A Corpus-based Study of Units of Translation in

English-Persian Literary Translations

Zohreh Shahrestani

Abstract

In the present study, the notion of ‘unit of translation’ as a challenging issue in

Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) is addressed. Considering this notion from a

product-oriented point of view as "the TT unit that can be mapped onto a ST unit"

(Baker, 2001: 286), the researcher's main concern is to investigate a hierarchy of

units of translation (UTs) proposed by Newmark (1991: 66-68) including word,

phrase, clause, sentence, and paragraph in the literary translations. At the

preliminary stage, two questions were raised to detect the most frequent UT adopted

by the professional literary translators, and to explore the relationship between the

UTs and the free-literal dichotomy in terms of the occurrence of unit/rank shifts. To

this end, a corpus of three famous English novels (originally written in English by

the renowned authors) and two best-selling translations of each (done by

professional translators) were chosen to be analyzed. Through a contrastive

analysis, two hundred and ten coupled pairs of ST-TT segments were extracted from

the first ten pages of each novel and its two translations based on establishing

relations of equivalence between the ST-TT segments and adopting sentence as the

major unit of analysis. The UTs adopted in the ST-TT segments were then identified.

The obtained results of the UT categories demonstrated that the most frequent UT

adopted by the professional literary translators was sentence. The unit-shifts applied

in the UTs were also signified. The statistical calculation of frequency of unit-shifts

in each translator's UTs proved that the more frequent is the occurrence of unit-

shifts in the UTs of the translator, the more deviated is his translation from the

formal correspondence, the more different the size of his UTs is, and finally the freer

his translation will be.

Key Words: Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS), units of translation, free-literal

dichotomy, unit/rank shifts, equivalence, formal correspondence.

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1. Introduction

Translation Studies is a new discipline which is concerned with the study of theory

and phenomena of translation. A classical concern for translation theory which is

frequently mentioned in older literature on the subject is the level at which

equivalence should be established, i.e. what units of translation one should choose

during the translation process. Catford (1965:21) suggests that the goal of translation

theory is to define the nature of translation equivalence. To him,

The central problem of translation practice is that of finding TL translation

equivalents. A central task of translation theory is that of finding the nature and

conditions of translation equivalents.

In translation studies, much discussion in the translation literature has focused on

identifying what should be equivalent in a translation. For example, with regard to

the linguistic form, discussion in translation literature has focused on whether

equivalence is to be pursued at the level of words, clauses, phrases, sentences,

paragraphs, or the entire text. Accordingly, this has given rise to the emergence of

the concept of Translation Units which is one of the key concepts in translation

theory that has exercised translation theorists over a very long period. In the field of

translation, from a product-oriented approach, a translation unit is a segment of a

target text which the translator treats as a single cognitive unit. The translation unit

may be a single word, or it may be a phrase, a clause, a sentence, or even a larger

unit like a paragraph.

In translation studies, the issue of UT is frequently raised in conjunction with that of

translation equivalence. As Sager (1994: 222) puts it, both “lie at the heart of any

theoretical or practical discussion about translation”. This is because theorists,

consciously or unconsciously, take the UT as a compartment in which what they

believe to be “translation equivalence” materializes.

There is a point in establishing equivalence, Toury believes, only insofar as it can

serve as a stepping stone to uncovering the overall concept of translation underlying

the corpus it has been found to pertain to; besides, the notion of equivalence may

also facilitate the explanation of the entire network of translational relationship and

the individual coupled pairs as representing actual translation units under the

dominant norm of translation equivalence (1995: 86). In this regard, one of the tasks

of the researcher wishing to probe into the translation units is to establish the

equivalent relationships between the coupled pairs of ST and TT segments which

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can pave the way for the identification and classification of units of translation at

different levels. In other words, to investigate unit(s) of translation that the translator

chooses during the translation process, one needs to establish a relation of

equivalence between the ST and the TT.

In earlier work on translation equivalence, Catford (1965: 20) defines translation as

"the replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual

material in another language (TL)". He distinguishes textual equivalence from

formal correspondence, which are respectively called by Nida as dynamic

equivalence and formal equivalence.

A formal correspondent is "any TL category (unit, class, structure, element of

structure, etc.) which can be said to occupy, as nearly as possible, the "same"

place in the "economy" of the TL as the given SL category occupies in the SL".

A textual equivalent is "any TL text or portion of text which is observed on a

particular occasion… to be the equivalent of a given SL text or portion of text"

(ibid: 27).

It is worth mentioning, however, that departures from formal correspondence

between the source and target texts denote Translation Shifts (ibid: 73), the

investigation of which has a long-standing tradition in translation studies. In other

words, shifts are deviations or changes that occur at every level during the

translation process as a result of the systemic differences between the source and

target languages.

There has been a great argument among theorists about the length (size) of unit of

translation. For most of them, the length of translation units is an indication of

proficiency, with professional translators working with larger units (sentence,

discourse, or text) and moving more comfortably between different unit levels. This

controversial argument about the length of unit of translation is, according to

Newmark (1988: 54), a concrete reflection of an age-old conflict between free and

literal translation: The freer the translation the longer the UT, the more literal the

translation; the shorter the UT, the closer to the word. Therefore, despite major shifts

of viewpoint on translation, one of the oldest as well as the most decried conflicts in

translation has been the concept of literal versus free translation, or the distinction

between word-for-word translation and sense-for-sense translation. The controversy

over “literal” versus “free” translation has a long history, with convincing supporters

on each side.

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In this research, the issue of units of translation is approached from a product-

oriented viewpoint to seek answers for the two following two questions:

RQ1: What is the most frequent UT among the professional translators of the

famous English novels?

RQ2: What is the relationship between the UTs and the kinds of translation,

i.e. free vs. literal, adopted by the professional literary translators in terms of

the occurrence of unit-shifts?

2. Theoretical Discussions

2.1Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS)

A branch of Translation Studies, developed in most detail by Toury (1995), that

involves the empirical, non-prescriptive analysis of STs and TTs with the aim of

identifying general characteristics and laws of translation (Hatim and Munday, 2004:

338). According to Munday (2001: 10-11), DTS is a branch of 'pure' research in

Holmes's map of Translation Studies and has three possible foci: examination of the

product, the function, and the process.

2.2 Translation Units

According to Baker (2001: 286), the term 'unit of translation', considered from a

product-oriented approach, is defined as "the TT unit that can be mapped onto a ST

unit".

