Using Baker’s Strategies in Translating Persian Idioms into English in Sadegh Hedayat’s Dash Akol Story

Idioms are the building blocks of a language and civilization that provide interesting insights into the use of words and languages. In addition, idioms are an essential feature of a language, as they are applied to communicate ideas concisely and effectively. In literary genres, novels and short stories, considered a part of fiction, are full of culture-specific expressions that require careful translation from the source language into the target language. For this, the use of appropriate strategies to translate idioms determines the quality of idiom translation because the meaning of idiomatic expressions cannot be extracted from their individual components. This qualitative study aimed to investigate Baker’s strategies used in translating Persian idiomatic expressions in Sadegh Hedayat’s Dash Akol story into English. Accordingly, Baker’s five translation strategies of idioms of similar meaning and form, idioms of similar meaning but dissimilar form, translation by paraphrase, translation by omission and literal translation were examined to analyze the translated story. It was found that translation by paraphrase (45%) was the most frequent strategy used to translate idioms, followed by the strategy of similar meaning but dissimilar form (27.5%), the strategy of similar meaning and form (12.5%), translation by omission (10%), and literal translation (5%), respectively. This study offers a new insight into translating idiomatic expressions from Persian into English and may have beneficial implications for students, teachers and researchers, as well.

Using Baker’s Strategies in Translating Persian Idioms into English in Sadegh Hedayat’s Dash Akol Story Keywords:

Idioms , Translation Strategies , Dash Akol , Sadegh Hedayat