Internal Journal of English and Literature Vol. 2(9), pp.

200-205, December 2011

Available online http://www.academicjournals.org/ijel
DOI: 10.5897/IJEL11.089
©2011 Academic Journals

Full length Research

Translation naturalness in literary works: English to

Persian
Elaheh Fadaee
Vakil Abad Blvd. 6 Hashemieh 21 ST., Mashhad, Iran. E-mail: [email protected]. Tel: 00989151030299.
Accepted 10 November, 2011

Naturalness as well as accuracy and clearness is one of the main features of evaluating translation of
literary books. An acceptable translated book is the one which includes all these three factors. Based
on the tendencies of translators to create good and natural translation pieces, and to show the
necessity of this action, the researcher in this paper tries to study the naturalness flow of some literary
short stories in Iran to reveal some strong and weak points of natural translations of some of these
books. As such, two research questions are derived in this study: do the short stories meet natural
translation? Does the attraction of these stories have relation with their naturalness? The most
important reason for choosing these books is that the researcher found that although literary books in
Iran have lots of fans especially among students of schools and private English institutions, these
books which are written in a simple language and are the summary of some of the great literary books,
such as The scarlet letter by Hawthorne, Little women by May Alcott, Dr. Zhivago by Pasternak, etc.,
show some lacks in translation naturalness. This article covers 4 parts as introduction including
theories of naturalness, method, result and discussion, conclusion.

Key words: naturalness, translation, literary short stories

INTRODUCTION

Great translators have enumerated different purposes for language. Rahimi (2004: 55) says "a translation will be
attempts they have made to translate great writers’ considered inaccurate if it contains the following cases:
masterpieces. Generally speaking, most of them believe
that if one finds himself competent enough to offer i) Inadvertently omitting some pieces of information
translations at par, he/she should not hesitate to do so ii) Adding information which is not really in the source text
because it is incumbent upon him/her as a social iii) Committing mistakes during the analysis of the source
responsibility to reveal and undress treasures oneself has text resulting in a different meaning".
got access to.
A good translator emphasizes on the readership and
the setting, and therefore on naturalness, ease of under- Clearness of translation
standing and an appropriate register, when these factors
are appropriate. When the main purpose of the text is to Larson (2001: 49) defines clearness as following:
convey information and convince the reader, (like story "clearness in translation means that the translated piece
books), a method of translation must be natural. can communicate to the people (target audience) who
In this view, naturalness is both grammatical and are to use it". He adds that "in clear translation the forms
lexical, and is a touchstone at every level of a text, from of the language used should be those which make the
paragraph to word, from title to punctuation. message of the source text as easy to understand as the
source text itself was to understand" (Larson, 2001: 48).
The translation lacks clarity if:
Accuracy of translation
i) It does not communicate the people who are to use it.
Accuracy of translation means that a translated piece ii) It does not use the form of language understandable
communicates the same meaning as the source for language speakers (Rahimi, 2004: 56).
 Fadaee 201