Newmark (1991: 66-68) assumes the main translation units to be a hierarchy: text,

paragraph, sentence, clause, group, word, and morpheme.

2.3 Equivalence

Baker (2001: 77) defines equivalence as the relationship between a ST and a TT that

allows the TT to be considered as a translation of the ST in the first place. Vinay and

Darbelnet view equivalence-oriented translation as a procedure which "replicates the

same situation as in the original, whilst using completely different wording" (cited in

Shuttleworth and Cowie, 1997: 51).

2.4 Dynamic/Textual equivalence vs. Formal equivalence

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Defined by Nida (1964, cited in Bassnett, 1980: 33), the former (also known as

functional equivalence) is "the closest natural equivalent to the source-language

message" (ibid: 166) and attempts to convey the thought expressed in a source text

(at the expense of literalness, original word order, the source text's grammatical

voice, etc., if necessary); while the latter (also known as formal correspondence)

attempts to render the text word-for-word (at the expense of natural expression in the

target language, if necessary). Also, defined by Catford (1965: 27), the former (also

known as textual equivalence) is "any TL text or portion of text which is observed

on a particular occasion to be the equivalent of a given SL text or portion of text"

and the latter is "any TL category (unit, class, structure, element of structure, etc.)

which can be said to occupy, as nearly as possible, the same place in the economy of

the TL as the given SL category occupies in the SL".

2.5 Shift

As far as translation shifts are concerned, Catford (1965: 73) defines them as

"departures from formal correspondence in the process of going from the SL to the

TL", i.e. if translational equivalents are not formal correspondent. According to Al-

Zoubi and Al-Hassnawi (2001: 2), shifts should be defined positively as the

consequence of the translator's effort to establish translation equivalence (TE)

between two different language systems. To them, shifts are all the mandatory and

optional actions of the translator to which s/he resorts consciously for the purpose of

natural and communicative rendition of an SL text into another language (ibid).

2.6 Unit/rank shift

Catford (1965: 79) defines unit/rank shifts as those departures from formal

correspondence in which "the translation equivalent of a unit at one rank in the SL is

a unit at a different rank in the TL".

2.7 Literal Translation

Literal or word-for-word translation is defined by Robinson as "the segmentation of

the SL text into individual words and TL rendering of those word-segments one at a

time" (1998, cited in Baker, 2001: 125). A literal translation can be defined in

linguistic terms as a translation "made on a level lower than is sufficient to convey

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the content unchanged while observing TL norms" (Barkhudarov, 1969, cited in

Shuttleworth and Cowie, 1997: 95). In a similar vein, Catford also offers a definition

based on the notion of the UT: literal translation takes word-for-word translation as

its starting point, although because of the necessity of conforming to TL grammar,

the final TT may also display group-group or clause-clause equivalence (1965: 25).

2.8 Free Translation

Also known as sense-for-sense translation, it is a type of translation in which more

attention is paid to producing a naturally reading TT than to preserving the ST

wording intact (Shuttleworth and Cowie, 1997: 62). Linguistically, it can be defined

as a translation "made on a higher level than is necessary to convey the content

unchanged while observing TL norms" (Barkhudarov, 1969: 11, translated, cited in

ibid). In other words, the UT in a free translation might be anything up to a sentence

(or more) even if the content of the ST in question could be reproduced satisfactorily

by translating on the word or group level (ibid). Besides, according to Catford (1965:

25), it is a prerequisite of free translations that they should also be unbounded as

regards the rank (or level) on which they are performed. Free translations are thus

generally more TL-oriented than literal translations.

3. Methodology

Through conducting this research, an attempt has been made to investigate the

argument about the problematic nature of units of translation in relation to free and

literal translations adopted in English-Persian literary translations regarding the unit-

shifts. Put it in another way, the present research seeks to study translation units that

the professional literary translators adopt in the process of translating famous novels

from English into Persian, and it is carried out by establishing a relation (of

equivalence) between the coupled pairs of ST and TT segments (that is to say, to

ascertain whether the translated literary texts are the closest natural equivalent to the

original message (Nida's definition of translation, 1964: 166), i.e. dynamically

equivalent, or formally equivalent), while taking into account the dichotomy of free-

literal approach to translation in terms of the occurrence of unit-shifts in the UTs. So

the approach is limited inasmuch as the researcher has looked at Units of Translation

only from the angle of the product of translation.

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As a consequence, this research is placed within the framework of Pure Translation

Studies-in Holmes's map of translation studies (Toury, 1995: 10, cited in Munday,

2001: 10-12) -which actually has Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) as one of its

major branches. In fact, DTS embarks upon examination of the product, the function

and the process as three focal points among which the first one is highlighted in the

course of this research. Since this study is concerned with the product of translation

and is a comparative analysis of several TTs of the same ST, it is a "Descriptive"

research. Stated by Farhady, "Through descriptive method, researchers attempt to

describe and interpret the current status of phenomena" (2001: 144). Descriptive

research is defined by Birjandi and Mosallanejad (2002: 184-86) as the basis for

qualitative research that deals with what is happening now.

So the design of this research is "descriptive" content analysis. Moreover, this

research goes under the heading of "Qualitative". A qualitative research explains

how all parts work together to form a whole. Patten defines qualitative research as

"an effort to understand situations in their uniqueness as part of a particular context.

It is not attempting to predict what may happen in the future, but to understand the

nature of the setting" (cited in Birjandi and Mosallanejad, 2002: 76-7).

Moreover, through several subcategories Farhady (2001: 144, 154) represents for

descriptive method of research, "Casual-Comparative" method which is, in turn, a

subcategory of "interrelational" methods seemed the most appropriate to the

researcher to conduct this research. The research is by nature comparative in that it is

aimed at comparing and contrasting pairs of ST and TT segments so as to find the

most frequent UT among the professional literary translators and to trace and

discover the relationship between their UTs and the kinds of translation, i.e. free vs.

literal, applied by them in terms of the occurrence of unit-shifts in UTs in the move

from the ST to the TT. Thus, it can be found out that this study falls under a

comparative category for research method.

3.1 Corpus Selection Procedure

In order for the samples of this research to meet the representativeness criterion, i.e.

to be representative of the whole population, the selection of materials was based on

a non-random sampling criterion which is described by Farhady (2001: 212) as a

process of choosing research population when random sampling is not possible. For

the sake of choosing certain English-Persian literary works, both the source texts and

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the target texts were selected based on a purposive sampling which is, according to

Farhady (ibid: 212), a procedure for selecting a non-random sampling, and defined

by him as "the procedure directed toward obtaining a certain type of members with

predetermined characteristics" (ibid).

