An Investigation of Stylistic Variation in Literary Translation:The Cat and the Moon and Calvary Dramas along with their Persian Translations in focus

This paper intended to investigate the stylistic features of the two dramas titled The Cat and the Moon and Calvary by William Butler Yeats, and their Persian translations by Farid Ghadami. In so doing, Leech and Short s checklist (2007) of stylistic features was employed to stylistically analyze the dramas and their Persian translations. The results revealed that the author had employed lexical and grammatical features, figures of speech, cohesion and context. In addition, the author’s use of nouns took the largest share of the major word classes in both dramas. Verbs were found to be the second dominant group of the major word classes in the English texts of both dramas. Adjectives contributed the 3rd largest number from the major word classes in the English texts of both dramas. The least represented in the major word classes are adverbs in the English texts of both dramas. Similar to the English texts of the two dramas, the Persian texts included the lexical categories with the same ratio, and this shows that seemingly, employing nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs is not language-specific in literary texts. In addition, no significant difference was observed between the texts of the dramas in two languages. The results of stylistic analysis of the two dramas in terms of their grammatical features showed that in addition to statements, Yeats employed questions, commands and exclamations in the English texts of both dramas. The results of the analysis of the English texts of the two dramas also showed that various types of clauses like relative clauses, adverbial clauses, and different types of nominal clauses were used by the author. It was also found that Yeats used both Tropes and Schemes in his writings, but in cohesion and context of the two dramas and their Persian translations some differences were seen.

کلیدواژه ها:

drama ، literary translation ، scheme ، style ، stylistic variation ، trope