فصلنامه مطالعات زبان و ترجمه
سال پنجاه و چهارم شماره 4 (زمستان 1400)

Interlinear translation has been a popular method of translating religious texts, including the Bible and the Qur’an. Since religious books are considered to be sacred, translators mostly translate them word by word and they provide readers with the exact original word under the translated text. However, early translations of the Qur’an were not completely word by word and contained numerous language initiatives. The aim of this study is to examine these initiatives. This descriptive-analytic study compares four ancient interlinear translations of the Qur’an dating back to the 4th and the mid-6th Century AH. The translations include the famous commentary on the Qur’an by Al-Tabar, Tafsīr Abū al-Futūḥ in verses, Qods translation of the Qur’an and Rey translation. The translations are analyzed in terms of lexical items and syntax. The findings suggest that the translators were loyal to the syntax and lexical items of the Qur’an albeit in varying degrees. In other words, although all the translations turned out to be word by word, they contained some specific features which made them valuable texts. For example, Tafsir al-Tabari and Qods translation contained many Persian equivalents or Qods translation included a Sistani dialect. In addition, the Rey translation and Tafsīr Abū al-Futūḥ were under the influence of the original language, especially when it comes to lexical items. Indeed, these two translations followed the syntactic conventions and standards of Persian.

A multitude of studies have highlighted the importance of implementing literary works in language and culture teaching. Despite the growing attention to cultural teaching through literary texts, the number of studies highlighting learning culture through short stories is still limited. This study investigated effects of teaching short stories on Iranian English students’ cultural identity reconstruction. Seven source and target stories entailing cultural conceptualizations of faith, love, and justice were taught during a semester. Four undergraduate students of TEFL at Yazd University were selected through purposive sampling. The researchers applied various instruments, including narrative interviews, open-ended questionnaires and diary studies. They collected the data related to participants’ self-images of initial, present, and future phases of learning English. The data were analyzed through qualitative content analysis. The findings identified a three-stage developmental path of cultural identity reconstruction, initiating from being profoundly mesmerized by a foreign culture, followed by appreciating national identity. In the third stage, they experienced a stage of respect for intercultural diversities and had a tendency for active membership in international communities. The participants demonstrated a strong tendency to preserve their cultural identity and move toward globalization. The findings supported the flexibility and multiplicity of cultural identities confirming social constructionists’ views. The findings underline the need for fundamental revision of teaching materials for the course Oral Reproduction in order to strengthen the cultural identity of Iranian English learners on their path towards globalization.

The present article draws on Ghomi and Farahzad’s (2020) model of renarration in audiovisual translation to explore different types of reframings effected in the interlingual dubbing of animated films broadcast on Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. Given that audiovisual narratives are of multimodal nature and involve nonverbal sites as well as verbal sites, they provide audiovisual translators and audiovisual translation institutes with more opportunities to reframe the target narrative. Therefore, Ghomi and Farahzad’s (2020) Multimodal Narrative Analysis is used to compare and contrast original and dubbed animations at the micro-level of verbal and nonverbal sites. The results of the study revealed 15 types of reframings that participated in the construction of reality in the target animations. They were categorized under 3 groups of reframing through selective appropriation, reframing through labelling and reframing through repositioning characters. Temporal and spatial reframing was found to be underlying all types of reframing. The study concludes that Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting has an active role in constructing reality in the target language and uses translation as a tool for accentuating or undermining certain narratives in the target animated films.

Given the paucity of longitudinal studies and particularly, the lack of attention to the concurrent interplay of positive and negative psychology in ELT, the present research aims at probing into possible causal relationships among belongingness, foreign language enjoyment, L2 learning demotivation and academic language performance. Following a convenience sampling method, the study sample consisted of 557 incoming university freshmen from non-English majors. A longitudinal survey was employed and the data were collected by means of the related measuring instruments at three time points during an academic semester. The results based on the statistical technique of latent growth curve model showed that there was a statistically significant decrease in participants’ foreign language enjoyment and also a statistically significant increase in their L2 learning demotivation over the course of the first semester. It was also found that belongingness had a positive correlation with foreign language enjoyment and a negative correlation with L2 learning demotivation. The results also revealed that the effect of belongingness on participants’ academic language performance was mediated by both foreign language enjoyment and L2 learning demotivation. However, the direct effect of belongingness on academic language performance was statistically non-significant. The findings have important pedagogical implications that are discussed.

The philosophy of absurd was presented by Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre and other philosophers of the 20th century. This philosophy affected the lives of modern man and when entered into the world of literature, shaping the literature of absurd. Absurd literature created a sense of nothingness and waiting for a savior. To understand the idea of absurd in the world of Samuel Becket and Gholamhosein Saa’edi, we chose two works written by these two great writers. This article presents a comparative study of Waiting for Godot by Becket and The Best Dad of the World by Saa’edi. In this research, the characters of these two plays are analyzed based on Albert Camus’ philosophy of absurd. Based on the content of the two works, concepts of waiting, need, pain and death are discussed. Then, the meaning of absurd man is clarified in these two works and the issue of death and its reflection on absurd man’s attitude is discussed based on Camus’ ideas. In addition, we studied the concept of waiting to find hopeless hopes in the lives of the characters in the two plays. The findings of the study showed that the concept of absurdity and nothingness can be seen throughout these plays and the need for finding hope in life is useless. At the same time, all the characters of the play are waiting for a savior to find a way for hope but we realize that this is not fulfilled.

The present paper draws on narrative theory and the notion of “framing through paratextual devices” to focus on Persian translations of a history book entitled Islam in Iran and it examines paratextual material in one of its chapters in order to see how the translation renarrated the events elaborated in the original for the Persian-speaking readers through such devices. To do so, the original text and the paratexts in the translated version were compared and analyzed in the section in question to see how each of them had narrated the controversial events and how the translation renarrated such events. Here, new patterns of causal emplotment and consequently the new narratives in the translation were specified. The results showed that the translation’s paratextual material challenged the author’s viewpoints in four different ways: 1) questioning the author’s viewpoints and disputing their validity, 2) accepting the author’s opinions but justifying them differently, 3) correcting the author’s mistakes, and 4) providing additional information. Accordingly, the annotations added to the translation reject the narratives of the original text of some historical events and personages and it seems that the translation renarrates them in the Persian version from the perspective of Shia Islam, coordinating them with the public and the accepted narrative of Shi’ism.

The weakening of the concept of translation as a one-to-one equivalence between the source text and the target text and the growing attention to audience, which peaked in the 1970s and 1980s, led to the evolution of translation theory and the role of audience. However, most translations of the Qur’an into Persian, although semantic, prefer the style of Arabic writing to the Persian-speaking audience, which causes many harms in the translation of the Qur'an, including the lack of connection between Persian-speaking audiences and these translations. Ali Maleki’s readable translation of the Qur’an, focusing on Persian-speaking readers, has given a completely audience-based approach to the translation of the Qur’an which is free from many of the shortcomings of existing translations of the Qur’an. The present study seeks to compare the semantic translation of Fooladvand and the translation of Ali Maleki with the use of concepts such as Koller’s “pragmatic equivalence” (1979) and Nida’s “equivalent effect” (1964) to show that the audience-based approach to translating the Qur’an makes use of the potentials of the Persian language and is better than semantic translations. It can also help the audience to understand the Qur’anic verses correctly and quickly.