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Title Peritextual Features of English-Urdu Translations in Pakistan: A Polysystem Approach

Author(s) Sadaf Zahoor

Abstract In the Pakistani context, research in literary translation has generally tended to focus on the comparisons between source texts and target texts in order to identify departures from and distortions of the source text with reference to certain theoretical paradigms. That is why only the translated texts have remained the focus of research for decades. However, almost every product of translation, in its published form, is surrounded by other (meta-)textual features which are located either before or after the translated text. There are also certain textual features inside the book which contain very useful, yet generally ignored, information about translation. These features are called peritextual features and because of their peripheral positionality, they have received minimal attention of the Pakistani scholars. Addressing this lacuna, this study has explored the peritextual features—forewords, prefaces, translator notes, end notes and any other commentary either preceding or succeeding the text— of the English-Urdu translations in Pakistan in terms of their alignment with or departure from the major paradigms of translation. The study is descriptive-qualitative in nature. It uses purposive sampling for which 15 English-Urdu translations were selected from the target population of about 100 translations. The peritextual features of the selected translations have been examined, under the polysystem approach, in light of the Toury’s norms of translation and Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory to explore the theoretical tilt of English-Urdu translators with reference to major translation paradigms. The textual analysis established, while taking into consideration the initial, preliminary and operational norms (taken from the peritexts), that majority of the translators and translation critics aligned with the target-oriented or acceptability paradigm and reflected as well as conformed to the secondary position of translation in literary (poly-)systems of Pakistan. Within the target-oriented paradigm, they aligned with sense-for-sense translation, domestication, dynamic equivalence and free translation signifying variations within the same paradigm with varying degrees of orientation toward the target texts. Only a few of them preferred the source-oriented paradigm while falling back upon literal, faithful and semantic translations. The study is significant as it not only offers contextual information about the process of translation provided by the translators and critics but also because of being first of its kind in Pakistan.

Type Thesis/Dissertation MS

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Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2022-09-22

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