A Comparative Study of Transposition of Form in English Translations of Gulistan-e-Saadi: A Case of Thackston (2008) and Rehatsek (1964)

Literary translators confront some problems and challenges in translating the specific style of some elements ofpoems and stories. In this vein, the present study was conducted to study transposition of form in the Englishtranslations of Guilstan-e-Saadi. To this aim, a mixed methods design was used. The corpus of this study consistedof 40 poems and stories along with their English translations by Thackston (2008) and Rehatsek (2010). To collectthe data, first, an experienced translator helped the researcher to investigate the translations carefully in orderto identify the cases of form transposition. Next, the identified cases of transposition were classified based onWhittlesey’s (2012) framework. Last, different statistical analyses were done to indicate various types of formtransposition and examine the difference between the two translations in terms of form transposition. The resultsof data analysis showed 50 cases of form transposition; the translators have transposed the form using thefollowing strategies: Rearrangement, simplification, elimination, complication and retention; rearrangement wasthe most frequent form of transposition strategy in both of the translations; there was no significant differencebetween the two translations in terms of transposing form. Likewise, there was no significant difference betweenthe two translations in the frequency of form transposition in stories and poems. In addition, there was nosignificant difference between the frequencies of form transposition in stories and poems in Thackston's (2008)and Rehatsek's (1964) translations.

Keywords:

literary texts , Gulistan-e-Saadi , transposition , form transposition