A descriptive comparative study of the strategies applied for the translation of the vernacular dialect of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men as a sociolect into Farsi

Abstract

Abstract This study aims to identify and compare the strategies applied by native Farsi Translators, Parviz Dariyush (1975) and Soroush Habibi (2009), in rendering the vernacular dialect (Chicano English) of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (1965) as a sociolect into Farsi. One hundred samples which contained seven unique characteristics of vernacular dialect limited to the two main characters of the novel, George and Lennie, were extracted from the novel with their Farsi equivalents. Sienkiewicz (1984, as cited in Berezowski 1997: 35) proposed strategies for the translation of dialects are taken as the model for this study to investigate the way dialectal features are dealt with in the selected parts and to check whether the procedure proposed by Sienkiewicz is sufficient and adequate for their translation. Analysing these samples, the results showed that one-to-one transference of dialectal elements is not practically possible into Farsi. However, both translators used phonological, syntactical, and morphological irregularities of Colloquial Farsi to show that the language of the novel is not standard language. Approximate Variety Substitution is the most frequent strategy used by Habibi and Dariyush. The aim of this strategy is to select a colloquial variety that has some dialectal features such as lexical, phonological, and morphological specifics and at the same time does not present an obvious recognizable TL dialect.