Application of Cohesive Devices in Translation: Persian Texts and Their English Translations in Contrast

Abstract

This research focuses on a discoursal element; namely, cohesive devices in terms of density, in Sa`di's Gulistan. Sixteen stories from the second chapter of Gulistan (on the manner of dervishes) were selected and compared with their translated versions by Arberry (1945), Ross (1890), and Rehatsek (1964). Cohesive devices, as language specific markers for holding relationship between parts of a text, were first identified and then classified into grammatical and lexical cohesive ones. Grammatical cohesive devices comprise reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction, while lexical cohesive devices comprise reiteration and collocation in which reiteration itself includes full repetition, synonymy, superordinate and general word. The model followed in the research was Halliday and Hasan's (1976). The results obtained from the comparison of density of each type of cohesive devices between the original Persian text and the English versions reveal some differences, even among the very English versions. This suggests lack of one to one textual correspondence between the two genetically the same but typologically different languages, English and Persian, in so far as the base model is concerned.