A Cultural Semiotic Approach to Study Mina Sarabi’s Persian Translation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of D’Urbillvilles

It is a thorny bottleneck for the translators to translate a literary work loaded with clusters of signs and symbols. This study attempted to explore the translation strategies used for the transference of Tess of D’Urbillvilles, a time-honoured English novel written by Thomas Hardy, to Persian, namely Tess carried out by Mina Sarabi in 1983. Investigation of the fundamental requirements for an effective transference of literary semiotics presupposes a thorough grasp of the source and target languages and their respective cultures. The findings of the study indicated that the translation strategies employed for such transference were many, including (cultural) adaptation, addition, assimilation, domestication, expansion and modulation. The study certified that Tess constituted an interlingual and intersemiotic version, as its translator transferred many different signs (linguistic, cultural, societal, religious and ideological) from English system of signs to Persian sign system.