Examining the Translations of Forough Farrokhzad’s Selected Poems by a Native and a Non-Native Speaker Using Vinay and Darbelnet’s Model

This study was a Persian-English comparative translation investigation on the selected poems of Forough- Farrokhzad, an influential contemporary Iranian poet. Two English translations were analyzed: one by a native Persian speaker, Sholeh Wolpé, an Iranian poet and translator, and the other by a non-native Persian speaker, Jascha Kessler, an American poet, writer and translator. The translations were reviewed according to Vinay and Darbelnet’s(1995) model which identifies two general translation strategies: direct and oblique, resembling literal versus free classifications, respectively, along with their supplementary procedures in order to investigate the frequency of the application of each procedure by the two translators. After situating every line of the poems in the related categories, the number of times each procedure was employed was examined. The findings indicated that both translators used the oblique strategy more than the direct one. The non-native translator, however, used the oblique strategy considerably more frequently compared to the native translator. Finally, new procedures called complementary procedures were proposed by the researchers to be added to Vinay and Darbelnet’s (1995) model in order to fill the gaps in the application of strategies and procedures to the poems of Forough Farrokhzad and probably other poems.