Assessing Persian-English Translation Quality: A Housian Model

This paper aims to assess the quality of Daneshvar’s short story (‘Chashme-e-Nim Khofteh’) with its English translation (‘The Half-Closed Eye’) by Lewis (1997) in light of House’s revised model (1997; 2001). Firstly, the main literature on the House’s TQA is reviewed. House’s newly modern revision concerns the categories for register analysis, the distinction between overt and covert translation including the cultural filter, as well as a reconsideration of the whole notion of translation evaluation. Secondly, the quality of Daneshvar’s translated story is assessed concerning its English translation. In doing so, a text profile is given for the ST and the TT, and then, the functions of both the ST and the TT are stated. Third and finally, the overall quality of the English translation of the story is assessed. Regarding the target field, a lot of mismatches in three lexical, syntactic, and textual means were observed. Regarding tenor, the changes the translator has made in the syntactic and textual means have changed the informal/ casual style of the ST into a bit of a formal/ informal one. Regarding mode, no mismatches happened in the English translation. Also, the English translation is overt and needs not a cultural filter to be applied.