The application of domestication and foreignization translation strategies in English-Persian translations of news phrasal verbs

Abstract

Since we live in an increasingly globalized world, we are definitely more well-informed about the world happenings through various mediums of globalization such as internet, news agencies, news channels, etc. Here lies the important and remarkable role of translation as a medium of conveying messages and transferring information. If a news piece is translated problematically, it may have bad effects on people's thinking about a certain country or it may lead to misunderstanding and misjudgment. Therefore, to produce translations as properly as possible, especially in cultural and cross-cultural aspects of translation which are abundant in news texts, the translators need to apply effective translation strategies. Domestication and foreignization translation strategies are two important strategies of translation in rendering phrasal verbs in news from a source-text language to a culture-specific target-text one. The authors of this study have applied these strategies of translation to English-Persian phrasal verbs in news texts to investigate whether English-Persian translators tend to domesticate the news headlines or foreignize them. The news containing phrasal verbs was analyzed based on the ones from different news agencies and websites. First, some news containing phrasal verbs is analyzed, then the English translations were compared and contrasted. As the results of the study showed, English to Persian translators tend to apply the domestication strategy more frequently. It was concluded that since culture-specific terms and words are difficult to be understood in the target language, the translators mostly tend to localize or domesticate them. This research is helpful in journalistic translation studies, since it focuses on the important features of phrasal verbs as culture-specific and context-bound terms with respect to translation strategies. © 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.