An Investigation of Implicatures in the Persian and Turkish Translations of Four American Short Stories

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Abstract

Translation of implicature as a challenging issue in Translation Studies is addressed in the present study. Considering this notion, the researchers’ main concern after extracting implicatures was to investigate the translation procedures proposed by Molina and Hurtado Albir (2002) and also Newmark (1988) in translating implicatures including: 1. Linguistic amplification, 2. Linguistic compression, 3. Literal translation, 4. Transposition, 5. Established equivalence, and 6. Free translation. To achieve the aims of the study, six questions were proposed to examine the translation procedures adopted by the translators and to find out the most frequent translation procedures utilized in rendering the relevant implicatures. To this end, four short stories entitled “Cat in the Rain”, “Indian Camp”, “Killers”, and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” by American writer Ernest Hemingway and their two best-seller Persian and Turkish translations by Ahmad Golshiri and Shirmohammad Qudratoghlu were chosen to be analyzed. Through a contrastive analysis in this qualitative descriptive study, sixty-nine implicatures were identified and extracted from all these short stories according to the maxims defined by Grice (1975) and compared with their corresponding translations. The results indicated that the Turkish translator has used linguistic amplification and free translation that do not lead to reproduce the implicatures in the target text; therefore, the Persian translator was more successful in recreating the implicatures in the target text.

Index Terms— Implicatures, Cooperative principle

I. INTRODUCTION

In general, translation is a complex process which draws on a variety of disciplines, ranging from Linguistics to Psychology, and which can be approached from many and diverse viewpoints. From translating very simple words and concepts to difficult ones, it calls for different kinds of competences on the part of the translator. During this process, the translator encounters different problems when rendering from one language into the next and the most important aspect of translator’s duty is to investigate the nature of such problems and attempt to overcome them.

Translating the implied meanings of the utterances between two speakers can be considered as one of the most difficult situations the translator may encounter, because understanding utterances is not simply a matter of knowing the meanings of the words uttered and the way in which they are combined. Implicated information is something beyond the literary meanings of words and in linguistic it is called “implicature”. Here, the role of the translator is transfigured, that is, she\he is responsible for reproducing the message in target language and making it comprehensible to readers.

As far as the researchers of this study know, there is much to say and to do in the field of Translation, particularly “Pragmatics”. A short glance at the subjects of M.A. theses related to translation and pragmatics in Iran indicates that there has not been much work done in this area. Hence, it seemed reasonable that a study be conducted on the translation of implicatures in order to uncover some of the issues that are embedded within this almost untouched subject.

According to Yule (1996), speech act is divided into direct and indirect. Sometimes, the utterance itself directly expresses the intention to a listener or a reader. At other times, the intention is implicit; it is not conveyed directly by the utterance produced. The term implicature was coined by speech act philosopher, Grice, in 1975 to denote those aspects of meaning that are communicated by an utterance in a conversational context without being part of the literal meaning of the utterance and to account for indirect meanings in discourse. (Grice, 1975)

In this regard, it is useful to distinguish between explicit and implicit information, and between implicit and implicated information. Explicit information is what a reader or listener gathers only from the strict meaning of words. It rarely reflects the intended meaning of an utterance especially in literature. Implicit information is built up from the explicit content of the utterance by conceptual strengthening or “enrichment”, which yields what would have been made fully explicit, if lexical extensions had been included in the utterance. Implicated information, called implicature, goes beyond what is said “the coded content” (Grice, 1975). It is heavily dependent on the context of the situation.

Widdowson (2007) describes implicatures of two categories depending on whether they are associated with the linguistic content of utterances directly or indirectly. Those that include all non-truth-conditional aspects conveyed by an utterance solely due to words or forms the sentence contains are called conventional implicatures. The second category of implicatures is related to the conversational implicature that is an important aspect of the general phenomenon of indirect communication, and falls within the field of Pragmatics.

In fact, conversational implicatures arise from the application of conversational maxims to ‘the saying of what is said’ and so require the prior determination of what is said. Grice (1975) has described the maxims that operate in normal co-operative conversation as follows:

The Maxim of Quality: Try to make your contribution one that is true, specifically:

i. do not say what you believe to be false,

ii. do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence (p.45).

