The Status of Intercultural Mediation in Translation: Is it an Absolute License?

The role of translator as the ‘Sprachmittler’ or intercultural mediator has welcomed much attention since the ‘cultural turn’ paradigm. The present research paper seeks to figure out how the manifestations of intercultural mediation are achieved in via translation in terms of two mediation facets, viz, personal and communicated interpretations. Whereas the former deals with the presence of the translator between the source and target cultures, the latter concerns with the role of the reader of the translated text in the target language through some mediational strategies including: expansion, reframing, replacement, eschewing dispreferred structure, and dispensation to capture the message of the source text. The rationale for focusing these strategies lies in the fact that translators often utilize transliteration and literal translation strategies when it comes to cultural items and concepts. As far as literature review indicates, mediational translation has not received due attention in the Persian language since it differs in comparison to from other languages such as English, French, etc. in case of language patterning, such study reveals some novel but applicable cultural translation strategies that highlight the nature of mediation in cultural translation.status: publishe