Recognition and rendition of idiomaticity in translating novels: Translator's strategies and orientations in focus

Abstract

Translators may resort to different strategies to meet the requirement of rendering the significance of a text into its translation. This is all the more so considering such demanding portions of literary texts as idiomatic expressions. This study scrutinized various strategies and orientations adopted by the translators in conveying the idiomatic expressions of Into the Magic Shop, the Catcher in the Rye, and the Great Gatsby, employing Baker’s theoretical framework. Comparing and contrasting the specific source texts (STs) containing various idiomatic expressions with their corresponding target texts (TTs) indicated that mostly the improper recognition and transference of the semantic aspects involved in the idiomatic expressions were noticeable in the TTs. Meanwhile, translation by employing idioms with identical meanings and unlike forms and paraphrasing were the most frequently applied strategies by the translators to render the idiomaticity at work. Considering different semantic aspects involved in idioms and the complex procedure of grasping their semantics, the study findings might lend insightful contribution to enriching the current understanding of the complexities of idiomatic expressions and their renditions, particularly concerning glaring disparities between the languages under study, that is, English and Persian as regards their stylistic preferences.