The maxim of Quantity:

i. make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange,

ii. do not make your contribution more informative than required (p.45).

The maxim of Relevance: Make your contributions relevant (p.45).

The maxim of Manner: Be perspicuous, and specifically:

i. Avoid obscurity (eschew obfuscation),

ii. Avoid ambiguity,

iii. Be brief,

iv. Be orderly (p.45).

For the purposes of our study, we have decided to base the translation technique categorizations largely on a more recent study on translation techniques by Molina and Hurtado Albir (2002). They have striven to create a unified classification system of translation techniques. In their article, they introduce seventeen earlier translation scholars’ classifications of translation techniques, explaining how the many names for essentially similar translation techniques easily cause confusion and how an integrated system would be useful. They acknowledge the achievements of earlier researchers and seek to compose a collective scheme. This is not to claim that other scholars have not done the same (e.g., Chesterman, 1997, pp. 92–112), but Molina and Hurtado Albir’s system is more explicit and concise and helps to understand translation techniques better than others do.

In total, Molina and Hurtado Albir (2002, pp. 509–511) have proposed a list of 18 techniques based on the earlier work of researchers and on their own observations and a translator may use a variety of procedures that differ in importance according to the contextual factors of both the ST and the TT.

II. PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

The principle function of translation as an important means of communication is to establish linguistic links between speakers of different languages, by means of transferring content from one language to another,  whereas it is true that the central problem of translation is how to choose the most adequate translation procedures, other problems too need consideration and analysis.

Implicature is one of the most delicate problems appear when, for instance, we translate conversational texts generally found in novels and short stories, because they consist of people’s daily explicit and implicit conversations. In any conversation, usually the speaker produces an utterance with the main intention of conveying a given meaning. Then, the hearer decodes the speaker’s utterance in the given context. Thus, it is assumed that participants in a communication activity observe a set of rules and principles including the cooperative principles as stated by Grice in 1975.

According to Grice (1975), if the conversational maxims are observed, the cooperative principle is observed too, and if not, the cooperative principle is flouted, and then implicature is made. Therefore, the question to be answered here is how implicature in conversational interaction is made and what are the strategies used by translators to convey such implied meanings.

Contrastive analysis of the source text and target text in the study of implicatures can be profitable first in understanding the nature of implicature and then in determining and exploring translation procedures employed in translating impicatures. Hence, these strategies can pave the way for the translators and hopefully may provide them with insightful clues on implicatures in translation. Furthermore, the results obtained can enhance the principle of literary translation in general and those of short stories in particular. In short, since the translation of short stories has become very popular nowadays, the translation of implicit utterances, implicatures, is considered as an important matter in the present study. To achieve the objectives of the study, the following six questions were posed:

1. What are the implicatures of four short stories?

2. Which translation procedures has the Persian translator used for conveying the same meaning?

3. Which translation procedures has the Turkish translator used for conveying the same meaning?

4. Which translation procedure has been used more often in Persian and Turkish translations?

5. What are the differences among the translation procedures used by the Persian and the Turkish translators in rendering the implicatures?

6. Which of the two Persian and Turkish translations has been more successful in transferring the same meaning of implicatures to the target text?

The most important limitation for conducting this study was that the research including theses and dissertations that have been done by Iranians in this area were rare; therefore, we had to rely mainly on the literature about other languages, and as delimitation, we restricted this study to four American short stories by Ernest Hemingway and their Persian and Turkish translations.

III. METHODOLOGY

A. Materials

Four American short stories “Cat in the Rain”, “Indian Camp”, “The Killers” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” by Ernest Hemingway were chosen for the present research. Each story was chosen from different collections of Hemingway’s works. The first two short stories, “Cat in the Rain” and “Indian Camp” were selected from In Our Time collection published in 1925 in New York, and each story in this collection includes three pages. “The Killers” from Men Without Women collection appeared in 1927 in New York , and the text is about nine pages, and finally “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” chosen from Winner Take Nothing which is Ernest Hemingway’s fourth collection, and it is about twenty three pages and was published in 1936 in New York.

