Manipulation in Perian Translations of Contemporary English Novels: A Corpus-Based Study

Given the impact of extra-linguistic factors such as culture and ideology, translation has never been a neutral act. When undergoing the process of translation, a literary work might be subjected to various manipulations. These manipulations may stem from different motivations such as more compatibility with the cultural-intellectual norms of the target community and thus a higher degree of acceptability. The present study has been aimed at exploring the extent and strategies of manipulations in Persian translations of contemporary English novels, the parts subjected to manipulation, and the types of manipulations. To this end, a parallel corpus comprising four English novels with their Persian translations was compiled and analyzed on a textual level. Upon classification of the manipulated segments and the types of manipulations, it was revealed that the manipulated parts constituted slightly over two percent of the whole text, and the strategy of "deletion" was the most frequent one in all the translations. 60% of the manipulated segments were culturally "sensitive" parts while 40% were "non-sensitive" parts of the text.