A Contrastive Analysis of Idioms and Idiomatic Expressions in Three English and Persian Novels for Translation Purposes

Abstract

The significance of idioms and idiomatic expressions in English can be understood from their appearance in all types of discourse ranging from every day conversations to scientific texts. So, the present study deals with the translation of idioms and idiomatic expressions from English into Persian focusing on the procedures involved. Baker's model (1992) which groups possible procedures into four strategies was chosen as the theoretical framework of this research. This study is an attempt to investigate strategies used in translating and also to find out which strategy is mostly used. To do so, a total number of 90 idioms and idiomatic expressions were extracted from three English novels. This study was carried out through a comparative study of idioms and idiomatic expressions from English into Persian. The findings of the research indicated that four strategies were used in translating idioms and idiomatic expressions and their frequency of being used is different and also it was revealed that most of the data were translated by paraphrase.