen to be less complicated than two other groups. Moreover, literal idioms are considered to be clear because they can be interpreted on the basis of their components. For example Coming out (to exit; to keep the inside of a place).
Translating Idioms:
working with English, the translator may conveniently recognize if an idiom violates `truth circumstances’, as in `it is raining cats and puppies’, `storm in a teacup’, ‘jump down someone’s throat’, etc. It can be hard to identify, if the idiom isn’t of the nature, and translators might just think of it as an ordinary expression, with the result of either shedding its tone or shedding its meaning.
There are two resources which may cause misinterpretation:
The first possible supply is that we now have idioms which can mislead readers/users; they do not appear idiomatic at all, but at a closer glimpse, careful visitors would find the ‘invisible’ idioms.
An example distributed by Salinger in "The Catcher in the Rye" is normally `received the axe’ in the next text:
"The supervisor warned me, but I didn’t notice, so I got the axe."
On the first start looking, readers may interpret it regarding a person who required an axe and wished to take action with it like lower a tree but at a closer search, a careful reader could find out which means "to lose the job".
The second way to obtain misinterpretation occurs when what in an idiom include equivalents in the target language (i.e. in Persian) but with completely different meaning. Another good example given by Salinger is the idiom:
"for the birds".
"Winter weather is normally for the birds."
At first it could be understood that sentence means the winter season is wonderful for the birds nonetheless it makes no sense since the meaning is absolutely different and it means "worthless; undesirable".
Strategies used translating idioms
Idioms are way of life bound which is another challenge for the translator to transfer the specific meaning and content of SL idiom into TL idiom flawlessly.
For the sake of solving these issues the translator may apply a strategy.
Using the correct method in this technique, the translators will get over the down sides easily in fact it is valuable and useful for their works.
Mona Baker, in her publication In Other Words (1992), defines the next approaches for translating idiomatic expressions: 1) employing an idiom with the same meaning and type, 2) using an idiom with the comparable meaning but different web form, 3) by paraphrase, 4) by omission.
(1) Translating an idiom with the same meaning and kind:
The first translation strategy by Mona Baker is definitely translating TL idiom very similar in its web form and meaning to the SL idiom.
For case in point: Tooth and nail ((Г¨à Ú†Ù†Ú¯ Г™Л† Г¯Ù†ГВЇГГ™вЂ
(2) Translating an idiom with the related meaning but different form:
Another strategy suggested by Mona Baker is usually translating a SL idiom into TL idiom the same meaning but different form. In cases like this, the translator will not preserve the lexical things and translate as a semantic equivalent.
For example: Acid tongue in her head. (ГВІГВЁГننیГВґГВЇГГВ±Г›Е’ ГВЇГГВґГªÙ†)
(3) Translation by paraphrase:
The most common technique in translation of idioms is definitely paraphrase. Translators frequently cannot translate a SL idioms as a TL idiom, therefore they utilize the paraphrase strategy by utilizing a word or several words in TL precisely related to this is of this idiom in SL which may be a non-idiom.
Newmark (1988, p.109) "says that when using this strategy not only components of feeling will be missing or added, however the emotive or pragmatic impression will be decreased or shed. Still, paraphrase is usually descriptive and explanatory; quite often it preserves the style of the original idiom aswell."
For case in point: On tenterhooks. ((Ù…Г«Ù„ Гينکه ГВ±Г™Л†Г›Е’ ГВЄГوه ГВўГВЄГВґ ГВЁГГ´Ù…
(4) Translation by omission:
According to Baker (1992, p.77) "omission is usually allowed only sometimes: first, when there is no close equivalent in the mark language; secondly, when it is complicated to paraphrase; finally, an idiom could be omitted for stylistic causes." "This strategy is not used very frequently. Actually, it is not approved by various scholars and some of them do not include it among various other translation strategies (Veisbergs, 1989)." However, sometimes you can’t really translate a SL idiom into TL, therefore the translator could use another
strategy called compensation. In this strategy the translator omit an idiom and may put another idiom elsewhere in the TL text by preserving the effect of SL idiom.
Compensation Strategy:
Compensation is a strategy most definitely worth considering, while it can be utilized as one possible strategy for coping with idioms and quite an effective one for compensating the loss due to translating. Therefore, as a way to protect the idiomaticity of the initial text also to avoid the mentioned reduction, various translators resort to compensation in translating idioms as their final but workable strategy. Then an idiom is not possible to get translated into TT, a translator’s last effort is to compensate an idiom by omitting that and adding an idiom in another place, by preserving the utilization effect of idiom in the ST.
