A Comparative Study of the Picture Of Dorian Gray and Its Two Persian Translations in Terms of Cohesive Devices

Abstract

Having considered the importance of cohesion in producing a fluent and meaningful text, this study attempts, based on Halliday and Hassan (1976) 's model of cohesion, to compare the English text The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde, 1982) with its two Persian translations by Tahami (2013) and Mashayekhi (2008), to investigate the strategies applied by the two translators in transferring cohesive devices, and to scrutinize the effects of the translators’ choices on the transference of the intended meaning to the target language. To this purpose, the cohesive devices (reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion) of the source text were identified and compared with those in the target texts. These devices were compared intralingually between the two target texts as well. The results of this quantitative and descriptive study revealed that there is not a one-to-one relationship between the source text and target texts in terms of cohesive devices due to the grammatical differences between the two languages and the deletion or addition of some information to the target text to convey the meaning. However, such differences do not damage the transference of the intended meaning to the target language. Also, it was shown that the patterns of use of cohesive devices, except the substitution element, are not the same in the two target texts either, because of stylistic or other differences. These findings require more attention on the part of translators when dealing with these devices which can finally will lead to higher quality renderings.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n20p2373