These two features were not the focus of this article, Nida (1943) sees a translator, who advocates natural
although they were introduced. translation, as a producer of a total overall effect with
approximate tone. In this way, he insisted on the
'intention' of the text rather than the words used by the
THEORIES OF NATURALNESS author and he understands what kind of audience the
original author had in mind when writing.
One of the main requirements in any translation work is According to Jakobson (1959: 15), "Natural translation
that the translation (the finished product) must sound is a whole message transference from one language into
natural. Before mentioning the characteristics of the another rather than the transfusion of single separate-
translation naturalness which are proposed by the great code units. What the translator dose is recording the en-
translation authorities and then mentioning the types of tire message and transmitting it into the target language".
unnatural translations, it is necessary to distinguish In natural translation, which is translation by an
between natural language, ordinary language and basic untrained individual, as Harris (1981: 254) defines it, "one
language. "Natural language is a language which is cannot talk of the linguistic knowledge of the bilingual".
readable by everybody, however, it is formal. Ordinary For Newmark (1988), naturalness is essential in all
language is the plain non-technical idiom used by Oxford communicative translation; whether one is translating an
philosopher's explanation. Basic language is somewhere informative text, a notice or an advert. According to him,
between formal and informal, which is easily understood, "a translator has to ensure that, a) the TT makes sense,
and is constructed from languages that are most and b) it reads naturally" (Newmark, 1988: 89).
frequently used by common people" (Newmark, 1988: Beekman and Callow (1974: 45) have offered another
87). criterion for assigning the naturalness of translation.
There is no universal naturalness. Naturalness "Their definition is based on the term 'ease'. They say
depends on the relationship between the writer and the there is correlation between ease of understanding the
readership and the topic or situation. What is natural in meaning of a text and the level of naturalness which it
one situation may be unnatural in another, but everyone has".
has a natural, 'neutral' language where spoken and Gutt (1999) claims that a good translation should read
informal written language, more or less, coincide. like a target – language original, not like a translation, it
Tendency towards natural translation goes back to usually expresses this idea that a translation should be
translation pieces of St. Jerome and his followers Luther so natural in its style that it is indistinguishable from an
(1530) and Dryden (1684) who favored 'colloquial and original in the target language.
natural' renderings of the texts. From then on, great Rahimy (2004: 58) defines naturalness and says: "it is
translators tried their best to create translation pieces important to use the natural form of the receptor lan-
which seemed natural as much as possible. guage if the translation is to be effective and acceptable.
Tytler (1971), Belloc (1931), Bates (1943), Nida (1943), Furthermore, the translation should not sound foreign or
Jakobson (1959), Levy, Catford, Newmark (1988), and smell 'translation'; the translation is not natural if it lacks
some contemporary translators have emphasized on normal use of TL speakers and appropriate style".
natural translation a lot. Tytler (1797) is the proponent of Williams` (2005) study indicates the cultural signi-
the idea that to make a natural translation, a translator ficance in the act of natural translation. It indicates that a
must be free in adding to or retrenching from the original lack of cultural knowledge can cause misusage or
text when it is being rendered into a target language. misunderstanding of language, and the feature negatively
According to Belloc (1931: 30), "Natural and good affects the performance of translation.
translation must... consciously attempt the spirit of the There are some terms which are considered as equal
original at the expense of the letter. Now this is much the substitution for natural translation; dynamic translation,
same as saying that the translator must be of original idiomatic translation, meaning-based translation, closest
talent; he must himself create: he must have power of his natural translation, functional translation, thought-for-
own, not just offer a one-to-one translation". thought translation, covert translation and so on. All of
The translator must free herself/himself from resorting these terms focus upon preservation of meaning, rather
to mechanical restrictions the same way that the author, than form, when there is tension between the two.
in writing a text, emancipates himself/herself from them Within Naturalness Theory, Mayerthaler (1981: 70)
(Belloc, 1931). Bates (1943: 121) says that; "If you want distinguishes "sem- and sym- naturalness. He
to translate a book naturally, you should know that, the emphasizes more on sem-naturalness which is simply
translator’s task is not confined to transferring of one called naturalness. The kind of naturalness is similar to
sentence into a similar sentence in the target language, traditional markedness: [alpha] markedness = -[alpha]
but that he/she is expected to search inconsistencies in naturalness".
the two languages, tackle them, and to overcome the In recent years, it is viewed that, in naturalness theory,
deficiencies of his/her own language in respect of the all distinctions in language are viewed as scales. Entities
unique characteristics found in the source language". on each scale differ in naturalness, the end points of
202 Int. J. English Lit.

