A Skopos-theoretical Analysis of Political Texts from English into Persian: The Case of Donald Trump’s Executive Orders

The present study attempted to investigate Schjoldager's (2008) taxonomy of translation microstrategies applied by the translator for translating "Donald Trump’s Executive Orders." This led to determine the most/least microstrategies and translation macrostrategy employed by the translator as well as his success in producing the TT and in fulfilling the skopos of the translation. To achieve this, 20 English versions of "Donald Trump’s Executive Orders" were chosen as the sample of analysis and compared with their Persian translations. As the results indicated, among Schjoldager's translation microstrategies, the translator employed all 12 strategies. This includes direct transfer, calque, direct translation, oblique translation, explicitation, paraphrase, adaptation, addition, condensation, substitution, deletion, and permutation of which explicitation and direct transfer were the most/least used microstrategies. Based on the findings, TT-oriented strategies have been used more than ST-oriented ones. Thus, under the skopos theoretical approach, the translator was successful in translating "Donald Trump’s Executive Orders" and in fulfilling the skopos of the translation. This was because of that translations made by him were easy to understand to all types of TT readers. This study offers some helpful pedagogical implications to translation students and trainees, teachers, and those responsible for teaching students and training translators.