Comparative Study of Translating Ambiguity in Hafiz’s Divan Translated by Wilberforce Clarke and Alaeddin Pazargadi

The present study embarks on a comparative study of the translations of ambiguity in Hafiz’s poems presented by Alaeddin Pazargadi (2003) and Wilberforce Clarke (2002). It aims at analyzing the diversity in translation of ambiguity according to the seven types of ambiguities identified by Empson (1930) in his book “Seven types of Ambiguity”. This research is a descriptive study in which 64 bold ambiguities existing in 62 Qazals of Hafiz's Divan, based on the definition and classification proposed by Empson (1930), have been extracted in the source language. Then the English equivalents of these ambiguities have been retrieved from the two English copies. By observing and comparing each translated ambiguity with the original ambiguity in Hafiz’s poems in Persian, and then during the comparison between each of the available translated poems, the researcher tried to distinguish the mismatches which exist between the source and the target texts. This comparative endeavor revealed that in most items, the meaning of the words with ambiguity differs in their translations and despite the fact that Pazargadi is a Persian language translator; he had not been able to provide a better translation

Comparative Study of Translating Ambiguity in Hafiz’s Divan Translated by Wilberforce Clarke and Alaeddin Pazargadi Keywords:

Ambiguity , Lexical meaning , Literal translation , Untranslatable