[lg policy] Dissertation: Language Contact through Translation: The impact of English modal system on Persian scientific genre

[Harold Schiffman]

Language Contact through Translation: The impact of English modal
system on Persian scientific genre


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 preferences
are handled in translations, and whether an influence of the global
lingua franca English is perceivable on Persian communicative
preferences. Our corpus contains 500/000 words, consisting of a
parallel sub-corpus and a comparable one classified into two different
periods: the first one covering the years 1956-1971, and the second
one containing texts from 1998-2009. For the current study, House
model of translation evaluation (1977, 2009) was adopted.

A corpus analysis of all occurrences of the modal auxiliaries especially
must, can, may in their epistemic use and their rendition in the
translated texts show us the different translation choices on the overall
communicative make- up of the comparable texts in two periods. The
results indicate that compared with Persian original texts, in English
texts, the overall use of modal auxiliaries is more and the hedging use
of auxiliary may make English texts especially those of the second
period more implicit and subjective. Persian original and translated
texts seem to behave differently in two time windows. In the first period,
both original and translated Persian texts exhibit a certain tendency to
diverge from English texts, which can be construed as the application
of the cultural filter. The scenario seems to be different for the later
Persian original texts. Although the general tendency towards the
middle certainty valued modal tavanestan (can) was reinforced and the
frequency of occurrence of Persian modal main verbs was increased,
the overall number of modal auxiliaries as well as the number of modal
passive constructions were decreased in favor of promotional passive
constructions. Therefore, it seems that the second Persian translated
texts due to the dominance of overt translation tend more towards the
English modal priorities, but no marked dominance of the least certainty
modal valued was observed in both the later translated and especially
original Persian texts.

http://linguistlist.org/issues/23/23-2899.html

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