"Nida and Taber (1969) refer to that, whereas one inevitably loses various idioms along the way of translation one also stands to gain a variety of idioms (p. 106)." Baker (1992) signifies that in compensation, a translator may omit a feature such as idiomaticity where it occur in the ST and expose it somewhere else in the TT (p. 78).
In support of this idea, Newmark (1991) shows that "most puns, alliterations, rhyme, slang, metaphor and pregnant words could be compensated in translation." Though he even more adds that, "compensation is the procedure which in the last resort ensures that translation can be done" (pp.143‐144).
Theoretical framework
We agree with Lorenzo, M. et al., for the reason that "the first step a translator must consider is to obviously define his objective before creating a translation which is as true as feasible to the original text." One of the aspects of Hans Vermeer’s idea of skopos (1989:227) is usually "the establishment of a clearly defined objective or goal for translation;
Any kind of translation, including translation itself, could be understood as an action, as the brand implies. Any action comes with an aim, a purpose."
The phrase skopos is a specialized word for desire to or reason for translation.
Nida’s Dynamic Equivalence
In the process of translating idioms, the translator may face various difficulties which is not an easy task to overcome.
The major problem is the lack of equivalence in the process of translation. It would be desirable if a translator could find a TL idiom which is the same as that in framework and content of SL idiom. Anyhow every language, both supply and target, has its own idioms and it may be hard to find the complete source equivalent in the target language.
The definition of dynamic equivalence is initially distributed by Eugene A. Nida in his publication "Toward a Science of the Translation" (Nida, E.A., 1964 https://testmyprep.com/lesson/ideas-on-how-to-write-an-informative-essay:161). Nida can be an American translator, scholar, instructor, innovator, influencer, conceptualizer, innovator, and influential theoretician. Nida argued that "at this time there are two various kinds of equivalence, formal equivalence and powerful equivalence. Formal equivalence deals with the message, in both kind and content whereas dynamic equivalence translation is founded on the principle of equivalent effect."
The translator is not concerned with the foundation language message, but rather with the dynamic marriage.
Dynamic equivalence connects the prospective language and culture to make messages comprehensible to target language receptors. For example, if we translate a term like ‘ two hemorrhages apiece ‘ literally into Persian, it’ll produce a nonsensical meaning for the Persian receptor. Idiomatic expressions might not exactly seem understandable when translated in one language to another. In such instances the equivalence counterpart " " Г®ÙˆÙ†ГВ±Г™Л†ГВґ ГВЇГ™Л† Ù‚ГВЁГ¶Ù‡ can be used to make it understandable to the receptor. In this perspective the translator has taken an equivalent that your original author most likely meant.
Method:
Corpus:
The study is founded on a contrastive comparison between the two Persian translations of
The Catcher in the Rye by Muhammad Najafi and Ahmad Karimi. In this study we tried to accomplish which of these translators has adopted the reimbursement strategy in his unique translation, and whether they have already been successful in this technique or not.
Gathering the info:
Collecting the data, of course, is really as important as other stages (like conclusion) and much more important. As the more accurate the gathered data is indeed, the more favorable the result will be.
Focusing on the process in this research, we long to clarify the steps in data collecting, respectively. At the earliest stage, we extracted English idioms and non-idioms from the primary chapter of the novel, afterward observed their Persian equivalents from two Persian translations by Najafi and Karimi of the same novel. We aimed to learn whether English idioms will be translated into Persian idioms or not really and whether English non-idioms will be translated into Persian idioms or not really. Then we read the aforementioned translated chapter by two translators many times to clarify if they might be idioms. We looked up English idioms in Idioms Oxford Dictionary, although we’d problems in recognizing the precise idiom initially.
On the other palm, as we happen to be Persian students, it had been not hard to find Persian idioms as tricky as English idioms, in any case. But on non-idioms, we regarded the virtually all English phrases or sentences which translated as idioms in TL.
Maybe you request why we chose this novel. As you know, of lessons, this novel is abundant with idioms and it makes the task for researcher to gain access to the idealistic results much easier.
Then we counted the idioms and non-idioms in both classic text and its own Persian translations by two translators.
Table 1. FINAL NUMBER of Idiomatic and Non-Idiomatic Translations of the Salinger’s Idioms
J.D. Salinger’s Idioms
Total
Translation
Najafi
Karimi
44
Idiomatic
22
18
Non- Idiomatic
22
26
In this table, we calculated the total amounts of English idioms (N=44) which is normally translated by translators, either idiomatic or non-idiomatic. As you can plainly see, here, Najafi translated even more English idioms (N=44) into Persian idioms (N=22) than Karimi. We imagine, this table will confirm our declare that Najafi has translated a lot more skilful than Karimi, because he got utilization of compensation strategy with the addition of more Persian idioms than Karimi. Anyway, our goal isn’t to compare folks and is just to determine if there is any use of compensation strategy in each one of these translations.
