Comparative Analysis of Translation of Taboos in Hezareh and Arianpour Dictionaries

Taboo terms are one of problematic areas in the process of translation. Dictionaries are one of tools translators use to solve this problem. There are some differences between dictionaries in the number of taboo terms and the strategies applied in their translation. Knowing the characteristic of dictionaries in this respect can help translators choosing a suitable dictionary to solve their problem. The present study was an attempt to find the frequency of taboos, the strategies applied in their translation in Hezareh and Arianpur dictionaries and the relation between the frequency of taboo terms and the applied strategy to understand the characteristics and successfulness of these two dictionaries in this respect. Many studies have been done on the topic of taboo terms and their translations in Persian and English language but in case of dictionaries nothing has been done. Different scholars have provided different definitions, categorizations and translation strategies for taboo terms. In the following the categorization of taboo terms and the strategies of translating them are presented. In the following some of the classifications on taboo terms  are presented: A. Anderson and Hirsch (1985, p. 79): 1. sexual organs, sexual relations, 2. religion, church, 3. excrement, 4. death, 5. the physically or mentally disabled, 6. prostitution, 7. narcotics, crime; B. Allan and Burridge (2006, p. 1): 1. bodies and their effluvia (sweat, snot, faeces, menstrual fluid, etc.), 2. the organs and acts of sex, micturition and defecation; 3. diseases, death and killing (including hunting and fishing), 4. religion and church, naming and addressing sacred persons, beings, objects, and places, 5. food gathering, preparation and consumption, 6. prostitution, narcotics, and criminal activity; C. Habibovic (2010, p. 7): 1. sex, 2. religion, 3. bodily functions, 4. ethnic groups, 5. Food, 6. dirt 7. death ; D. Gao (2013, p. 2): 1. bodily excretions, 2. death and disease, 3. Sex, 4. four-letter words, 5. swear words, 6. privacy, 7. discriminatory language; E. Avila Cabrera (2014): 1. animal name, 2. death/killing, 3. drugs/excessive alcohol consumption, 4. ethnic/racial/gender slur, 5. filth, 6. profane/blasphemous, 7. psychological/physical condition, 8. sexual reference/body part, 9. urination/scatology, 10. violence. As taboos are part of the culture of each language, to translate a taboo, the translator must be familiar with both source and target languages in order to know whether the taboo word in the SL, is known as taboo in the TL or not. According to Behzad and Salmani (2013, p. 227) three possibilities may arise in the process of translating taboo terms: a) the taboo term in L1 is not taboo in L2, b) the taboo term in L1 is taboo in L2 too, and c) the term which is not taboo in L1 is considered as taboo in L2. Facing these situations, in part (a), the translator has no problem and can translate the word easily, but in parts (b) and (c), there are some choices to render if not exact but similar and acceptable meaning and feeling of the word into the second language. There are different strategies for translating taboo terms. Each translator can use one of them according to the context. The following are some of these strategies:  A. Allan & Burridge (2006): 1. euphemism, 2. dysphemism, 3. orthophemism; B. Vossoughi & Etemadhosseini (2013, p. 3): 1. Omission, 2. manipulation of segmentation, 3.euphemism; C. Venuti (as cited in Hashemian, Mirzaei, & Hosseini, 2015, p. 25): 1. domestication, 2. foreignization. D. Davoodi (2009): 1. censorship, 2. substitution, 3. taboo for taboo, 4. euphemism, E. Tanriverdi Kaya (2015): 1. substitution, 2. taboo for taboo, 3. omission. 4. euphemism, 5. addition, 6. explication, 7. Dyphemism. In the present study, the strategies proposed by Davoodi were applied. According to Davoodi (2009), there are four possible strategies in translating taboo terms: Censorship: it is the first possible way that a translator can choose when facing a taboo term in translation. As Davoodi asserted: “In this case, the translator ignores the term easily and censors it as an extra term” (2009, p. 1). But that’s not an appropriate choice, “because in some occasions, the taboo term is a key term in the source text and the omission of it will distort the meaning of the text”. (ibid.) Substitution: another way in translating a taboo term is by substituting the word with another one in target language. But Davoodi believed that “it often certainly distorts the meaning” (ibid.). Taboo for taboo: to Davoodi, “On the other hand, although the translator knows the expressions are not acceptable to target people and society, s/he prefers to translate them into taboo” (ibid.). Euphemism: according to Davoodi: “euphemism is the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression to replace one that offends or suggests something unpleasant” (ibid.) To address the questions of the study, taboo terms relating to words drunk, fuck, shit, dead and hell were found in both dictionaries. Then their frequency was also studied.  Next,  the applied strategies based on Davoodi’s strategies were compared. To conduct this comparison two 5 columns tables including no., taboo term in English, taboo term in Persian and the applied strategy for each of dictionaries were prepared. Of the 51 taboos of the corpus, Hezareh has provided translation for 49 taboos and Arianpur for only 9 taboos; thus, Hezareh dictionary has more taboo terms in comparson to Arianpur dictionary. On euphemism and translation of taboo for taboo term, an acceptable translation for the target receivers have been provided, while in the Arianpur dictionary less taboos are presented and the effect of taboos is lessened using censoring strategy. Concerning the frequency, as the preferred strategy in Arianpur is censoring thus the frequency of taboo terms is lesser in Arianpur in comparison to Hezareh dictionary. Therefore, the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the corpus in the present study showed that, Hezareh dictionsry is more suitable than Arianpour dictionary regarding finding equivalents of taboo terms.