A Study of Translators’ Approach in Dealing with Culture-specific Items in Translation of Children’s Fantasy Fiction

The present study was aimed at investigating translators’ approach in dealing with culture-specific items (CSIs) in translation of fantasy fiction for children. For this purpose, the CSIs in Persian translations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit as well as Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia were studied. Since children have an imperfect knowledge and language ability, translators of such novels encounter difficulties while dealing with culture-specific items. They cannot easily decide whether to domesticate or foreignize such items. The reason for selecting these novels was that they are high-fantasy novels and highly localized and expressive of the country where they were developed. Moreover, they are so popular, magical novels and strongly related to fairy tales, myths, and legends. They demonstrate obvious deviation from reality and abound in culture-specific items. This descriptive research was conducted by employing a parallel corpus study and a consolidation of translation procedures introduced by four theorists, i.e. Aixelá , Davies, Fernands, and Klingberg was used as the theoretical framework of the study. The results were indicative of the translators’ source-oriented tendency and the most frequently applied strategy was transliteration

کلیدواژه ها:

Literary translation ، fantasy fiction ، culture-specific items (CSIs) ، children’s literature