The Translatability of Cultural Elements in the Translation of Colloquial Language: A Case Study of Zola’s Assommoir, Based on Newmark Theory

Abstract

Getting away from the grammar and standard language of a society, colloquial language makes up the language of a specific social or corporate group. This language, rooted in a specific group’s culture, sometimes, proved incomprehensible for the other groups of the society. This makes it difficult for a translator to transfer the textual elements of this language. In this field, some essays have been published in ISI journals; however, this paper is focused on the first novel which has brought the working class of the nineteenth century and their language in literature. Assommoir, the seventh novel in Rougon-Macquart series by Emile Zola published in 1877, is considered as a cornerstone in the history of French fiction and even the world literature. This novel has been translated into Persian in 1361 (1982) by Farhad Ghebraee; this is the only Persian translation of this novel, presented in Iran. Focusing on the theoretical framework presented by Peter Newmark, this essay will explore how the colloquial language and the story’s cultural elements get transferred and examine the probable difficulties of this transfer and will try to estimate the rate of the so-called translator’s success in this task.