Footnote as Translator’s Footprint: Serving dehybridization or hybridization?

Abstract

The present paper provides new insights into the issue of footnote as translator’s footprint. As footnotes were previously considered to be only at the service of dehybridization, this study attempted to investigate the role of footnotes in producing hybridity. The original English version and the two Persian translations of a popular best-seller, The Kite Runner, were used as the corpus and studying footnotes in the frame of hybridity and dehybridization was taken as the point of departure. After scrutinizing the total number of footnotes extracted from the two Persian translations, six types of footnotes were identified of which one type had no connection to the two phenomena of hybridization or dehybridization; in fact it took a neutral stance toward them. Another was at the service of dehybridization as it was asserted in previous studies, and the other 4 were incontrovertible evidence that footnotes also serve hybridization and that they can even lead to a case of doubled hybridity.