The first story “Cat in the Rain” recounts the story of an American couple on vacation in Italy. The entirety of the story’s action takes place in or around the couple’s hotel, which faces the sea as well as the public garden and the war monument. Throughout the story, it rains, leaving the couple trapped within their hotel room. As the American wife watches the rain, she sees a cat crouched “under one of the dripping green tables. Hemingway uses symbols to express the girl’s determination to save her faltering marriage. Hemingway shows the girl’s eagerness to go through the heavy rains to save the cat and this story is about three pages.

The next short story is “Indian Camp”, the plot of which turns around three major characters: Nick Adams, Nick's father and Uncle George, there is also the Indian woman, and her husband. The setting of the story takes place in an Indian camp, on a lake, a meadow, and in a wood on the way to and from the camp in northern Michigan. The time is probably around 1910, because Hemingway himself was a child at that time and his own father was a doctor, who also paid doctor’s calls among Indians in Michigan. In addition, what is going on in this short story corresponds with the factual historical time, e.g. that a doctor goes to help in an Indian camp on a primitive basis.

The third analyzed story here is “The Killers”, the story of Nick Adams, George, Anderson, and Sam. The scenes in Hemingway's story take place in a restaurant, on a street parallel to streetcar tracks, on a side street, and in a rooming house. The time is late autumn in the mid-1920s. The place is Summit, Ill., a real town on the western outskirts of Chicago. The whole story states the conversation between these boys and the killers.

The last story “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” consists of two characters Francis Macomber and his wife Margaret (usually referred to as Margot) and the setting is in Africa following events, occurring between Macomber and professional hunter Robert Wilson.

Since these stories are in the form of a conversation between different characters, it is supposed to fulfill the aims of the research. Furthermore, there were two translations into Persian and Turkish available to accomplish the research objectives.

The Persian translation of “Cat in the rain”, “Indian Camp”, “The Killers,” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” by Ahmad Golshiri was published in 2008 in Tehran, by Negah publication.

The Turkish translation of “Cat in the rain”, “Indian Camp”, “The Killers” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” by Shirmohammad Qudratoghlu was published in 2012 in Oroumie, by Boota publication.

B. Procedure

To fulfill the objectives of the study, the following steps were taken:

1. The original short stories have been read thoroughly.

2. Then maxims that have been flouted and caused different kinds of implicature have been identified. All examples are selected from the story “Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”.

The maxim of quality:

Well, you're a coward.", said Margarot. (p.13)

The maxim of quantity:

“Now the wife. Well, the wife. Yes, the wife. Hm, the wife.” Wilson said. (p.16)

The maxim of relevance:

"Can't we set the grass on fire?" Macomber asked.

     "Too green.” Wilson answered. (p.10)

The maxim of manner:

"That does it," said Wilson. (p.17)

3. Next, approximately sixty-nine implicatures have been identified in the source texts.

4. The two translations of implicatures into Persian and Turkish have been analyzed.

5. Then, the given translation procedures for the Persian and Turkish translations have been identified and analyzed. These translation procedures are on the basis of Molina and Hurtado Albir’s (2002) and Newmark’s framework. To clarify this item of the procedure, some examples are provided for each translation procedure:

-Linguistic amplification:

The cat was trying to make herself so compact that she would not be dripped on. (p.191)

ترجمه ترکی: اوستونه یاغیش دامجیلاماسین دئیه ییغیلیب یوماغا دﺅنموش پیشیک بیر آز دا قیسیلماغا چالیشیردی. ( ص. ۱٠٤(

The Turkish translator has used Linguistic Amplification by adding the word "یاغیش "in his translation to make the sentence more explicit for his readers.

"That's one for the medical journal, George," he said. (p.170)

ترجمه فارسی: اوگفت: «این هم یه مطلب جانانه برای مجله ی پزشکی، جورج.» (ص.۱۱٧(

The Persian translator has added “مطلب جانانه" that was not mentioned in the source text.

