Masoud Rostami - Assistant Professor, the Department of English Language and Literature, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran
Pouria Sadrnia - MA student in Translation Studies, the Department of English Language and Literature,Isfahan University, Isfahan, Iran
Elham Ale Ali - MA student in Translation Studies, the Department of English Language and Literature, Isfahan University,Isfahan, Iran

As intercultural mediators between the SL and the TL, translators are reputed to be equivalence hunters. They seek to find the best equivalents for the SL elements in order to have the most precise and tangible translation in the TL. Two polarized dispositions of translators, those prioritizing the form over the content and vice versa, have always been the center of discussion for scholars. Literal and free translation favor these two poles; literal translation concentrates on the form, whereas free translation prioritizes the content. Literal and free translation have exhaustively been explored by Vinay and Darbelnet (۱۹۹۵) as ‘direct’ and ‘oblique’ translation respectively, covering seven distinct procedures. This study deals chiefly with the investigation of translation procedures based on the model proposed by Vinay and Darbelnet (۱۹۹۵) in the translation ofWaiting for Godot from English to Persian by Najaf Daryabandari and MoradHosein Abbaspour. Furthermore, this study makes an attempt to investigate whether the direct or oblique translation strategy has been used by these two translators. In order to ascertain the frequency of each strategy, the researchers chose ۱۶۵ data pairs from both translated texts. The findings revealed that the proportion of direct and oblique translation for Daryabandary was ۲۳% to ۷۷% respectively, whereas for Abbaspour this proportion was ۵۴% to ۴۶%.

Vinay and Darbelnet’s model, direct translation, oblique translation