Table 2. FINAL NUMBER of Idiomatic and Non-Idiomatic Translations of the Salinger’s Non-idioms
J.D. Salinger’s Non-Idioms
Total
Translation
Najafi
Karimi
42
Idiomatic
42
26
Non-Idiomatic
0
16
This table as well illustrated that Najafi translated 42 English non-idioms out of 42 as idiomatic. Alternatively, Karimi translated 26 English non-idioms out of 42 as idiomatic. This desk displays how Najafi and Karimi contain functioned in translating non-idioms into idioms. By total non-idioms, we mean those which translated as idioms by Najafi and it’ll be our requirements for counting Karimi’s idioms and non-idioms.
Table 3. Total Number of Different Data Extracted from Both Translations and the initial Text
Data
J.D. Salinger
Najafi
Karimi
Idiom
44
64
44
Non-idiom
42
22
42
Total
86
86
86
This table confirms that Najafi offers translated the novel extra idiomatic (N=64) than Karimi (N=44).
Classifying the Data:
After extracting and counting the total idioms in both original text and its translations, it revealed that translators had applied 3 different translation approaches for idioms. These tactics were:
Translating English Idioms into Persian Idioms
Translating English Idioms into Persian Non-idioms
Translating English Non-idioms into Persian Idioms
Analyzing the info:
In this stage, we analyzed the complete collected info and calculated frequency and the percentage proportion of every approach in the same translations. The results are proven in the tables below;
Table 4. Frequency and Percentage of Idiom’s Translation Strategies Applied by Najafi
Strategy
Frequency
Percentage
Translation of idiom with idiom
22
50
Translation of idiom with non-idiom
22
50
Total
44
100
Table 5. Regularity and Percentage of Idiom’s Translation Tactics Applied by Karimi
Strategy
Frequency
Percentage
Translation of idiom with idiom
18
40.90
Translation of idiom with non-idiom
26
59.10
Total
44
100
Table 6. Rate of recurrence and Percentage of Non-Idiom’s Translation Approaches Applied by Najafi
Strategy
Frequency
Percentage
Translation of non-idiom with idiom
42
100
Translation of non-idiom with non-idiom
0
0
Total
42
100
Table 7. Frequency and Percentage of Non-Idiom’s Translation Tactics Applied by Karimi
Strategy
Frequency
Percentage
Translation of non-idiom with idiom
26
61.90
Translation of non-idiom with non-idiom
16
38.10
Total
42
100
Table 8. Percentage of each Applied Approaches in both Translations
Strategy
Najafi
Karimi
Translation of non-idiom with idiom
100
61.90
Translation of non-idiom with non-idiom
0
38.10
Total
100
100
Results:
The results display that both translators, Najafi and Karimi, have used three strategies in translating idioms: translating English idioms with Persian idioms, translating English idioms with Persian non-idioms, translating English non-idioms with Persian idioms, and translating English non-idioms with Persian non-idioms.
One of the translators, Najafi, used more frequently the first and the 3rd (translating English idioms and non-idioms as Persian idioms) strategy in his translation, on the other hand, the latter translator, Karimi, used the next and the previous (translating English idioms and non-idioms as Persian non-idioms) strategy more regularly.
Discussion and Conclusion:
As mentioned before, it’s hard to translate a SL idiom into TL idiom regarding the accurateness and the faithfulness of SL into TL.
In this stud, out of 44 extracted idioms from J.D. Salinger’s novel, 22 (50%) of the expressions contain not really been translated as idioms by Najafi. In the same case, Karimi has translated 18 (40.90%) of the idioms with Persian idioms and the remaining 26(59.10%) idioms have already been translated non-idiomatically. This imbalance between your final number of idioms and their non-idiomatic translations causes a lack of idiomaticity in the Persian translated texts. Some of these idiomatic losses have already been compensated for elsewhere in the text, because the translators have changed some English words non-idioms with Persian idioms. By this strategy, Najafi has added 42 idioms and Karimi has got added 26 idioms with their translations. We recognized that there surely is not the actual contrast in amounts of idioms in two languages(SL,TL), but it is rather prevalent in translation. The translators were somehow successful within compensating idiom gaps in the TL. Furthermore, they compensated those non-idiom expressions in the original context to operate better on the translations.
Compensation strategy is known as here as the best to translate idioms, non-idioms and shape of speech as well.
