A Domain Analysis Survey on A Course on Persian Literary Translation

What is it about?

Although courses in translation are common in higher education in Iran, in North America, there are very few programs that are specifically on translation. This paper aims at defining the domain analysis for a course on Persian literary translation as an advanced level Persian course. To that end, the stakeholders in this study as well as the documents to be used in the study will be determined, and through a qualitative survey, the curriculum of the course will be developed. The particular domain of this study are undergraduate and graduate students at the Intermediate High or higher level of Persian who want to be able to use their language skills in their academic and/or professional careers. Translation is an important way for them to do this. The target use domain is academic and professional translation of written texts between Persian and English. The stakeholders in this study are: 1) Professional translators because they know the knowledge skills and attitudes that are necessary to actually work in the field, 2) Former students of languages who have used their languages skills in translation because they can tell us what skills they did and did not acquire at the university that helped or would have helped them in translation, and 3) Faculty and instructors who teach language and/or translation because they have expertise in what skills are teachable within the context of a university course. The documents to be used include: 1) Literature review to determine the most recent and applicable discourse topics, trends, and values in the field of translation studies, 2) Job postings that mention translation as one of the necessary skills because they provide information about what employers are looking for, and 3) Programs and course descriptions, syllabi, and required materials of other academic programs in translation as they can provide us with information about what is already in place in the field of translation studies. The research tools to collect the data are questionnaires and interviews. The results of the study will be used to objectively create the curriculum of a new course in Persian literary translation.

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