Discourse and Religious Texts Translation: a Case Study of Imam Ali's (A.s) Hammam Sermon of Nahjol-balagha Translation into English

Evaluating the quality of translation is one the most difficult area in the field of Translation Studies. It focuses on the inter-relationships between the text translated from Source Text and the text translated into Target Text. The main issue in this case is how to measure and express the quality of translation. This study aims at detailed investigation of House's (1997) Translation Quality Assessment model in two English Translations of Hammam Sermon (the characteristics of pious) of Imam Ali?s (A. S) Nahjul-Balaghah in order to determine the quality of these translations on three different levels: 1) Language/Text, 2) Register(Field, Mode and Tenor) and 3) Genre. Then, the two translational models of overt and covert are utilized in the analysis of translations. One of the important implications of the results obtained in this study is that students learn how to analyze Source Text and Target Text in order to find the quality of the translated text from Arabic into English; as a result they can translate more efficiently and the findings of this study are hoped to be of help to trainers of would-be translators and those who are interested in the field of Translation Studies.