- Linguistic compression:

It was getting dark. (p.192)

ترجمه فارسی: داشت تاریک می شد. (ص.۱٦٩(

The Persian translator has used Linguistic Compression because the word “it” which refers to weather is no translated.

“See the birds dropping. Means the old boy has left his kill.” Wilson said. (p.8)

ترجمه ترکی: گﺅرونورکی ،دوستوموز اﺅز غنیمتی نی قویوب گئدیب . (ص.۳۳)

The Turkish translator has preferred to use linguistic compression by omitting the adjective “old” in his translation.

-Literal translation:

The cat was trying to make herself so compact that she would not be dripped on. (p.191)

ترجمه فارسی: گربه سعی می کرد خودش را جمع کند تا آب رویش نچکد.(ص.۱٦٦(

It was getting dark. (p.192)

ترجمه ترکی: هاوا گئتدیکجه قارانلیقلاشیرادی. ( ص. ۱٠٨ (

-Transposition:

The room smelled very bad. (p.169)

ترجمه فارسی:اتاق را بوی بد گرفته بود. (ص.۱۱٥(

The Persian translator has applied Transposition, because the verb “smelled” is changed into an adjective.

"Those must boil," he said. (p.169)

ترجمه ترکی:او دئدی: اونلار قاینا ملی دیر. (ص.٧٨(

Turkish one has used Transposition, because the part of speech of the verb “boil” is changed into "قاینا ملی" which is an adjective in Turkish language.

-Established equivalence:

When she talked English, the maid's face tightened. (p.192)

ترجمه فارسی: وقتی زن به انگلیسی حرف زد، چهره ی خدمتکار در هم رفت. (ص.۱٦7)

ترجمه ترکی: آمریکالی قادین اینگیلیسجه دانیشماغا باشلایاندا خدمتچی نین صفتی گرگین بیر وضعیت آلیردی. ( ص. ۱٠٧)

Both translators have used Established Equivalence procedure for translating “tightened”; they have said" در هم رفت "and" گرگین بیر وضعیت آلیردی" respectively in Persian and Turkish. They have applied different wordings in the same situation between the source and target texts.

-Free Translation:

   “He'll turn up all right.” (p.171)

ترجمه فارسی: «اون چیزیش نمیشه.» (ص.۱۱٩(

ترجمه ترکی: او،ایندیجه گله جک. (ص.٨۲(

Both translators have applied Free Translation, because they have used their own words in the target texts not exact equivalence of source text words.

6. Next, the most frequently used translation procedure in each translation has been calculated and the results of data analysis are illustrated through tables and figures.

7. Finally, it has been decided which one of the translations has been more acceptable in transferring the implicatures meaning into the target language.

C. Design

The current study is classified as descriptive and qualitative type of research. To define the descriptive method, Creswell (1994) stated that descriptive method is to gather information about the present existing condition. “The qualitative researchers gather what they see, hear, and read from people and places. They do research in natural setting rather than in laboratories or through written surveys”. (Rossman & Rallis, 2003, p.4)

This is a descriptive qualitative and comparative quantitative case study of the 69 implicatures of four short stories by Hemingway (1927), according to Grice’s (1975) cooperative principles and analyzing the translation procedures utilized in rendering into Persian and Turkish versions based on Molina and Hurtado Albir’s (2002) and Newmark’s (1988) framework.

D. Data Analysis

It is noteworthy that the researchers have extracted all data including the features of implicature from the selected short stories, and to increase reliability of findings, the researchers themselves attempted to assess them several times. Then, the Persian and Turkish translations of these implicaturs were found and the procedures based on theoretical model of Molina and Hurtado Albir’s (2002) were examined. After that, the data was analyzed, and in doing so, the data were considered based on content analysis.

According to Titscher, Meyer, Wodak, and Vetter (2000), content analysis is "the longest established method of text analysis among the set of empirical methods of social investigation" (p.55). However, there does not seem to exist a homogenous understanding of this method at present, but originally the term "referred only to those methods that concentrate on directly and clearly quantifiable aspects of text content, and as a rule on absolute and relative frequencies of words per text or surface unit" (Titscher et al., 2000, p.55). Later, the concept was extended to include all those procedures which operate with categories, but which seek at least to quantify these categories by means of a frequency survey of classifications.

