An investigation into translating speech acts of complaint, refusal and request from English into Persian: A Case Study

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the frequency of the speech acts of request, refusal and complaint in the American short story A perfect day for banana fish” and its Persian translation in order to find out whether the speech acts have been realized and rendered by the translator correctly and whether the directionality of the speech acts has been maintained in the translation. Searle’s (1969) classification of speech acts was applied to accomplish the purpose of the study. The focus was on the conversations containing requests, refusals and complaints. The results were contrasted and the findings revealed that there were no significant differences existing in the way the aforementioned speech acts are realized in the English story and its Persian translation in terms of directness and indirectness. The findings revealed that only 20% of indirect refusals were translated incorrectly in terms of indirectness; the rest were translated correctly. This study implies that translators should consider many elements in translating speech acts within the stories and other kinds of texts. Translators should recognize speech acts in the source text‚ translate them correctly into the target language and preserve its (in)directionality within the target language

Keywords:

Speech Acts , Complaint , Refusal , Request , Direct speech act , Indirect speech act , Short story