Using Monolingual and Bilingual Dictionaries in Translating Literary Texts

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to examine whether using monolingual and bilingual dictionaries has any significant effect on the quality of translation of literary texts among literature and translation students. Accordingly, 114 senior undergraduate students of English Literature and English Translation were chosen on the basis of their performance on a piloted English proficiency test and were subsequently divided into four groups. A text which was the first three paragraphs of Ernest Hemingway’s "A Farewell to Arms" was given to them to translate. One group of literature students and one group of translation students used a bilingual dictionary while the other two groups used a monolingual dictionary. The students were asked to translate the text, prior to which a summary of the selected novel was given to all students to read. To respond to the four research questions posed in this study, the means of the scores of the four groups, i.e. those literature and translation students who used a monolingual dictionary and those literature and translation students who used a bilingual dictionary were calculated and a two-way ANOVA was run in this regard. The conclusion was that there was a significant difference between the impact of the two majors (literature and translation) in the quality of their translation, but no significant difference was observed between the use of bilingual and monolingual dictionaries; so the interaction of dictionary type and major type was not significant.