Addition and deletion in translation of the derivatives of Estef’al and its influence on the translations of sermons

Paying attention to the quality of the translation of religious texts such as the Qur'an, Nahj al-Balaghah, and Hadith is an important and obvious issue. Evaluating the translation of these texts to protect them is necessary, important, and valuable. Among these texts, from which various translations have been made into the Persian language, is the noble book of Nahj al-Balaghah.  But in general, these translations from Arabic to Persian have been criticized by many writers because they are not as good as they could be. In the present research, with a descriptive-analytic method, the cases of deletion and addition of translation of derivatives of the Estef’al in the translation of Nahj al-Balaghah's sermons were studied. Based on this, the data  11 of the derivatives of the Estef’al from all the sermons of Nahj al-Balaghah were selected and investigated in five Persian translations of Nahj al-Balaghah (Faiz al-Islam, Ansari, Shahidi, Zamani, and Dashti). The findings of this research showed that the examples of deletion and addition of translation of derivatives of the Estef’al have damaged the mentioned translations. For example, inappropriate deletions included meanings deletion of derivatives of the Estef’al, deletion of rhetorical devices, and deletion of grammatical elements. Inappropriate additions included unnecessary and incorrect explanatory additions of words; improper interpretative additions of vocabulary; and extensions in the translation of words. The statistical report of the performance of the translators in the examined samples indicates that Faiz al-Islam's translation had the least frequency of slips and Dashti's translation had the highest frequency of slips, but the total performance of the five translations is not such that it can be considered appropriate and successful.