Metadiscourse Markers: A Contrastive Study of Translated and Non-Translated Persuasive Texts

Metadiscourse features are those facets of a text, which make the organization of the text explicit, provide information about the writer's attitude toward the text content, and engage the reader in the interaction. This study interpreted metadiscourse markers in translated and non-translated persuasive texts. To this end, the researcher chose the translated versions of one of the leading newspapers in the United States, The New York Times, and the original versions of Hamshahri newspaper (an Iranian newspaper). Qualitative and quantitative analysis of both textual and interpersonal metadiscourse markers in second language (L2) translated and non-translated version of the opinion articles from The New York Times and Hamshahi (6 from each), found out how the translators organize their texts and how these organizations were related to the non-translated texts. Findings of the study revealed that textual and interpersonal metadiscourse markers were seen in both sets of data. Regarding the occurrences of textual metadiscourse categories and subcategories, the results showed significant differences between the two groups. It was, however, found that the Iranian writers used interpersonal markers significantly more than the Iranian translators did. The results suggested that metadiscourse markers have a prominent role to help the translators of opinion articles to understand the original texts.