Journal of Language and Translation
Volume:8 Issue: 4, Winter 2018

Codification of nonverbal elements in subtitling movies is a challenge for translators. The aim of this study was to investigate the strategies used by Iranian subtitlers for codification of nonverbal elements in subti- tling English movies into Persian using Perego’s shifts and strategies (2003). For this purpose, a selection of 20 English movies (ST) with their Persian subtitles (TT) by Iranian subtitlers were selected and analyzed. At first, nonverbal elements in the ST were identified. Then, they were compared with their Persian subtitles using Perego’s model to find out the strategies used by Persian subtitlers in codifying the nonverbal ele- ments. The results showed 56 cases of codification of nonverbal information in the Persian subtitles. Ac- cording to the results, the strategies suggested by Perego for the codification of nonverbal information in subtitling are applicable to subtitling from English into Persian. Among these strategies, addition (48%) had the highest frequency and reformulation (13%) had the lowest frequency in the subtitling of the 20 English films.

The present study sets out to conduct a critical investigation into what linguistic strategies are exploited during the translation of English advertising brochures for household appliances into Persian to manipu- late customers to purchase the respective products. In the pursuit of this goal, it seeks to explore the val- ues that have been added to the Persian version of the translated brochures. In doing so, a number of 35 English advertising brochures for household appliances for which the Persian translation were available in the market were randomly selected and then analyzed based on the three-dimensional model developed by Fairclough (1989). Accordingly, the data are analyzed with respect to the linguistic strategies em- ployed during the translation process. To comply with the requirements of the next two dimensions of the model, afterwards, the results are interpreted and explained. The findings suggest that the translators ef- fect certain linguistic changes in transitivity structure, vocabulary and grammatical features while trans- lating the brochures. Furthermore, the results reveal that various values like caring about customer‟s en- joyment and convenience, ensuring customers about their purchases, maintaining a formal link between manufacturers and customers, paving the way for better understanding of the source texts by reducing the sentences and preferring an indirect speech towards customers in the target texts than the source texts are conveyed to the target texts by translators.

Improvement in the quality of teacher education programs, especially in higher education, is an important issue. Failure to have an efficient teacher education program could lead to the training of graduates who are not prepared for the realities of the classroom. Accordingly, in an attempt to help improve the present situa- tion of teacher education programs especially at the graduate level, this study aimed to develop and validate an instrument for exploring the challenges Iranian student-teachers face and to present a model for these hurdles. To this end, a Likert-scale questionnaire was constructed based on the literature and through con- sultation of experts which included 32 items. The questionnaire underwent a rigorous validation process in a pilot study with 180 teaching English as a foreign language participants studying for their master’s degree using Cronbach alpha, exploratory factor analysis, average variance extracted, and composite reliability. Furthermore, employing structural equation modeling procedures, a six-dimensional model was presented for the investigated challenges. The obtained results called for the authorities’ further attention to teacher trainees’ problems in areas such as financing, educational facilities, educational planning, peers, teachers as well as a series of personal and social problems they may experience. Considering and dealing with the problems experienced by student-teachers in each of these areas can certainly provide the authorities and different stakeholders with an abundance of new knowledge and information which can be effectively used to improve the quality of teacher training programs.

A sizeable body of research into instructed pragmatics roots from the noticing hypothesis: comparing im- plicit and explicit instruction. It is only recently that other theories, including the output hypothesis, have been researched as possible explanations of interlanguage pragmatic development. Pursuing the same line of research, the present study addressed the impact of collaborative output (CO) on the production of apologies. To this end, 51 EFL learners comprising a CO group (N=26) and a control group (N=25) par- ticipated in the study. The CO group underwent six 45-minute sessions of instruction on apologies, in which they received input in the form of written speech-act contained situations, followed by paired dis- course completion tasks. The results of the statistical analyses showed the significant improvement of the CO group on a 15-item written discourse completion test serving as both the pretest and the posttest. The findings warrant CO-based instruction as an apt approach to the instruction of pragmatics.

