A Study on Translation of Slang Words and Phrases in Jalal Al-e-Ahmad’s Pink Nail polish

Subject Areas : Journal of Teaching English Language Studies

Narges Talabeygi ¹ , Azar Bagheri Masoudzade ²

1 - 1M.A. in English Language Translation, Department of English Language, Sirjan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Sirjan, Iran
2 - 2* Ph.D. in TEFL, Department of English Language and Literature, Shahid Bahonar University, Kerman, Iran

Received: 2023-02-14 Accepted : 2023-08-22 Published : 2023-09-19

Keywords: Literary Translation, Translation strategy, translation, Slang word,

Abstract :

The present study has focused on the translation of slang words/expressions in Pink Nail polish story as a literary Text. The researchers analyzed the extent of translation accuracy and applied strategies based on Baker’s (1992) model. For this end, Jalal Al-e-Ahmad’s Pink Nail polish story as Source Text (ST) with the English translation as Target Text (TT) by Robert Wells (2007) were selected by the researchers. Data were descriptively and qualitatively analyzed and the results revealed that all Bakers' strategies of slang translation were applied except "translation by illustration". However, none of the strategies were equally distributed in English translation. Based on the analysis, "Translation using a loan word or loan word plus explanation" identified as the least frequent strategy and "Translation by paraphrase using the related word" strategy has been applied frequently which shows that the concept expressed in the ST existed in the TT, but in different form or in different words. Results also indicated some major shortcomings as meaningless translation, untranslated slangs, and adding and removing some words. Totally, the translator tried to find appropriate equivalences in most of the selected parts to be closer to target language.

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