IRANIAN MALE AND FEMALE LEARNERS' CREATIVITY IN NEWS TRANSLATION FROM A SOCIOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE

Access Open ABSTRACT Purpose: This article investigates the difference between Iranian male and female learners' creativity and their use of translation strategies in news translation from a sociolinguistic perspective. Approach/Methodology/Design: In terms of the sample, 50 (24 male and 26 female) M.A students of the English Translation at Islamic Azad University, Marvdasht Branch were randomly selected as participants of the study. Abedi's Creativity Test (1983) was used to differentiate male and female students' creativity. The test included 60 questions and was designed based on four different subcategories of creativity. Saibua's Model (1985) was used to assess the strategies applied in the process of translation by male and female translators. Findings: There is no significant difference between Iranian male and female students’ level of creativity and their use of translation strategies in news translation at P ≤ 0.05. Practical Implications: The results can be used to uncover the difference between male and female learners’ levels of creativity in transferring source text to target text. Various news translators can draw on the results of this study as a guideline to solve problems that could occur when translating because the strategies mentioned in this study are applicable. In addition, the results may be helpful for the translators of any kind of text because the concepts of these strategies can be adapted or applied for almost every type of text. Originality/value: The study investigates the difference between male and female learners' ability to transfer ST to TT by using translation strategies.


INTRODUCTION
Creativity is a personal feature and is one of the most crucial issues for individual characters; however, only recently in the history of translation, translators have been regarded more as textual creators in their own right. Wilss (1988, in Kubmaul, 1995 considered a translator's work as ''re-creative rather than creative'' (Kubmaul, 1995, p. 41), as they are limited when they produce the target text by the source text. Over the years, researchers have tried to investigate the differences between the way males and females acquire/learn the language and the way they use language and communicate. ''The most distinctive trait of human translation is its creativity, for translation involves choices that are not determined by pre-set rules'' (Delisle, 1988, p. 37). On the other hand, throughout history, language-related differences between males and females have been the subject of a considerable amount of studies (Matud, Rodríguez & Grande, 2007), and several studies have shown significant differences between males and females (Abra & Valentine-French, 1991;Averill, 1999;Tsai, 2012).
Different reasons have been suggested as the causes of these differences such as mental, physical, behavioral, etc. (Stolitzfus, Nibbelink, Vredenburg & Thyrum, 2011;He & Wong, 2011). This is back to the view of translation as a problem-solving process, the male and female learners' skill lies in the ability to use appropriate problem-solving strategies in translation. Balacesco and Stefinik (2003) distinguished between theoretical approaches that focus on creativity in translation as a problem-solving activity (Guilford, 1968) and those that focus on the aspect of novelty. Domestication and Foreignization are two basic strategies in translating news, and "provide both linguistic and cultural guidance" (Yang, 2010, p. 1). As one of the text types and genres of translation, news translation has its specifications. Gambier (2006) believed that three important issues are mirroring in translating news, and since these features are indispensable features of news texts per se, these issues can be a call for new research topics.
The main objective of the current study is to probe into the difference between Iranian male and female students' levels of creativity during news translation. News translation is an important issue because one newspaper can tell about almost every important event that may happen in the world. People are nowadays familiar enough with newspapers so that they may look over those important sections that can open their eyes to other parts of the world. How could we know what is happening in other countries if there were no translators? Translators play an important role in helping readers go stay connected with world situations. In this vein, this study aims at investigating the difference between male and female learners' ability to transfer ST to TT by using translation strategies.
Based on the above objectives, this study seeks to answer the following question: Is there any significant difference between Iranian male and female students' creativity and their use of translation strategies in news translation? Considering the research question, the following hypothesis was formulated: there is no significant difference between males' and females' creativity and their use of translation strategies for news translation.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Based on Perteghella (2006), creativity is considered as "an activity that is similar to a practical thinking skill'' (p. 9). Translation is a creative and challengeable activity because the translator accommodates the source text with the target text by translation strategies. When the translator faces translation problems, or when he/she cannot follow the translation methods, he/she must have his own ways to achieve it. Translation theorists discussed some points, which can be used as translation strategies. Saibua (1985) states that "the first aim of news is to report a factual event(p. 93). Its writing style is unique in both vocabulary and structure of words and sentences". News is not very complicated because it is written for readers of different backgrounds, e.g. lifestyle, education, or attitudes. Sibua's model is divided into the lexical and syntactic levels and these levels have nine subcategories.
According to Von Flotow (2001), the issue of gender and translation is investigated in the issues of identity, historical studies, theoretical considerations, post-colonial questions, and questions of cultural transfer. While most of the research regarding gender in translation can deal with the issue of gender identity and its effect on their translations, the present study is on the difference between males' and females' levels of creativity in news translation.
In their article "Gender Differences in Creativity", Baer and Kaufman (2008), presented a comprehensive review of literature on gender differences in creativity up to the present day. Creativity in translation is often understood as belonging exclusively to the realm of literary translation. On the other hand, Charytone, Basham and Elliot (2008) reported that there were not significant gender differences between university students in terms of general creativity measures. There have been many studies conducted to explore and highlight these differences between male and female in many fields of studies such as psychology, biology, medicine, education, management, marketing, etc. (Golavar, 2009). While the various definitions and approaches are not mutually exclusive, research on creativity in translation can be considered along two main axes: empirical-experimental approaches that investigate the cognitive process involved in translating, and literary-cultural approaches that investigate parallels between translating and other forms of creative writing, as well as exploring creativity and translation within particular sociocultural, political and historical contexts. As Chavez-Eakle, Eakle, and Cruz-Fuentes (2012) stated, the creativity enhances human adaptation to the environment and circumstances. Jääskeläinen (2012) pointed out, creativity plays a role whenever there is no ready-made answer; therefore, ''creativity is a part and parcel of the cognitive problem-solving in other kinds of translation tasks as well' ' (p. 193).
The discrepancy in creativity, regarding gender, has also been found in different cultures. Oral, Kaufman and Agars (2007) utilized two different tests-the Alternate Uses Test (Christensen, Guilford, Merrifield, & Wilson, 1960) and the Consequences Test (Christensen, Merrifield, & Guilford, 1958)-to measure the creativity of schoolchildren in Turkey. The results showed no gender differences on the Alternate Uses Test, but females scored higher on the Consequences Test. Cheung and Lau (2010) used the Wallach-Kogan Creativity Tests (Wallach & Kogan,1965) on schoolchildren in Hong Kong. Their results showed that middle school girls outperformed boys in several dimensions of creativity. By canonical correlation analysis, Ai (1999) found that Spanish male and female students showed different aspects of creativity related to academic achievement. For male students, flexibility was the predominant factor that related to academic performance, while for females, fluency and elaboration were more important factors. He suggested that the gender differences in creativity could be in part influenced by gender roles.
Considering the above-mentioned points, males and females have differences that are certainly associated with their physical and mental distinctions, and hence the creative performance might be different. In this vein, the present study explores the difference between males' and females' creativity and their use of translation strategies for news translation.

