A Comparative Study of Transposition in English Translations of Gulistan of Saadi: A Case Study of Thackston’s and Rehatsek’s Translation

Subject Areas : All areas of language and translation

Niloofar Nakisaei ¹ , Azadeh Nemati ² , Samad Mirza Suzani ³

1 - Master’s degree graduate in English Translation, Department of English, Zand Institute of Higher Education, Shiraz, Iran
2 - Assistant professor of English Language Teaching, Department of English Language Teaching, Jahrom Branch, Islamic Azad University, Jahrom, Iran
3 - Assistant professor of TEFL, Department of English Language Teaching, Marvdasht Branch, Islamic Azad University, Iran

Received: 2021-01-29 Accepted : 2021-01-29 Published : 2021-01-01

Keywords: literary texts, transposition, Transposing the content, Transposing the form,

Abstract :

This study aimed at investigating transposition in English translations of Gulistan of Saadi. To this aim, a mixed methods design was utilized. The corpus of this study consisted of 20 poems and 20 proses along with their English translations by Thackston (2008) and Rehatsek (2010). To collect the data, first, the researcher and an experienced translator explored the translations carefully to identify the cases of trans- position. Then, the identified cases of transposition were categorized based on Whittlesey’s (2012) framework. Next, the frequency and percentage of different types of transposition were calculated. Final- ly, chi-square test was run to investigate the difference between the two translations in terms of transpos- ing form and content. The results of data analysis showed 10 and 14 cases of transposing the form in the translations by Rehatsek and Thackston, respectively. The content has been modified in 30 cases of translation by Rehatsek and in 26 cases of translation by Thackston. Thackston revealed more transpositions of form while Rehatsek revealed more transpositions of content in English translations of Gulistan of Saadi. There was no significant difference between the two translations in terms of transposing form and content.

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