A Comparative Study of Persian Translated and Non-Translated Political Texts: Focus on Simplification Hypothesis

This study sought to examine simplification hypothesis, a translation universal, in Persian translated political texts and their comparable Persian non-translated political texts in terms of lexical density, type-token ratio and average sentence length. To do so, 300 paragraphs were randomly selected from three Persian political translated and three Persian political non-translated books. Then, the lexical density, type-token ratio and average sentence length of each paragraph were calculated through AntConc 3.2.0w software. After that, the t-test procedure was performed to see if the observed differences between the two corpora were statistically significant. The results of the data analysis showed that the lexical density and type-token ratio of the political translated texts were higher than those of the political non-translated texts but the average sentence length of the political translated texts was lower than that of the political non-translated texts. The overall findings of this study challenge and limit the validity of simplification hypothesis in that lexical density and type-token ratio of translated political texts may not be lower than those of non-translated political texts.