Participants
The participants of this study were 50 male and female English Translation students at Islamic Azad University, Marvdasht Branch. For the selection of the participants, the researcher used random sampling. Twenty-four of the participants were male and twenty-six were female. The participants' age ranged from 23 to 50.

Instruments
To collect the required data, a questionnaire called Abedi's Creativity Test was administered to examine the participants' level of creativity and to determine the creativity of males and females. This questionnaire consisted of 60 items in two tables: the first table required information about gender, age, and degree of participants; the second table included the 60 questions. The questionnaire comprised four subcategories (i.e., fluidity, expansion, innovation, and flexibility). Each question was indicative of the creativity from low to high level, and they were scored from one to three respectively. The total score on each subscale indicated the subjects' status in that section and the total score on the four subscales (fluidity, expansion, innovation, flexibility) which indicated the overall score and their creativity. The total score range was between 60 and 180 levels of creativity of each participant. Questions 1 to 22 were related to fluidity, 23 to 33 to expansion, 34 to 49 to innovation, and 50 to 60 to flexibility. These scores were gathered from four subcategories. In this questionnaire, the person who had a higher score was more creative. To ensure the validity of the questionnaire items, the confirmation of two experts of English language translation was sought. The reliability of this questionnaire was calculated through Cronbach's alpha. The index calculated for all items was above 0.7, which indicated that the reliability of questionnaire items was acceptable.
In addition, to investigate the strategies used by creative male and female translators for translation journalistic texts in this study, Saibua's model (1985) was applied to a conveniently selected sample of participants from the English Department, Marvdasht Branch of Islamic Azad University. For this purpose, an assortment of international newspapers, magazines and articles were selected for assessing males' and females' creativity in news translation. Saibua's model (1985) was designed for news translation to report the factual events and comprised the following taxonomies: adding explanation, using phrases or sentences instead of words, using words referring to general meaning instead of specific meaning, adding conjunction between phrases or sentences, omitting words or idioms, transliterating sound from SL to TL, modifying the structure of words, modifying the structure of sentences, and arranging structure in a paragraph.

Procedures
To handle the performance of the participants, the researchers considered the standard time for the questionnaire around 15 minutes. 50 questionnaires were distributed among students of English language translation (based on accessibility) in the spring semester of 2017-18 and all the questionnaires were filled and given back in two weeks. Descriptive and inferential statistics were collected and to analyze the data, independent samples t-test was run using SPSS (version 24).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
To answer the research question and probe the difference between males' and females' creativity in translation strategies for translating news, descriptive statistics and independent samples t-test were used. In Table 1 the mean and standard deviation of the four subcategories of the creativity test are presented. As shown in Table 1, the mean score of expansion of the male respondents was more than females' expansion, but the mean scores of fluidity, innovation, and flexibility of female respondents were more than those of the males. Thus, it was remarkable that in female translators the mean score of expansion was lower among the other subcategories of the creativity test.

