A Linguistic Perspective on Persian Literary Translation PDF

A Linguistic Perspective on Persian Literary Translation Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi Then, seek a Poet who your way do's bend, And chuse an Author as you chuse a Friend. United by this Sympathetick Bond, You grow Familiar, Intimate and Fond; Your thoughts, your Words, your Stiles, yours Souls agree, No Lo...

A Linguistic Perspective on Persian Literary Translation Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi Then, seek a Poet who your way do's bend, And chuse an Author as you chuse a Friend. United by this Sympathetick Bond, You grow Familiar, Intimate and Fond; Your thoughts, your Words, your Stiles, yours Souls agree, No Longer his Interpreter, but He. ( Roscommon 1685 , 7) Translation is a complex decision-making process; perfect equivalence is a "utopian dream," especially since any two languages are asymmetrical, and most words are polysemous even in the same language ( Baer 2019 , 59). This chapter begins by discussing different linguisticoriented approaches to translation, moving to textual considerations like stylistics, followed by translation universals, then to the translation process, and finally to extraneous considerations, such as translator invisibility or visibility. Subsequently, these discussions are applied to Persian literary translation by discussing comparative linguistics of Persian and English in terms of syntax and lexico-semantics, as well as discourse analysis and pragmatics. Throughout this chapter, genuine examples from Persian literary translations are given, and different kinds of equivalences, as well as the problems that arise in finding these equivalences, are discussed. Linguistic-Oriented Approaches to Translation A linguistic approach to translation is simply one that is based on the tenets of linguistics. Among those who have taken such an approach to translation, some see translation as a branch of linguistics (e.g., Catford 1965 ), while others consider language as the material to study translation (e.g., Baker 1992 ), and still others see translation and linguistics as interrelated and mutually supportive (e.g., Malmkjær 2011 ; Shabani-Jadidi 2020b ). Malmkjær (2005 ) lists different ways in which translation studies and linguistics support each other: (a) data from translation studies might be used to inform linguistics (b) data from linguistics might be used to inform translation studies(c) theoretical insights and concepts from translation studies might be used to inform linguistics (d) theoretical insights and concepts from linguistics might be used to inform translation studies ( Malmkjær 2005 , 15) In this chapter, we delve into the theoretical insights and concepts from linguistics that are used to inform translation studies. There is not one single approach to translation, but rather several approaches, each of which is based on a different theoretical foundation. Some of these approaches are Vinay and Darbelnet's Saussurean approach ( 1958/1995 ); Nida's generative dynamic approach ( 1964 ); Catford's systemic functional approach ( 1965 ); Gutt's relevance theory approach ( 1990 ); Bell's psycholinguistic approach ( 1991 ); and Halverson's cognitive linguistic approach ( 2003 , 2007 , 2010 ). Next, these approaches to translation are briefly discussed. Vinay and Darbelnet's Saussurean Approach Vinay and Darbelnet classify language into three levels: syntax, lexis, and message. While the first level, syntax, is rigid and rule-based, the other two levels, lexis and message, are matters of choice between vernacular versus literary and poetic, and between jargons of different disciplines, including legal, scientific, journalistic, and so on. Therefore, to Vinay and Darbelnet, the most important element in translation is the style of the target text (TT) and that of the source text (ST). In other words, the translator has the option to tone up or tone down the language in the TT. In their linguistic approach to translation, Vinay and Darbelnet include different Saussurean dichotomies, such as langue versus parole as well as signifier and signified. Langue encompasses the principles of languages regardless of the specific type of language, that is, the abstract systematic rules and conventions of a signifying system, rather similar to Chomsky's principles shared by all languages, universal grammar (UG). Parole, on the other hand, is the external manifestation of langue and encompasses meaningful utterances in a given language. Signifier is the acoustic or visual image, whereas signified is the mental concept. A signifier or a word in one language might refer to one or more signified or mental concepts, and these concepts do not always match perfectly in the target language (TL) and source language (SL). It is this lack of one-to-one correspondence between the signifier and signified in two languages that makes translation a very difficult and sometimes impossible task. In Saussurean terms, this is labeled "value," a term which Vinay and Darbelnet adopt in their linguistic approach to translation. For the value concept, they give the example of the word or signifier mouton, which refers to two signified concepts of the sheep and the meat of the sheep in French, whereas in English, it only evokes the meat. Therefore, the word on its own is not a reliable source for translation, as a word might have different meanings in different contexts. For this reason, to Vinay and Darbelnet, the unit of translation is not a word, but rather the smallest segment of the utterance whose composing elements cannot be translated individually, thus making it a non-decomposable unit. As mentioned previously, in Vinay and Darbelnet's approach, the lexis and message are matters of choice; therefore, the translator can opt for direct or oblique translation. As the name suggests, in direct translation, the translator translates the SL to the TL element by element. Of course, during this kind of translation, due to the value concept explained earlier, there might be some discrepancies between the elements, which will require the translator to make choices. She can use "borrowing," which involves using a borrowed word from the SL in the TT, such as using "sāqī " for sāqī in translations of Persian poetry ( Brookshaw 2019 , 81). Or she can use "calque," which is loan translation. For instance, "Assembly of Experts" for Majles-e khebregān. However, sometimes it is awkward to translate literally and word for word, andthe translator has the option of using "transposition," which is replacing one word class with another without changing the meaning of the message, or "modulation," which is a variation of the form of the message and is unavoidable when the TT seems unsuitable or unidiomatic or awkward. An example for "transposition" is "both the line, and the whiteness" for ham satr ham sepid, which is the title of one of the poems in Sohrab Sepehri's (1976 ) The Eight Books, "Us Nil, Us Gaze" ( Shabani-Jadidi and Keshavmurthy 2021 , 346). An example for "modulation" is translating yeki bud yeki nabud to "once upon a time," because translating it to "one was and one was not" is unsuitable, unidiomatic, and awkward. Transposition and modulation may be either optional or obligatory depending on the situation and the choice of the translator. For example, a translator can choose to translate sāqī as "cup bearer" rather than "sāqī." However, sometimes an element or a unit of translation in the SL has no equivalence in the TL. Then, the translator has no choice but to create a new situation that exists and makes sense in the TL. This is referred to as adaptation, and it has many examples in English translations of Persian poetry. The following is an excerpt of Fani's (2020 ) thoughts on Shafiʿi-Kadkani's (2011) essay on poetic untranslatability: Shafiʿi mainly bases his argument of poetic untranslatability on a single beyt from Hāfez: Beh may sajjādeh rangin kon garat pir-e moghān guyad/keh sālek bikhabar nabvad ze rāho-rasm-e manzelhā, which I translate as follows: dye the prayer-rug with wine if the Magian Pir asks you/for the Wayfarer should be in tune with the routes and rules of each stage. ( Fani 2020 , 12) In his translation, Fani has no choice but to tone down the sajjādeh rangin kon to "dye the prayer-rug" and sālek to "Wayfarer" because these concepts do not exist in the English language or culture. Therefore, the translator must translate them to something that English readers can relate to, though they might still wonder why someone should dye their prayer-rug! There are certain cultural concepts that are merely lost in translation, yet so long as the message is recreated in the TT, one can say that the translator has achieved her goal. Nida's Generative Dynamic Approach Nida's (1964 ) work on Bible translation incorporates not only linguistics but also anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and biblical hermeneutics. Of the linguistic theories, Nida borrows the tenets of Chomsky's (1957 ) early generative grammar as well as Katz and Fodor's theory of semantics ( 1963a , 1963b ) in order to describe what happens in translation. In Chomsky's generative grammar or transformational grammar, there are certain basic kernel sentences out of which language builds up its elaborate structures through different kinds of transformation, such as addition, deletion, replacement, and so on. Similarly, a translator is involved in the process of first decoding the ST through breaking it down into its basic kernel elements and then generating the appropriate equivalents in the TL ( Nida 1964 , 60). Katz and Fodor's ( 1963a , 1963b ) theory of semantics is similar to Chomsky's universal grammar in that the components that constitute the meaning of language-specific terms are rudimentarily language-independent. Therefore, one can say that all languages share