Translating Taboo Language in the 1390s: The Case of The Catcher in the Rye

The aim of this study was to discover the prevailing strategies of translating taboos in the 1390s/~2010s. To this end, four Persian translations of J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, published in the mentioned decade, were investigated. However, to make a comparison between strategies of translating taboo words and expressions in the 1390s/~2010s and the pre-Islamic Revolution era, the only translation of the novel published before the Islamic Revolution was also examined. This study adopted a mixed theoretical framework, one to detect the taboo items and the other to analyse the collected taboos with respect to the translation strategies. To carry out the research, first, the taboo items of the source text were extracted. Then the 124 taboos extracted from the source text were compared to their Persian counterparts with respect to translation strategies. Findings of the study showed great diversity regarding the adopted strategies, possibly highlighting the role of translators’ personal decisions, rather than norm-based decisions, in translating taboo items.