Errors in the Translation of Discourse Markers from English into Persian in Movie Subtitles

Reza Kafipour^1,

¹English Department, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran

Cite this paper:
Reza Kafipour. Errors in the Translation of Discourse Markers from English into Persian in Movie Subtitles. American Journal of Educational Research. 2016; 4(15):1100-1105. doi: 10.12691/education-4-15-8

Abstract

Discourse markers are a part of language which are much neglected in the Persian language although they play a very important role in our daily conversations. This study aims at researching and investigating errors which occurr in the translation of discourse markers (DMs) from English into Persian in the subtitles of drama movies. To conduct this study, five movies were chosen. Each individual movie was selected from a single decade from 1970 onward. After the selection of the movies, six commonly used DMs which were mentioned in [6] were searched and obtained by the aid of computer softwares (AntConc© And adobe acrobat reader™). These DMs were categorized based on their functions in the original work. The obtained DMs in this study were analyzed carefully by the researcher and errors in translation were identified. The errors were categorized according to [6] model including omission, literal translation and translation by a different DM. The results and chi-square showed that omission is the most prevailing error made by Iranian translators in the translation of English subtitles into Persian followed by literal translation and translation to another DM. In today’s Persian language, using some expressions like midooni (I know), manzooram ineke (I mean) and etc. in today’s Persian language indicates that English DMs are being directly copied into Persian which may cause interference.

Keywords:
discourse markers movies subtitles translation errors translation strategy

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