each scale being more natural and less natural, that the translator rendered word by word exactly, so he
respectively. did not obey conditions 1 and 2 because when the
The terms more natural and less natural make it addressee reads this text, he recognizes that it is a
possible to avoid the logically contradictory terms natural translation. It violated condition 5 too as it is a more
and unnatural; unnatural cannot seriously be predicated semantic translation rather than communicative one,
of anything in a 'natural' language (though the word because he focused more on the writer’s style not
occurs occasionally in theoretical writings). reader’s interests. Condition 3 is also violated as the
"A fundamental tenet of naturalness theory is that all translator did not add or remove any words or phrases.
naturalness scales and values are founded in extra Therefore, this kind of rendering shows that the translator
linguistic reality, the physical or cognitive substratum of did not consider his/her addresses and violated condition
language" (Dressler 2003: 45). Furthermore, there are 4.
another group of translation theorists who prefer to use
statistical calculations to evaluate and test the amount of
naturalness in translation. There are two formulas for METHODS
testing translation readability which are practical in testing In order to study naturalness factor in translation of Bilingual-
translation naturalness, too: Educational story books in elementary and intermediate levels, 30
Bilingual-Educational story books (English to Persian) were
i. The Flesch- Kinkaid Grade level readability and selected randomly out of 139 books, which are published and also
naturalness formula. available in book stores of Iran, to survey the feature of naturalness
in translation of these books.
ii. The Power- Summer- Kearl readability and naturalness
According to the Iran National Library, 718 Bilingual Educational
formula. story books (English to Persian) have received publication codes
until 5 September, 2009, but just 139 story books out of this number
Among these theories, 5 of them are selected to be the have been published and also available in book stores of Iran.
basis of this study which are Belloc`s (1931), Rahimi`s The researcher randomly selected 30 books out of 139 to start
(2004), Tytler`s (1797), Nida`s (1943) and Newmark`s the study, and studied each of these books carefully to evaluate the
translator's effort to reach natural translation. The researcher
(1988) theories of naturalness:
selected just 30 books out of 139 because each translator of these
books has translated at least 3 to 4 of these books. It means that,
1. Natural translation must not be a one-to-one or literal studying one of the books of each translator would show the
translation from any language (Belloc, 1931) amount of naturalness translation in his or her work.
2. A natural translation is so, that the receptor language The selected books were Cranford, The Elephant Man by Vicary
readers do not recognize it as translation at all (Rahimi, Tim, translated by Monir Sadate Seyyed kordestanchi and
published in Vazhe (2007); Dracula by Bram Stoker, translated by
2004) Jamshid Skandani, and published in Sales (1997); The mill on the
3. In a natural translation, a translator is free in adding or floss by George Eliot, translated by Pezhman Hoosemi Nezhad,
retrenching from the original text when it is necessary and published in Vazhe (2003); Princess Diana by Cherri Gilkrist,
(Tytler, 1797) translated by Minoo Ghafari, and published in Vazhe (2003); White
4. In natural translation a translator understands what fang by Robin Waterfield, translated by Ramin Razavi, and
published in Jade Abrisham (1998); Sherlock Holmes by Arthur
kind of audience the original author had in mind when
Conan Doyle, translated by Reza Taghavi, and published in Azar
writing (Nida, 1943) Sabalan (2008); Far from the madding crowd by Jennifer Bassett,
5. Natural translators adopt communicative translation translated by Kamran Bahmani, and published in Vazhe (2006);
more than semantic translation (Newmark, 1988) Martin Luther king by Allen Maclain, translated by Marjan Hosseini,
and published in Goyeshe Noo (2007); The rain man by Lioner
Therefore, based on the afore-said theories of Flisher, translated by Ghasem Kabiri, and published in Ghoghnoos
(1990); Dr. Zhivago by Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, translated by
naturalness, the researcher wants to find out the amount Kamran Bahmani, and published in Vazhe (2003); The road ahead
of naturalness in some selected Iranian short stories. by Bill Gates, translated by Hormoz Habibi, and published in Heram
Here, a paragraph of one of the bilingual story, The (1996), Money to burn by John Scott, translated by Mehri Alizade,
Elephant Man is stated as an example to be studied on and published in Vazhe (2006); Little women by Luizami Alkoot,
the basis of these 5 conditions: translated by Shahindokhte Raeeszade, and published in Elmi-
Farhangi (1995); The scarlet letter by Terry Dibble, published in
Behzad (2003); Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare,
My name is Dr Fredrick Treves.
translated by Mohammad Sadegh Shariat, and published in
I am a doctor at the London Hospital. Gouyesh No (2008); Who moved my cheese? by John Spenser,
One day in 1884, I saw a picture in the window of a shop translated by Mohammad Riyazi, and published in Abtin (2001);
near the hospital. Sweet Hemlock, translated by Zohre Zahedi, and published in
I stopped in front of the shop and looked at the picture Andishe Alam (2003); The call of wild by Jack London, translated
At first I felt interested, then I felt angry, then afraid. by Khosro Shayeste, and published in Sepideh (1991); The last leaf
by O` Henri, translated by Habib Atashi, and published in
Jangal(2002); Project Omega, The breathing method by Stephen
It was a horrible, ugly picture (The Elephant Man, chapter King, translated by Javad Yosuf Beig, and published in Shahre
1, p.3) Khorshid (2007); Of mice and men by John E. Stein Beck,
In this paragraph of The Elephant Man, it is observed translated by Parviz Daryoush, and published in Asatir (1989);
 Fadaee 203

