Word Choice and Symbolic Language: A Case Study of Persian Translations of THE SCARLET LETTER

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the stylistic devices in the two Persian translations of the novel The Scarlet Letter, with special focus on symbol and word choice. The participants of the study were 24 M.A students of translation studies. The data were collected through a researcher-developed questionnaire. The findings indicated that not only universal symbols are translatable, but also culture-specific symbols can be translated from one language into another, with some trivial nuance of meaning lost. Also, the findings of the study suggested that for the target readers’ better understanding, translators should give footnote for culture-specific symbols. As to the word choice (i.e. the sense of archaic words), the translators have not preserved this feature as precisely as it appears in the original novel; instead, they have used old Persian syntactic structures which compensate for the loss of the sense of archaic words.