basic kernels in their syntax and basic components in their semantics. Nida (1964 ), however, adds the importance of the message that has to be recreated when translating from SL to TL. To him, some kinds of messages can be language-independent and universal. Based on Jakobson's (1960) identification of factors involved in verbal communication, Nida considers an act of communication to include (1) the subject matter, (2) the participants, (3) thelinguistic act, (4) the code used, and (5) the message. According to Nida (1964 ), if the form and content of the message are the priority, then the translator can choose to produce a formalequivalence translation, whereas if the priority is that the audience or readers of the TT react in the same way as the audience or readers of the ST, then the translator can choose to produce a dynamic-equivalence translation, which focuses on the equivalence of reaction to TT and ST. Different subject matters and text types require different kinds of translations. For example, in scientific texts, perhaps a formal-equivalence translation would suffice, but in a political speech or a TV commercial, a dynamic-equivalence translation is needed to make the TT audience have the same reaction as the ST audience. When it comes to literary translation, however, both kinds of translations can be equally important. For example, when translating Hafez, it is usually more feasible to do a formalequivalence translation than a dynamic-equivalence translation. That is why many scholars have written against translating Hafez's poetry, as no translation will be able to do justice to the words of Hafez and attain the effect they have on Persian-speaking readers (e.g., Davis 1990 ; Hillmann 2018 ; Fani 2020 , among others). The efficacy of a translation is said to be judged based on three criteria: efficiency of communication, comprehension of the original intent, and equivalence of response ( Nida 1964 , 182). These three criteria sum up different kinds of translation equivalences discussed earlier in this section and in previous sections. Catford's Systemic Functional Approach Catford (1965 ) believes any theory of translation is necessarily based on a theory of linguistics, as it is a process of substituting a text in one language for a text in another. He follows Halliday's (1961 ) systemic functional grammar theory: "The theory includes the 'architecture' of grammar---the dimensions that define the overall semiotic space of lexicogrammar, the relationships that inhere in these dimensions---and its relationship to other sub-systems of language---to semantics and to phonology (or graphology)" ( Halliday 2014 , 55). Catford considers any language event to be based on formal levels of phonology and graphology, grammar, and lexis, all of which are related to the situation within a certain context. Each of these formal levels includes units, structure, class, and system. At the level of grammar, the unit goes from largest to smallest; that is, from sentence to clause to phrase to word to morpheme. It goes without saying that the opposite route is taken when building up the structure, going from smallest to largest; that is, from morpheme to word to phrase to clause to sentence. When translating, the same operation is at work. In other words, the translator decodes incrementally from largest to smallest; that is, from paragraph to sentence to clause to phrase to word to morpheme. And when she is constructing the TT, she will go the opposite route from the smallest to the largest. The more numerous discrepancies exist between the SL and the TL, the more difficult the translation task will be. For units with one-to-one correspondence in SL and TL, the translation is quite straightforward. However, for units in the SL that have multiple or no correspondence in the TL, the translator's task becomes more difficult, and that is when she will resort to choosing what she thinks is best based on the elements involved in a communication act: (1) the subject matter, (2) the participants, (3) the linguistic act, (4) the code used, and (5) the message, as discussed earlier. Levels of phonology and graphology precede morphemes, while discourse, text, or message is a higher level than the sentence. Systems are language-independent principles in languages; for example, the consonant cluster system at the level of phonology, the number system at the level of morphology, the collocations at the level of lexis, and the word order system at the level of sentence. Catford defines translation as "the replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual material in another language (TL)" (1965 , 20). It is the degree of equivalence that makes a translation full versus partial or total versus restricted in Catford's classification of types of translation. He considers a translation full if the entire text in the SL is produced in the TL and partial if some elements are left untranslated. In a total translation, all the elements of the ST have corresponding elements in the TT, whereas in restricted translation several elements in the ST are reduced to one element in the TT. Another topic that Catford (1965) discusses in terms of degree of equivalence is shift, which refers to the shift from one level in the SL to another level in the TL during the process of translation. An example in English translations of Persian texts is the ordinal number (e.g.; first, second, etc.), which is only used as an adjective in Persian, but in English, can be used not only as an adjective but also as a pronoun. For example, in English one can say, "There are two parts; the first is more important." But in Persian, one cannot say, "Do qesmat ast. Avallin mohemtar ast"; instead, one has to say, " Do qesmat ast. Avallin qesmat mohemtar ast." However, at times, even a shift cannot produce a TT equivalent to a ST. This is called linguistic or cultural untranslatability, both of which Catford (1965) calls linguistic untranslatability. To Catford, cultural untranslatability creates a collocational shock rather than a cultural one. For example, in Sohrab Sepehri's (1976 ) Book 5, The Water's Footfall ( Shabani-Jadidi and Keshavmurthy 2021 , 215), the poet says, "I say my prayer when the wind has made its call for prayer above the minaret of the cypress." An English-speaking reader who is not familiar with Persian culture cannot perceive the collocation "the minaret of the cypress"; therefore, he will have a collocation shock upon reading this sentence. For other examples of untranslatability, refer to previous sections. Gutt's Relevance Theory Approach Gutt (1990 ) proposed that the translation phenomenon can be explained through the relevance theory of communication developed by Sperber and Wilson (1986 ), which is itself based on Grice's (1975 , 45) cooperative principle that states, "Make your contribution such as required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged," and that is based on several maxims of conversation, as indicated by the following: 1. The maxim of quantity: Be as informative as you possibly can and give only as much information as is needed. 2. The maxim of quality: Be truthful. 3. The maxim of relation: Be relevant. 4. The maxim of manner: Be as clear, as brief, and as orderly as you can in what you say and avoid obscurity and ambiguity. While these maxims might work for English, they definitely do not work for languages like Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and others that have complex systems of formality and cultural load. For example, in Persian, to be curt is considered impolite. Or in Persian, speaking or writing ambiguously has a long history and is not considered necessarily negative. Of course, Gutt (1990 ) argues that relevance theory alone can account for the interlocutors' abilities to understand each other despite ambiguities, sarcasm, irony, figurative language, puns, understatement, overstatement, and discoursal discrepancies. Sperber and Wilson argue that relevance is an innate focusing mechanism of the human cognitive system where it is possible to have "the greatest possible cognitive effect for the smallest possible processing effort" (1986/1995 , vii). They also differentiate between descriptive literal language and interpretive nonliteral language. Since any utterance is the translation of a speaker's thought and assumption, they belong to the interpretive category. Similarly, any translation between two languages is indeed interpretive nonliteral language. Gutt argues that although any two languages have differences, they share some communicative clues arising from different sources, such as phonetic properties, syntactic properties, semantic representations, formulaic language, and others. The more communication clues two languages share, the more direct the translation can be. Therefore, language pairs that share more communicative clues are more appropriate for direct translation, whereas language pairs that are more distant both linguistically and culturally are more suitable for indirect or oblique translation. Bell's Psycholinguistic Approach A psycholinguistic approach to translation investigates translation through experimental studies such as think-aloud self-reports during (introspective) or after (retrospective) the task of translation. Robert Bell's (1991 ) psycholinguistic approach to translation integrates such experimental studies and linguistic theories. Based on the notions of linguistic competence and communicative competence discussed in linguistics, Bell considers translators to possess a translation competence that includes the knowledge and skills required to do the task of translation regardless of the language and the text type. In other words, a translator's translation competence is her contrastive knowledge of the SL and TL as well as of text type and knowledge domain in both languages in addition to