An overview of Tarouf
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Tarouf
(„
tar-off’
) is a Farsi word which describes a complex cultural
construct. Three different English-Farsi dictionaries offer the following
translations:
- salutation, compliment, comity, chivalry
- compliment, ceremony, offer, present
- compliment(s), ceremony, offer, gift, flummery, courtesy, flattery,
formality, good manners, soft tongue, honeyed phrases.
Many of these words have only limited relation to each other, and this is
because they can be seen as facets of tarouf, and the kinds of behaviours
associated with it. Two examples illustrate tarouf more effectively than
these definitions. The first is an Iranian joke:
Many years ago, a young Persian woman became pregnant. The
months passed and she kept getting bigger, finally nine months
came but no baby came out. She kept getting bigger and
bigger…but still no baby! Years went by until she became an old
woman with a huge belly. Finally the doctors had a machine that
could look into her belly and see what was going on in there. They
looked inside and saw two men with beards saying to each other,
‘after you’, ‘no, after you’, ‘no please, after you’.
A second example was told to us by an Iranian about his cousin, born in
the UK of Iranian parents, who made his first visit to Iran in his early 20s.
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He took a taxi back to the airport, and he and the driver chatted for
the whole of the journey. When he got to the airport he asked the
driver to tell him the fare, but the driver said there was no charge, it
had been a pleasure to talk with him. My cousin didn’t know about
tarouf, so he took this at face value, thanked him profusely and left!
The driver, despite no doubt being aghast at this turn of events, let him go.
This illustrates that
tarouf
is deeply culturally embedded – the driver could
ill afford to offer a free fare for such a long journey, yet faced with a
customer who did not recognise the conventions of
tarouf
he felt unable to
step outside of them and demand the fare.
Welch, Welch and Piekkari (2005) identify three forms or layers of
language used in the workplace – everyday language, „company speak‟
and technical/professional/ industry language.
Tarouf
will most typically
be found at the level of everyday language, but its influence is likely to be
found at all layers, for example, even in technical presentations there will
be courtesies and conventions to be observed. One of the Iranian
managers noted „Iranian culture looks at language as an art and for this
reason they use
tarouf
so much in daily activities‟. Certainly it is „hard to
disentangle language effects from broader cultural influences‟ (Welch,
Welch and Piekkari, 2005: 14) – as well as being an untranslatable word,
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tarouf
is a deeply embedded part of Iranian culture which people deal with
on a daily basis, so it is important to examine it in terms of the concept just
as much as the word. With that in mind, we developed the following
empirical questions:
Q1: How do translators deal with the problem of translating the word
tarouf
?
Q2: In addition to the problems with the
word
, does the
concept
of
tarouf
have an impact on their role in facilitating communication between Farsi
and non-Farsi speakers in international business?
Q3: What are the implications of these issues for international business
communication?
Method
In order to explore the idea of
tarouf
as an „untranslatable‟ word, we
interviewed translators working in English and Farsi. We were unable to
secure access to translators through agencies, who appeared concerned
our approach was a ruse to gain access to translators without paying an
agency fee. We therefore adopted a snowball sampling approach, going
directly to individual translators based in Iran, and asking them to
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recommend other potential participants for us to contact. Clearly the study
was premised on our claim that
tarouf
is untranslatable, so we initially
asked all participants whether they agreed with that assertion. All
confirmed that it was so, and we proceeded to explore the three empirical
questions listed above via in-depth telephone interviews with 31
individuals – 16 translators (5 men, 11 women) and 14 interpreters (12
men, 2 women). Six of the interpreters were interviewed twice, and were
also sent follow-up e-mails seeking clarification of key points. It was not
possible to record the interviews so we were unable to produce
transcripts, however detailed notes were taken. The opportunity for
follow-up interviews and e-mails provided a further rigour to the data
gathering process. The question of the implications for international
business communication was something upon which they could provide
some insight, but we decided to compare their views to those of practising
managers so after completing the interviews with the translators, we
undertook telephone interviews with five managers (three Iranian, two
British) working for MNCs in Iran. The data analysis approached adopted
was somewhat simplistic, in that we treated the participants‟ response as
reporting fact, rather than as texts for analysis. This may seem an odd
approach, given that the very subject matter of language and translation
draws our attention to issues of discourse, language games etc. As our
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study was focused on examining how professional linguists handle the
issue of untranslatable words in their practice, and we therefore decided to
treat the interviews as broadly factual reports.
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