Table 1. Book 1: Cranford. Considering T.Sc: 2.78 (out of 5), it can be said that the translator
of this book has created low natural translated pieces, because the
+N.S -N.S M.(+N) M.(-N) translation of this book do not have even half of the necessary
conditions to be known as a natural translated book.
C1 335 256 0.56 0.44 According to Table 2, nearly half of the translated sentences of
C2 351 240 0.59 0.41 this book do not meet the conditions 1 and 3. Considering T.Sc:
C3 241 350 0.40 0.60 3.01 (out of 5), it can be said that the translator of this book has
created high natural translated pieces and this translation is more
C4 368 223 0.62 0.38
natural than the translation of book 1.
C5 361 230 0.61 0.39 The instrument of obtaining data is a questionnaire containing
+N.S: high naturalness; -N.S: low naturalness; C: some characteristics of the high natural translation which are
conditions; M. (+N): mean of more/high natural sentences; proposed by great theorists and also some popular translators. In
M. (-N): mean of less/low natural sentences; ∑: total order to enhance the validity of the research, 35 participants were
sentences of the book; T.Sc: total score of the book; asked to respond to the questionnaire. To fulfill this purpose, 8
Formula: M= ∑ X / N, M= C / ∑; ∑: 591; T.Sc: 2.78. short story books were selected out of 30 ones and divided these 8
books to two groups. Each group consisted of 4 books. For each
group, 4 passages with their translated counterparts were randomly
selected (each passage from each book). To start the project in the
Table 2. Book 2: The elephant man. first week, participants were asked to answer the questionnaire
after studying the selected translated passages of short story books
+N.S -N.S M.(+N) M.(-N) of group 1. These sentences were written on the papers with two
options: 1 or 0. Participants who were the English Translation
C1 288 226 0.56 0.44 students of Bandar Abbas University in M.A. program were
C2 311 203 0.60 0.40 supposed to read 4 English passages with their Persian translated
C3 300 214 0.58 0.42 counterparts which were extracted from 4 Bilingual-Educational
short story books. For each passage, they were supposed to report
C4 333 181 0.64 0.36
1 score according to the 5 conditions of questionnaire (it meant that
C5 325 189 0.63 0.37 they were supposed to award one score to each passage after
checking conditions 1 to 5 of the questionnaire). 2 weeks later, the
+N.S: high naturalness; -N.S: low naturalness; C: same participants were asked to evaluate the second group short
conditions; M. (+N): mean of more/high natural story books with the same questionnaire. This time, the participants
sentences; M. (-N): mean of less/low natural sentences; were familiar with the procedure and did the same task with a new
∑: 514; T.Sc: 3.01.
group of passages and reported the results as they did before. The
answers are summarized in Table 3.
According to these data, passages from books number 1, 2, 6
Tears of paradise by Dante Aligiri, translated by Vahid Kiyan, and and 8 were (+Natural), because all of them met more than 3
published in Andishe Alam (2005); Jane Eyre by Sharlote necessary conditions to be known as highly natural translated texts.
Boronttee, translated by Mahdi Afshar, and published in Dabir Passages from books num. 3, 4, 5 and 7 were (–Natural), because
(2007); Love or money? by Rowena Akinyemi, translated by Abbas none of them met 3 or more necessary conditions to be known as
Rahi, and published in Mashhad (2001); Stealing the hills by high natural translated texts.
Josephine Feeney, translated by Jamshid Tadayon, and published
in Jalil (2002); A box full of kisses, translated by Hamid Reza
Ghanadpoor, and published in Ilaf (2009; Robin Hood by Howard RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Payel, translated by Sedighe Ibrahimi, and published in Panjere
(2004). Naturalness theory is viewed as a relative subject. In new
Persian translations of the afore-said books with English ones natural theory, we have terms as, more natural, or less
were compared and contrasted with each other considering the natural. The term more natural and less natural might
characteristics of natural translation proposed by the great seem to imply the existence of standards of comparison:
translation theorists and also some popular translators, with the use
of questionnaire as a check list.
x is more or less natural than y (Dressler, 2003: 461).
To gather data, one of the research short stories is selected The terms more natural and less natural make it
randomly. Then this book is studied carefully to be examined on the possible to avoid the logically contradictory terms natural
basis of condition number 1 (from the questionnaire) with all of the and unnatural. Unnatural cannot seriously be predicted of
sentences of this book (sentence by sentence). If each of the anything in a natural language (though the word occurs
translated sentences of this book had the condition number 1, it occasionally in theoretical writings) at the same time the
would award a score of 1 to that sentence. If not, that sentence
would get a score of 0. All other sentences of this book are checked predicates of more natural and less natural emphasize
with these 5 conditions. When the researcher checked all translated the ideas that naturalness is relative (Dressler, 2003:
sentences of the short story with all 5 conditions of the 462). So, the researcher has used the terms of less/low
questionnaire, she separately calculated the scores of the naturalness and more/high naturalness based on 5
translated sentences of the book for each condition. So, she got5 conditions:
scores for this book (one score for each condition). With the other
29 remaining short stories, the same examination is done. The
sample of tables for 2 books comes as shown in Tables 1 and 2. 1. Natural translation must not be a one-to-one or literal
According to Table 1, more than half of the translated sentences translation from any language (Belloc, 1931)
of this book do not meet the condition 3 and nearly half of the 2. A natural translation is so, that the receptor language
translated sentences do not meet the conditions 1 and 2. readers do not recognize it as translation at all (Rahimi,
204 Int. J. English Lit.