Intertextuality is an important academic writing ability when using others’ ideas efficiently and is tanta- mount to failing in the fulfillment of the research part of MA programs if improperly utilized. This study was thus intended to delve into university teachers’ judgment of what they may count as proper or im- proper intertextuality and the reasons why students might deviate from the acceptable norms of intertex- tuality. To this end, four extracts of MA theses together with their original sources were presented to four university professors with different academic rankings. Through an interview, the four extracts were evaluated and their intertextual qualities were explained. The data analysis revealed that university pro- fessors assessed intertextualities as proper or improper inconsistently within two rounds of evaluation. Furthermore, they recounted cultural, social, educational, developmental, virtual and economic reasons for students’ deviating behaviors in the utilization of the resources available. As for the criteria of illegit- imate intertextuality, it was found that no signaling to the reader subject to the violation of the following conditions including specific domain knowledge, more than one sentence copied or paraphrased, mis- match between source and target, and the particular section of the thesis where borrowed ideas are to be used could lead to plagiarism. This study has implications for thesis writers, thesis raters, and EFL writing teachers which are discussed in the paper.

Translation plays an important role in conveying and manipulating ideologies. Accordingly, this study sought to analyze the ideological elements in the English subtitles of the Persian movie The Salesman. The framework to find the driven ideological strategies in the translation of the Persian audio of the same movie was based on the critical discourse analysis (CDA) model inspired by Fairclough and proposed by Farahzad. Following the data analysis, the researchers found that the most frequently applied ideological manipulation strategies were related to social power relationship. Next came ideologically significant lexical choices fol- lowed by agency. The fourth most frequently applied ideological manipulation strategies were traces of both modality and nominalization while the least frequent strategies were tense, positive/negative, and coordina- tion/subordination. Furthermore, no samples of passivization/activization as means of ideological manipula- tion were found. Moreover, the translator had used frequent strategies such as deletion and addition, which were not included in the very same model. Ultimately, the study revealed that ideological manipulation oc- curred mostly in subjects concerning the rights of women in society, the patriarchal system of Iran, religious expression in daily conversation, as well as Iranian norms and their religious culture. The findings further proved the significance of ideology and power relations in the text and the ubiquitous need to be aware of the means of representing ideology in texts and thus how to analyze texts ideologically.

Since the emergence of the cultural turn in translation studies, external factors affecting translation have re- ceived attention in this field. Macro factors such as culture, politics in target contexts, history, ideological manipulation, and translators’ institutional rules have become the concern of translation studies. Consider- ing these factors, the current study aimed to identify the manipulative strategies used by translators in trans- lating patient information leaflets (PILs) from English into Farsi. To this end, 30 parallel corpus of PILs were compared to identify the translation strategies used in them; subsequently, an interview was conducted with 10 administrators of pharmaceutical companies to find out the reasons why these particular strategies were used by translators. The findings showed that translators used three main translation strategies, namely addition, deletion, and transliteration to manipulate texts in the process of PILs translation. The interview results indicated that translators intend to enforce institutional setting rules by adopting these particular translation strategies.

Translation of a literary text is a difficult task, for understanding literature requires knowledge of various linguistic levels of a literary text in addition to strategies and methods of translation. To this should still be added cognitive-based translation training which helps practitioners preserve the aesthetic aspects of a literary text. Focusing on short story as a genre with both oral and written literary features, the researchers have attempted here to clarify the position of a literary text on the one hand, and the intricacies of its translation on the second. The body of discussion generally captures five distinct levels of analysis, i.e. the linguistic level, the literary level, the symbols-in-art level, the cognitive level, and the level of analyz- ing the relationship between literary language, semiosis, cognition, and creativity (the art-symbol level), and the features pertaining to each level, which draw the route-map of translation. In addition, translation is also seen as a tool, among other factors, for introducing the short story genre into Persian literature.