Taking all these criteria into account, the novels and the translations of each were

meticulously selected. These were then supposed to be segmented, compared and

contrasted from the viewpoint of units of translation. Indeed, the corpus used in this

study is a parallel corpus, that is to say, original English source texts and their

translations in Persian. A parallel corpus is defined by Olohan (2004: 24) as "a

corpus consisting of a set of texts in one language and their translations in another

language".

The English novels were selected based on purposive sampling to fulfill the

following selection criteria,

Originally written in English,

Being regarded as masterpieces,

Closely related to each other in terms of genre, and

Written by renowned authors.

Persian translations were also selected based on purposive sampling to include those

consistent with the following certain criteria:

Best-selling Persian translations,

Being considered as the pick of the numerous existing translations, and

Done by professional translators.

The final samples are presented in Tables 1 & 2.

Table 1 The list of English novels

No. Novel Title Author Year of the First

Edition

Selected

Pages

1 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 1-10

2 Lord of the Flies William Golding 1954 1-10

3 Cry, the Beloved

Country

Alan Paton 1948 1-10

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The list of Persian Translations Table 2

Persian Translations of ‘Heart of Darkness’

No.TitleTranslatorYear of the

First Edition

Year of

Publication

Selected

Pages

تاریکی 1 حسینی دل 10-198520011صالح

اعماق 2 در

ظلمت

حاجتی 10-1 19861986فریدون

Persian Translations of ‘Lord of the Flies ’

No.TitleTranslatorYear of the

First Edition

Year of

Publication

Selected

Pages

زبوب 1 مشرف بعل محمود

تهرانی آزاد

( . آزاد( م

198419841-10

مگسها 2 اردکانی ساالر سوسن

( شاهین(

198419841-10

Persian Translations of ‘Cry, the Beloved Country ’

No.TitleTranslatorYear of the

First Edition

Year of

Publication

Selected

Pages

وطن 1 دانشور بنال 10-197219821سیمین

کن 2 گریه

سرزمین

محبوب

حافظی هوشنگ

پور

198320041-10

3.2 Data Collection Procedure

In order to manage the process of data collection, the first ten pages of each novel

and their Persian translations were selected. Then, to make a thorough comparison

between the STs and their selected TTs possible, the first two hundred and ten

9

sentences from those ten pages of each novel were extracted. The extracted

sentences of each novel were then matched with their two translations. In this way,

the ST-TT segments were specified for each novel based on the established

equivalent relations. The ST-TT segments extracted from each novel and its two

translations were then included in the separate tables related to each novel. Here, a

point to mention is that the researcher had to adopt a unit of analysis to make it

possible to specify ST-TT segments and later to make it feasible to identify the UTs

applied in each segment and, hence, to discover the occurrence of unit-shifts in those

UTs.

1) So, the first stage was to specify the ST segments. For that matter, sentence was

basically adopted as the major unit of analysis. Because it is mainly regarded as a

meaningful unit that conveys the message completely. Besides, among the language

levels the sentence is where sentence linguistics and text linguistics overlap, and

decisions made at any other language levels will be duly reflected within the contour

of the sentence, the primary building block for TL text construction (Hewson and

Martin, 1991: 86). However, the researcher encountered some rare cases in each ST

(novel) where a complete message was conveyed through a word or phrase, so she

considered word or phrase as the minor units of analysis. Moreover, in order to

specify the ST segments the researcher had to stick to a punctuation mark to separate

the units of analysis; therefore, she essentially used full stops to separate the ST

sentences. Because among punctuation signs that operate to (con)textualize, full

stops are the most significant marks since they signal the full sentential

independence of a language segment (Zhu, 1996: 438).

2) Yet, after specification of the ST segments as mentioned above, the two

translations of each ST segment were specified in the next stage. Since the

translations were supposed to be specified based on the established equivalent

relation between the ST and the TT, the translation column in the tables is entitled

‘equivalent translation’, which is to Catford (1965: 27) “an empirical phenomenon,

discovered by comparing SL and TL texts”. Also, it was important to the researcher

whether the translation was formally equivalent, i.e. directed more towards the form

of the ST or formal correspondence, or dynamically equivalent which is described as

"the closest natural equivalent to the source-language message" (Nida, 1964: 166).

The researcher actually regarded it as a basis to later enable identification of the

occurrence of unit-shifts in specified UTs.

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3.3 Data Analysis Procedure

After specifying the ST-TT segments, they had to be analyzed to see what UT(s)

were applied in them by each translator. One source of inspiration for choosing the

units of translation was Newmark (1991: 66-68)'s statement that assumes the main

translation units to be a hierarchy: text, paragraph, sentence, clause, phrase/group,

word, and morpheme. Yet, in order to increase the degree of manageability of the

research, an attempt was made to select those UTs which are frequently preferred as

basic working UTs by the translators. Therefore, in ascending order, word, phrase,

clause, sentence and paragraph were selected as categories of UT.

3.3.1 Investigating Units of Translation

3.3.1.1 Word as UT: It is clear that, despite its apparent convenience, the word on its

own is unsuitable for consideration as the basis for a unit of translation. Further,

although the researcher has been mostly concerned with the sentence as unit of

analysis, there were in fact some rare cases in each story where the researcher had to

regard word as UT, because the translator could have successfully conveyed the

message to the reader through one word in TT, as in the following cases:

Heavens! !خداوندگارا

That's right. . آره

Tomorrow, she said. .فردا

3.3.1.2 Phrase as UT: Hatim and Mason (1990: 180) maintain that there is no doubt

that translators work with phrases as their raw material, and equivalence cannot truly

be established at these levels. Phrase is considered as "two or more words that

function together as a group" (Swan, 2005: xxii) and conveys a thorough message

per se, as in the following cases:

Old knitter of black wool. سياه پشم پير !بافندة

"Sucks to your ass-mar!" آسمت .فالن

This letter, Stephen. ستفن نامه اين دربارة .ـ

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3.3.1.3 Clause as UT: Syntactically clause forms a part of a sentence and has a

subject-predicate structure which is not complete by itself and is semantically

dependent (Richards and Platt, 1992: 52-53); therefore, it is not a meaningful unit

and should be completed by another sentence. So this UT has not been separately

observed. In fact, the clauses were taken into account in the form of sentences

incorporating them, i.e. complex sentences- which contain one or more dependent (or

subordinate) clauses and an independent (or main) clause- and compound-complex

sentences- which contain two or more independent clauses and one or more

dependent clauses (Frank, 1972: 1).

