A Cross- Cultural Study of Animal Symbolism in the Persian Translations of Children's Literature

Abstract

Animals are among culture-bound items which make the translation practice a difficult task for translators and need
specific considerations on the part of the translators. In fact, animals in each culture carry some symbolic meanings with
themselves which are specific to that culture and are different from those carried in other cultures. Accordingly, the present study
aimed at investigating the strategies adopted by Persian translators to render the symbolic meaning of animals in children's
literature. It also sought to find the effectiveness of using such strategies regarding the target audiences. To achieve these goals,
eleven animal terms, with different symbolic meanings in western and Persian culture, were investigated in twelve western
children books and their Persian translations. Then, based on Venuti's (1995) categorization of translation strategies, they were
categorized into two main domestication and foreignization translation groups to see which group keeps more preferred strategy
among Persian translators of children's literature. The effectiveness of using such strategies was measured by interviewing thirty
Persian first grade students to elicit their knowledge about the symbol of animals and comparing them with the used strategies.
The results showed that most of the Persian translators tend to foreignize these cultural terms. However, the results of the
interview revealed that children recognize the native symbolic meanings of animals more than their foreign ones. It was concluded
that the strategies used by Persian translators is not an appropriate one for translating cultural symbolic terms for Persian
children.