Most and Least Difficult Persian Tense Structure: Mozare in L1-L2/L2-L1 Translation Processes

The intrinsic attraction of translation with the aim of discovering and transferring meaning, on the one hand, and the oceanic complexity of language, on the other hand, have added impetus to the momentum of translation studies. One obvious area is the set of ubiquitous concepts realized in given structures. An instance is the Persian (L1) tense structure ʻmozareʼ with five concepts expressed in their corresponding English (L2) structures. Specifically, this study sought to answer how L1-L2/L2-L1 translations of ʻmozareʼ would be done in terms of processing time needed. To answer the above question, 50 English translation (fe)male undergraduates, at Islamic Azad University of Isfahan (Khorasgan) were, first, screened out to 23 on a restricted PBT TOEFL and, then, tested via a test involving both L1-L2 and L2-L1 translations of mozare concepts. Findings indicated that in L2-L1 translation, the translation of simple present into mozare took longest, that is, was most difficult, whereas in L1-L2 translation, the translation of mozare into present perfect took longest, that is, was most difficult. Pedagogically speaking, findings could be used for both language translator and language teacher trainer programs. Moreover, the research could be replicated for other similar high- frequency multiple-concept structures.