Translation of Slanguage Items: The Case Study of The Catcher in the Rye

This paper investigates the translation of slanguage items, with a particular emphasis on taboo terms, which are widely recognized as posing significant and complex challenges for translators working across different cultural contexts. Focusing specifically on two English-to-Persian translations of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. The present study adopts Venuti’s (۱۹۹۵) influential concepts of domestication and foreignization as its primary theoretical and analytical framework. The translations were carefully and systematically analyzed using a combination of contrastive textual examination through SDL Trados Studio and quantitative assessment via Microsoft Excel to determine the frequency, distribution, and patterns of different translation strategies. The results indicate a clear prevalence of strategies such as deletion, euphemism, taboo-to-taboo translation, and taboo-to-non-taboo translation, listed in decreasing order of frequency. While the translators generally followed a target-oriented approach, aiming to carefully observe and respect cultural expectations in the target language, a detailed quantitative analysis of the applied strategies, particularly the unexpectedly high frequency of domestication due to cultural differences between the source and target languages, reveals a more nuanced, complex, and layered reality than might be initially assumed.

کلیدواژه ها:

Domestication ، Foreignization ، Slanguage ، Taboo Items ، The Catcher in the Rye