A Critical Review on the Translation of the Book “Sufism and Surrealism” Based on Garcé's Theory

More than being a "tool" for translating knowledge and awareness from one language to another, translation is a "process" for reflecting cultural and social concepts. To improve the quality of such reflection, new perspectives on translation, linguistics, and discourse can be used. One of the new perspectives on translation is the proposal of the Spanish Carmen Garcés (1994), which has four levels: "semantic-lexical", "syntactic-word-constructive", "discourse-functional" and "stylistic-practical". With the help of these four levels, it is possible to investigate the increase, maintenance, and decrease the original text information in the translated text. By counting the positive and negative features of translation, the adequacy and acceptability of translation are also evaluated in this theory. In the following article, based on this theory, we critique the translation of Habibullah Abbasi from the book "Sufism and Surrealism" written by Adonis. Although the translator has increased the volume of the translated text by adopting the method of "synonymy" and bringing more or fewer captions, according to the criteria set by Garcés, his translation has the feature of preserving the information of the source text. In spite of the criticisms that can be leveled at the translator's method of translating terms and the type of word-for-word translation, in general, his translation has a degree of adequacy and acceptability as stated in Garcés' theory.