Gender Impact on Translation of Particular Textual Aspects in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice based on Robinson’s Model of Criterion-Referenced Rating Scale

Abstract

The present paper means to study the impact of gender on specified textual aspects of the translated text limiting to degree of naturalness, explicitation, content, register, vocabulary, terminology, translation brief and orientation to target text type based on Robinson’s model of Criterion-referenced rating scale. Jane Auston’s world famous classic work, Pride and Prejudice along with two Farsi translations rendered by a male and a female translator compose the corpus of this study. Assuming that particular textual aspects are more likely to come under the influence of the translator's gender, the basic assumption was that there is a possibility that the male translator would not transfer the minutes of the narrative of a female writer. The findings revealed that the female translator in terms of Cultural Specific Items and terminology, triumphs on explicitation, in terms of language, style and tone, she triumphs on ethics of formality and totally she has more footnotes and more omissions. The male translator, more informal in tone and style, utilizes more slang equivalents. The male translator has very few number of footnotes and no omissions. However, in terms of transference of meaning there appeared no meaningful difference between the two translators. In other words, the differences were on the level of form and aesthetic aspects rather than meaning and message. The present paper was based on one case study. Doing the same research on more cases, the findings have the potentiality of generalization.