In the present study, the clauses have been taken into consideration under two

broader constituent categories, i.e. complex sentence or compound-complex

sentence. Also, the number of both complex sentences and compound-complex

sentences is considered as indicative of clause as UT.

3.3.1.3.1 Clause as UT: Complex Sentences: As defined by Frank (1972: 1),

complex sentence contains one or more dependent (or subordinate) clauses and an

independent (or main) clause. For example:

They were men enough to face the darkness. تاريکي با که داشتند را اين مردانگي آنها

شوند .رويارو

"I expect there's a lot more of us scattered about. و پخش برها و دور اين ما از خيلي گمانم

شدن .پال

There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. تپه‌ها به ايکوپو از که هست زيبايي جادة

.مي‌پيوندد

3.3.1.3.2 Clause as UT: Compound-Complex Sentences: Defined by Frank (1972:

1), compound-complex sentence contains two or more independent (or main) clauses

and one or more dependent (or subordinate) clauses. For example:

It was the biggest thing in the town, and everybody I met was full of it.

داشت اطالع آن از I کامال کردم مالقات که را هرکس و داشت وجود شهر اين در که بود چيزي .بزرگترين

When he gets leave he'll come and rescue us. نجاتمان و مي‌آيد بگيرد مرخصي اينکه بمحض

.مي‌دهد

For there there is a multitude of buses, and only one bus in ten, one bus in twenty maybe, is

the right bus. . بيست يا ده از يکي مي‌رود شما مقصد به که اتوبوسي و اتوبوس‌هاست تراکم آنجا

مي‌آيد که است اتوبوسي

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3.3.1.4 Sentence as UT: According to Richards and Platt (1992: 330), sentence is the

largest unit of grammatical organization within which parts of speech (e.g. nouns,

verbs, adverbs) and grammatical classes (e.g. word, phrase, clause) function, and a

sentence normally consists of one independent clause with a finite verb. Also,

according to Frank (1993: 220), a sentence is a full, independent prediction

containing a subject plus a predicate in the form of independent clause. Elsewhere he

defines the independent clause as a full prediction that may stand alone as a sentence

[222]. Based on the independent clause(s) consisting sentences, the sentences can be

generally classified into two types: simple and compound, both of which contain

independent clause as their only building block. So this UT was treated in simple

sentences and compound sentences, and the number of both simple sentences and

compound sentences is reckoned as indicative of UT as sentence.

3.3.1.4.1 Sentence as UT: Simple Sentences: To Frank (1972: 1), simple sentence

contains one full subject and predicate and can take the form of a statement, a

question, a request, or an exclamation. Such a sentence has only one full prediction

in the form of an independent clause (Frank, 1993: 222). For example:

His remark did not seem at all surprising. تعجب ماية هيچ‌رو به مارلو گفتار

.نگرديد

Piggy bore this with a sort of humble patience. بردباري و فروتني با را حرف اين خوکه

کرد .تحمل

It is not an easy letter. نيست سرراستي .نامة

3.3.1.4.2 Sentence as UT: Compound Sentence: As stated by Frank (1972: 1),

compound sentence contains two or more sentences joined into one by punctuation

alone, punctuation and a conjunctive adverb, or a coordinate conjunction; when such

sentences are joined coordinately, they are each called independent clause. Such

sentences have two or more full predictions in the form of independent clauses (ibid,

1993: 222). For example:

I gave my name, and looked about. کردم نگاه بر و دور به و گفتم را .اسمم

Ralph giggled into the sand. و مي‌زد غلت ماسه‌ها ميان رالف

.مي‌خنديد

She took the letter and she felt it. . و گرفت را کاغذ زن

کرد لمس

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3.3.1.5 Paragraph as UT: Defined by Richards and Platt (1992: 262), paragraph is a

unit of organization of written language, which serves to indicate how the main ideas

in a written text are grouped. In text linguistics, paragraphs are considered as macro-

structure of a text and they group sentences which belong together and deal with the

same topic. Consequently, a paragraph, as a macro-structure, usually consists of a

group of related sentences such as simple, compound, complex, or compound-

complex which together incorporate a whole unit. Yet, in this study, paragraph as

UT was found to be exclusively implemented in the both translations of Heart of

Darkness by the same number, and no cases of such UT were found in the both

translations of the two other stories. For example:

And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white

changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken

to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men.

چنان و افتاد پايين نامحسوسش و قوسي فرود در خورشيد هم، باشد عاقبت رفتن کار در ناگهان گويي که

بي ـ تند سرخي به تابناک سفيدي از باشد، انداخته هالکش به آدميان جمع بر گستر خيمه تيرگي دست و

. يافت تغيير ـ گرمايي و اشعه هيچ

3.3.2 Investigating Unit-shifts in the UTs Applied by the Translators

Based on the categories mentioned above, the UTs applied in the ST-TT segments

were identified. Concurrently, while identifying the UTs in the ST-TT segments,

unit/rank shifts or those departures from formal correspondence in which "the

translation equivalent of a unit at one rank in the SL is a unit at a different rank in the

TL" (Catford, 1965: 79) were also sought after. The unit-shifts were specified to

later gauge the relationship between the UT and the free-literal dichotomy.

Apparently, according to Catford, shift is not formally equivalent. In fact, if the SL is

imitated exactly in the TL, the result is called formally equivalent translation which

is awkward or unnatural, more directed towards the form of the ST, and basically

source-oriented. However, to avoid such a translation, the translator may deviate

from the ST and move away from close linguistic equivalence, so a shift occurs and

the resulting translation distancing from formal correspondence (equivalence) is

called dynamically (textually) equivalent translation which is described as "the

closest natural equivalent to the source-language message" (Nida, 1964: 166).

