Marked themes in the translation of English poems

From discourse perspective, any variation in the textualization of discourse is functionally motivated. That is to say, any variation carries a specific communicative value. To create special images or to add more communicative value to some linguistic elements, the discourse producer deviates from norms of language. This mainly happens in poetry. A kind of deliberate deviation used in poetry is manifested through marked themes. Such marked themes may be mishandled in the process of translation and as a result, the intended meaning of the discourse producer may be inflicted. This paper was an attempt to prove the fact that the mishandling of marked themes in the translation of poetic texts can have a negative effect on the nature of the message to be negotiated and it can mislead the readers to have a different understanding of the created piece of discourse. To cast a torch light on the issue, some samples of translated poems from English into Persian where marked themes have not been treated correctly were analyzed. To test the effect of the mistreated marked themes on the readers interpretation, 30 students of English Literature , as participants of the study were given some selected English poems containing marked themes. Each couplet was followed by a questions to which two interpretations as a or b were supplied. In a delay post- test the same students were given the translated version of the same poems with the same questions , of course with ill translation . With a pre-test and a delayed post-test design, the collected data were entered into SPSS to find out if mishandling of marked themes in the translation of poems can have a significant effect on the reader s different interpretation of a poem. And the analysis revealed the fact that marked themes should not be taken for granted in the process of translation or else a misinterpretation will be the result.

Keywords:

textualization , deviation , marked themes , communicative value