For the analysis of the data of the present study after extracting implicatures based on Grice’s (1975), cooperative principles and maxims the number of implicatures for each story and also the kinds of maxim flouted have been shown. Next, since, the study was conducted by means of a translation task, the Persian and Turkish translations of these implicaturs were identified and analyzed in order to examine six translation procedures based on theoretical model of Molina and Hurtado Albir’s (2002). Next, each procedure applied for each translation of implicature has been taken into consideration and then the frequency of each strategy has been calculated. The analysis of research has been focused on the most frequently used translation procedure in both Persian and Turkish renderings and figures have displayed percentile distribution of them. The summary of the findings has been illustrated in the forms of tables and charts. Finally, the present student features the importance of translator’s task to convey the closer meanings of these implicatures into target texts.

IV. RESULTS OF THE STUDY

In previous section, the details of data collection and analysis were given. The data was gathered by thoroughly reading and analyzing the four short stories and their Persian and Turkish translations. As the data was about implicature, based on Grice’s theory (1975), implicatures were regarded as the sentences in which the maxims of cooperative principles (quality, quantity, relevance, and manner) were intentionally or unintentionally violated. The source materials in this project were four short stories: “Cat in the Rain”, “Indian Camp”, “Killers” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” by the famous American author Ernest Hemingway. Thus, all the implicature appearing in these four stories were identified, extracted, and analyzed along with their translations. A set of sixty-nine implicatures were identified altogether. As the next step, the translation procedures utilized by the Persian and the Turkish translators were discussed based on the classification listed by Molina and Hurtado Albir (2002), and Newmark (1988). The results using descriptive statistics were demonstrated in the tables below. First, the table of implicature based on their taxonomy of maxims and then the table of classification of translation procedures is given below.

Table 1. Implicatures resulting from the violation of Grice`s maxims in four stories

Table 1 demonstrates that sixty-nine implicatures were extracted of which seventy-seven maxims were flouted entirely based on Grice’s (1975) theory. The difference in the number of implicatures and maxims indicates that in the first story, “The short happy life of Francis Macomber”, which included thirty one impicatures, in the case of four implicatures( i.e. implicatures number 4, 22, 24, and 27) more than one maxim was violated, similarly, the second story, “The Killers”, had eighteen implicatures, but one implicature (i.e., implicature number 6) resulted from flouting two maxims. Again, in the third story, “Indian Camp”, twelve implicatures were found, while one maxim had been violated twice (i.e., implicature number 8), and finally in the last story, “Cat in the Rain”, which had eight implicatures, but two implicatures (i.e. implicature number 2 and 7) resulted from flouting more than one maxim. Moreover, it should be mentioned that the difference in the number of the implicatures in each story is caused by the length of the related story. That is to say that, the longer the story under investigation was the more implicatures it had. Each story with its number of flouted maxims (i.e., quality, quantity, relevance, and manner) is shown in figure 1.

 

 

 

 

Figure 1.The Number of Flouted Maxims in Four Stories

Here, the number of flouted maxims in each story is demonstrated in bar graph. Figure 1 illustrates that in the stories “Killers”, “Indian Camp”, and “Cat in the Rain”, the maxims of manner, and quantity were not violated. After that, the percentage distribution of implicatures in the four stories under investigation is given in the following pie chart.

Figure 2. Total percentile distribution of implicatures (quality, quantity, relevance, and manner) in four stories

Here, the percentage of implicatures is calculated according to the four short stories under investigation, because the source materials in this study were not a single novel; therefore, illustrating the distribution according to the classification of maxims was impossible. As discussed earlier the unequal length in the stories has caused the difference of distribution, thus from the longest story to the shortest we get the percentages: “The short happy life of Francis Macomber” contained 45% of implicatures, then “The Killers” with 24%, after that “Indian Camp” with 18% and finally “Cat in the Rain” with 13%, of the implicature which were analyzed and examined in the present study. Next, the number of each translation procedure utilized by the Persian and the Turkish translators to render the implicatures in the target texts were calculated and are shown below.

