The Development of Norms over Time and its Effect on Translation Process

Abstract

The present study intends to compare two translations of The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan with each other and with the source text in order to investigate the effect of socio-cultural factors and norms developed in the time of translators’ lives on the quality of their translations as well as on their translational decisions. The first translation belongs to the Qajar era translator, Mirza Habib, and the other one has been done by a contemporary translator, Mehdi Afshar. This study employs Toury’s descriptive-comparative model which allows studying translation in terms of the target culture’s context as well as its social norms. The findings revealed that the translators have translated the novel differently and they have tried to produce a text which complies with the expectations of their target audience at the time. In other words, they have reacted to the constraints governing their decision while translating. Another finding of the study is that neither translator had been completely faithful to the original text because of the prevalent social constraints of their life time. Finally, this research considers historically-changing socio-cultural/political context as an essential factor in creating as well as describing and explaining translations.