Hedging And Translation

Hedging is defined as degree of doubt or skepticism. It is a strategy which is used by all people in general and scientific scholars in particular. Scientists sometimes have doubt in expressing their statements. As a result, they use some structures in order to avoid certainty and confidence e.g. modality. They use modal verbs like may, might, can, could, and shall. For instance, instead of saying ,"water absorbs the heat of sun" scientists will say " water may absorb the heat of the sun". There are some other strategies and structures like lexical verbs such as seem, suggest,appear,?etc. Adjectival,nominal and adverbial clauses are used for hedging in scientific texts. For instance, in the following we have:
1. Adjective: possible, probable?etc.
2. Nouns:possibility,estimate,suggestion?etc.
3. Adverbs: perhaps, probably,apparently?etc.
In this study, the writer tries to compare and contrast the range of hedging between Persian and English. To do so, a psychological book was selected known as "synopsis of psychiatry". Then, its Persian translation was chosen. After that, different hedging strategies which were used in the book synopsis of psychiatry will be taken out. After wards, hedging structures in its Persian translation will be found. Consequently, these two hedging types will be compared and contrasted. For reaching the purpose of this study the following questions will be drawn.

1. what are the hedging strategies in source and target languages?
2. what is hedging in scientific text?
3. Which text is more hedged_based?
4. Are hedging strategies avoidable?

Hedging is a strategy which is about doubtness and skepticism on scientific facts. There are at least three important models. The first model was signed by Ken Hyland. Hyland (1996) designed a graph for possible hedges. He considered writer_oriented hedges,reader_oriented hedges, and contend_oriented hedges. Zadeh (1972) defined another taxonomy for hedge in scientific texts.
One of the most important categories drawn by Salager_Meyer(1980) described a taxonomy for hedges. His taxonomy includes Model verbs, adjectival, adverbial, and nominal phrases, approximators, introductory phrases, if clauses, and compound hedges.


Objective of the study



1.Finding the various aspects of scientific hedging.
2.charecterizing various kind of hedging.
3.comparing two different language via hedge.

The result of this study will help the translators to render more accurately. The method of this study is both qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative part is responsible for comparison of hedge across two languages. However, quantitative part takes core of frequencies and percentageof the study.

For the analysis of the study the following steps will be taken:

1. Collection the hedge _based sentences both in Persian translation &English book
2. comparing them according to an appropriate model .
3.drawing conclusion on the different hedging strategies and structures between two languages.
4. considering frequency &percentage of hedging strategies across languages.