communicative competence in both languages and their cultures. Bell believes that both psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics are needed to explain the translation process. Psycholinguistics accounts for the processes in the mind of the translator while translating, whereas sociolinguistics explicates the choices the translator makes in the context of the text and the intended message. As Malmkjær states, "Norms are matters of sociolinguistics; universals of psycholinguistics" ( 2018 , 21). In his model of the translation process, Bell explains the process of reading the ST starting from visual recognition of graphic stimulus and their conversion into a discernable series of letters, forming words, phrases, and clauses, which are then analyzed syntactically, semantically, and pragmatically. Once this process is completed, the translator takes these steps in reverse in order to produce the TT. This process seems to be the opposite of what Catford's (1965 ) systematic functional approach to translation assumes to be happening during the translation task, as discussed in the previous section, and Bell has been criticized for concentrating too much on describing information processing and less on analyzing the translation process ( Malmkjær 2011 ). To me, Catford's order of events seems more logical than that of Bell. Most translators read the whole text before embarking on the translation task, and during the translation, they are more likely to read a paragraph to get a holistic idea of the section they are translating. Then they read the sentence and break it to its constituting clauses, phrases, words, and letters. This is so for the decoding process. For the encoding process, the translator takes the reverse route, that is from smallest to largest, in order to create the TT. Halverson's Cognitive Linguistic Approach Sandra Halverson (2010 ) takes a cognitive linguistic approach to translation and brings up the notion of translation universals ( 2003 ) and translation shifts ( 2007 ). In her cognitive approach to translation, Halverson bases her arguments on the tenets of cognitive linguistics as well as a cognitive theory of bilingualism. The cognitive linguistic theory that Halverson adopts for her cognitive theory of translation is that of Langacker (1987, 1991 , 1999 ), which considers the cognitive processes and structures underlying the language to be integrated with other cognitive abilities, including perception, memory, and reasoning. This is in contrast to a generative linguistic approach that considers the language faculty to be separate from other mental faculties (e.g., Fodor 1983 , among others). In addition, Halverson employs the theory of bilingualism by Jarvis and Pavlenko (2008 ), which considers three levels for language: lexeme or word form, lemma or lexical information, and concept or world knowledge. Halverson argues that a human's experience and her ability to compare, contrast, categorize, abstract, focus, and so on are all involved in a linguistic event and therefore in the translation process. Following Langacker's theory, Halverson argues that the more a linguistic, or a translation, event is activated in the brain, the more it will be automatic, because repetition of events leaves a neurochemical trace in the brain, which decays if not repeated. Halverson likens the brain of a translator to that of a bilingual and argues that both the SL and the TL are equally and simultaneously activated in the brain during the translation process. Upon reading the ST, a semantic network is activated by lexical and grammatical structures of the SL, which includes nodes of lexical and grammatical structures of the TL. The most salient and the most relevant choices will be activated to produce the TT. Despite the important role of linguistic theories early on in the formation of translation theories, the field of translation studies is not limited to linguistics and tries to incorporate different disciplines, such as feminism ( Santaelilia 2005 ; Hartman 2019 ), postcolonialism ( Bassnette and Trivedi 1999 ), and pragmatics ( Gutt 2000 ). Next, I will review some other factors involved in translation that go beyond the mere text. Stylistics and Translation In addition to translating what is said in the ST into the TT, the translator is also involved in how it is said. This latter consideration is the style of the ST of which the translator needs to be aware and try to replicate when recreating the message in the TT. Unlike the translation of scientific texts, which can be focused only on the content, the literary translation must necessarily be direct and take into account both the content and the style ( Boase-Beier 2011 , 71). The style of the text is not only the special manner by which the author expresses herself in writing or speaking, but also more broadly whatever is beyond the words and the syntax, which gives the text distinction. Style might not be discernable in scientific texts, but in literary texts, it is one of the most noticeable features of the text. We can guess who the writer of a text is if we are familiar with her work and her special style. Therefore, when we are translating, we must endeavor to recreate the same effect that the ST has had on us for the recipients of the TT. Hervey and Higgins (1992 , 23) suggest that the translator of a ST that makes its readers laugh must attempt to make the TT readers laugh as well. There are only a small handful of studies that have worked on style in translation (e.g., Tabakowska 1993 , Parks 1998/2007 , and Boase-Beier 2006 ), and for Persian-English translations, there are barely any. Since Persian is a highly idiomatic language ( Shabani-Jadidi 2020a ) and English is not, in many translations, the metaphors are toned down to regular speech. This affects the style of the TT, making it different from that of the ST. One challenging problem that translators of novels face is the existence of different dialects and idiolects within one text. For example, in the translation of Daneshvar's (1992 ) Jazire-ye sargardani (translated by Higgins and Shabani-Jadidi, Forthcoming, as Island of Bewilderment: A Novel of Modern Iran), the author uses different dialects for the characters, illustrating geographical, class, and educational backgrounds, and in Pezeshkzad's (2004 ) Hafez-e nashenide pand (translated by Shabani-Jadidi and Higgins 2021 as Hafez in Love) the author uses regional, Shirazi terms. How would you translate the Shirazi expression kolu "neighborhood chief"? How would you distinguish it from kalāntar "neighborhood or town chief," which is the standard Persian version of the word? Would you just ignore the different style and translate it like the rest of the text? Would you change a Shirazi accent to a Southern accent? These are some of the choices that the translator faces, which make the translation task quite challenging. Boase-Beier (2011 ) provides different strategies for these cases, such as translating a dialect in the SL into a dialect in the TL; explicitly adding "she said in dialect"; or using a different register in the TT for some characters ( Boase-Beier 2011 , 79). Sometimes changing the style is a political decision. Anushiravani and Atashi (2012 ) criticize the manipulation and appropriation of style in the translations of Hafez that aim at propagandizing the Orient to Western readers. Shabani-Jadidi (2020b) discusses some of the reasons for the conscious or subconscious manipulation of the ST style in the TT, which include political agendas, censorship, lack of linguistic or cultural mastery over the SL as well as the TL, and others. She argues, Sometimes these rhetorical devices are purposefully ignored in order to a reach political end. An example can be the literal translation of marg bar āmrikā as "Death to the USA" in American media. One wonders if marg bar gerāni will be translated as "Death to high costs of life." ( Shabani-Jadidi 2020b , 15) Even more than the novel, poetry embeds particular styles that the translator needs to recreate when producing the TT. Sometimes, the poet intentionally uses ambiguity or grammatically marked expressions. To be faithful to the style of the ST, the translator needs to keep the ambiguity or the grammatically marked expressions in the TT. For example, Sohrab Sepehri (1976 ) in his The Eight Books has a particular style and uses uncommon collocations, which were recreated in the TT ( Shabani-Jadidi and Keshavmurthy 2021), yet whether it has the same effect on the TT readers as the ST does on its readers has to be investigated. Other than uncommon collocations, marked grammatical expressions, and ambiguity, there are other factors that determine the style of a text, such as sentence length, use of direct or indirect speech, number of simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences, active and passive verbs, inversions, and others. These stylistic elements that are called the "fire" or "energy" of the text ( Williams 2002 ) make the ST special and must be replicated in the TT if the translator wants the effect of the TT on his readers to be the same as the effect of the ST on its readers. Other than linguistic elements contributing to the style of the text, cognitive stylistics also plays a role. Cognitive stylistics or cognitive poetics refers to whatever makes up the reader's cognitive context, such as his cultural background and mental representations, as well as the historical background of the text and the ideology behind it ( Simpson 2004 ; Boase-Beier 2011 ). All of the factors that determine the stylistics of a text make the job of the literary translator a creative one, as she will have different choices, and depending on how faithful to the Sshe wants to be, she will make one choice or another. For example, if the translator thinks that wordplay is the most important aspect of the ST, then she will retain the wordplay ( Gutt 2000 ). However, despite the importance of the wordplay, retaining it in a TL whose culture is so far from the ST is almost an impossible task. For example, in Daneshvar's Jazire-ye sargardani ( 1992 ), there is a game of charades in which the characters need to guess what word the players are portraying. The characters who are doing the miming consider the word as a compound and decompose the word into its orthographic pseudo-constituents: jen "genie" and deh "village." It is impossible to retain the same wordplay in English; therefore, the translators have chosen to explicate the compositional holistic meaning of the word as well as its constituents in parentheses: "La'l Bau said, 'It's very clear what word you are thinking of. But I'm embarrassed to say it.'From the end of the hall Bijan said, 'Prostitute.'