CULTURAL TRANSLATABILITY AND UNTRANSLATABILITY: A CASE STUDY OF TRANSLATION OF “ROSTAM AND SOHRAB”

The aim of the present study was to explore cultural untranslatability in the Story of “Rustam and Sohrab” in Firdowsi’s Shahnameh and its equivalent translation by Helen Zimmern. To this end, the cases containing the untranslatable cultural elements or elements culturally difficult to translate were identified by comparing the Story of “Rustam and Sohrab” with its English translation by Zimmern. Besides, strategies used to render cultural and linguistic elements problematic in translation were identified through using categories proposed by Vinay and Darbelent (2000) and Newmark (1988). The results showed nouns including common nouns, name of places, and name of persons accounted for 89.8% of the cultural untranslatable elements while adjectives included only 10.3% of the cultural untranslatable elements. Personal proper names were the most frequent category of cultural untranslatable elements followed by common nouns and names of places. The most common strategies used to render cultural elements were transference and retention through translation and the second most frequently used strategy was replacement. Other strategies being used less frequently were naturalization, synonymy, and literal translation.