Translation historiography in the Modern World: Modernization and translation into Persian

Translation historiography in the Modern WorldModernization and translation into Persian

Omid AzadibougarKatholieke Universiteit Leuven

Nearly all scholarly works about the encounter of Iran with European modernity emphasize the role of translation not only in introducing new literary forms into the Persian literary system but also in becoming the main engine of change and modernization of the culture This paper concerns itself with this constructivist narrative of the available historiographical discourse and the translational envi-ronment between 1851 and 1921 in Iran After describing the field of translation in the period in question I challenge the uncritical conception of translation as a positive force by on the one hand investigating hypothetical cultural and linguistic implications and on the other hand questioning the power of transla-tion per se as ascribed to it in the above mentioned historiographical discourse in socio-cultural modernization This will prioritize the individual and cultural translational effects over the supposed institutional ones

Keywords modern Persian prose translation movements the Darolfonun the Constitutional Revolution translation historiography Iranian modernity

1 Translation studies in Iran and the Persian language

Even though translations are historical phenomena it is only relatively recently that they have been taken seriously by historians at least ldquohistoryrdquo mdash or rather ldquohistoriographyrdquo mdash has generally been written without any reference to transla-tional phenomena Hence it is all the more remarkable when in certain circum-stances in certain cultural environments historians take translation (more) seri-ously It is true that neither history nor historiography are well-defined kinds of narrative writing Most universities recognize history or historiography mainly as a national genre in which the history of the localnational culture is an object of study International historiography may be linked with the tradition of national

Target 222 (2010) 298ndash329 doi 101075target22206azaissn 0924ndash1884 e-issn 1569ndash9986 copy John Benjamins Publishing Company

Translation historiography in the Modern World 299

history but it is generally considered additional to the history of the national cul-ture In most cases various kinds of relations with the surrounding cultures are part of this historiography but translation is rarely an object of study in this field At the same time the history of translation(s) has become an object of study at a relatively late stage in Translation Studies and is often considered to be a subtopic within the cultural approach to translation

However some national historians are aware of the phenomenon of transla-tion and in this article I want to observe such a case namely the situation of Iranian cultural history in recent centuries This is particularly significant because the desire for participation in international cultural networks coupled with a fear of isolation has led to the ldquolocalrdquo historiographiesrsquo uncritical reiteration of those formulated abroad In my discussion I cannot yet answer larger cultural questions concerning the explanation of the sudden interest in translation among Iranian historians and whether this is a general interest in translation among historians or rather a specific interest in connection with particular moments in the coun-tryrsquos history This would require me to take into account the historiography of the surrounding countries (Israel Turkey India etc) including the history of coloni-zation and shifts in colonial (or postcolonial) relationships eg in the transition from more Europe-oriented partnerships into more USA-oriented partnerships (andor globalization) and that is beyond the scope of the present article

Not only history and historiography are complicated concepts in the context of the (Middle) East1 In presenting a study of narratives and narrativity I cannot establish a clear distinction between literature and cultural history as most West-European historical handbooks would do more or less explicitly It is clear that no historian would reduce his object of study only to literary texts nor to literary writings but the Great Books in many cultures tend to have literary qualities and also literary prestige

In Iranian culture however literary writings have a rather explicit position in the history of textual traditions but unlike European traditions Iranian ldquoLitera-turerdquo with a capital letter was not supposed to be written in prose until a given mo-ment in the early 20th century which implies that there are genre complications to the extent that narrative prose writing is the result of import (and translation) from European languages This may be one of the explanations of the unavoid-able link from the Iranian perspective between narrative prose (in literature) and translation

Nevertheless writing about translation in Iran is a difficult task for various reasons To begin with we are dealing with a colorful linguistic scene as there are other languages and dialects in use in todayrsquos Iran in addition to Persian (Farsi) which happens to have been the dominant and official language and the main source of cultural change however only 58 of the population speaks Persian