Figure 1. Comparison of Male and Female Students' Level of Fluidity
Fluidity as the first subcategory of Abedi's creativity test shows the variability level of creativity between male and female participants. Considering Figure 1, the mean score of the fluidity of the males was 48.08%, and that of females was 48.80%, which showed the latter group was so slightly outperforming the former (i.e., 0.72%).

Figure 2. Comparison of Males and Females Level of Expansion
Expansion is the second subcategory of Abedi's creativity test that shows the extension level of creativity between males and females. As it is shown in Figure 2, the mean score of expansion of the males was 22.29%, and that of the females was 21.61%. Thus, the mean score of expansion of the males was 0.68% more than the females, which seems so slight that it can be assumed there is not much difference between them.

Figure 3. Comparison of Males and Females Level of Innovation
Innovation is the third subcategory of Abedi's creativity test that shows the novelty level of creativity between males and females. The mean score of innovation of the males was 34.20% and the females was 34.69%, thus the mean score of females was 0.49% greater than that of males. Flexibility is the fourth subcategory of Abedi's creativity test that shows the suppleness level of creativity between males and females. The mean score of flexibility of the males was 25.83% and that of the females was 25.88%. Thus, the mean score of the females was only 0.05% greater than that of males. To identify whether there is any significant difference between males' and females' levels of creativity, independent samples t-test was run, the result of which is shown in Table 2.

Source: Author
As shown in Table 2, the significance level is above 0.05, and hence there is no significant difference between males' and females' levels of creativity in terms of fluidity, expansion, innovation, and flexibility. In other words, both males and females approximately have the same level of creativity and it seems that gender does not play a determining role in creativity. The strategies used by male and female respondents based on Saibua's model are presented in Table 3. According to Table 3, it appears that both male and female groups employed arranging the structures in a paragraph, using conjunction between phrases or sentences, and modifying the structure of words as the most widely used strategies. On the other hand, the lowest strategy used was using words referring to general meaning instead of specific meaning. To investigate the significant difference between males' and females' creativity and their use of translation strategies in news translation, independent samples t-test was used, the results of which are shown in Table 4. As shown in Table 4, there is no significant difference between males' and females' creativity and their use of translation strategies in news translation. The major objective of the present research was to find out the response to the question of whether is there any significant difference between males' and females' creativity and their use of translation strategies in news translation. First, the mean scores of the four subcategories of fluidity, expansion, innovation, and flexibility used by the males and females were obtained. Then, independent samples t-test was run to show the difference between males' and females' creativity.
Moreover, to find out the difference between males' and females' use of translation strategies an independent samples t-test was used to show the difference between males' and females' use of translation strategies in news translation. What is shown in this study is that creativity had an important role in applying translation strategies, and solving the translation problems, but there is no significant relationship between the translator's creativity and their use of translation strategies for translation journalistic texts. In the same vein, Ruschiensky (2015) carried out a research study about competence and creativity in Translation and revealed some results in line with this study.
Similarly, Tavajjohi (2012) explored the relationship between creativity and quality of translation regarding literary and journal texts and showed that creativity is a relative concept in people's personality, while there is no significant relationship between creativity and quality of translation neither in the literary text nor in journalistic texts. Also, Wang (2010) carried out a research on translating style, constraints and creativity and concluded that style is an important factor to be considered in cross-cultural, cross-lingual translation. On the other hand, the study revealed that there is no significant difference between males' and females' creativity and their use of translation strategies in news translation. Therefore, in translation evaluation, both males and females had the same level of creativity, and the gender of the respondents is not very determining. In other words, gender does not play an important role in translation creativity.
The results of the current study are consistent with the result of the study by Charytone, Basham and Elliot (2008) in which they reported that there were no significant gender differences between university students in terms of general creativity measures. On the other hand, the results are not in line with the results of the research conducted by Baer and Kaufman (2008) who indicated that creativity in translation is often understood as "belonging exclusively to the realm of literary translation" (pp. 75-105).

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
This study mainly aimed at investigating the difference between Iranian male and female students' creativity and their use of translation strategies in news translation. The results showed that there is no significant difference between Iranian male and female students' level of creativity and their use of translation strategies in news translation at P ≤ 0.05. Abedi's creativity test (1983) was used to measure males' and females' creativity. Saibua's model (1985) was also used to assess the strategies applied in the process of translation by male and female translators. The results of this study can be worthwhile for researchers who intend to investigate the role of creativity in the translation of a variety of texts and genres. The results can also be used to uncover the difference between male and female learners' levels of creativity in transferring source text to target text. Various news translators can draw on the results of this study as a guideline to solve problems that could occur when translating because the strategies mentioned in this study are applicable. On the other hand, the results may also be helpful for the translators of different text types, because the concepts of these strategies can be adapted or applied for almost every type of text. In addition, the instructors who teach journalism or other related fields can make use of such studies to clarify differences between English and Persian news structures. Future research on the analogous topic can address creativity interference in making translators (un)biased when they are translating literary texts or in which ways the strategies could be used by translators to manipulate the journalistic discourses in terms of the different ideologies in the production of source and target texts.