Unintended Framing and Linguistic Habits: A Narrative Account

Abstract

This article draws on the notion of ‘narrative’ and ‘framing’ (Baker, 2006) to see whether or not the ideologically controversial aspects of the narratives encoded in Harry Potter book series have been framed in its Persian translations. In so doing, the article focuses on a Persian translation of one of the books of the series and examines the sites, in and around its text, at which the process of framing may be carried out. As with the sites inside the text, all cases of mismatch between the translated text and its source texts are examined and regarding the sites around the text, paratextual information is investigated. The result of the textual analysis showed many cases of mismatch which together led to a religiously charged text. However, this religious frame did not seem to be in line with the information found around the text. That is to say, the translator seemed to have unintentionally framed the text differently. In addition, based on the similarities between the tone of mismatches and the tone of paratextual information, it appeared that linguistic habits played a role in this reframing. To see if the translator had unintentionally reframed the source text, she was interviewed, and the result was positive. Also, similar mismatches were looked for in some other works of the same translator to see if linguistic habits had played a role and so many similar mismatches, which contributed to the same religious narratives, were found. Therefore, it appeared that, the translator influenced by her linguistic habits had reconfigured the narratives encoded in the source text unintentionally.