Translation as Relocation of Culture in Iranian Migrant Literature
A Case Study of Rooftops of Tehran
Abstract
Migration and translation are interrelated both involving moving across languages and cultures. Building on the tenet that translation could help migrants to relocate their culture, examining the intersection would be significant. This paper sought the occurrence of linguistic and cultural adjustments, as two faces of relocation, in Iranian’s migrant writing in English to see whether migrants make any attempts to relocate the original culture. Rooftops of Tehran was examined as the corpus and Migrant’s Relocation Model was developed by the researchers for data collection/analysis using MAXQDA 2020 software. The data included all segments which qualified as the subcategories of linguistic/cultural adjustments. After qualifying segments were coded, numerous adjustments were found. Cultural customs and traditions were the most frequent, followed by native words, cultural images, cultural values and beliefs, accented language and cultural themes. The results showed that the author actually made translational adjustments attempting to relocate the original culture and that these adjustments were so frequent that the text was characterized as translational. Through these adjustments, the author claimed a space for heterogeneity while simultaneously resisting dominant linguistic/cultural norms. This verifies that migrants are cultural mediators who translate to relocate their original culture in a new setting.
Keywords:
Cultural Adjustments, Iranian’s Migrant Writing, Linguistic Adjustments, Relocation, TranslationReferences
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