(In Persian, jen 'genie'+ deh 'village'= jendeh 'prostitute.')" (Higgins and Shabani-Jadidi Forthcoming). The ST readers will probably laugh upon reading this wordplay, while the TT readers probably will not! In theory, recreating the ST stylistics and poetics might be deemed important and necessary, yet, in practice, it might not always be possible. Perhaps Boase-Beier (2011 ) is right in arguing that literary translation is open-ended, as there are a host of interpretive choices before the translator of such texts, and, depending on the audience of the TT and the goal of the translator, some choices will be more suitable than others. Translation Universals The idea of universals is an attractive one which has been used for several disciplines, including linguistic universals, cognitive universals, and others. Gideon Toury (1977 ) was the first to suggest the existence of "universals and translational behaviors" ( Toury 1980 , 60), which refers to those characteristics of translation that are universal regardless of the languages, the translator, the time, subject matter, and so on. One such universal is explication that seems to be inherent in the translation process (e.g., Toury 1980 ; Blum-Kulka 1986/2004 , among others). In other words, all TTs are more explicit than the ST because the translator disambiguates the ST in order to understand it and then produces the TT based on that disambiguation. Of course, explication has also been considered to be a universal trait in any language mediation and not just in translation ( Blum-Kulka 1986 ; Gaspari and Bernardini 2010 ). However, explication is not a welcome strategy when it comes to translating legal documents. Baker and Pérez-González (2011 , 42) argue that globalization has caused society to need the service of translators and interpreters more than ever before. In the judicial system translators may be asked not to explicate, clarify, or disambiguate elements that are vague, ambiguous, or implicit. I have experienced this dilemma firsthand, when I acted as crown witness and was commissioned by the court to translate a series of text messages. In the case in question, the accused had expressed multiple times in his text messages to his brother that he was thinking of killing his friend. I was asked by the prosecutor to simply translate the text, rather than explicating it within the context of the case. However, the defense attorney's expert witness linguist had explicated the text and had deemed it not to justify the intent of causing harm but rather that the defendant was simply having passing thoughts of harming another. In such situations, the translator's decision-making and the choices they make may be about life and death and thus their responsibility grave. Biel argues for these choices of the translator and considers the genre of the text to be the determining factor: Recent studies ( De Sutter, Delaere, and Plevoets 2012 ) seem to confirm that genre is one of the important determinants of variations which impact features of translation: forexample some genres may trigger the use by translators of more explication (e.g., leaflets), while others may be more prone to standardization (e.g., legal genres). ( Biel 2018 , 160) Returning to the discussion of universals, one way to discover translation universals has been to compare the TT with original texts written in the TL. Through this comparison, some common traits of translated texts have been identified including explication, disambiguation, simplification, conventional grammaticality, syntactic unmarkedness, and avoidance of repetition ( Baker 1993 ). The translated text has also been considered to be different both from the SL and the TL and labeled as a third code ( Frawley 1984 ) or as a translational interlanguage ( Selinker 1972 ; Baker 1993 ). A third code implies that the translation product is a different species from the SL and TL in that the TT is a compromise between the norms of the SL and those of the TL. The idea of a translational interlanguage is quite appealing, and it can account for mistakes in translation as well as provide information for identifying translation universals. Chesterman (2004 ) argues for two kinds of universals: S-universals and T-universals. In his view, S-universals are elicited by comparing the ST with the TT, whereas T-universals are derived from a comparison of the TT with original texts in the TL. Malmkjær (2011 ) quotes Chesterman (2004 ) in providing the following list of translation universals identified by different scholars: Lengthening: translations tend to be longer than their source texts ( Berman 1985 ; Vinay and Darbelnet 1958 ). Interference: the source text necessarily interferes with the target text ( Toury 1995 ). Standardization: a translation tends to use more standard language than a ST that exhibits deviance from the standard ( Toury 1995 ; with respect to dialect, see Englund Dimitrova 1997 ). A translation tends to exhibit less complexity of narrative voices than a source text that exhibits this characteristic ( Taivalkoski-Shilov 2002 ). Explication ( Blum-Kulka 1986 ; Øverås 1998 ). Sanitization: translations tend to display more usual collocations than do their STs ( Kenny 1999 ). Later translations tend to be closer to the ST than earlier translations. (See the papers published in Palimpsestes 4, 1990.) There tends to be less repetition in a translation than in its source text ( Shlesinger 1991 ; Toury 1991 ; Baker 1993 ). Translated texts are less varied lexically than non-translated texts, are less lexically dense, and use more high-frequency terms ( Laviosa-Braithwaite 1996 ). Translated texts are more conventional in their language than non-translated texts ( Baker 1993 ). Translated texts exhibit a larger quantity of patterns that are atypical of the language than do non-translated texts ( Mauranen 2000 ). Translated texts underrepresent features that are unique to the language ( Tirkkonen-Condit 2000 ). ( Malmkjær 2011 , 86--87) Despite the search for universals in translation, Toury (1980) acknowledges that many of these "universals" are more of a general tendency than a universal. Similarly, Baker (1993 ) argues that for a trait to be a translation universal, it must emanate from the translation process and not from the mediation between two languages, and it must hold constant regardless of thelanguages and cultures involved. In studies on the translation process, the translation universals are usually elicited from the think-aloud reports of translators during the translation process. More recently, Toury (2004 ) questions the universality of translation universals and corrects his previous assumption of the existence of universals by calling them "laws," as laws can have exceptions but universals cannot ( Toury 2004 , 17). Most discussions of translation universals focus on the translation product and the linguistic features that are particular to the translation product of the TT in comparison to the ST as well as original texts in the TL. However, perhaps we can consider translation universals to be also about the translation process itself (as Baker 1993 suggests earlier) as well as the linguistic features in the translation product. In other words, what is it that all translators do regardless of the languages involved, the subject matter, and the text type? If we consider translation studies to encompass more than the language, the translation theories, and the linguistic theories, then we may want to consider translation universals in the process of translation as well. To explain translation process universals, I adopt Halverson's (2010 ) cognitive linguistic approach to translation, which considers the cognitive processes and structures underlying the language to be integrated with other cognitive abilities, including perception, memory, and reasoning. Translation is a mental process; therefore, it seems that a cognitive approach is appropriate to account for what happens during the translation process. Think-aloud reports have been used extensively to study what happens during the process of translation. In think-aloud reports, the translators simultaneously and consciously report what they are thinking about during the translation process. This thinking about thinking is called metacognition. ShabaniJadidi (2009 , 59--64) recorded the think-aloud reports of sixty-two translation students while translating a variety of text types, including literary, political, scientific, and philosophical. After transcribing these think-aloud reports, she elicited some twenty metacognitive strategies of translation, which are given as follows: A Linguistic Perspective on Translation 9. Over-repetition: repeating a wordBefore the Translation Process 1. Pre-thought: thinking about the topic or ST author before the translation 2. Planning: planning the steps in translating the text 3. Method selection: deciding on the method of translation (e.g., whether word for word or sense for sense) 4. Reader consciousness: being conscious of the reader 5. Commenting: