Assertiveness and Prediction of Marked Structures in the Translations of Undergraduate English Students

Markedness in linguistics is the state of being distinct, peculiar or complicated in comparison to a more usual or common form. Markedness has been widely studied in the literature. Yet, almost no study has ever explored the relationship between translators’ assertiveness and their preference of marked structures in translation. This article aims at investigating the relationship between the assertiveness level of Iranian undergraduate English students and their preference of using lexical and grammatical marked structures in their Persian translations. To this end, 60 undergraduate English students completed the Assertiveness Scale developed by Alberti & Emmons (1995), and rendered ten short statements taken from the story Child by Tiger into Persian. The story is characterized with itsmarked lexical and grammatical structures. The translation test was scored by two raters, based on the use of marked lexical (e.g. wrong collocations, plurals) and grammatical(e.g. reducedclauses)structures in the students’ translation, and a high inter-rater reliability was achieved.Pearson results revealed a significant positive relationship between the test-takers’ assertiveness andtheir preference to render English marked structures into Persian marked structures. Our findings have implications for translation instructors.

Assertiveness and Prediction of Marked Structures in the Translations of Undergraduate English Students Keywords:

Assertiveness , Marked structures , Lexical , Grammatical , Translation