Pragmatic Adaptation as a Requirement in Translation: A Case of Persian and English Versions of The Shah

Abstract

Drawing on adaptive models of translation, the paper attempts to identify how a change in the readership of the text could result in changes in the target text. For this purpose, a well-known book on the history of Iran, written originally in English and later translated into Persian, by a well-versed scholar was selected. The corpus was then analyzed using Vehmas-Lehto’s (2002) classification of pragmatic adaptation and Chesterman and Wagner’s (2002) model of pragmatic strategies. Results indicated that from among the adaptation types ‘addition’ was employed with the highest frequency, followed by omission. In addition, ‘explicitness’ and ‘information change’ as pragmatic strategies showed to be often used by the translator. Further, in both categories of ‘omission’ and ‘addition’, ‘information change’ appeared to be the most frequently employed strategy. The findings are discussed focusing on how translation practice can be improved based on the survey of recent translation theories.

Keywords

• Adaptation
• Pragmatics
• Translation
• Naturalness
• English
• Persian