Table 2. Translation procedures used for translating implicatures

Table 2 shows that six translation procedures suggested by Molina and Hurtado Albir (2002), and Newmark (1988). It should be mentioned that due to the lack of “Free Translation” in Molina and Hurtado Albir’s list of translation procedures the researchers were forced to take advantage of Newmark’s list of translation procedures that contained free translation. It is understood from this table that the most frequent procedure used by the Persian and the Turkish translators is “Literal Translation” and the least one is “Linguistic Compression”.

Furthermore, the Persian translator has utilized “Literal Translation” and “Established Equivalence” more than the Turkish translator has. On the other hand, the Turkish translator has used “Free Translation”, “Linguistic Amplification”, and “Linguistic Compression”more than the Persian translator has, and just one translation procedure,“Transposition”, was used equally by the two translators. Next, the results of Table 2 are shown in Figure 3 as follows:  

Figure 3. Frequency of translation strategies used by the Persian and the Turkish translators

After calculating and analyzing the number of translation procedures, the percentage distribution of each translation procedure utilized in Persian and Turkish sentences were figured which are given separately by pie charts as follows:

Figure 4 The percentile distribution of translation strategies used by Persian translator

Figure 4 refers to the percentage distribution of translation procedures utilized by Persian translator to render the implicatures to the target text. As it is illustrated, the most frequent procedure used is “Literal Translation” with 46% out of the whole: it means that the translator has transferred the implicatures with the least change, and “Linguistic Compression” as the least frequent procedure with 3% out of the whole.

Figure 5. The percentile distribution of translation strategies used by Turkish translator

Figure 5 shows the percentile distribution of translation procedures used by the Turkish translator to convey the implicatures in the target text. It is obvious that “Literal Translation” with about 35% of the total was recognized as the most frequent procedure, and “Linguistic Amplification” with about 4% of total was regarded as the least frequent procedure used by the translator. Each of these percentages is shown in both pie charts indicate a special meaning; therefore, the conclusions will be discussed in details in the next section.

VI. CONCLUSION, IMPLICATIONS, AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

Translation is the art of reproduction of an utterance from source language into target language in an artistic and professional manner. Now, this art can be shown where the translator confronts the translation of conversational texts. A conversation consists of speakers with the intention of conveying an implicit meaning, and translation of implicatures, is considered as an important matter. Therefore, the intricate aspect of the translator’s job is to know how to render this implicit message adequately from source language to target one in accordance with its context. Grice (1975) coined the term implicature, and it happens when the maxims of cooperative principle according to Grice, are violated.

The present research is done based on above-mentioned theoretical framework. As discussed earlier, the implicatures of four short stories by Hemingway were extracted and analyzed along with their Persian and Turkish translations based on translation procedures suggested by Molina and Hurtado Albir (2002), and Newmark (1988). The selected translation procedures include Literal Translation, Free Translation, Linguistic Amplification, Linguistic Compression, Established Equivalence, and Transposition. In this section, the results would be elaborated in a form of responses of the research questions and then the conclusions to be drawn from the study, the implications, and suggestion for further study are given.

A. Answers to the Research Questions

In section IV (i.e., RESULTS OF THE STUDY), the analysis of findings was given and demonstrated by tables, charts, and figures, now the conclusion of these findings will be elaborated in the forms of responses of the research questions.

1. What are the implicatures of four short stories?

According to Grice (1975) by violating the maxims of quality, quantity, relevance, and manner the implicature is produced, thus based on this theory the researcher has extracted sixty nine implicatures from the four short stories under investigation which were analyzed in detail in section IV.

2. Which translation procedures has the Persian translator used for conveying the meaning?

The Persian translator has utilized six translation procedures presented by Molina and Hurtado Albir (2002), and Newmark (1988) in translating the implicatures of four short stories. The results have indicated that Literal Translation, Free Translation, Linguistic Amplification, Linguistic Compression, Established Equivalence, and Transposition were the translation procedures used respectively in transferring the implicatures into the Persian target texts.