commenting on the ST 6. World knowledge: relating the text to one's own previous experience and schemata During the Translation Process 1. Self-correction: correcting oneself during the translation process 2. Self-questioning: questioning oneself to clarify the ambiguities in the ST 3. Interpretation: interpreting and analyzing the difficult words, phrases, clauses, and sentences in the ST 4. Paraphrasing: paraphrasing difficult words, phrases, clauses, and sentences in the ST 5. Equation: thinking of as many equivalents for a word or phrase as possible 6. Guessing: guessing the meaning of a word or phrase 7. Skipping: skipping a difficult part and continuing with the rest of the translation only to come back to the difficult part later 8. Monitoring: pausing in the middle of the translation process to contemplate the translation9. Over-repetition: repeating a word over and over again to remember its meaning 10. Coinage: coining a new word as the equivalent of an unknown word 11. Visualizing: visualizing a word, phrase, clause, or the whole text to understand it better After the Completion of Translation 1. Coherence: verifying whether the TT is coherent 2. Cohesion: verifying whether the TT is cohesive and sentences well linked 3. Self-assessment: evaluating and commenting on one's own translation Despite the popularity of think-aloud reports due to their ease of use and their generation of metacognitive information about the translation process, there are some criticisms of this data elicitation technique. Muñoz gives an overview of such criticisms, saying that while reporting their thought, in fact, subjects might be in a worse position than observers with respect to their own mental states ( Ryle 2002 ). In sum, introspective reports are intuitions on an illusion ( Pronin 2009 ) which are not necessarily consistent ( Barsalou 1993 ) or accurate ( Wilson 2002 ), and are therefore unreliable ( Schwitzgebel 2008 ). That is why cognitive psychology often rejects introspection ( Börsch 1986 ), and that is why Gibbs (2007 ) argues that CL should favor non-introspective procedures as well. ( Muñoz 2013 , 247) Yet, Muñoz further adds, "the fact that introspection does not yield reports on actual thought processes does not mean that they do not offer valuable insights on them, but only that their results should be analyzed with the same caution applied to questionnaires" ( 2013 , 247). Of course, no data elicitation technique is perfect, yet if the results are analyzed with caution, valuable information can be deduced. Shreve (2018 , 175) poses the question of how the translators or interpreters process the text: sequential, sentence-by-sentence, or translation unit by translation unit. He then argues that according to cognitive processes of translation, it seems that the unit of translation is sentential or even clausal. Then he asks if this sentential dominance pushes textual concerns to pretranslation activities or post-translation revision. The last three post-translation metacognitive strategies identified in Shabani-Jadidi (2009 ) have been discussed by Blum-Kulka (1986/2004 ) in terms of shifts. Shreve (2018 ) describes Blum-Kulka's shifts very clearly: Blum-Kulka describes so-called "shifts" in cohesion and coherence as part of the translation process. Shifts in cohesion are often necessitated by differences in the source and target grammatical systems, and as the translator accommodates those differences it can lead to what she called "shifts in levels of explicitness" and "shifts in text meaning". Shifts of cohesion can result in a target text that indicates underlying semantic relations to a greater or lesser degree than the original. But Blum-Kulka (2004 , 300) makes the important point that it is not just linguistic system differences that lead to these shifts. She argues that they result from the "constraints" of the translation process itself, something she calls the "explicitation hypothesis". Shifts in text meaning, on the other hand, happen when the "explicit and implicit meaning potential" (2000, 299) of the source is changed by the translator's use of particular target-side cohesive devices; her argument here is thata translator's choice of cohesive device in the target language can intentionally (or unintentionally) alter the meaning of the target relative to the source---thus the translator needs to be aware of the potential for meaning shift. ( Shreve 2018 , 170) Returning to the topic of translation product universals, Tirkkonen-Condit (2004 ) refers to a potentially universal tendency to translate literally. However, Shabani-Jadidi's (2009 ) study seems to suggest that before the translation process, the translator decides whether to translate the text literally or not based on the text type and the purpose of the act of translation. Malmkjær (2011 ) poses some questions as to whether some translators' first response needs more editing than others and how different the translational cognitive activities are in comparison to the monolingual and the bilingual cognitive activities. Perhaps, one can assume that metacognitive strategies commonly used by translators might give us some clues as to the answers to these questions. For example, another translation product universal has been argued to be segmentation ( Jakobsen 2002 ), which is also confirmed by the translational metacognitive strategies mentioned earlier under the names of paraphrasing and interpretation. In the next section, I will discuss the translation process and what happens during the translation. Translation Process Most techniques of data elicitation to study the process of translation originate in cognitive psychology. Empirical studies of translation date back to the 1980s with the emergence of functional theories of translation (e.g., Reiss 1971 ; Vermeer 1978/1983 , among others), the focus of which goes beyond the translation product and also includes the translator. The thinkaloud protocol or concurrent report, as previously described, was one of the earliest and most popular techniques in data elicitation for translation process studies (e.g., Gerloff 1986 ; Krings 1986 , among others). Other data elicitation techniques used in the study of the translation process are retrospective verbal reports and introspection proper. The retrospective verbal report is like the think-aloud protocol, except that the report is not concurrent, but rather done after the completion of the translation task. The introspection proper combines data elicitation and analysis; that is, the translators are asked to analyze their own thinking. Shabani-Jadidi's study ( 2009 ), discussed previously, combines the think-aloud protocol and introspection proper techniques in that the translators are asked to report concurrently what they are thinking while doing the translation, hence the use of metacognitive strategies in the title of the study. Jääskeläinen (2011 ) makes a distinction between automatized mental processes and nonautomatized mental processes. She argues that in the think-aloud, retrospection, and introspection proper reports, people are only able to verbalize thought processes that are currently active in their brain and not those that have been automatized. This claim is in line with psycholinguistic studies on language processing. (For such studies on Persian, see Shabani-Jadidi 2014 , 2016 , 2018 , 2020a.) Other than the three data elicitation techniques described earlier, Jääskeläinen names a few others: The "soft" qualitative options include diary studies (e.g., Bergen 2009), questionnaire studies (e.g., Youssef 1989 ), interview studies (e.g., Jänis 1996 ; Shih 2006 ), or dialogue protocols (e.g., House 1988 , 2000 ; Kussmaul 1991 , 2007 ). The "hard" quantitative methods of data collection include keyboard logging (e.g., Translog: see Jakobsen 1999 ; orScriptLog: see Englund Dimitrova 2005 ; see also Tommola 1986), eye-tracking (e.g., Göpferich, Jakobsen, and Mees 2008) and screen recordings. ( Jääskeläinen 2011 , 125--26) Of course, each of these techniques has its pros and cons, and based on the nature and the purpose of the study, the researcher can choose one or multiple ones to have a more objective view of the process of translation. For example, qualitative techniques are more prone to subjectivity, hence the benefit of using a combination of these techniques. Another topic discussed in studies of the translation process is the characteristics of professional translators. Studies on translators show that despite the automaticity of the translation process in professional translators, they are engaged in more decision-making and more problem-solving during the translation process than are non-professional translators. They are reported to identify more problems and spend more time and resources on solving those problems; consequently, the decision-making process is lengthier as they have more options to select from for the lexicon, form, and message equivalences in the TL. (See Gerloff 1988 ; Jääskeläinen 1999 ; Roth-Neves 2003 , among others.) In addition, professional translators can shift between subconscious processing in more routine translation tasks and conscious processing in novel situations. (See Jääskeläinen 1999 ; Dragsted 2005 , among others.) Routine translation is subconscious in that the translation process has become automatic, hence not adding too much processing load on the brain; however, novel situations in translation have not become automatized yet, hence adding to the processing load in the brain. Segmentation of the ST in the translation process, as mentioned earlier, is one of the translation universals. Dragsted (2005 ) studied the segmentation method of professional translators translating easy and difficult texts and reported that professional translators segment larger portions of the ST and that the processing is at the clause and sentence level. She calls