A Semantic Analysis of English Equivalents of Idioms of Mathnawi in Nicholson’s Translation

Abstract

Mathnawi is one of the most significant masterpieces of Iranian literature which has been fully translated into English by the famous English orientalist, Reynold Alleyne Nicholson and invoked by many scholars ever since. This research aims to study the different approaches of the translator in terms of the translation of idioms in Mathnawi, on the basis of Baker's (2011) six fold theory to determine the translator's success in rendering the figurative speech of this corpus. In order to do so, over one thousand of Mathnawi's idioms and special expressions were collected and after analyzing their various concepts and meanings in Persian, they were compared with their English equivalents to show the translator's major tendency. The results of this research reveal that in the mentioned translation, the translator's dominant method has been word for word or literal translation, and the relevant reasons are mentioned in the essay.