3. Which translation procedures has the Turkish translator used for conveying the meaning?

The Turkish translator has utilized six translation procedures presented by Molina and Hurtado Albir (2002), and Newmark (1988) in translating the implicatures of four short stories. The results have indicated that Literal Translation, Free Translation, Linguistic Amplification, Linguistic Compression, Established Equivalence, and Transposition were the translation procedure used respectively in transferrin the implicatures into the Turkish target texts.

4. Which translation procedure has been used more often in Persian and Turkish translations?

As shown in figures 4, and 5, both the Persian and the Turkish translators have utilized Literal Translation more often than the other translation procedures. The Persian translator has applied it with 46% and the Turkish one has used it with 35%. This result indicates that both Persian and Turkish translators by utilizing the Literal Translation more than the others have aimed to convey the meaning of most of the implicatures to the target texts.

5. What are the differences among the translation procedures used by the Persian and the Turkish translators in rendering the implicatures?

According to table 2, the Persian translator has utilized literal translation 32 times, Free Translation 10 times, Linguistic Amplification 6 times, Linguistic Compression 2 times, Established Equivalence 16 times, and Transposition 4 times. On the other hand, the Turkish translator has utilized Literal Translation 25 times, Free Translation 11 times, Linguistic Amplification 14 times, Linguistic Compression 3 times, Established Equivalence 13 times, and Transposition 4 times. It is understood that among these procedures Literal Translation and Linguistic Amplification have the most frequent usage between the Persian and the Turkish translators.

6. Which of the two Persian and Turkish translations has been more successful in conveying the meaning of implicatures to the target text?

To respond this question much more precision is needed. To convey the meaning of implicatures means that the translator not only should get the implied meaning of the utterance, but also should transfer it to the target text in a similar manner as it is in the source text. Among the translation procedures in this research only Literal Translation, Established Equivalence, and Transposition have the capability of conveying similar meanings. Therefore, by utilizing them, the translator has the opportunity to maintain the intended meanings of the original sentences, while in all the other cases of Free Translation, Linguistic Amplification, and Linguistic Compression, the translator is forced to add or omit or to change the sentence completely to make it comprehensible for the reader. In this way, the translator makes the implied meaning more explicit and this is something that should be avoided in translating the implicatures. Therefore, the Persian translation with the high percentages in Literal Translation and Established Equivalence is more acceptable in conveying the meaning. On the other hand, the Turkish translation due to the high percentages in Linguistic Amplification and Free Translation is less acceptable in transferring the implicit meanings to the target text.

B. Conclusion

Based on the results of the analysis and the discussion above, the following points are concluded:

First, according to Grice (1975), the implicatures occur due to the act of flouting the conversational maxims, which constitute a very important element in Pragmatics. This notion helps us account for certain aspects of meaning neither Semantics nor Syntax have succeeded in doing so.

Implicature is a special kind of pragmatic field. Its main function is to explain how it is possible for a speaker to mean more than what s/he says based on the cooperative principle and the four maxims of: quality, quantity, relation, and manner. These maxims may either be observed or flouted by the speaker consciously or unintentionally.

Second, understanding utterances is not simply a matter of knowing the meanings of the words uttered and the way in which they are combined. The problem appears when the translator is asked to read and understand the message and transmit it to another audience who may be very different from the readership the original writer had in the mind. In such circumstances, thus, a translator requires to be a good pragmatic analyst to identify the intended meaning of the utterances, detect the implicit meanings, and produce the same effect in the target text so that it bears the emotional and aesthetic aspect similar to the original text.

The last one is that, Pollard (1998), has explained that translating novels is different from translating scientific texts. Science deals with universals while the happenings in fiction are semi-imaginary and are indented to move the emotions of the community. It means that in translating fiction a translator should have knowledge about the cultural and linguistic factors of the source language and the target one in order to represent an acceptable translation.

C. Implications

This study like any other research has some natural consequences. One of implications can be guiding the students who are interested in translation, particularly rendering novels and short stories that consist of conversational texts. Moreover, the result of this study can be generalized for Translation studies and the findings can inspire future students to undertake other theses in the area of implicature and present new procedures for translating such phenomena.

