Postmodernism and Translation: Analyzing the Translation of Postmodernism Fictional Text

The present paper explored the Persian translation of Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America by Payam Yazdanjoo as a fictional text in order to highlight the extent of postmodernism and the main problems of translating postmodernism were assessed by the researchers. In conducting this qualitative corpus-based study, the researchers focused on eight postmodernism techniques which were presented by Sheeba (2017). The findings of the study revealed that all the techniques of postmodernism were applied by the Iranian translator. Among all, magical realism has been applied more than other techniques while reader involvement has been used less than other ones in rendering the translation. The results of the study also indicated the ability of the translator in highlighting illusory and imaginary phrases to assist the reader in understanding such imaginative items. Regarding the main problems, the translator has to omit many cultural differences which can produce the most far-reaching misunderstandings among readers. Also, in most cases, he only transferred the sentences into the target text.
 
Keywords: Fiction; Fictional translation; Postmodernism; Translation