Criticism of the Translation of the Marked Informational Structure in Najib Mahfouz's Novels (Case study: the novels "Al-Shahaz" and "Al-Tariq")

Abstract

Deviation from the usual lexical arrangement in any language creates constructions called marked informational constructions. Marked constructions have pragmatic meanings and a communicative role in the discourse, and since translation is a communicative act, it is necessary to pay attention to these constructions in order to establish a pragmatic and communicative balance between the discourse of source and target. In this research, after examining the theoretical foundations of information construction and the initiation process, which is one of the most important information constructions, seven examples of Persian translations of the novels "Al-Shahaz" and "Al-Tariq" by Naguib Mahfouz, a famous Egyptian writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988, are shown in a descriptive-analytical manner. The novel "Al-Shahaz" was translated into Farsi by Mohammad Dehghani under the title "Gada" and the novel "Al-Tariq" by Mohammad Reza Marashipour under the title "Rah". In the works of Najib Mahfouz, including the two mentioned novels, deviations from the usual lexical arrangement have marked informative constructions of signs, which make their correct transmission in the same signified form necessary to express the author's intention. The results obtained from this research have shown that the translators often translated with their own linguistic symbols and as a result, they translated the marked constructions in an unmarked form. This has caused a part of the meaning intended by the author to not be expressed, and the communication and role balance between the two discourses has not been achieved.

Keywords

• translation
• informational structure
• marking
• initialization
• al-tariq novel
• al-shahaz novel