Contrastive Componential Analysis and Strategies for Translating Mystical Terminology from Persian into English

Subject Areas : Islamic Mysticism

mohammadreza ghari ¹ , Hasan Hashemiminabad ²

1 - faculty and professor of the free university of arak . central . iran
2 - گروه زبان انگلیسی، واحد اراک، دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی، اراک، ایران.

Received: 2020-07-25 Accepted : 2020-07-25 Published : 2020-07-22

Keywords:

Abstract :

Because of being culture-bound and language-specific features, Persian and Islamic mystical terminology pose many difficulties for those who translate from Persian into English. Throughout the long history of inter-lingual relations, translators employed strategies and techniques for translating the terms of Persian Islamic mystical terms, attaining different degrees of success or somehow failed. In the present study, which is a descriptive and library research, 20 Persian mystical terms along with their 20 derivatives and their English equivalents are chosen from the specific corpora. The data are analyzed according to the principle of translation studies and contrastive linguistics, the strategies used in the sample are identified and described, the characteristics of the equivalents are examined semantically and pragmatically, and the (dis)advantages of equivalents and strategies are described. The findings show that it is essential for translators to compare and contrast the term and its equivalent(s) in terms of their semantic components and pragmatics. Furthermore, their cultural and linguistic features are to be taken into consideration. Finally, the closest natural equivalents can be selected. It is evident that one-to-one correspondence between the items of the two languages are relatively rare. However, the translators can pave their ways by componential analysis, contrastive linguistics and using the strategies discussed here to provide a good translation.