Taher Mahmoudi

Context Familiarity and Translation of Political Texts: the Effect of Context Familiarity on the Translators of Political Texts Taher Mahmoudi

In this thesis the importance of context familiarity in translation of (journalistic) political texts is studied and evaluated. In this research two groups of translators (MA students of English language) were selected randomly and a (journalistic) political text was delivered to them, in order to translate it to Persian. For participants of the control group the context of given text (test) was left unknown and unclear intentionally, but for the experimental group`s participants, the context of the text was clarified, and the context has been explained in a written form. The analyzed results according to the model of House and Baker`s taxonomy showed that those translators who got familiar with the context of the texts did better in translation than those who were unfamiliar with the context of the text. The result shows that translators for doing a better translation should get familiar with the context before starting translation of a text, essentially in translation of (journalistic) political texts.