In addition, the present study and specially the process of data collection and analysis uncovered the complexity of a translator’s job. As Abdellah (2002) points out, the misinterpretation in the reading comprehension, stage will surely lead to deviant representation of the original in the minds of the target readers. Translators should be aware that incorrect comprehension of a text considerably decreases the quality of translation. Therefore, future translators in addition to the denotative meanings of texts should pay attention to their connotative meanings and implicatures.

The third implication of the present study is the importance of re-wording in translation. It means that the translators should apply various strategies for conveying the message as closely as possible by choosing the appropriate methods, techniques, and procedures.

The last implication, concerns with the use of translation procedures and strategies. Translator must constantly make choices, in each paragraph, sentence, or translation unit, to decide which of the possible choices is the most useful for the transfer of the ideas into the text being translated. It means adapting the most suitable strategies and techniques to the requirements of the text rather than utilizing a certain technique forever.

D. Suggestion for Further Research

It is hoped that findings of the present study can help translators become generally more informed about what goes on when they are translating. Studies like this have rarely been done previously among three languages, i.e. English, Persian, and Turkish. Therefore, it is also hoped that this study could have paved the way for other researchers interested in doing similar research.

This study has been done on four American short stories: “Cat in the Rain”, “Indian Camp”, “Killers” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” by famous writer Ernest Hemingway and their two Persian and Turkish translations. Other researchers can compare or contrast other English novels or short stories with their translations produced by Persian and Turkish language. Other similar studies on different genres such as drama, other short stories, can be done to find out whether similar results would be achieved.

REFERENCES

[1] Abdellah, A. S. (2002). What Every Novice Translator should know. Translation Journal, 6, 3, July. Retrieved from http://accurapid.com/journal/21novice.htm.

[2] Anderson, J.R. (1983). The Architecture of Cognition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

[3] Chesterman, A. (1997). Memes of Translation, Amsterdam, and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

[4] Ghodratoghloo, S. M. (2012/1391). Yaghish Altinda Pishik [Cat in the Rain]. Urumia: Bouta Publication.

[5] Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In Cole, P., and J.L. Morgan (Eds). Syntax and Semantics, 3: Speech Acts, New York: Academic Press.

[6] Hemingway, E. (1925). Cat in the Rain, Indian Camp. In Our Time. New York.

[7] Hemingway, E. (1927). The Killers. Men without Women. New York.

[8] Hemingway, E. (1936). The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. Winner Take Nothing. New York.

[9] Molina, L., and Hurtado Albir, A. (2002). Translation Techniques Revisited: A Dynamic and Functionalist Approach. Meta: Translators’ Journal, 47(4), 545- 590.

[10] Newmark, P. (1988). A Textbook of Translation. London: Prentice Hall.

[11] Pollard, D. (1998).Translation and Creation: Reading of Western Literature in Early Modern China, 1840-1918. Amsterdam: John Benjamin publishing Company.

[12] Titscher, S., Meyer, M., Wodak, R., & Vetter, E. (2000). Methods of Text and Discourse Analysis. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

[13] Widdowson, H. G. (2007). Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[14] Yule, G. (2000). Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Esmail Faghih, born 1946 in Tabriz/Iran, is an Emeritus professor of TEFL (Alzahra University) who is currently teaching and supervising at IAU, South Tehran Branch. He got his PhD in TESL/TEFL from the University of Illinois, at Urbana-Champaign, USA in 1980. Dr. Faghih has published numerous books and articles in different areas of language teaching and learning. He is also renowned for his translated books. His latest book translated from English into Persian is "Aesopian Literary Dimensions of Azerbaijani Literature of the Soviet Period, 1920–1990" which was published in 2012 in Tehran. His current research interests include applied linguistics, contrastive analysis, critical discourse analysis, and the Azerbaijani-Turkish language and literature.

Fatemeh Abbasi holds an M.A. in Translation Studies at Islamic Azad University South Tehran Branch. She is interested in teaching translation courses, thinking styles, and translation quality.