A Critique of the English Translation of Haft Peykar Based on Antoine Berman’s Model
Abstract
The present article aimed at examining the English translation of Haft Peykar translated in English as Haft Paykar: A Medieval Persian Romance, by Julie Scott Meisami (2015). Based on Berman’s model and within the framework of a descriptive-comparative methodology, several samples were assessed. The researcher attempted to find the merits and demerits of the given English translation of Nizami’s Haft Peykar based on the critical model of Antoine Berman, and to show the frequency of the‘deforming tendencies’in the English translation. Primarily, English translation of the original poetry – the story of seven beauties- was compared and analyzed then the merits and demerits of the translation were identified precisely. The analysis of the data revealed that almost all types of deforming tendencies, although with different frequencies, were observed in the translation of the poetry. The highest frequency goes for the qualitative destruction, and the lowest one for ‘the effacement of the superimposition of languages’. In cases where no deforming tendencies are observed, upon Berman’s idea, the translated text enjoys the merits of a faithful translation and the translation of those parts following the deforming tendencies is inadequate. Overall, it appears that Berman offers a model which is too strict to keep the form and content of the source text in the English translation of Haft Peykar.
Keywords: Berman’s model, deforming tendencies, merits, demerits, Haft Peykar
Keywords:
Berman’s deforming tendencies, Demerits, Haft Peykar, Merits, Qualitative impoverishment, Quantitative impoverishmentReferences
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Copyright Licensee: Iranian Journal of Translation Studies. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0 license).
