Authorial Style in English into Persian Literary Translations: A Focus on the Strategies Applied for ‎Translating Metonymies

Abstract

Translating literary texts such as novels has always caused difficulties for translators since their ‎aesthetic features and diverse authorial styles call for further attention on the part of translators. ‎Metonymy is one of these aesthetic features. By meticulously scrutinizing the strategies applied for ‎translating metonymies, one can gain insights into translators’ regard for faithfulness to authorial style ‎which is of great significance in literary translation. One question was posed: In regard to the strategies ‎applied for translating metonymies, do Iranian translators tend to follow the styles of authors while ‎translating English novels into Persian? Ten English novels and their Persian translations were selected ‎to serve as the corpus of the study. The extracted data were metonymies as defined by Abrams (2005, ‎p. 103). A modified version of the model proposed by Larson (1984, p. 114) was adopted for classifying ‎and analyzing the data. The typologies of metonymy proposed by five Persian scholars were also used ‎to determine the conventional types and sub-types of metonymy in Persian. Based on the findings of ‎this study, Iranian translators do not tend to follow the styles of authors while translating English ‎novels into Persian, at least in relation to the strategies applied for translating metonymies.‎