Translation Strategies of Culture Specific Items from English to Persian in Translation of Othello

Translation has always been considered as the main communication tool among nations with different languages and cultures. The aim of this research was to identify translation strategies of culture specific items (CSIs) in translation of Othello written by William Shakespeare. The corpus of this study was Othello and its Persian translation by Abdolhossein Nooshin. To begin with, the English culture specific items and the corresponding translations of them were identified. The next step was to determine the strategies used by the translator according to Newmark s translation model. The items were then categorized into several tables to specify the frequency of each strategy. After collecting and analyzing data, it was determined that the most frequently used strategy applied by the translator was cultural equivalent. Then, they were classified based on Venuti s domestication and foreignization theory one by one. It was finally concluded that the translator used domestication strategy more frequent than the foreignization strategy. The findings of this research also suggested that Venuti s model is not adequate enough because it is too general and therefore it should have subcategories in domestication and foreignization to be more suitable for adequate analysis of translated texts.