Review of Ali Abbas Zoleikheh’s Translation of Masnavi, Book 1, according to Mona Baker’s Theory

Abstract

One of the major challenges that a translator faces in translating literary works is poetry. In such translations, not only selecting suitable equivalents but also transferring the poet's purpose is of the utmost importance because it is highly effective in the reader’s understanding as well as the poem aesthetic. In translating literary works, particularly poems, grammatical structures are of paramount importance. As syntax varies from language to language, to accurately translate meaning from the source language to the target language, equivalence in translation fulfills this key objective. According to Mona Baker’s theory of “Structural Equivalence”, by using the descriptive-analytical method, the grammatical structures as well as the meaning of poems are examined in two parts. Part one is the analysis of morphology including accountable /uncountable nouns, person, gender, tenses, and regular/irregular verbs. However, in part two grammatical structures of the translation are examined by using several poems that are translated by Zoleikheh. The obtained result shows that even though Zoleikheh has put a lot of effort into translating Masnavi into Arabic, he could not transfer the poet's purpose, and that is because of an incorrect way of reading some verses and also using the inappropriate lexicon and syntax. Therefore, readers face difficulties understanding some meanings and long contents will not be transmitted to the Arabic language.