English to Persian Translation Accuracy of “Rules and Regulations” of International Banking System

This study comparatively analyzed the English to Persian translations of “rules and regulations” of the International banking system, at lexicon, phrase, sentence and paragraph levels to find out if the translations had been semantically comparable to their English versions. The translated texts, together with their English scource texts, were handed in to raters to assess and score semantically based on a three-point scale of “incorrect”, “fair” and “correct”. According to the results, the majority (96%) of lexicons had been translated correctly into Persian, while a small percentage of translated lexicons (3%) had a fair quality and an even smaller percentage (1%) were incorrectly translated. As for the phrases, most of them (86%) had been translated correctly into Persian, while a small percentage of translated phrases (8%) had a fair quality and an even smaller percentage (6%) had been incorrectly translated. Regarding sentences, 44% of their translations had a good and 44% had fair quality, whereas some smaller numbers (12%) had been incorrectly translated. Compared to previous components, i.e. lexicon and phrases, the percentage of incorrect translations had noticeably increased at the level of sentence. Yet, the mean words in Persian sentences (i.e., 23.48) were rather similar to the source language sentences (i.e., 25.72). Regarding paragraphs, 40% of the translations had a good and 40% had a fair quality, but a significant number (20%) had incorrect translations. So, unlike the lexicons and phrases, a significant number of sentences and paragraphs had semantically been inaccurately translated. In addition, the mean number of words in Persian paragraphs (64.6) was considerably smaller than the mean words in English paragraphs (71.1).     Keywords: Semantic accuracy in translation, English to Persian, Banking rules and regulation