300 Omid Azadibougar

and Persian dialects as their mother tongue whereas 27 use Turkish and Turkish dialects 9 Kurdish 2 Luri 1 Balouchi and 1 Arabic in addition to 2 who use still other languages at home2 Therefore it is important to note that ldquoPersianrdquo is only a sub-set of ldquoIranianrdquo which has been (mis-)presented as its equivalent by literary historians3

In effect the historiographies of translation have always concerned themselves only with Persian and there is no mention of translation between Persian and other Iranian languages likewise translation between these languages themselves or of other languages into them has been completely ignored Thus although ldquoPersianrdquo as a noun names a language and should not be confused with the adjective ldquoIra-nianrdquo in terms of cultural influence the two signifiers tend to collapse into each other primarily because as the official language Persian appears to have been the only linguistic path for importation through translation affecting the speakers of all Iranian languages

At the same time the Persian language has a very long history and has always been in a network of translational give and take the period under investigation in this paper comes after four historical periods of transformation of the Persian lan-guage (1) the Samanid period (820ndash998) (2) the Ghaznavid Seljuq and Kharaz-mian period (998ndash1220) (3) the Mongol and Timurid period (1220ndash1502) and (4) the Safavid period (1502ndash1796) (Kamshad 1966 3) In the first period prose ldquois extremely simple straightforward and objective No particular attention is paid to making phrases rhyme hellip [and] the authorsrsquo prime concern was to make themselves understoodrdquo During the second period and under the influence of the imported Islamic-Arabic culture authors used a ldquocopious terminologyrdquo as a result of which early simplicity was lost and Persian prose became ldquolabored and highly artificialrdquo reaching ldquothe point of absurdity and an almost incomprehensible stylerdquo The third period begins with ldquothe pagan Tartarrsquos disregard for Islamic institutions coupled with the overthrow of Caliphaterdquo which reduced the influence of Arabic to the ldquounexpected advantagerdquo of the Persian language making this period ldquonotable for the number of historians it producedrdquo since the Mongol Ilkhans had a ldquokeen interest in recording their campaigns and achievementsrdquo In this period Persian prose ldquohas neither the ease simplicity and precision of early writings nor the rich-ness and elegance of later stylesrdquo (Kamshad 1966 4ndash6)

The fourth period preceding the modernization of Persian was ldquoin many re-spects a great onerdquo but ldquonotoriously poor in the field of literature both in prose and poetryrdquo (Kamshad 1966 7) due to the fact that ldquothe rulers of the Safavid dynasty devoted the greater part of their energies to the propagation of the Shiite doctrinerdquo which threw the Persian language and its prose ldquointo unparalleled confusionrdquo as Islamic tracts ldquowere either written for laymen in plain and jejune style (nonetheless full of Arabic grammatical constructions) or else they were composed by Shiite


doctors imported from Arabia who had little knowledge of Persian and wrote in an Arabicized stylerdquo Nevertheless these ldquopedantic and garrulous discoursesrdquo which were only written ldquoto show off and achieve eminence as propaganda of pi-etyrdquo do not qualify ldquoas Persian proserdquo proper (Kamshad 1966 7)4

