International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation ISSN: 2617-0299 (Online); ISSN: 2708-0099 (Print) DOI: 10.32996/ijllt Journal Homepage: www.al-kindipublisher.com/index.php/ijllt Page | 157 Analyzing Lexical Items and the Thematic Structures of Two Translations of to Have or to Be by Eric Fromm Mohammad Amin Mozaheb 1 ✉ Amir Ghajarieh 2 and Heshmat Sepehriniya 3 1 Assistant Professor, Department of Foreign Languages, Language Center, Imam Sadiq University, Tehran, Iran 2 Assistant Professor, Translation Studies Department, Ershad Institute of Higher Education, Tehran, Iran 3 MA in Translation Studies, Ershad Institute of Higher Education, Tehran, Iran ✉Corresponding Author: Mohammad Amin Mozaheb, E-mail: dr.mozaheb@isu.ac.ir ARTICLE INFORMATION ABSTRACT Received: 16 October 2021 Accepted: 21 November 2021 Published: 30 November 2021 DOI: 10.32996/ijllt.2021.4.11.17 There are different ways of assessing the quality of a good translation. This study tried to approach this task using House's (2015) translation quality assessment (TQA) model and Baker's (2018) marked thematic structure model, each introducing new ideas and novel ways to assess the quality of a translated work. Having reviewed the alternative TQA models, this study aims at a detailed investigation of House’s Model and its potential power to predict the errors in the Persian translation of chosen psychological work for this study. As a kind of complementary assessment for the source text (ST) and its two target texts (TTs), Baker's model was used to compare ST marked thematic structures with their TTs equivalents. Persian translations of Eric Fromm’s To Have or To Be on the basis of two chosen models were carried out. First, the errors (overt and covert errors), as well as thematic structures (marked vs. unmarked), were identified and classified, and then the frequency of their occurrences was computed to see whether there is any statistically significant difference. The results indicated that out of 100 selected items of the source text, TT1 and TT2 had 22 and 77 overtly erroneous items, respectively. The most frequent errors especially in TT2 by Mr. Tabrizi were mistranslation, breach of TL system, omission, and addition. The only covert error was a tenor mismatch between the writer of the source text and the translator of the target text. Since in two particular pieces of translation especially TT2, there were a lot of overt errors and according to House’s Model, a good translation has to be translated overtly and any deviation of it will be considered as an error, this translation can be considered as a covert rather than an overt translation. Considering the marked thematic structures, with the percentage of 94.5 and 79 in TT1 and TT2 by Mr. Sabouri and Mr. Tabarizi, it can be claimed that there was a high degree of correspondence between ST and its two TTs for marked structures. The product of this study could be beneficial for translators of psychological works to get familiar with problems in translation of these books as well as strategies used to cope with such problems. KEYWORDS Covert error, overt error, translation quality assessment, Housing model, Baker's model, marked and unmarked structure 1. Introduction 1 In the globalization age with multi-voice nationalities and cultural differences, translation becomes a necessity more than ever. Translation plays different roles and purposes based on the requirements of society. There are different text types and genres in that each one specifies a specific approach to translation. Translation theories as what is expected by scholars most of the time are not in line with procedures applied in translation by translators and it seems that there are some gaps between translation theory and procedure. One of these gaps may be because of using different strategies used by translators. It is supposed that these gaps can be the result of a lack of consideration of different aspects of translation, cultural differences, and improper selection of translators (Vermes, 2001). Copyright: © 2021 the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Published by Al-Kindi Centre for Research and Development, London, United Kingdom.