Representation of social actors in Chinua Achebe’s novel “Things Fall Apart” and its two Persian translations

• Main Authors: Esmat Babaii, Maliheh Rashed
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Western Sydney University 2017-07-01
• Series: Translation and Interpreting : the International Journal of Translation and Interpreting Research
• Subjects: discourse analysis; critical discourse analysis; social actors; translation studies; ‎post-colonialism; self and other-representation
• Online Access: http://www.trans-int.org/index.php/transint/article/view/575/288

This paper discusses the feasibility of employing a discourse-based approach in examining the (un)successful portrayal of a given socio-cultural context through translation. In so doing, instances of two Persian translations of Chinua Achebe’s post-colonial novel “Things Fall Apart” were selected to illustrate the congruence as well as incongruence of translations with their source text. Van Leeuwen’s (1996, 2008) model of representation of social actors was used as the analytical framework and proved to work well for the aims of the study. The implications of using a discourse-based approach, along with possible future directions, are discussed.