Table 3. Participant's response.

Pc. B.1 B.2 B.3 B.4 B.5 B.6 B.7 B.8

1 4 5 1 3 3 4 1 3
2 5 4 2 2 1 3 1 4
3 4 3 2 1 2 3 2 3
4 4 4 3 1 2 3 2 4
5 3 5 2 2 2 4 2 4
6 4 4 2 2 2 4 1 4
7 3 3 1 2 2 4 1 4
8 4 4 3 2 3 4 1 3
9 4 3 2 1 1 4 2 3
10 3 4 2 2 2 4 2 2
11 4 4 2 3 3 2 3 4
12 3 4 2 1 2 3 2 4
13 4 3 2 2 2 3 3 4
14 4 4 2 2 1 4 1 3
15 4 3 2 1 1 4 2 4
16 3 4 2 2 2 4 2 4
17 3 4 2 2 2 4 2 3
18 4 4 3 1 2 4 1 4
19 4 3 1 2 1 3 1 4
20 4 3 2 3 3 4 1 3
21 4 4 3 1 1 4 1 2
22 4 3 1 2 1 4 2 4
23 5 4 1 2 2 4 2 4
24 4 3 1 3 2 4 1 3
25 3 4 1 2 2 4 3 4
26 4 4 2 1 2 4 2 4
27 4 5 2 1 1 4 3 4
28 4 4 1 1 2 4 1 4
29 5 4 2 3 2 4 1 4
30 4 5 2 2 2 3 2 3
31 4 4 1 2 3 4 2 3
32 4 4 1 2 2 4 1 4
33 4 4 3 1 3 4 1 4
34 4 3 2 2 2 4 2 4
35 4 4 1 2 2 4 1 4
M 3.89 3.83 1.83 1.83 1.94 3.74 1.66 3.460
Pc: participants; B: books; M: mean (∑ X / N).