14

The kind of shift which is taken into account in the current study is unit/rank shift

that is a subdivision of category shift and is defined by Catford (1965, cited in

Munday, 2001: 61) as the shift "where the translation equivalent in the TL is at a

different rank to the SL", as in the following cases:

ShiftUTEquivalent TranslationEnglish

yesPhrase => s.s. . بود نقشه وسط در هم .Dead in the centreدرست

yess.s. => cx. s. ماجرا به که مي‌رسيد به‌نظر. شده عالقمند

For a moment he looked interested.

yess.s. => cd. s.! کن نگاه آنرا .Look at itبگير

4. Discussion of Findings and Conclusions

While analyzing the collected data, it seemed logical to calculate the frequency and

percentage of units of translation applied in the three novels as well as the frequency

and percentage of unit-shifts in the UTs adopted by the professional translators of

those novels. Based on the findings of the analysis, the results of the statistical

analysis are presented in the following tables:

Table 3 Frequency and Percentage of Units of Translation in Heart of Darkness,

Lord of the Flies, and Cry, the Beloved Country

Total Percentage

%

PercentageTotalFrequency

FrequencySub-categories

of Units of

Translation

Units ofTranslation

1.811.812424Word

3.27 3.274444Phrase

43.1829.48580

396Complex Sentence

Clause

13.70184Compound-complex sentence

51.4531.19691

419Simple Sentence

Sentence

15

20.25272Compound Sentence

0.290.2944Paragraph

As Table 3 reveals, the most frequently applied unit of translation among the literary

translators is the sentence which remarkably includes the majority of samples, the

highest frequency as well as the highest percentage which ranks sentence as the top

list category and the foremost adopted unit of translation. In addition, clause

covering a wide range of samples and having an approximately high frequency and

percentage occupies the second prominent position among the applied units of

translation. Lastly, phrase, word and paragraph are respectively other applied units

of translation whose frequency and percentage are not highly significant. A summary

of the statistical findings obtained in this section is presented in the following chart:

Units Of Translation

43.18

51.45

1.810.29

3.27

sentence

Paragraph

Word

Phrase

Clause

This leads to the conclusion that successful literary translators are mostly concerned

with the sentence as their unit of translation to find the closest natural equivalent to

the source-language message and to best convey the message to the TL reader.

Table 4 Frequency and Percentage of shifts in the UTs in Heart of Darkness, Lord of the Flies, and Cry, the Beloved Country

Novels Translators Frequency Percentage%

Hosseini's Translation 88 41.90

16

Heart of Darkness

Hajati's Translation 97 46.19

Lord of the FliesAzad's Translation 75 35.71

Ardekani's Translation 98 46.66

Cry, the Beloved Country

Daneshvar's Translation 77 36.66

Hafezipoor's Translation 88 41.90

Since the occurrence of unit-shifts, as departures from formal correspondence in the

UTs in the move from SL to TL, is the focus of study in this section, here the

frequency and percentage of shifts occurred in the UTs of each translator have been

calculated separately to make the comparison possible. As indicated in Table 4, unit-

shift has occurred most frequently in Ardekani's translation of Lord of the Flies, so it

contains the highest percentage. Also, in Hajati's translation of Heart of Darkness a

nearly similar number of unit-shifts has occurred. It can be representative of the fact

that these two translators are highly oriented towards deviating from the ST,

applying translation units of a size different from the ST, and, thus, their translations

tend to be freer. The obtained results have been displayed in the following graph:

17

occurrence of units-shift in translations

36.66

41.9

46.66

35.71

46.19

41.9

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

Hosseini'sTranslation

Hajati'sTranslation

Azad'sTranslation

Ardekani'sTranslation

Daneshvar'sTranslation

Hafezipoor'sTranslation

Translators

Per

cen

tag

e

It can be inferred that, as far as the product-oriented view of the UTs is concerned,

the more frequent is the occurrence of shifts in the UTs of the translator, the more

deviated is his/her translation from the formal correspondence, the more different the

size of his/her UTs is, and finally the freer his translation will be. Thus, there is a

direct relationship between the number of occurrence of shifts in the units of

translation (i.e. unit-shifts) and free translation. Besides, although frequency of the

occurrence of unit-shifts is closely related to a free translation being produced and it

may make a translation freer, it may change the size of the UTs to a longer or shorter

UT; so for the UTs it is the matter of either/or.

5. Final Words

The findings, theoretical discussions, as well as practical evidences of this research

can provide guidelines for the novice translators who need to gain the initial

knowledge to take the preliminary steps. Also, the results of this study may introduce

some usable hints on the application of the most appropriate UT in the literary

translation for university students majoring in translation and translation courses.

Since the most frequently applied UT among the literary translators proved to be the

'sentence', grammar exercises and translation tasks on grammatical structures can be

used in translation classes. For fulfilling such a purpose, teachers had better use a

grammar-oriented approach in their translation classes, especially in courses such as

translation principles and methodology, as well as translation of simple texts in

general and literary texts in particular. This is due to the fact that the ST segments

can have a deep structure and a surface structure whose identification can help apply

the UT that is true equivalence of the ST and best fits the translation of literary texts.

Furthermore, based upon the relationship found in this research between the UTs and

the free-literal dichotomy in terms of the unit-shifts, the translation trainees can be

instructed that application of unit-shifts in the process of going from the ST to the

TT helps them to achieve a free translation and that the literary translation needs to

undergo deviations from the formal correspondence to meet this requirement.

At the end, given the importance of application of the most appropriate UT in the

literary translations, a need is felt for fulfilling further researches into the domain of

UT and it is hoped that this study paves the way for other studies in this area.

18

Works Cited

Al-Zoubi, M. Q. and A. R. Al-Hassnawi (2001). Constructing a Model for Shift

Analysis in Translation. Translation Journal. Retrieved December 10, 2006

from the World Wide Web: http://accurapid.com/journal/18theory.htm

Baker, M. (2001). The Routledge Encyclooedia of Translation Studies. London:

Routledge.

Bassnett, S. (1980/1991). Translation Studies. London and New York: Routledge

Birjandi, P. and P. Mosallanejad (2002). Research Methods and Principles. Tehran,

Iran: Shahid Mahdavi Publications.

Catford, J. C. (1965): A Linguistic Theory of Translation. London: Oxford University

Press.

Farhady, H. (1995). Research methods in applied linguistics. Tehran: Payame Noor

University.

Frank, M. (1972). Modern English: Exercises for non-native speakers, Part II. United

States of America: Prentice-Hall.

------- (1993). Modern English: A Practical Reference Guide. United States of

America: Prentice-Hall.

Hatim, B. and I. Mason (1990). Discourse and the Translator. London and New

York: Longman.

Hatim, B. and J. Munday (2004). Translation: An advanced resource book.

Routledge: New York.

Hewson, L. and J. Martin (1991). Redefining Translation: The Variational Approach.

London and New York: Routledge.

19

Munday, J. (2001). Introducing translation studies: theories and applications.

London & New York: Routledge.

Newmark, P. (1988). A Textbook of Translation. New York, London: Prentice Hall.

