An Investigation into the Semantic Domains of Dysphemistic Forms in The Catcher in the Rye and its Persian Translation and their Translation Strategies

Abstract

This study sought to identify the semantic domains of the various realizations of dysphemism in The Catcher in the Rye and its Persian translation. It also aimed at spotting the translation strategies employed by Translator Najafi in rendering them into Persian. The novel was chosen as it encompasses quite a lot of dysphemistic expressions in the first-person account of the teenage narrator. In an initial pilot phase of analysis, six general semantic domains of relieving, sex, religion, animals, insanity, and dirt were spotted to guide the rest of data analytic procedure. The three semantic fields of religion, insanity, and sex accounted for approximately 85% of all cases of occurrence of dysphemism. In regard to the translation strategies used by Najafi, the following strategies were identified as playing a significant role in rendering the realizations: deletion, transfer of identical semantic domains, transfer of different semantic domains, change of instances of strong dysphemism into those of mild one, and finally change of cases of dysphemism into those of euphemism. Studies such as these are liable to contribute to advancement of further research and discussions on the as yet under-researched area of dysphemism.