2004) natural translation, reflected in questionnaire. For the

3. In a natural translation, a translator is free in adding or second time, the researcher chose Table 2 to study the
retrenching from the original text when it is necessary results quantitatively and based on the statistical results
(Tytler, 1797) obtained from formulas of naturalness testing.
4. In natural translation a translator understands what In the third step, the researcher compares and con-
kind of audience the original author had in mind when trasts the results of these two groups (for all of 30 books,
writing (Nida, 1943) separately). Finally, she reported the results of the study
5. Natural translators adopt communicative translation about naturalness in translation of story books through
more than semantic translation (Newmark, 1988) tables.
Among the 30 evaluated books, 14 (43.75%) do not
The researcher studied the results of Table 1 qualitatively meet 3 or more than 3 necessary conditions to be known
and based on theories of popular translators about the as natural translation pieces. The first results of analysis
 Fadaee 205

Table 4. Translation naturalness calculation. the attraction of the books and naturalness, because the
quality of the translated text, the writer's style and the
F Rf P. Rf (%) naturalness are important factors in the attraction of a
C1 15 0.4687 46.87 story books.
C2 13 0.4062 40.62
C3 15 0.46.87 46.87
REFERENCES
C4 8 0.25 25
C5 10 0.3125 31.25 Bates ES (1943). Intertrafic: Studies in Translation. London: J. Cape
F, Frequency; Rf, Relative frequency P.Rf, percentage of relative Publication, p.121.
Beekman J, Callow J (1974). Translating the Word of God. USA: The
frequency
Zondervan Corporation, for Summer Institute of Linguistics, pp. 45.
Belloc H (1931). On Translation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 30p.
Dressler WU (2003). "Naturalness and Morphological Change". Berlin:
De Gruyter, 45p.
of low natural translation (calculation of frequency, Gutt EA (1999). Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context,
Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publication, 58p.
relative frequency, percentage of relative frequency of Harris B (1981). Prolegomenon to Study of the Difference between
neglected conditions) are summarized in Table 4. Teaching Translation and Teaching Interpretation. Ottawa: University
This table shows that among 30 books, 28 books do of Ottawa Press, pp. 254.
not have conditions 1 and 3, 13 do not have condition 2, Jakobson R (1959). On Linguistic Aspects of Translation. In: On
Translation, R. B. Bower (ed.), Cambridge: Harward University Press,
10 do not have condition 5 and 8 do not have condition 4. 15p.
Table 4 shows that nearly half of the books did not meet Larson ML (2001). Meaning-based Translation. NewYork: University
3 or more conditions of naturalness. Table 3 shows that Press of America, pp. 48-49.
among 8 books, just half of them meet 3 or more Mayerthaler W (1981). Morphologische Natürlichkeit. Wiesbaden:
Athenaion Publication, 70p.
conditions and have naturalness. So, it configures the Newmark P (1988). A Textbook of Translation, New York: Prentice Hal,
researcher's data, too. 89p.
Nida EA (1943). Towards a Science of Translation, with Special
Reference to Principles and Procedures Involved in Bible Translating.
Leiden, the Netherlands: E. J. Brill, for the United Bible, 41p.
Conclusions Rahimi R (2004). "Alpha, Beta and Gamma Features in Translation:
Towards the Objectivity of Testing Translation". Translation Studies,
In this article, translation naturalness of some literary 2(5)
books was evaluated. After analyzing the obtained results Tytler A (1797). Essay on the principles of translation, Edinburgh:
Cadell & Davies, extracted in D. Robinson (ed.), 102p.
of the present study, it is found that some essential Williams DS (2005). The Belief Systems of Cultural Brokers in Three
conditions in translation procedures were neglecting Minority Communities in America. Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
which leads to create low natural translated pieces. There (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation), 75p.
are two research questions:

1. Do the short stories meet natural translation?

2. Does the attraction of these stories have relation with
their naturalness?

In order to have a high natural translation, a translator

would observe the afore-said conditions. The answer of
the first question is that as observed, about 56.25% met 3
conditions or more and are natural, but 43.75% did not
meet 3 conditions and are unnatural. The answer of the
second question is that there is a direct relation between