------ (1991). About Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Nida, E. A. (1964). Toward a Science of Translating. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Olohan, M. (2004). Introducing Corpora in Translation Studies. London and New

York, Routledge.

Richards, J. C., J. Platt and H. Platt (1992). Dictionary of Language Teaching and

Applied Linguistics. Great Britain: Longman.

Sager, J. (1994). Language Engineering and Translation Consequences of

Automation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Shuttleworth, M. and M. Cowie (1997). Dictionary of Translation Studies.

Manchester: St. Jerome.

Swan, M. (2005). Practical English Usage. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University

Press.

Toury, G. (1995). Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam and

Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Zhu, C. (1996). “Climb Up and Look Down: On sentences as the key functional UT

(Unit Of Translation) in text translation”, Proceedings of the 14th World

Congress of the Fédération Internationale des Traducteurs (FIT), February

1996, Vol. 1, Melbourne, AUSIT, pp. 322-343.

20

It can be representative of the fact that the deviations from the ST have been

considerably high in these two translations, UTs of a different size from the ST have

been applied, and they tend to be freer.

This study sets out, amid the points already mentioned, a method for the comparison

of ST and TT pairs: identifying the relationships between the coupled pairs of ST

and TT segments and establishing equivalence and attempting generalizations about

the underlying concept of unit of translation to explore what UT is most frequently

adopted by the professional literary translators and to argue the relationship between

the UTs and the free-literal dichotomy in terms of the occurrence of unit/rank shifts

or changes in the UTs in the move from the ST to the TT.

21

Hence, in line with Newmark's hypothesis, this product-oriented descriptive

translation research intends to enrich the theory of describing the phenomenon of

English-Persian literary translation from the viewpoint (perspective) of units of

translation: to investigate the most frequent unit of translation applied by the

professional literary translators, and to inquire into the relationship between the UT

and the kind of translation, i.e. free vs. literal, adopted by the literary translators in

terms of unit shift.

This paper tries to draw a clear picture of the notion of Unit of Translation as a key

concept in translation studies. In so doing, it is argued by the researcher that the

development of the issue of UT inevitably involves a theory of equivalence, which

can be said to be the central issue in translation. It also sheds light on the distinction

between literal translation and free translation, which is an important and ever

debated point in the literature of translation, in terms of the occurrence of unit/rank

shifts or changes in the UTs in the move from the ST to the TT, and in a corpus of

literary translations from English into Persian (outstanding novels originally written

in English and their successful translations done by professional translators).

To this end, the researcher has been mainly concerned with comparing the SL and

TL texts (certain literary translations with their original texts) so as to highlight the

differences between professional literary translators concerning the two points noted

above. The comparison of texts in two different languages for the purpose of

specifying units of translation inevitably involves a focus on equivalence which is

the central issue in translation. So this study also aims to ascertain whether the

translated literary texts are formally equivalent, i.e. directed more towards the form

of the ST or formal correspondence, or dynamically equivalent which is described as

"the closest natural equivalent to the source-language message" (Nida, 1964: 166).

22

To achieve the above-mentioned goals, the researcher aims to look into three famous

English novels considered as masterpieces and to compare and contrast ten pages of

each novel with two of its successful translations done by professional translators.

Through conclusions which will be drawn at the end of the analysis and implications

which will be provided for further studies, it is hoped that new insights can be

offered to the literary translators

Individual translators, with different foci of attention, may prefer different units as

their basic working UTs.

It is widely agreed to be the case that translation and translation studies have never

had it so good. Over the last two or three decades, translation has become a more

prolific, more visible and more respectable activity than perhaps ever before. And

alongside translation itself, a new field of academic study has come into existence,

initially called Translatology (but not for long) which is now changed into

Translation Studies, and it has gathered remarkable academic momentum.

The concept of UT (unit of translation) has been an essential issue not only in

translation theory over the last years, but also in modern translation studies

In this light, Vinay and Darbelnet (1958/95) maintain that for any science, one of the

essential and often the most controversial preliminary steps is defining the units with

which to operate (cited in Hatim and Munday, 2004: 137). This is equally true of

translation.

It is axiomatic that, despite its apparent convenience, the word on its own is

unsuitable for consideration as the basis for a unit of translation.

23

According to Newmark (1988: 30-31), normally you translate sentence by sentence

(not breath-group by breath-group), running the risk of not paying enough attention

to the sentence-join. If the translation of a sentence has no problems, it is based

firmly on literal translation, plus virtually automatic and spontaneous transpositions

and shifts, changes in word order, etc. He further argues that "since the sentence is

the basic unit of thought, presenting an object and what it does, is, or is affected by,

so the sentence is, in the first instance, your unit of translation, even though you may

later find many SL and TL correspondences within that sentence" (31).

.

Unit of translation is an issue that has exercised translation theorists over a very long

period, indeed. The issue of unit of translation is of a paramount importance in the

study of translation in general and the translation of literary works in particular:

It might illustrate the kind of translation adopted in the process of translating, i.e.

from the dichotomy of literal-free translation which has dominated translation theory

for a very long time; it helps to explore the nature of the notion of equivalence, a key

concept which is basic to any linguistically oriented translation theory, in that every

translation has to stand in some kind of equivalence relation to the original and this

equivalence relation, which is anything but clear-cut and predictable, is the outcome

of the workings on Units of Translation; it can also be indicative of the translation

shifts or changes that take place in the move from ST to TT and the perception of

which triggers a sort of adjustment mechanism that ensures the correct interpretation

of the message.

It is generally defined as the study of the theory and phenomena of translation. It is,

according to many researchers in the field, an emerging discipline, yet to gain the

status of an independent and distinct discipline in the academia around the world.

Translation studies, as an umbrella term, manifests that translation has been

practiced for thousands of years, and debates on the nature of translation have been

part of translation practice for almost as long. The debates on translation practice go

back to the very definition of what translation is.

SL emphasis TL emphasis Word-for-word translation Adaptation

Literal translation Free translation

Faithful translation Idiomatic translation

Semantic translation Communicative translation

24

Figure 2.1. Types of Translation according to Newmark (1988: 45)

His model shows that word-for-word translation, for example, is the closest in form

to the original structure of the source text; whereas adaptation puts the most

emphasis on the fluency of the target text. He further sheds light on each of these

translation methods as follows:

Stated by Hatim and Munday (2004: 255), it is Peter Newmark's 'semantic

translation' that has come closest to what formal equivalence might entail. In

semantic translation, the translator attempts, within the bare syntactic and semantic

constraints of the TL, to reproduce the precise contextual meaning of the author

(1988: 22, cited in ibid).

