Strategies Employed in the Translation of Idioms from English Novels into Persian

Idioms are considered as one of the beauties of every language which spiritualizes and colorizes that language and they are closely connected to the culture of every society. The present study aimed at examining the repertoire of strategies employed by Iranian translators in the task of translating idioms in novels. To achieve this aim, the study focused on the novel “Great expectations'' written by Charles Dickens. The researchers of this study selected two translations of this profusely translated masterpiece based on convenience sampling. The strategies proposed by Mona Baker (۱۹۹۲) were the selected framework for the analysis. The results of the descriptive statistics helped the researchers to answer two research questions in this study mostly related to the types of strategies used and their frequencies. According to the findings, the least frequently used strategy was “paraphrase,” with a percentage of ۴.۲۸%, and the most frequently used one was “using an idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form” with a percentage of ۶۷.۱۴ %. The translation by omission was not used at all in both translations. It seems that as the proficiency and the experience of translators increase, they tend to keep the use of strategies like omission and paraphrasing at a minimum. The findings of this study will help educators in providing a comprehensive map of strategies used by Iranian translators in their task of translation across different fields of study.

Keywords:

idiom , translation strategy , translation task , Iranian translators , paraphrase , Mona Baker