Allusion and Translation: A Case Study of English Translation of Haft Peikar by Nizami

Understanding cultural and social factors plays an important role in our comprehension of cultural concepts. Among cultural concepts, allusion is examined in this study. The occurrence of allusions is more challenging than the semantic or syntactic difficulties of a text for translators. Translating allusions is considered a reader-centered process. 

Allusions are some of the cultural elements that require an understanding of the culture and language of the ST. Such adequate fluency is not possible for foreign language readers, so collecting these elements and making them available to the TL can greatly alleviate the difficulties of these verses, even helping translators.According to Hatim and Mason (1990), “translators should find TT equivalents for allusions of ST in such a manner that what has intentionally been covered is not explicitly explained, while the meaning of allusions is retrieved”. Comparing the original version with two English translations, the researcher tried to find the strategies selected by two translators to transmit religious allusions as well as their success in introducing implicit meanings. 

This research is supposed to provide answers to the following questions:Have the translators understood the implicit meaning of these stories?What strategies have they used to translate these allusive devices into English?How successful is the quality of the translated versions of this poem in terms of conveying the half-hidden meanings in religious allusions?  Theoretical framework After the model proposed by Leppihalme (1997) for translating allusions, another model was introduced by Gambier (2001). Gambier places culture-specific items and allusions in one category, and so his model is more general than Lippihalme's and can be used to translate cultural elements. 

According to Mona Baker (2009), in cultural translation, cultural elements and concepts such as dialect, allusion, customs, etc. are targeted, and the question that always arises is what the best-proposed solution is for translating cultural elements so that cultural differences can be properly understood. 

Overall, 60 allusions from among the Seven Beauties stories (Haft Peikar) and the strategies to translate them, based on Gambier’s theory (2001), were found. Then two English translations were examined and the equivalents of the desired phrases were identified. The selected solutions of translators and the frequency of each were obtained and placed in a table. 

The most frequent strategy selected by these two translators was "literal translation". Wilson, the first translator of this work, has translated this masterpiece in prose. But the second translation, which was done by Meisami, is a rhymed version. The second translation is considerably successful because the translator has added some explanation to make allusive meanings explicit. Due to using inadequate strategies, excess of literal translation, omission, and incorrect translation, the first translation is not considered to be a good version in English.