this feature of professional translators the "integrated processing mode," whereas in difficult texts, the segments are much smaller and processing is at the word and phrase level. She calls the latter mode of translation "analytic processing mode." In addition, segmentations are reported to be longer as the translation task comes to the end (Englund Dimitrova 2005). Translator's Invisibility In his seminal book, The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation (1st edition 1995 , 2nd edition 2008), Lawrence Venuti discusses the illusion of TT fluency, which refers to the creation of an illusion that the TT is an original text in the TL. He argues that this marginalizes and makes the translator invisible. Instead, he believes that more credit and power should be bestowed upon the translator to leave a footprint on her work of creating the TT. He calls for translators to "foreignize" the TT at times rather than always seeking to "domesticate" it in order to make the TT stand out as a particular genre rather than as a TL original text. Venuti distinguishes between foreignization and domestication as follows: "The notion of foreignization can alter the ways translations are read as well as produced because it assumes a concept of human subjectivity that is very different from the humanist assumptions underlying domestication" ( 1995 , 24). Domestication of the TT has also been criticized as being a kind of imperialism and a literary conquest of foreign original texts in an attempt to assimilate them into the domestic culture. Foreignization, on the other hand, forces readers "to modify their customary linguistic and cultural assumptions by encountering versions which, by imitating the syntax and formal properties of their originals, shock readers into a perception of their alien foreignness" ( Hopkins 2019 , 114). Reiss (1971/2000 ) divides the ST into three categories, which affect the degree to which the translator's invisibility or visibility is necessary rather than a matter of choice. The first category includes content-focused texts, whose content is the most important, and equivalence only needs to be content equivalence. Here, the translator can be as visible as she likes, as it does not matter that the text form be replicated. Some examples of such texts are news reports, manuals, commercial correspondences, press releases, technical texts, and others. The most extreme translator's visibility is in "gloss translation," which refers to word-for-word and form-for-form translation (like the translation of holy books such as the Quran) where the translator reproduces as literarily and meaningfully as possible the form and content of the ST ( Nida 1964 , 159). Reiss's second category of ST includes form-focused texts, in which the form and the stylistics of the ST must be replicated in the TT. Literary texts are among form-focused texts, where the readers will witness some degree of translator's invisibility due to faithfulness of the TT to the ST form. The third category includes appeal-focused texts, where the purpose of the message is paramount and the linguistics of the text is of low importance. Advertisements, propaganda, and satire are some examples of this kind of text, in which the translator is mostly invisible as the focus is on conveying the message more than anything else. Another factor that plays a role in the success of a translation, especially a literary translation, is the degree of affinity between the translator and the ST. This affinity and closeness is well-depicted in the epigraph (as quoted in Hopkins 2019 , 108) of this chapter: Then, seek a Poet who your way do's bend, And chuse an Author as you chuse a Friend. United by this Sympathetick Bond, You grow Familiar, Intimate and Fond; Your thoughts, your Words, your Stiles, yours Souls agree, No Longer his Interpreter, but He. ( Roscommon 1685 , 7) Were a translator to choose what to translate, especially in literary translation, wouldn't she choose the ST by which she has been most influenced? Only then can she recreate the concealed message in the ST through the language she uses in the TT. In that case, the translator is said to need to be as gifted as the original author. Examples for such translations include many nineteenth-century translations of classical Persian poetry. Hopkins gives the example of Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyam: "There were, indeed, 19th-century translations made on similar principles to those of the earlier period, the most famous and enduring---though from a Persian, not a classical source---being Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859 )" ( Hopkins 2019 , 111). Regardless of the kind of text, literary translations are the most challenging ones because in addition to linguistic nuances, the rhythm, sounds, register, and stylistics of the source prose and the source poetry must be replicated in the target prose and the target poetry. However, when the SL and the TL as well as the cultures are very distant, the challenges are doubled, and reproducing equivalences sometimes becomes impossible. McLellan (1964 ) argues that in the case of distant languages like Japanese and English, perhaps explanation is more feasible than strict translation, especially when it comes to classical texts, as they are even more distant. The Japanese language is full of ambiguity, vagueness, and imprecision, whereas English is explicit, direct, and precise. Similarly, the Persian language is full of cases of formulaic language, which are said to be derived from "particular cultural and contextual priorities and assumptions... dually rooted in the human brain and human society" ( Wray 2013 , 317). The first root lies in Persian linguistics, while the second root is embedded in Persian culture. An abundance of idiomatic expressions in a language can also be attributed to the rich literary culture of that language ( Shabani-Jadidi 2020a ). In addition, psycholinguistic studies on the processing of idiomatic expressions show that native speakers access the idiomatic meaning of collocations before their literal meaning (e.g., Shabani-Jadidi 2014 , 2016 , 2020a ; Klitgård 2018 , among others). Therefore, the translator must endeavor to recreate a similar effect in the readers of her TT. In Persian literary translation, it is crucial to recreate and preserve the idiomatic expressions. Akin to what McKinney states about Japanese, "it can be heartbreaking for the translator to be forced to reduce to a single, unequivocal meaning the floating filaments of a classical Japanese sentence" ( 2019 , 123). Ambiguity and vagueness are prominent features of Persian poetry and Persian prose; however, disambiguation and explication are two of the translation universals described earlier in this chapter. Hartman (2019 ) argues that the translator must avoid reproducing stereotypes. She also poses the question of whether adding explications---for example, about a certain location that the TL readers most likely do not know---in the form of footnotes will compensate for the lack of knowledge of the readers or whether it will change a literary work into an anthropological study and deprive the readers from enjoying the text artistry ( Hartman 2019 , 208). What is even more challenging than recreating SL idiomatic expressions in the TL is allusions, which embed idiomatic language as well as cultural, literal, and historical references. Even if the linguistic components of lexicon, structure, and even register are replicated, it is impossible to recreate the same effect it has on the original readers. So what should be done? Should the translator add explanations in parentheses or give footnotes or endnotes? Despite its problems, adding clarification notes is a common practice in translation. For example, for the translation of the Persian idiom in Hezar Famil by Shabani (1996 ), hame rā be yek cheshm negāh mikard, "he looked at everyone with one eye," Higgins and Shabani-Jadidi have chosen to write "he looked at everyone with a single eye," where in the footnote, they further explained "meaning he did not discriminate" ( Higgins and Shabani-Jadidi 2018 , 11). Endnotes and footnotes are often an indispensable part of English translations of Persian texts, and they are used to make the texts more comprehensible for a non-Iranian audience, such as adding dates, more info on locations, more complete references, and a glossary of titles. However, this will cause interruptions in the flow of the TT for the readers. In McKinney's words, notes provide no more than explanations at best and in no way reproduce the actual effect of the allusion, while awareness of the presence of a wider literary tradition in the work, even if it could be successfully introduced, is not likely to cause the Western reader the same frisson as its original audience felt. ( 2019 , 124) Another way to deal with allusions is for the translator to simply delete them in the TT; however, this will undoubtedly make the text lose some of its literary features. Therefore, it seems that there will be a cost associated with the translation of allusions in the TL regardless of the strategy taken by the translator. The Translator as a Bilingual The most rudimentary characteristic of a translator is her being bilingual and bicultural, that is, knowing the SL and the TL as well as their cultures equally well. Once this condition is met, other skills, like reading comprehension, writing ability, and translation skill come into play in order to equip the translator to execute the translation task successfully. Therefore, other than the bilingual competence that includes lexical, semantic, syntactic, grammatical, textual, pragmatic, and sociolinguistic knowledge in addition to a procedural knowledge to communicate in both languages, the translator needs "extra-linguistic, knowledge about translation, instrumental, and