A Critical Glance at Repetition and Parallelism in Literary Texts from a Discourse Analysis and Translation Studies Perspective

Abstract

Through a survey on historical and philosophical traces of the phenomenon of “repetition” in the West, this paper deals with the significance and role of rhetorical repetitions in literary texts from the perspective of discourse analysis and translation studies. Addressing the issue of translating repeated elements in texts from a discourse analysis perspective and pointing out the crucial role that proper rendering of such elements can play in relaying the content, style, and diction of the source text (ST) into the target text (TT), to underline the rhetorical significance of repetition, the author presents instances of repetition from the fields of oration, religious discourse, and literature. The paper finally compares portions of a number of published Persian translations of a few literary texts, including parts of a few plays by William Shakespeare, to indicate to what extent the translators have appropriately relayed rhetorical repetitions in the source text to the target text.