An Investigation of Strategies for Translating Onomatopoeias and Interjections in English Comic Books into Persian

The aim of this qualitative research was to investigate and assess the strategies used for translating onomatopoeias and interjections from English comic books into Persian. In this regard, six issues of the Walking Dead written by Kirkman (2003) were selected to examine onomatopoeias, interjections, and the strategies for translating them in three different translations. The sounds in the comic book were categorized based on the model presented by Igareda (2017). All translation strategies were indicated in order to identify the frequency of each strategy. Afterwards, the chi-square test was utilized to indicate the most and least frequently used strategies. The results of this study demonstrated that maintaining the original as an English loan was the most prevalent strategy used for translating all onomatopoeic words. Equivalence and substitution, together, were the least common strategies used for the translation of onomatopoeias in speech balloons. However, when onomatopoeias were in the background, the least common strategies were omission, changing the meaning, and so on. For translating interjections, the most frequent strategy was translating interjections into corresponding interjections, and the least common strategies were repetition, changing the meaning, and so forth.