strategic plus psycho-physiological components" in order to have translation competence ( Ferreira 2013 , in Schwieter and Ferreira 2018 , 252). However, not all bilinguals are capable of undertaking translation tasks. Lörscher (2012 ) makes a distinction between bilingual translations and those of professional translators by saying that bilinguals are capable of natural translation, which is different from the translation competence in professional translators. De Groot's (1992/1993 ) distributed feature model discusses crosslinguistic differences in the bilingual lexicon to be the reason that cognate and concrete words are translated faster than abstract words. This is in line with the results of experimental studies in bilingual mental lexicons, or lexicon if we go with Cook's (1992 ) holistic multicompetence approach, which considers bilinguals to have one mental lexicon for both languages. Some studies supporting this approach have argued that frequency of cognate words in one language affects their processing rate in another language ( Caramazza and Brones 1980 ). In addition, some other studies have reported that translation performance is improved when there are morphemic similarities between the two languages ( Cristoffanini, Kirsner, and Milech 1986 ). Still other studies have observed that homographs activate their corresponding meanings in both languages, regardless of the stimulus language ( Grainger and Beauvillain 1987 ). In addition, De Groot (1992 ) did a series of experimental studies on translating words by bilinguals and reported that there are several characteristics of the word that affect the translation processing, including the frequency of the word in the SL and its equivalent in the TL, imageability or concreteness, familiarity, contextuality, definability, and cognate status. It will be interesting to see in future studies how the mental processing of bilinguals who are professional translators looks, perhaps not at the word level, but at the sentence level, which is more likely to be the unit of translation for most professional translators. Schaeffer summarizes the most important experimental studies on translators' processing: The role of co-activation during translation was investigated by Macizo and Bajo (2004 , 2006 ) and by Ruiz et al. (2008 ). Participants in these studies translated single sentences, and reaction times per word (during ST reading) were measured. In particular, the later studies ( Macizo and Bajo 2006 ; Ruiz et al. 2008 ) manipulated aspects of TT which were shown to have an effect on reaction times. Bajo and colleagues aimed at testing an early and rudimentary model of the translation process proposed by Seleskovitch (1976 ), who argued that translation is normally carried out sequentially in that the first step is ST comprehension and only when this is complete and only once the source material is "deverbalized" can reformulation in the TL begin. Opposed to this sequential view is the assumption that representations specific to the TL are activated at the same time as SL representations are activated (horizontally and in parallel). All three studies found clear evidence against Seleskovitch's model: the evidence in these studies suggests that the TL is activated during ST reading. This might not be surprising now, though, giventhe overwhelming evidence there is for coactivation of the two linguistic systems in bilinguals. ( Schaeffer 2018 , 285--86) Comparative Linguistics of Persian and English Several linguistic distinctions between Persian and English can make the translation process between these two languages more arduous. Shabani-Jadidi (2020b ) classifies these differences as follows: In Persian to English translations the first set of problems is lexico-semantic, which includes contextual synonyms (i.e., the meaning of a word is contingent upon the context in which it is used), semantic fields (i.e., the same word includes a wider or narrower scope of meanings in Persian and English, e.g., jān "soul, life, dear"), and missing terms (i.e., words absent from one language but present in the other, e.g., gheirat). The second issue is caused by the morphological differences in the two languages, such as compound words (one example is the existence of compound verbs in Persian but not in English). The third issue at stake is grammatical problems, which encompass topics such as time sequence, tense, and anaphoric rules. Still another source of problem is the syntactic differences, which include language structure, such as the way passive is constructed, and the word order (often active verbs in Persian do not have a corresponding active verb in English, e.g., sadame-didan "be injured"). ( Shabani-Jadidi 2020b , 20) Problems arising from differences in the grammar and syntax of Persian and English include the following: 1. Unlike English, Persian is a prodrop language, meaning that the subject pronoun can be dropped and is dropped in most cases, especially in colloquial speech found in dialogues in novels. This causes some confusion when it comes to finding the antecedent of the dropped pronouns to recreate it in English. 2. Persian pronouns do not have gender. The genderlessness of pronouns in Persian creates an even more ambiguous tone in the ST, which is absent in the TT. There has been an ongoing debate in the translation of the genderless pronouns, especially in Persian poetry. Some scholars have deemed a masculine gender for the beloved in Persian poetry (e.g., Shamisa 2002 ; Afary 2009 ), which is probably what was intended in the original Persian poems. However, other translators have considered the beloved to be female, as is more common in English poetry. 3. Unlike English, Persian is a verb-final language, and most sentences in Persian texts are quite long compared to those in English. Therefore, at times it is hard to establish what the subject of the verb is. 4. Some verbs in English are accusative and need a direct object, while their equivalence in Persian is not and needs an indirect object. For example, in English, we enjoy something, but in Persian we enjoy "of" something, as noted by Shabani-Jadidi and Sedighi (2018 , 402). 5. Conjunctions have different usages in Persian and in English. One example is the Persian practice of using a long string of items connected by multiple instances of va "and" rather than commas. In such cases, the translator has to decide which va "and" deserves an "and" in English, either because items are part of a set or for emphasis. Alternatively, the translator may choose to break apart long complicated sentences into smaller chunks, which an English reading audience will find more manageable. Similarly, sometimes the va "and" is used in Persian to indicate contrast, and it must be translated as "but" rather than "and." There are obviously many differences between the lexico-semantics of Persian and English, and these differences are not only about the direct meaning of lexemes or words but also about the semantic network or semantic field. In addition to the basic meanings of words, there are connotations that are not as straightforward as the basic meanings. Malmkjær distinguishes between these two types of meaning by saying, Basic meaning includes Lyons' (1977 , 50) descriptive, social, and expressive meaning, Halliday's (1970 , 143) ideational/experiential, interpersonal and textual meaning, and what is known variously as referential, cognitive, propositional, designative, literal, representational ( Bühler 1934 ), thin ( Strawson 1950/1972 ) and denotative meaning. It is the kind of meaning about which some agreement can be reached through discussion, because it has an air of objectivity about it. Connotational meaning, in contrast, has to do with associations a person has with parts of their language(s). ( Malmkjær 2018 , 31) This latter kind of meaning, that is, connotational meaning, is quite subjective and may vary from one person to another, one text to another, one context to another, even one era to another. In other words, there are many extraneous factors shaping the connotational meaning. Some examples of untranslatability between Persian and English due to semantic domain or lexical information include the following: 1. Some words in Persian have no equivalence in English. Take the word rend used by Hafez in his poetry, which Shayegan (in Gray 1995 ) calls "the most evocative symbol of indefinable ambiguity of the Persian character" ( Gray 1995 , 28), and the word rend "shrewd" that we use in modern Persian today. They have two completely different meanings. While the first one has an extremely positive connotation, the latter has a very negative connotation. Sometimes, by adding an explanation in the text or in the footnote, such non-existing words in the TL can be made clear in the TT. An example is explicating the phrase when translating lab-e juy as "the edge of the channel of clear water that was flowing between the street and the garden wall" (Higgins and Shabani-Jadidi Forthcoming). 2. Polysemy also causes problems for translation. For example, the word Ashkāniān "Parthians" includes the word ashk "tear." When this word is mentioned in Daneshvar's Jazire-ye sargardani ( 1992 ), the author is intentionally using wordplay to evoke both senses of the word. This polysemy is impossible to recreate in English; therefore, the translators chose to explicate the second sense of the word as: "Bijan said, 'I like the Pishdadian dynasty.' But Hasti didn't laugh. She was destined to like the Ashkanian (literally meaning the tearful ones). After all, when Hasti had learned to speak, the first word that had come out of her mouth was 'Ouch'" (Higgins and Shabani-Jadidi Forthcoming). However, one can argue that the readers of the TT still will most likely not experience the effect that the polysemous word has on the ST readers. 