Idioms in Translation: A Comparative Analysis of Three Persian Translations of The Yard and the Dogs of My Father

Idioms form a significant part of a language. Using idioms in their works, literary writers try to avoid the direct style of writing, increase the influence of their texts and manifest their writing abilities and skills; Doing this, they create a specific style of writing in their works which is usually demanding and challenging for translators. According to the fact that, idioms comprise of a figurative meaning as well as a specific image and function in a language, it is not usually easy to find their exact equivalents in other languages. Translators are expected, on the one hand, to be able to recognize and understand idioms in the source text, and, to be able to find appropriate and acceptable equivalent for them in the target language, on the other hand. The Yard and the Dogs of My Father, a Kurdish novelette written by Sherzad Hasan, the well-known Kurdish novelist, is a rich example of using idioms in narrating a literary fiction. It has been translated into Persian three times so far. Applying Baker (2018) classification of strategies for translating idioms, the present study, analyzed the Kurdish text and its three Persian translations by Keikhosrawi. Halabjai and Karim Mojawer. The results of the study indicated that the transletors have applied all the six strategies, except the fifth one. Translating idioms by paraphrasing them was the most frequent strategy in the corpus of the present study. It was also indicated that Baker’s first three strategies were more frequentluy used in Halabjai and Karim Mojawer’s translations, in comparison with Keikhosrawi’s translation, and as a result those translations were closer to the source text regarding the translation of idioms.