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Linguistic Approach toward Translating English Proverbs and Anti-Proverbs

into Persian

Article · December 2014

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 An Approach toward Translating English anti-proverbs into Persian

Mandana Kolahdouz Mohamadi*

PhD. Lecturer in Linguistics and Translation Studies at PNU University, Iran

Abstract— Proverbs are short wise sayings that are of many different types, anti–
proverbs are one of them. The present paper aims to investigate the methods of
translating English anti-proverbs into Persian especially the ones that concern three
corresponding SL/TL bases and proposes a theoretical model concerned with weak,
moderate and strong versions of conceptual translation equivalents to translate English
anti-proverbs to Persian to show that there are similarities and differences between
translating English proverbs and anti-proverbs into Persian.
Keywords— Translation; Persian/ English, Proverbs; Anti-proverbs
1. Introduction
Proverbs are concise, easy to remember and useful expressions that are used in every situation of
life due to their content of everyday experiences. Meider (2004) defines proverbs as short,
generally known sentences of the folk which contain wisdom, truth, morals, and traditional views
in a metaphorical, fixed and memorable form, which are handed down from generation to
generation and since they belong to the common knowledge of all native speakers, they are
indeed very effective devices to communicate wisdom and knowledge about human nature and
the world at large. They have been used to spread knowledge, wisdom and truths about life from
ancient times up until now. Proverbs change with time and culture, some old proverbs are not in
use any longer because they reflect a culture that no longer exists, e.g. let the cobbler stick to his
last, which has vanished more or less, because the profession of the cobbler nowadays is rare.
However, new proverbs that reflect the contemporary society are created instead, e.g. Garbage in,
garbage out, a proverb created due to our computerized time (Semenishena, 2013). In
contemporary paremiology, anti-proverbs are a category of proverbs coined by Wolfgang Mieder
which reflect changes in the word sequence of paremiological units to create humorous or
ironical effects, i.e. “parodied, twisted, or fractured proverbs that reveal humorous or satirical
speech play with traditional proverbial wisdom”( Ioan Milică ,2013). Anti-proverbs are created
as a result of many human beings traits e.g. innovation; humor; satire which impact on social

*
Corresponding author : manadana.mohamdi@gmail.com
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praxis and give birth to anti-proverbs (Bhuvaneswar, 2003). What is important is that to have full
effect an anti-proverb must be based on a known proverb “if at first you don’t succeed, quit” is
only a funny form of a standard proverb. Although Mieder (2007) considers most anti-proverbs
as one-day-wonders in that they will never enter general folk speech by gaining a certain
currency and traditionality, but most of them express new wisdom which now is accepted as
innovatively expressed wisdoms based on traditional proverbial structures. While a number of
linguistic studies in several languages have investigated these types of proverbs during past
twenty-five years but they have ignored the translatability importance of anti-proverbs as the
source of new folk proverbs. Thus, the present article aims to review the methods of translating
English proverbs into Persian especially the ones concerning three corresponding SL/TL bases:
form, content and context and for the first time proposes a theoretical model concerned with
weak, moderate and strong versions of conceptual translation equivalents to translate English
anti-proverbs to Persian. The significance of this study lays in the expression of Mieder (2007)
who believes that paremiologists are required to study these new proverbs and paremiographers
should definitely include anti-proverbs in their revised or new proverb collections, thus due to its
folkloric nature Persian is always in need of such proverbial lore studies.
2. Review of literature
To the best of the writers’ knowledge, there is no single and theoretical model concerned with the
translation of English anti-proverbs to Persian thus in this section the literature related to some
studies on English/ Persian anti-proverbs and proverbs collections are reviewed. As mentioned
earlier anti-proverb is a category of proverb in which people twist familiar proverbs to change
the meaning. Sometimes the result is merely humorous, but the most spectacular examples result
in the opposite meaning of the standard proverbs. Examples include, "Nerds of a feather flock
together", "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and likely to talk about
it" and "Absence makes the heart grow wander". Anti-proverbs are common on T-shirts, such as
"If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you" (Mieder and Litovkina, 2002). Mieder
(2003) in his book collected more than 150 traditional proverbs and over 1000 anti-proverbs
drawn from a wide variety of contemporary sources. Litovkina and Mieder in their book
gathered a collection of more than 5000 anti-proverbs for 580 traditional proverbs and about the
international distribution of anti-proverbs stated that when translated from one language to
another an anti-proverb more often than not will lose its massage, nevertheless, there are the
cases in which an internationally spread proverb inspires parallel anti-proverb in two or more

