LINGUIST List 23.2899
Mon Jul 02 2012
Diss: Translation/English/Persian, Iranian: Shanaseri: 'Language Contact through Translation...'
Editor for this issue: Lili Xia
<lxialinguistlist.org>
Date: 01-Jul-2012
From: Shadi Shanaseri <shadi_shahnaseri
yahoo.com>
Subject: Language Contact through Translation: The impact of English modal system on Persian scientific genre
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Institution: University of Isfahan
Program: Linguistics Department
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2011
Author: Shadi Shanaseri
Dissertation Title: Language Contact through Translation: The impact of English modal system on Persian scientific genre
Linguistic Field(s):
Translation
Subject Language(s):
English (eng)
Persian, Iranian (pes)
Dissertation Director:
Mohammad Amouzadeh
Manoochehr Tavangar
Dissertation Abstract:
This thesis formed to find out how English communicative preferencesare handled in translations, and whether an influence of the globallingua franca English is perceivable on Persian communicativepreferences. Our corpus contains 500/000 words, consisting of aparallel sub-corpus and a comparable one classified into two differentperiods: the first one covering the years 1956-1971, and the secondone containing texts from 1998-2009. For the current study, Housemodel of translation evaluation (1977, 2009) was adopted.
A corpus analysis of all occurrences of the modal auxiliaries especiallymust, can, may in their epistemic use and their rendition in thetranslated texts show us the different translation choices on the overallcommunicative make- up of the comparable texts in two periods. Theresults indicate that compared with Persian original texts, in Englishtexts, the overall use of modal auxiliaries is more and the hedging useof auxiliary may make English texts especially those of the secondperiod more implicit and subjective. Persian original and translatedtexts seem to behave differently in two time windows. In the first period,both original and translated Persian texts exhibit a certain tendency todiverge from English texts, which can be construed as the applicationof the cultural filter. The scenario seems to be different for the laterPersian original texts. Although the general tendency towards themiddle certainty valued modal tavanestan (can) was reinforced and thefrequency of occurrence of Persian modal main verbs was increased,the overall number of modal auxiliaries as well as the number of modalpassive constructions were decreased in favor of promotional passiveconstructions. Therefore, it seems that the second Persian translatedtexts due to the dominance of overt translation tend more towards theEnglish modal priorities, but no marked dominance of the least certaintymodal valued was observed in both the later translated and especiallyoriginal Persian texts.
Page Updated: 02-Jul-2012