In this light, Munday (2001: 44) maintains that Newmark's description of

communicative translation resembles Nida's dynamic equivalence in the effect it is

trying to create on the TT reader, while semantic translation has similarities to Nida's

formal equivalence. Yet, Newmark keeps himself away from the full principle of

equivalent effect, since that effect "is inoperant if the text is out of the TL space and

time" (1981: 69, cited in ibid). He further indicates that semantic translation differs

from literal translation in that it 'respects context', interprets and even explains; on

the other hand, literal translation means word-for-word translation which sticks very

closely to ST lexis and syntax (1981: 63, cited in ibid). Nevertheless, he considers

literal translation to be the best approach in both semantic and communicative

translation:

Translation may be defined as the replacement of textual material in one language

(SL) by equivalent textual material in another language (TL). The central problem of

translation practice is that of finding TL translation equivalents. A central task of

translation theory is that of defining the nature and conditions of translation

equivalence (Carford, 1965: 21). Chesterman (1989: 99) notes that equivalence is

obviously a central concept in translation theory. To Kenny (1997: 77), equivalence

is supposed to define translation, and translation, in turn, defines equivalence.

As stated by Bassnett (1980: 32-33), Albercht Neubert, who distinguishes between

the study of translation as a process and as a product, stresses the need for a theory

of equivalence relations as the ‘missing link’ between both components of a

complete theory of translation, while Raymond van den Broeck challenges the

25

extensive use of the term claiming that the precise definition of equivalence in

mathematics is a serious obstacle to its use in translation theory!

However, according to the concept of this fundamental translation term, which is

somehow different from that of the linguistic term of 'correspondence', translating is

not merely replacing the words of the ST with their corresponding words in the TL.

In this respect, Munday (2001: 49) quotes Bassnett as saying:

Translation involves far more than replacement of lexical and grammatical items

between languages ... Once the translator moves away from close linguistic

equivalence, the problem of determining the exact nature of the level of equivalence

aimed for begin to emerge (Bassnett, 1980/91: 25).

Catford (1965, cited in Shuttleworth and Cowie, 1997: 51) views equivalence as

something essentially quantifiable- and translation as simply a matter of replacing

each SL item with the most suitable TL equivalent.

This perception has led some scholars to subdivide the notion of equivalence in

various ways. Thus, some have distinguished between the equivalence found at the

levels of different units of translation, while others have formulated a number of

equivalence typologies, such as Nida’s (1964) influenced dynamic and formal

equivalence, Each of these individual categories of equivalence which will be

elaborated through the upcoming paragraphs encapsulates a particular type of ST-TT

relationship.

Pointed out by Catford (1965: 27), and Sarhady (Translation Studies, 7 & 8 (2004 &

2005): 67-68), from a linguistic approach, a distinction must be made between

textual equivalence and formal correspondence. A textual equivalence is any TL text

or portion of text which is observed on a particular occasion to be the equivalent of a

given SL text or portion of text. A formal correspondence, on the other hand, is any

TL category which can be said to occupy, as neatly as possible, the same place in the

economy of the TL as the given SL category occupies in the SL. Since every

language is a unique system, it seems that formal correspondence is approximate. To

Catford (ibid), the degree of divergence between textual equivalence and formal

correspondence may be used as a measure of typological differences between

languages.

Eugene Nida (1964) distinguishes two types of equivalence, formal and dynamic,

and proposes them as two basic orientations in translating.

26

In formal equivalence, the focus of attention is on the message itself, in both form

and content, and one is concerned that the message in the receptor language should

match as closely as possible the different elements in the source language. Thus, it is

basically source-oriented; that is it is designed to reveal as much as possible of the

form and content of the original message. Such a translation in which one is

concerned with such correspondences as poetry to poetry, sentence to sentence, and

concept to concept is called by Nide a 'gloss translation', which aims to allow the

reader to understand as much of the SL context as possible (Nida, 1964, cited in

Venuti, 1995:136).

To have a formal equivalence, one attempts to reproduce several formal elements,

including grammatical units, consistency in word usage, and meanings in terms of

the source context. Therefore, correspondence in grammatical units, such as

translating nouns by nouns, verbs by verbs, etc., keeping all phrases and sentences

intact, and preserving lexical concordance are of the characteristics of formal

equivalence (ibid).

However, in dynamic equivalence, the focus of attention is directed, not so much

toward the source message, as toward the receptor response. A dynamic equivalence

translation may be described as one concerning which a bilingual and bicultural

person can justifiably say, "That is just the way we would say it"… One way of

defining the dynamic equivalence translation is to describe it as "the closest natural

equivalent to the source-language message" (ibid).

It is assumed by Hatim and Munday (2004: 44) that:

The more form-bound a meaning is…, the more formal the equivalence relation will

have to be. Alternatively, the more context-bound a meaning is …, the more

dynamic the equivalence will have to be.

FE <<<<<<< Meaning >>>>>>>DE

FORM- BOUND CONTEXT- BOUND

Figure 2.6 Formal (FE) vs. dynamic (DE) equivalence (ibid).

Accordingly, formal equivalence presupposes matching SL- and TL- content, which

is a very reasonable requirement if it is supposed to hold for sufficiently large units,

and at the same time matching forms- the most faithful rendering possible of the

word order, parts of speech, grammatical constructions and also genre-determined

form (meter, etc) of the SL-text (Pederson, 1988: 18).

27

To Hatim and Mason (1990: 7), although formal equivalence is a means of providing

some degree of insight into the lexical, grammatical or structural form of a source

text; orientation towards dynamic equivalence, on the other hand, is assumed to be

the normal strategy. As claimed by Nida (1964: 160, cited in ibid), "the present

direction is toward increasing emphasis on dynamic equivalences. Indeed, he defines

the goal of dynamic equivalence as seeking the "closest natural equivalent to the

source-language message" (Nida, 1964: 166, Nida and Taber, 1969: 12).

Viewing the UT as a language level on which translation equivalence is to be

established is a misguided conception based on three unwarranted beliefs: (a) UT is a

formal unit in nature and can be treated in isolation; (b) language units are automatic

UTs; and (c) complete equivalence is achievable (Zhu, 1996: 433).

reveals Newmark's apparent vacillation about the range of the UT. Elsewhere he has

stressed the importance of the sentence, conspicuously absent in the above

definition, as the "natural" or primary UT, while those below the sentence are "sub-

units of translation" (Newmark, 1988: 31, 65).