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languages that can be considered as similar anti-proverbs (2006:9). Kolahdouz mohamadi (2012)
collected 400 Persian proverbs and anti-proverbs derived from them and concluded that like
other languages Persian enjoys anti-proverbs and the way they are formed is almost the same as
the way English or Russian anti-proverbs are formed.
3. Methodology
As it was mentioned earlier anti- proverbs are made based on generally known proverbs thus the
present paper used the weak, moderate and strong versions of Gorjian (2008) and Khoramshahi
(2004) models in order to propose a model for the translation of English anti-proverbs into Persian
thus first of all a brief review about the translation of proverbs was presented and then the proposed
model was introduced for each stage. It also should be mentioned that for the process of the
translation of English anti-proverbs to Persian two English and Persian corpora of anti-proverbs
were used. The former was collected by Mieder (2003) and the latter was the corpus of Persian
anti-proverbs which was collected by Kolahdouz Mohamadi (2012).
3.1. The Translation of English proverbs into Persian vs. English anti-proverbs into
Persian
Gorjian (2008) and Khoramshahi (2004) in their article introduced three strategies for the
translation of English proverbs into Persian in which the translator starts from the first strategy and
if there is no exact equivalent he/she shifts to the second strategy (i.e. near equivalent) and again if
there is no equivalent the translator tries to comprehend and interpret the message of proverb into
TL literally. These two researchers assert that the translator should not jump on the third strategy
before trying the first two. In order to give a precise perception about these three strategies, below
the comparison between them is provided.
3.1.1. Weak version
According to Gorjian (ibid.) and Khoramshahi (ibid.) the weak version in the proverb translation
occurs when there is not an equivalent of proverb in TL. In other words there are not shared
lexical, semantic and conceptual properties here, thus the translator comprehends and interprets the
meaning of the SL proverb and produces the massage in the form of a simple statement.
1. English proverb: an apple a day keeps the doctor away.
2. English interpretation: eating an apple each dry can help to keep your health.
3. Persian literal equivalent: .‫ شما را از مراجعه به پزشک بينیاز ميكند‬،‫خوردن یکعدد سیب در روز‬

On the other hand the weak version in the translation of English anti-proverbs is somehow like the

3
weak version in the translation of English proverbs; the main difference is that in the weak version
of anti-proverbs sometimes literal or metaphorical translation of anti- proverbs and sometimes both
of them are deduced. For instance in the anti-proverb “a slice of pizza a day keeps the doctor
away” which is derived from the previously mentioned proverb both metaphorical and un-
metaphorical translations can be considered. The metaphorical meaning conveys the less you eat
fast food the healthier you will be and the un-metaphorical meaning is the less you eat pizza itself
the healthier you are.
1. English anti-proverb: a slice of pizza a day keeps the doctor away.
2. Persian metaphorical translation: ‫با خوردن فست فود كمتر خود را از پزشک بي نیاز كنید‬

3. Persian literal translation: .‫خوردن یک تکه پیتزادر روز شما را از مراجعه به پزشک بي نیاز ميكند‬

3.1.2. Moderate version

The second version is the one in which there is a partial equivalent of proverbs in TL, in other
words unlike weak version there is a shared concept between proverb equivalent in SL and TL,
thus through getting the concept translator tries to find a near equivalent which is as close as
possible to the TL proverb.
1. English proverb: a bird in hand is worth two in bush
2. English interpretation: it’s better to have a less but sufficient.
3. Persian equivalent: ‫سركه نقد به از حلوای نسیه‬

Moderate version in anti-proverbs is slightly different in that while translating English moderate
version anti-proverbs to Persian the translator should not expect to find the same concept or even
anti-proverb with the SL one, like what was mentioned about the proverbs, instead he/she may
think about the proverb which anti- proverb is derived from so that he/she would be able to use half
of the proverb to translate the anti-proverb and once again trigger the proverb from which the anti-
proverb has been derived in the reader’s mind. For example the anti-proverb “Too many cooks
clutter up the kitchen” is derived from the proverb which says “Too many cooks spoil the broth”,
thus if the translator has the same equivalent proverb for it in mind so he can use the first part of
that and translate the rest metaphorically or un-metaphorically.
1. English anti-proverb: Too many cooks clutter up the kitchen.
2. Persian un-metaphorical translation: ‫آشپز كه دوتا شد تو آشپزخونه بریزو بپاش میشه‬

3. Persian metaphorical translation: ‫وسایل مدرن نه تنها كارایي زیادی ندارند بلکه دست و پا گیر نیز هستند‬

4
 3.1.3. Strong version
The last version is the strong version in which Gorjian (ibid.) and Khoramshahi (ibid.) believe that
there is an exact TL equivalent which is matched with the proverb in SL. In other words, there are
shared lexical, semantic and conceptual properties existing in both SL and TL. This one-to-one
correspondence between the two equivalents can be achieved if the translator follows up the steps
mentioned earlier in this article.
1. English proverb: Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today
3. Persian conceptual equivalent: ‫كار امروز را به فردا میفکن‬

