Naturalness in the translation of novels from English to Persian

Abstract

This thesis is about `naturalness' in the translation of novels from English into Persian. It studies, describes and explains the cultural and linguistic factors determining naturalness. This thesis consists of eight main chapters, as well as Introduction and Conclusions Chapters. The Introduction Chapter sets the problem, its significance, the questions to be addressed in the thesis and the hypotheses held. Chapters 1 to 4 discuss theoretical matters: a review of translation theories, different approaches to naturalness, analysis of possible features involved in naturalness leading to a comprehensive definition of naturalness, and methodology of the study, that is, the different methods and the procedure followed in this research. The next four chapters, i. e. chapters five to eight, have looked at the problem from different perspectives. Chapter 5 analyses the historical situation and relations within and between the Persian literary and socio-political systems that gave rise to the need for translation and establishment of the new genre of the novel in Iran. Chapter 6 deals with the norms and models constraining the Persian translators' behaviour, through an analysis of norms and their roots within the Persian literary polysystem. Chapter 7 is a cultural analysis of the period after the Islamic Revolution and compares this period with a 15-year period before the revolution. The Islamic Revolution is a very important turning point according to the cultural viewpoint and provides a very interesting opportunity for the comparison of cultural activities before and after the revolution, given the fact that this revolution is often considered to have a more cultural nature than a political one. Chapter 8 is a linguistic analysis that deals with the micro-structural level of the study, it studies the cohesive devices of reference and ellipsis and the relevant features that determine their naturalness or unnaturalness. Finally, the Conclusions Chapter gives a summary of the conclusions reached in the previous chapters, discusses the limitations of the present study and suggests some relevant topics for further studies