English to Persian Translation Accuracy of “Rules and Regulations” of In-Ternational Banking System

Abstract

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, the
 majority (40%) of the translations had either a good or fair quality, while a significant
 number (20%) had been incorrectly translated. 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).