Importantly, Newmark (1988: 66-7) makes the crucial point that "all lengths of

language can, at different moments and also simultaneously, be used as units of

translation in the course of the translation activity". While, as mentioned by Hatim

and Munday (2004: 25), it may be that the translator most often works at the

sentence level, paying specific attention to the problems raised by individual words

or groups in that context. However, to Newmark (1988: 69), the longer the unit, the

rarer one-to-one translation in which each SL word has a corresponding TL word.

As distinctly pointed out by Newmark (1988: 30-31), since sentence is the basic unit

of thought, so it is your unit of translation, even though you may later find many SL

and TL correspondences within that sentence. Normally you translate sentence by

sentence (not breath-group by breath-group), running the risk of not paying enough

attention to the sentence-joins. Indeed, primarily you translate by the sentence, and

in each sentence, it is the object and what happens to it that you sort out first.

Additionally, he (ibid: 65) insists that the sentence is the 'natural' unit of translation,

just as it is the natural unit of comprehension and recorded thought.

Newmark (1991: 66-68) assumes the main descriptive units to be a hierarchy: text,

paragraph, sentence, clause, group, word, and morpheme.

28

Hatim and Mason (1990: 180) maintain that there is no doubt that translators work

with words and phrases as their raw material, and equivalence cannot truly be

established at these levels.

Sometimes the translator is compelled to translate a part of his/her material with a

change/shift in the unit of translation such as the time when s/he encounters cases of

untranslatability in which a number of items are found in the text for which there is

no corresponding equivalence or even the nearest equivalence in the TL and decides

to render those parts using a free or communicative method of translation. Texts tend

to be identified as translations when shifts from source-language text are perceived.

The perception of these shifts triggers in the addressee a sort of adjustment

mechanism which ensures the correct interpretation of the message.

Actually, Catford was the first scholar to use the term in his A Linguistic Theory of

Translation (1965, cited in Hatim and Munday, 2001: 26). In Catford's own words,

translation shifts are "departures from formal correspondence in the process of going

from the SL to the TL" (1965: 73).

According to Munday, Catford (1965: 20) follows the Firthian and Hallidayan

linguistic model, which analyzes language as communication, operating functionally

in context and on a range of different levels (e.g. phonology, graphology, grammar,

lexis) and ranks (sentence, clause, group, word, morpheme, etc.) (Munday, 2001:

60).

Baker (2001: 226-227) defines shift as changes that occur in the process of

translating. Shifts are deemed as required, inevitable, and indispensable changes

which result from attempts to deal with the systemic differences which exist between

source and target languages and cultures. Shifts allow the translators to overcome

such differences.

Also, Venuti (2000: 148) regards shifts as 'deviations' that can occur at such

linguistic levels as graphology, phonology, grammar, and lexis. Further, he clarifies

that when Anton Popovic asserts that "shifts do not occur because the translator

wishes to change a work, but because he strives to reproduce it as faithfully as

possible", the kind of "faithfulness" he has in mind is "functional", with the

translator locating "suitable equivalents in the milieu of his time and society"

(Popovic, 1970: 80, 82, cited in ibid).

As far as the product-oriented view of shifts is concerned, Popovic (1970: 79, cited

in Baker, 2001: 228) defines shifts from a descriptive point of view:

29

All that appears as new with respect to the original, or fails to appear where it might

have been expected, may be interpreted as a shift.

Popovic also comments that shifts represent "the relationship between the wording

of the original work and that of the translation" (Popovic, 1970: 85, cited in

Shuttleworth and Cowie, 1997: 153).

As pointed out by Newmark (1988: 85, 285), 'shift' also termed by Vinay and

Darbelnet as 'transposition' is a translation procedure involving a change in the

grammar from SL to TL.

Within the framework of a linguistic theory of translation, Catford (1965: 27)

distinguishes between formal correspondence and textual equivalence, which was

later to be developed by Koller:

A formal correspondent is "any TL category (unit, class, structure, element of

structure, etc.) which can be said to occupy, as nearly as possible, the "same" place

in the "economy" of the TL as the given SL category occupies in the SL".

A textual equivalent is "any TL text or portion of text which is observed on a

particular occasion… to be the equivalent of a given SL text or portion of text".

Munday (2001: 60) maintains that textual equivalence is thus tied to a particular ST-

TT pair and focuses on the relations that exit between elements in a specific ST-TT

pair. While formal equivalence has to do with general, non-specific and system-

based relationships between a pair of languages or elements in two languages. When

the two concepts diverge, a translation shift is deemed to have occurred. To Haim

and Munday (2004: 28), a shift occurs if, in a given TT, a translation equivalent

other than the formal correspondent occurs for a specific SL element.

M E T H O D O L O G Y

, there is considerable disagreement among translation theorists investigating the

notion of units of translation on the level at which equivalence should be established,

i.e. what units to choose as Units of Translation. In the field of translation, from a

product-oriented approach, a translation unit is a segment of a target text which the

translator treats as a single cognitive unit. The translation unit may be a single word,

or it may be a phrase, a clause, a sentence, or even a larger unit like a paragraph.

This controversial argument about the length of unit of translation is, according to

Newmark (1988:45), a concrete reflection of an age-old conflict between free and

30

literal translation. The freer the translation, the longer the UT; the more literal the

translation, the shorter the UT, the closer to the word.

The present research seeks to study translation units that the professional literary

translators adopt in the process of translating famous novels from English into

Persian and it is carried out by establishing a relation (of equivalence) between the

coupled pairs of ST and TT segments (that is to say, to ascertain whether the

translated literary texts are the closest natural equivalent to the original message

(Nida's definition of translation, 1969: 19), i.e. dynamically equivalent, or formally

equivalent), while taking into account the dichotomy of free-literal approach to

translation in terms of the occurrence of unit-shifts in the UTs. So the approach is

limited inasmuch as the researcher has looked at Units of Translation only from the

angle of the product of translation.

As a consequence, this research is placed within the framework of Pure Translation

Studies-in Holmes's map of translation studies (Toury, 1995: 10, cited in Munday,

2001: 10-12) -which actually has Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) as one of its

major branches. In fact, DTS embarks upon examination of the product, the function

and the process as three focal points among which the first one is highlighted in the

course of this research:

1. Product-oriented DTS intends to describe or analyze the existing translations

and address a single ST-TT pair or a comparative analysis of several TTs of the same

ST.

31