A Study of Realia Translation Strategies in the Novel “A Thousand Splendid Suns”

Abstract

The present study aimed at investigating the realia translation strategies used by Iranian translators in the novel “A Thousand Splendid Suns”. To do so, the first twenty chapters of this best-seller novel were selected as the source text. Likewise, two Persian translations of this novel were chosen as the target text. While the first translation was carried out by a professional translator, the second translation was done by an amateur one. First, using Mikutytė’s (2005) model of realia, all the Cultural-Specific Items (SCIs) were extracted from the source text. These included 735 items. Then, each of the terms was compared with its two corresponding Persian translations to see what strategies have been used. The Researcher used Davies’ (2003) model of realia translation strategies. In addition, one more strategy was added to this model named normal translation. This referred to those cases when the translators had not used any of the seven translation strategies proposed by Davies (2003). As the findings of the study revealed, normal translation and preservation were the most frequent strategies used by both of the translators. While the professional translator used additions as the third most frequent strategy, the no-professional one tended to use omissions in most of the cases and this was detected to be the third most frequent strategy. Results also indicated statistically significant differences among the frequencies of the strategies in both translations.