Retaining Linguistic Hybridity: A Multiple Case Study of Non-Standard Language Transfer Through Literary Translation Process

Abstract

Translated texts have an in-between existence commonly referred to as hybridity; they belong to both source and target cultures, which indicates that hybridity is an inherent characteristic of translation. However, it is not only translated texts that contain hybridity, original texts do too, especially in the case of linguistic hybridity that is caused by non-standard language. All forms of non-standard language have their own sociolinguistic implications; their mere presence in a literary production conveys certain messages, which makes this presence a prominent one. It is equally important to find out what becomes of such language in the process of translation. Therefore, the current qualitative research picked four literary novels that featured at least one-character parading non-standard speech patterns, along with two Persian translations for each novel so that translators' styles could be compared. The target texts were inspected to observe cases of either neutralization or reproduction of non-standard language. The findings proved that most translators gravitate towards normalization, meaning that their readers would not be able to perceive the existence of different speech patterns in the story. Nevertheless, by employing diverse structures and terms, two translators managed to demonstrate that linguistic hybridity existed in their texts. Considering how dissimilar English and Persian dialects are, having transferred non-standard language through the translation process is an impressive accomplishment.