Patterns of Repetition in Persian and English: A Cross-Linguistic Study of the Two Translations of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the density of the most frequently used type of cohesive device (repetition) in
terms of semantic equivalence in Waiting for Godot by Beckett (1954) and its two Persian translations by Alizad (2009) and
Rastegar (2002). In fact, the original text and the translations were examined in terms of repetition. The repeated elements were
first specified and counted in all the three texts and the density was calculated in each text for comparison. The results showed
that there was a tendency not to transfer original repetitions-not out of carelessness nor out of linguistic constraints, but out of
normative, stylistic considerations. Also, a seemingly contradictory phenomenon occurred, in which new repetitions were
introduced by the translators. This could have been an attempt on the part of the translators to avoid repeating the same words
or phrases, or to care for other normative considerations like the wish to embellish or amplify the text. Also, the results indicated
that there was no orderly one to one relationship between the source and target texts with regard to translating repetitions;
namely, in one case their number was equal to, while in another case, it was less than that of the original text since the translators
tried to use more similar equivalents than repeating the same equivalents over and over. It can therefore be concluded that the
two translated texts were statistically different in terms of semantically-loaded repetitions.