Culture and translation: the case of English and Persian languages

Abstract

Translation is not merely a mater of linguistics. The major goal of the present paper is to investigate the relationship between ‘culture’ and ‘translation’. To this end, the researcher drew on a corpus from English and Persian languages. The findings indicated that although different languages, like English and Persian, employ different linguistic forms, this variety cannot be considered as a real challenge. Since during the process of translation, source text’s container (i.e. form) usually undergoes a sort of lexical, phonological, graphological and grammatical change, and source text’s content (i.e. meaning) is logically required to be held constant, accurate understanding of ST meaning and natural rendition into TL depends on the translator’s deep acquaintance with both TL and SL cultures. Resorting to a descriptive equivalent or using explanatory notes would be of great help for accurate rendition and would, consequently, lead to a deep and clear understanding of the TT on the part of the target audiences.