Journal of Language and Translation
Volume:3 Issue: 1, Winter 2013

The research attempted to discover the norms of translating taboo words and concepts after the Islamic Revolution in Iran using Toury’s (1995) framework for classification of norms. The corpus of the study composed of Coelho’s novels between 1990 and 2005 and their Persian translations which were prepared and analyzed manually to discover the norms. During both the selection of novels for translation and the process of translating by translator norms were at work. It was also discovered that the translators of the novels complied with the target language norms, i.e. the translators had attempted to produce acceptable translations. Regarding preliminary norms, the research suggested that the translation policy was based on popularity of the author that could guarantee the salability of translations. The frequency of the norms suggested that euphemism with 37.87 percent was the dominant norm in translating taboo words and concepts. The frequency of the norms in each of the books, as well as their frequency in the entire corpus was measured and presented in tables and discussed. Finally, it was found out that the dominant ideology in Iran was a determining factor in the process of decision making by the translators.

Negotiation, as an interactional strategy and proactive focus on form (FoF) have received increased attention in second language research. The combination of negotiation and proactive FoF, however, has not been examined in relation to L2 vocabulary learning. To address this gap, the present study investigated how the amount of negotiation and proactive FoF impacted learners’ vocabulary knowledge development. The participants were 100 adult learners of English, assigned to three experimental groups and one control group. The three experimental groups investigated three categories of no negotiation, limited negotiation, and extended negotiation in proactive FoF. A pretest-posttest design was employed in order to detect any improvement in participants’ vocabulary knowledge components, consisting of collocations, synonyms, derivation, and hyponymy. The results revealed that (a) participants’ vocabulary knowledge significantly improved in all the experimental groups, (b) extended negotiation was significantly superior to limited negotiation, and limited negotiation was significantly superior to no negotiation in proactive FoF, and (c) derivation was the least affected vocabulary component by the treatment.

The effect of test on teachers, students, and their classroom behaviors has ever been amenable to scholarly studies. To explore such an effect, 20 professors offering MA TEFL preparation courses and 30 candidates received PLSP and APALS inventories. Paired-sample t-tests revealed significant differences. However, the respective componential multivariate ANOVA revealed non-significant and significant differences among the components of the styles and maxims, respectively. The teacher’s teaching styles and maxims were significantly affected in the light of washback. Pearson correlation coefficients revealed significant correlation among the components like: classroom conduct, facilitation, and agenda. Contrary to the hypotheses made, the results of the similar analyses (t-test, componential multivariate ANOVA and correlation coefficients) run as to the learners’ learning styles showed drastically opposite results; meaning that neither the styles as a whole nor their componential individual sub-styles showed to have been significantly washback-determined. These contradictory findings may be attributed to reflective orientations among the teachers.

The present investigation was designed to study the production and comprehension of specific means for information highlighted by advanced Iranian learners of English as a Foreign Language. The study focused on the discourse-pragmatically motivated variations of the basic word order such as inversion, pre-posing, it- and Wh-clefts. After taking the Nelson test, a homogeneous group was settled. For measuring the learners’ comprehension, a set of meta-linguistic tests was administered consisting of an acceptability judgment task along with an error identification task. In the case of investigating the learners’ production, they were supplied with a test of production consisting of discourse completion items. A total of 30 males and females who were all MA EFL learners served as the participants of this study. First, the production task was administered, and the learners went through the comprehension task in another session. Descriptive analysis and Pearson tests were performed on the data to test the hypotheses of the study. The results indicated that the advanced Iranian learners of English are aware of the syntactic options for structuring the information; however, they avoid producing these structures in their use of language to convey their proper pragmatic functions. Furthermore, there is no meaningful relationship between the learners’ awareness and their use of marked structures.

The present study was conducted to examine the relationship between the self-supervision and the self-efficacy of Iranian EFL teachers and also the relationship between the self-supervision and the self-efficacy of intermediate adult learners individually. To this end, 40 EFL teachers and 55 intermediate adult learners were selected from two branches of Kish Language Institute. In this study, “Self-Supervision checklists” were formed separately for the teachers and the learners to collect data. Common European Framework (CEF) and that of the Association of Language Testers in Europe (ALTE), the two internationally standard scales were used as learners’ checklists. Besides, an independent t-test was run to determine the statistical difference between the means on two sets of scores: the teachers’ self-supervision and the institutional supervision; the learners’ self-supervision and the institutional assessment. Data analysis and statistical calculations revealed a positive relationship between the teachers’ self-supervision and their self-efficacy in language teaching, and it also showed a positive relationship between the learners’ self-supervision and their self-efficacy in their language learning.

Every society has its own culture, values, and ideology. Translations convey the meaning as well as cultural and ideological values, beliefs, ideas and norms from source culture to target culture. One type of translation which nowadays is popular among people, and can attract so many audiences in different ages is Audiovisual Translation (AVT), particularly dubbing. If there is difference between values of source and target culture, it may cause conflict, i.e. some words and sentences in source culture can be used without any problem but they may be considered taboo in the target culture, and the people of target society might avoid using them. If the translator transfers such taboo words and sentences to the target culture, she/he will violate the norms of the society. Therefore, audiovisual translator should be equipped with different strategies in order to tackle such problems in the process of translation. This study attempts to determine the most frequent strategies in dubbing taboo words and sentences in romantic films which have been dubbed from English into Persian within the third decade after the Islamic Revolution in Iran by using Toury’s (1995) framework for classification of norms. This study will also investigate the norms which contribute to dubbing taboos from English into Persian in that period of time.

The benefits of textual input enhancement in the acquisition of linguistic forms have produced mixed results in SLA literature. The present study investigates the effects of textual enhancement on adult foreign language intake of two English linguistic forms-subjunctive mood and inversion structures-to explore the role of the type of linguistic items in input enhancement studies. It also investigates learners’ trend of development in the acquisition process of these structures. Thirty first year college-level participants were exposed to twelve enhanced texts for subjunctive mood and twelve other texts for inversion structures. The study employed a pretest-posttest-delayed posttest design to explore the effectiveness of instructional treatment in the short term and long term acquisition of the structures. Alongside a pretest and a posttest, three production tests were administered to assess the trend of development in each structure.The results revealed that textual enhancement aided the learning of the target forms. With regard to type of linguistic items, significant benefits of subjunctive mood over inversion structures were found during both short term and long term. This study revealed that textual input enhancement may have differential effects on the acquisition of linguistic forms. Theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical implications are also discussed.

Even though some scholars do not agree on the direct link between globalization and translation, most others believe that the process of globalization has influenced translation practices over time. The present research, thus, endeavors to probe into the nature of these impacts and shed some light on the manifestations of globalization trend in the translations of literary texts. To this aim, the Persian translations of three novels written by Ernest Hemingway were selected. Two time spans, the second and the third waves of globalization, were also selected to portray if the globalization trend has influenced translations of the novels. Then, the suggested framework by the same authors was employed in the analysis of Persian translations of the novels in order to demonstrate if the suggested model was applicable in the analysis of English-Persian literary texts. The study revealed that some changes occurred in the strategies employed in the translations done during the third wave of globalization trend.