Culture-Specific Items in “The Catcher in the Rye”:A Comparative Analysis of Three Persian Translations

Among the many controversial issues which arise when we have a translation project at hand,“culture” has proven to be one of the all-time most notable ones. Although numerous scholars insiston sticking to the original text in every respect – not neglecting the superiority of authorship, othersare of the belief that as long as audience attention and financial success are concerned, it is the targetculture that should become the primary concern in a translator’s mission. To name just a few figuresin the latter side (as it will be the focus of this research), we shall discuss Bassnett and Nida, whosetheories on translation will constitute the theoretical framework in this study. Due to the broadness ofculture, the scope of this study will inevitably be limited to the three most prominent culture-specificfeatures – Slangs, Idioms, and Taboos. For the corpus, on the other hand, “The Catcher in the Rye”and three Persian translations by Mohammad Najafi, Ahmad Karimi, and Araz Barseghian have beenselected. This descriptive-comparative case reveals that not only has Najafi proven to be the masteramong three in handling culture-specific items, but he has also been fully alert to aspects beyond thetext.

Keywords:

Culture-Specific Items , ” “Slang , ” “Idiom , ” “Taboo , ” “Culture”