Assessment of Translation Strategies Used in the Translation of Extralinguistic Culture-bound References in the Two Persian Renderings of Robinson Crusoe

Translating cultural elements can be a demanding task due to the fact that such elements have specific meanings in the culture and language in which they arise but not necessarily in others. Taking this fact into account, the present study intends to examine translating culture-specific items from English into Persian and the way they are rendered. For this purpose, this study aimed to achieve two objectives. First, it tried to investigate different strategies used by two Persian translators in translating culture-specific items in English novel ''Robinson Crusoe'', and second, it tried to detect the most frequently used strategies by comparing two translations of the same text. In this study, the original novel and its two Persian translations were compared with each other. To begin with, the culture-specific items in the original novel were detected and their Persian renderings by two translators were identified. Then, these items were categorized using Nedergaard-Larsen's (1993) classification. Finally, the strategies employed by two Persian translators of the same text while dealing with culture-specific items were identified. For identifying and categorizing translation strategies, Pedersen's (2005) taxonomy was chosen. The findings of the study revealed that the following strategies were adopted by two Persian translators to render culture-specific items in the novel: retention, specification, direct translation, generalization, substitution and omission. They also indicated that retention is the most frequently used strategy and the most proper way of rendering culture-specific items

Keywords:

Translation , Culture , Culture-specific items , Translation strategy