tracing transculturation in translated persian advertisements

As foreign products have been flooding onto the persian market, they put forward their adverts and launched a new channel of communication between transaction parties through the art of translation, using a wide variety of word combinations, linguistic means, figures of speech, visual metaphors and a full spectrum of strategies from complete transference of the source text into the target culture, to the creation of new texts based on advertisers briefs. this study explores the issue of translated advertising slogans in english and persian magazines from cultural viewpoints. in analyzing the corpus of slogans, the researcher adopted a descriptive and analytic approach in which one hundred and fifty english and their parallel translated persian adverts was examined. in the cultural analysis, traits of colonizer culture in colonized culture were investigated to highlight transculturation in translation of adverts. a postcolonial framework is used to set out changes in translation strategies, emphasize the role of power differentials and make predictions for practice. the choice of strategy, as appeared, depends on the power balance between the agents of translation; including not only translators, but also advertisers, designers, governments, text receivers and on the cultural, historical and economic situation in which the translation takes place. seeing translated adverts as contact zones where different cultures meet, the empirical research centers on the absorption of the dominant s culture into that of the subjugated, and focuses on the interaction of foreign and native elements in these translated adverts. the results show that the post-colonial contact zone is a mixture of colonizer and colonized; and demonstrate the necessity of giving translators the power their expert status deserves if translated adverts are to persuade the target audience.