The Effect of Lexicon-based Debates on the Felicity of Lexical Equivalents in Translating Literary Texts by Iranian EFL Learners

This study was an attempt to investigate the effect of lexicon-based debates on the felicity of lexical equivalents in translating literary texts by Iranian EFL learners.  To fulfill the purpose of this study, 59 university students, majoring in English Translation, were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups from a total of 73 students based on their performance on a mock TOEFL test. Next, a Translation Production Test (TPT), with two brief texts, was administrated to the participants of the study. As a prerequisite, the correlation between participants’ scores on TPT and LE (Lexical Equivalence) was calculated. The result indicated a highly positive correlation between students’ scores on the test of felicitous lexical equivalent selection and their sores on TPT performance. Then, the participants’ score on lexical equivalents were considered as a pretest to assess their ability to select the most appropriate equivalents in the translation of literary texts from L1 to L2. Finally, after a fourteen-session instruction for the experimental group, the participants sat for another TPT, which included two other brief Persian literary texts that were used to investigate the effect of the intervention. The result of statistical analyses indicated that there existed a significant statistical difference between the means of the experimental group (EG) and the control group (CG).