Abstract Translation of masterpieces of a nation’s classic literature poses great challenges to translators. One of the major challenges is the issue of dealing with culturally-bound expressions (CBEs). In the current study, the researcher aimed at exploring the effect of time-span on rendering Sa’di’s Gulistan. To this end, two English translations by Ross (1823) and Arnold (1899) were studied based on Davies’s (2003) model. She has proposed seven procedures among which ‘Preservation’, ‘Transformation’, and ‘Omission’ were deemed low-productive. These, together with ‘Mistranslated’ CBEs, were regarded as a criterion for assessing the performance of the two translators on lexical-semantic level. As far as rendering CBEs were concerned, findings of the study showed that time-span has had no positive effect on avoiding low-productive procedures. Since most of the challenging CBEs were categorized in the realm of ‘Social life’ and ‘Religion’, the prospective translators, who intend to re-translate a classical Persian masterpiece, are highly recommended to gain adequate knowledge in the two realms. Inaccessibility to other translations of the Gulistan was a limitation of the study; therefore, researchers are suggested to find other translations from the 20th or 21st century and also focus on other potential factors affecting the quality of rendering CBEs.

Abstract Translation is not merely a mater of linguistics. The major goal of the present paper is to investigate the relationship between ‘culture’ and ‘translation’. To this end, the researcher drew on a corpus from English and Persian languages. The findings indicated that although different languages, like English and Persian, employ different linguistic forms, this variety cannot be considered as a real challenge. Since during the process of translation, source text’s container (i.e. form) usually undergoes a sort of lexical, phonological, graphological and grammatical change, and source text’s content (i.e. meaning) is logically required to be held constant, accurate understanding of ST meaning and natural rendition into TL depends on the translator’s deep acquaintance with both TL and SL cultures. Resorting to a descriptive equivalent or using explanatory notes would be of great help for accurate rendition and would, consequently, lead to a deep and clear understanding of the TT on the part of the target audiences.

Resumo A tradução não é apenas uma questão de linguística. O objetivo principal do presente artigo é investigar a relação entre “cultura” e “tradução”. Para tanto, a pesquisadora utilizou um corpus das línguas inglesa e persa. Os resultados indicaram que, embora diferentes idiomas, como inglês e persa, empreguem formas linguísticas diferentes, essa variedade não pode ser considerada um verdadeiro desafio. Uma vez que durante o processo de tradução, o conteúdo do texto fonte (ou seja, a forma) geralmente sofre uma espécie de mudança lexical, fonológica, grafológica e gramatical, e o conteúdo do texto fonte (ou seja, o significado) é logicamente necessário para ser mantido constante, compreensão precisa do significado do ST e a tradução natural em TL depende do profundo conhecimento do tradutor com as culturas TL e SL. O recurso a um equivalente descritivo ou a utilização de notas explicativas seria de grande ajuda para uma interpretação precisa e, consequentemente, levaria a uma compreensão profunda e clara do TT por parte dos públicos-alvo.