The Degrees of Cultural Approximation in Lazard’s French Translation of Ale Ahmad’s Sin

Abstract

Jalal Ale Ahmad's oral language offers many cultural and folkloric elements to the audience. These include proverbs, idioms, slangs and ironic sentences, metonymy, onomatopoeia, and more. Having used rhythmic, full of alliteration and figure of speech, he gives a particular rhythm to his writing. All of this has made the work of translators difficult. In this paper, by examining the French translation of Gilbert Lazard of Sin, a story of Jalal Ale Ahmad, we have highlighted his method of translating the cultural elements from Persian into French. According to Newmark’s and Aixela’s models of Culture-Specific Items translation, we have shown that Lazard's translation is based on the functional equivalents with different degrees of cultural approximation. The taxonomy of these equivalents built on the above patterns, provides useful translation information to translators and researchers.