This version also can be found among anti-proverbs as well in which the English anti-proverb
and its translation may share the same lexical, semantic and conceptual properties so in this case
which is a bit rare among anti proverbs the translator can have one – to- one correspondence.
1. English anti-proverb: Don't do today what you can put off until tomorrow.
2. Persian conceptual equivalent: ‫كار امروز را به فردا بیفکن‬

4. Results and discussion

This study compared the methods of translating English proverbs and anti-proverbs into Persian, it
can be concluded that there is a slight difference between translating English proverbs and anti-
proverbs into Persian since both of them can be translated through weak, moderate and strong
versions. It also can be said that what makes a significant difference between translating English
proverbs and anti-proverbs is that the latter uses proverbs in its translation but the former does not
and what makes a difference between strong , moderate and weak version of English anti-proverb
translation is that the first two use proverbs partially or as a whole but weak version does not and
what is similar between translating English proverbs and anti-proverbs into Persian is that weak,
moderate and strong versions can be applied while translating them into Persian. It is suggested
that the translators should know the three strategies and their mechanisms in rendering anti-
proverbs and should be acquainted with anti-proverbs then start to translate. In this case, they may
utilize three steps for finding equivalents in SL/TL and simultaneously should think about choosing
metaphorical or non-metaphorical translation for them. It seems that this model can be used for the
translation of English anti-proverbs to other languages or vice versa since Joseph Raymond (1945),
Hanzén(2007) and Семенишена (2013) assert that proverbs are universal and there are analogous
proverbs in different nations that have related cultural patterns and according to what Litovkina &
Mieder (2006) have provided about the anti-proverbs the authors also found that this is also true

5
about the translation of anti-proverbs where different nations make anti-proverbs out of the
proverbs that have the same concepts and this can be considered as the strong version while
translating them e.g. below an example of the strong version among English, Hungarian, French
and Persian anti-proverbs can be found.
1. English: Don't do today what you can put off until tomorrow.
2. Hungarian: what I can do tomorrow, I do not do it today (amit holnap is megtehetsz, ne tedd meg
ma)
3. French: why put off until tomorrow what can be done next week (pourquoi remettre á demain
Ce qu'on peut faire la semaine prochaine)
4. Persian: ‫كار امروز را به فردا بیفکن‬

Another important finding of this study is related to the massage of anti-proverbs. As mentioned
earlier Litovkina & Mieder (2006) pointed out that by translating from one language to another an
anti-proverb lose its massage but the present study showed that in spite of the cultural differences,
while translating English anti-proverbs into Persian no significant changes were found in the
massage. Also our results showed that the number of weak version was more than the strong
version which shows that various languages are different in terms of using anti-proverbs e.g.
according to the recently conducted research (Kolahdouz mohamadi, 2012) the number of English
anti-proverbs were much more than Persian. On the other hand while proverbs are idiomatic anti-
proverbs are less idiomatic and this reveals their nature in translation. Anti-proverbs enjoy mostly
literal and less idiomatic translation than proverbs. According to Litovkina (2004),
Zakharova(2009) and others it seems that just like proverbs, the use of anti- proverb in class not
only helps to diversify educational process and to make it brighter and more interesting but also it
helps to solve a number of very important educational problems. The use of proverbs in the
classroom can improve students’ learning experiences, their language skills, and their
understanding of themselves and the world.
5. Conclusion
The main outcome of this study was to classify SL/TL equivalents of anti-proverbs in English and
Persian but further investigation is needed in this area. This study once again showed that although
there exists some differences in folklore and proverb lore of nations, their nature is always
dynamic, productive and effective.
Acknowledgment

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We take this opportunity to express our profound gratitude and deep regards to Prof. Mieder for his
exemplary guidance, monitoring and constant encouragement throughout our study on anti-
proverbs. The blessing, help and guidance given by him time to time shall carry us a long way in
the journey of life on which we are about to embark.
References
Bhuvaneswar, C. (2003). Proverbium 20 (2003): A review of English articles. Afriprov.
Retrieved May17, 2012 from http://www.afriprov.org/index.php
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literature. Retrieved Nov.15, 2013 from rusnauka:
www.rusnauka.com/7_NITSB_2013/Philologia/1_130648.doc.htm
Gorjian, B. (2008).Translating English proverbs into Persian: A case of comparative linguistics.
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Hanzen, M. (2007). ―When in Rome, do as the Romans do": Proverbs as a part of EFL
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 Mieder, W., & Litovkina, A. T.(2002). Twisted wisdom: modern anti-proverbs. De Proverbio,
electronic book publisher at the University of Tasmania, Australia.
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April 9, 2013, from http://festival.1september.ru/articles/572596/

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