CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF PERSIAN TO ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF “BOOK TWO OF MATHNAWI” BY EDWARD HENRY WHINFIELD AND JAWID MOJADDEDI

The translation of poetry is much more difficult than other types of translations because of its discourse and the ideology behind it. At present, ideological manifestations in the translation process are becoming more and more important in translation studies, because the discourse meaning is not only limited to the meaning of words and sentences but also depends on the occasional ideological representations of the main information of the discourse. Consequently, the present study was an attempt to conduct a critical discourse analysis of two translations of Rumi's the Mathnavi (Book Two) by Whinfield (۱۸۹۸) and Mojaddei (۲۰۰۷) to investigate what ideology was implied in these translations. The research design adopted for this study was both qualitative and descriptive; moreover, it was relied on interpretive analysis of the data. The corpus for this study comprised Book Two of Rumi's the Mathnawi, containing ۱۱۵ couplets. It was edited by M.A. Movahhed and published by Hermes Publications in ۲۰۱۷, along with its English translations of Whinfield (۱۸۹۸) and Mojaddedi (۲۰۰۷). From this corpus, ۵۰ couplets were randomly selected for analysis. The selected couplets were critically analyzed in three stages (description, interpretation and explanation) using Fairclough's (۱۹۸۹) model; then, the ideologically laden words which occurred in the selected couplets were tabulated and interesting patterns found were explained. At the final stage, a general discussion was held based on the results. The findings indicate that the two translations are ideologically different as the two translators belong in two different nationalities, religions and eras.