3. Collocations are another kind of lexical difficulty when translating Persian into English and are often untranslatable. One can choose to find a similar collocation to the one in the ST for the TT, or alternatively translate it literally hoping that the TT readers will get themessage. One example is qalam-e qavi "strong pen" to refer to "a very good style of writing." However, "strong pen" is mostly likely to be interpreted as referring to the quality of the actual pen. One can say "serious writer" but then again, "serious writer" can also mean "a dull writer." 4. Idioms, so common in Persian, are another kind of lexico-semantic problem in translation. Although it is rarely possible to find a similar idiom in the TL, in most cases a literal translation will not convey the message and sometimes even leads to an infelicitous message. For example, should shekastan-e telesm be translated as "to break a talisman" or "to break a spell" or something else that is completely different from the idiom in the SL? In translating Daneshvar's Jazire-ye sargardani ( 1992 ), the translators have chosen the last option and translated telesm rā shekast as "were the charm," which recreates the same sense and message as the idiom in the Persian text: "The hospital gate was open, but the gatekeeper did not let the taxi drive in. Dr. Bahari's name and the social worker position were the charm, and the gatekeeper called for a stretcher" (Higgins and Shabani-Jadidi Forthcoming). Sometimes, however, it is easier to find a close enough equivalence to the SL idiom in TL, for example, by using "to move heaven and earth" for khod rā be āb o ātash zadan (Higgins and Shabani-Jadidi Forthcoming). Another example is the Persian idiom, zir sibili rad-kardan "to pass the matter under the mustache," which Higgins and Shabani-Jadidi translated as "sweeping it under the rug" in their translation of Shabani's (1996 ) Hezar Famil ( Higgins and Shabani-Jadidi 2018 , 72). In other cases, translators take liberties with the TT. For example, in the translation of Salman Savaji's hemistich, zehi khojaste zani khāye-daro mard-afkan, Shabani-Jadidi and Higgins, trying to replicate the same pun, write "Well-done triumphant, testicled, man-killing woman" ( 2021 , 40). Though "testicled" is a coined word, English readers would still understand its meaning and would get the same joke as do the ST readers. Pragmatics and discourse analysis (DA) go beyond the text and consider extraneous elements affecting or characterizing the text. Due to its wide scope, it is difficult to define discourse analysis, but perhaps we can see what discourse analysis entails through what Baumgarten and Schröter state: DA engages with the use of language beyond individual sentences or utterances and, hence, beyond the domains of grammar and semantics (cf. Brown and Yule 1983 ; Schiffrin 1994 ). Its key notions are text and genre, and its key areas of investigation are the analysis and description of different genres, text structure and composition, text grammar (cohesion) and text semantics (coherence). DAinvestigates the way elements within texts build up and contribute to constitute texts, the features that allow texts to be grouped into genres and the way texts refer to and interact with each other through intertextuality (cf. Paltridge 2006 ; Bax 2011 ). ( Baumgarten and Schröter 2018 , 138) As examples of discrepancies between Persian and English discourse analysis and pragmatics, consider the following: 1. Hyperbole is a literary device used in Persian literature, often in describing the beloved or the patron. In English, however, hyperbole is considered distasteful and generally reserved for a mortal describing an immortal (e.g., Davis 1990 ; Anushiravani and Atashi 2012 , among others). That is why in the English translation of some Persian poetry, we notice that the text has been toned down in regards to hyperbole. 2. Considering culture while reading a text makes the translator either consciously or subconsciously manipulate or appropriate the ST when recreating her TT. Anushiravani and Atashi consider William Jones's translation of Hafez as "his conscious contribution to the discourse of propagandizing the orient that was meant to arouse sensual and exotic expectation" ( 2012 , 52). 3. Register is the way of saying something ( Halliday 1990 , 168), and it determines the specific values for words in relation to a speech community and a purpose ( Federici 2018 , 299). For example, in Daneshvar's Jazire-ye sargardani ( 1992 ), the author uses different registers of greetings to show the degree of formality or intimacy of one of the male characters towards three female characters. Higgins and Shabani-Jadidi translated this series of greetings as indicated (Forthcoming): a. To the grandmother of his daughter-in-law: sarfarāz farmudid. bande rā az khāk bardāshtid "It's an honor. I am privileged to meet you." b. To the mother of his daughter-in-law: chākeram "At your service." c. To his daughter-in-law: mokhlesam arus khānum "I love my daughter-in-law." The degree of formality in the ST registers decreases as he gets to the last person, that is, his daughter-in-law. Therefore, in the TT, the same shift of register must be recreated. 4. Repetition is another concept that needs to be discussed here, as it is treated differently in Persian and in English. Repetition in Persian is even sometimes used as a literary device, whereas in English, repetition is almost always considered as redundancy. For example, the phrase, goft "said" can be translated as "responded," "asked," "commented," and so on according to the context. Alternatively, the "said clause" can be moved after the opening phrase of what's said. (For instances of this kind of change, see Shabani-Jadidi and Higgins 2021 and Higgins and Shabani-Jadidi Forthcoming). In both cases more variety is introduced into the TT, which is usually considered preferable in contemporary Englishlanguage fiction. Conclusion This chapter has a different slant than other ones in this volume in that it studies the translation process through a linguistic lens. It takes a micro approach to translation, and its aim is to give the readers an overview of scholarly research and discussions on the interface between linguistics and translation. The study of linguistics has much to offer in our understanding of the translation process, as a review of the most prominent linguistic approaches to translation and of linguistic research on the translation process has demonstrated. A comparison of Persian and English grammatical features, semantics, and stylistics brings into focus the many challenges translators face in turning Persian literary works into English literary works---and a variety of ways in which translators have addressed these challenges. Examples from English translations of Persian texts, many of which draw from the author's own experiences, showcase several of these differences between Persian and English and the problems they pose to the translator. The lists of problems highlighted here are by no means exhaustive; a corpus-based study would be required in order to more fully identify the problem areas and address them in Persian literary translations. Linguistics and translation theories have supported each other for quite some time. To demonstrate this, different linguistic approaches to translation were discussed and the tenets of each one described. Which one of these tenets might or might not work for Persian-Englishtranslation due to the linguistic properties of the Persian language was also discussed. Since translation theories have been informed by other more metalinguistic concepts, some of these concepts were discussed in this chapter as well. One of these concepts is the style of the ST and how it is sometimes close to impossible to reproduce it in the TT. Another metalinguistic concept discussed in this chapter is translation universals, borrowed from linguistic universals, along with different arguments as to what they consist of and whether they are actually universal. It is further argued in this chapter that in addition to looking for translation universals in the product of translation, we must also look for them in the process of translation, for which a cognitive approach is appropriate. The metacognitive strategies used in the translation process can be divided into three categories: those occurring before the translation, those occurring during the translation, and those occurring after the translation. Some data elicitation techniques to study the process of translation that are derived from cognitive psychology were also discussed in this chapter so that interested researchers might use them in their empirical study of translation process. This chapter also weighed in on the pros and cons of a translator's visibility or invisibility in the TT and how footnotes and endnotes are often an indispensable part of Persian to English translations of literary works, including adding dates, more information on locations, more complete references, and a glossary of titles. A comparison of the translation processes of untrained bilinguals and those of professional translators highlighted the linguistic and extralinguistic competences translators need. Similarly, comparative linguistics of Persian and English shows how several linguistic discrepancies between the two languages make the translation process challenging. These include lexico-semantic, morphological, grammatical, and syntactic discrepancies, as well as discoursal and pragmatic ones, each of which were explained and exemplified throughout the chapter. This chapter aimed to provide a bird's-eye view of current linguistic debates in translation studies. The author hopes that interested scholars of linguistics and translation will find the discussions engaging and will pursue further studies in the domain of the interface between linguistics and translation.