Investigating Translations of the Qur’anic Elaborative Discourse Marker Wæ in an English and Persian Parallel Corpus

Due to the ambiguity, complexity, and context-sensitiveness of discourse markers, their presentation becomes more comprehensive in the process of translation. Additionally, Qur’anic discourse markers enjoy a special delicacy. This article thus investigated the translations of the Qur’anic elaborative discourse marker wæ in two Persian and English translations by Ali Maleki and Tahereh Saffarzadeh, respectively. To this end, ۱۴۷۵ examples of this discourse marker from six randomly selected ajzā of the Qur’an were analyzed using a descriptive and qualitative method. The results show that in numerous cases this discourse marker has not been translated literally but the translators have translated it communicatively, dynamically, and constructively by appealing to different linguistic procedures and by applying ۱۱۸ different categories and combinations of various contrastive, inferential, temporal, and elaborative Persian and English discourse markers. The translators' approaches affirmed that translation is a dynamic and innovative discourse construction and structuration process influenced by the context of the natural processing of language in social contexts. It is so because of the versatility and dynamicity of interlocutors’ mental conditions and world knowledge as well as the situational circumstances that have bearings on the interpretation and application of meta-communicative elements by translators.

کلیدواژه ها:

Discourse Marker ، Qur’anic Translation ، Discourse Monitoring ، Ali Maleki ، Tahereh Saffarzadeh