the structure and context in translation of religious texts comparative analysis of two translations of nahj-al-balaghah by shahidi and dashti

due to its specific characteristics, special theoretical principles are involved in translation of religious text. the texts of this genre are classified into two categories of divine and non-divine each with its own considerations in the act of translation. nahj-al-balaghah is one of the non-divine islamic texts. two of the well-known translations of it into persian are those by seyed jafar shahidi and mohammad dashti the translation style of each is different from the other. the results of the comparative study of these two cases of translation indicates that shahidi was inclined more to the form of the source text and tried to preserve the aesthetic elements, literary factors, cultural historical and geographical context, and the compendious and old language of the source text in his translation. this inclination severs the connection of his translation with the contemporary linguistic spirit and sacrification of the fluency resulted in reduction of communicative ability of his translation. dashti’s translation, on the contrary, is more reader-oriented and it is compiled based on the characteristics of the contemporary language which results in a fluent text. but this approach resulted in sacrification of some features of the source text and in some cases in non-equivalency in translation.