Document Type : Translation Studies

Author

• Zahra Jafarbeglou

MA Student of Translation Studies, Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

This study examines hybridity in translation through a case study of Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America. It analyzes how references to American and Iranian cultures are rendered in the Persian translation and how these choices shape the hybrid character of the text for different readerships. To this end, the English source text and its Persian translation are compared to identify the translation strategies applied to hybrid elements reflecting Iranian and American cultures. The findings show that material culture, such as food, clothing, housing, and transportation, constitutes the most prominent category of hybrid elements. Transference is the most frequently used strategy overall, particularly for elements reflecing American culture, indicating a predominantly foreignizing approach. In contrast, hybrid items reflecing Iranian culture are more often translated through cultural equivalence and reduction. Interpreted in light of Venuti’s (1995) concepts of domestication and foreignization, the results suggest that the translator preserves the hybrid nature of the memoir by maintaining the foreignness of American elements while reducing familiar Iranian ones.

Keywords

• Hybridity
• memoir
• cultural references
• domestication
• foreignization