The ldquomodernizationrdquo of Persian prose occurs in the Qajar dynasty (1794ndash1925) during which several factors contribute to cultural revival the importation of texts from India by Nadir Shah (reign 1736ndash1747) and their impact on the new educated elites of the Qajar era5 the political stabilization and a period of relative security with an interest in culture and learning along with the rise of a new class of people civil servants with the leisure time to cultivate letters the efforts of reli-gious leaders to promote the enlightenment (in a positive meaning) of the masses and the royal classrsquos support for art increasing contacts with and influence of Brit-ain France and Russia together with the introduction of new technologies like the telegraph and becoming conscious of the weakness of the country as a result of political defeats and finally the importation of the printing press in 1812 (Ka-mshad 1966 10ndash11) It is during this period that the first newspaper (1837) and the first weekly (1851) are published and the first ldquomodernrdquo school established (1851) The final result of all these changes was the Constitutional Revolution of 1905ndash9 (Kamshad 1966 11) It is claimed by the historiographers quoted further on that early translations from European languages introduced ldquonew ideasrdquo into the Iranian culture whose ldquomodernizationrdquo would not have been possible with-out translation This asserted ldquomodernizationrdquo through translation between 1851 when the first ldquomodernrdquo educational institution Darolfonun was established and 1921 when Mohammad Ali Jamalzadehrsquos manifesto on the necessity of simpli-fying prose was published is the focus of this paper This was a period during which translationrsquos role as the modernizing engine of language and culture was determined The main concern is questioning the claimed ldquomodernizingrdquo role of translation assumed to have motivated and been fulfilled in alliance with a general political will to change the political structure from a monarchical dynasty into a parliamentary one6

Another difficulty of writing about translation in Iran is that we are struggling against some institutional insufficiencies and a lack of research in the field7 we rarely come across an analysis of translation into the Persian literary system in the available historiographies which are mostly (more or less) similar chronological accounts of the translated works Besides research in the field has not yet led to the formulation of any theories expressive of contextual specificities if any indica-tive of methodological inadequacies Hence even though the limited number of available publications on Translation Studies can function as the basis for further research to specify significant issues facing translation and culture in Iran they rarely move beyond a chronological narration or alternatively a comparative


contrastive analysis of source and target texts Such a simplistic view of translation as a neutral introducer of other cultures ignores the cultural impacts of transla-tion the irony is that even though translation is the most obvious mode of cultural exchange there has rarely been interest in considering translation into Persian in an intercultural frame8 Moreover it is bizarre that translation channels and pos-sibilities between Iranian languages have been ignored with nearly all publications focused only on translation from or into Persian

What is more in dealing with historiographies we need to ask some funda-mental questions who writes the historiography and to what extent is it possible to ignore the influence of the authorrsquos position the asymmetrical political relations and (de-)colonization That is when one claims that translation benefits the cul-ture we need to specify who actually benefits and to whose detriment And given the vast territorial changes in the past two centuries how can one assume that contemporary Iran has nothing to do with neighboring cultures and countries9 It is from such a standpoint that I have raised the issue of the asymmetrical political relations with the lending dominant cultures as counter-evidence to the claims about the modernizing role of translation

My main aim is to bring Translation Studies in Iran out of itself and to locate it in an international framework by re-writing the historiography of translation and its impacts on the Iranian context through the Persian language and account for other languages if substantial translations frominto them actually happened this paper is a first step in that direction It poses some questions without necessarily aspiring to re-write the historiography

2 The unanimous agreement

The general narrative of the positive and constructive role of translation in the formation of modern Persian prose10 unanimously agreed upon and repeated by nearly all scholars and historians of modern Persian prose (Kamshad 1966 Aryan-pour 2003 Balay 2006 and 2008 Rahimian 2006 Ahmadzadeh 2003 Mirabedini 2007)11 presents the following scenario from the early to the mid nineteenth cen-tury contact between Iran and Europe increases and the growing self-awareness of Iranrsquos ldquobackwardnessrdquo coupled with the desire for ldquoprogressrdquo necessitates trans-lation The importation of the printing press in 1812 makes publication easier and with the institution of the first ldquomodernrdquo European-style school in 1851 and the growing number of students sent to Europe to learn the new sciences the trans-lation of educational materials aimed at technological advancement increases the implied translation purpose is education with the central ideologies of refor-mation change and later revolution The establishment of newspapers (Kaghaz


Akhbar 1837 Vaghaye Etefaghie 1851 Akhtar 1875 in Istanbul Qanoon 1890 in London Tarbiat 1896) helps the propagation of such ideas and translation be-comes the essential tool for modernization and for the insertion of new and ldquopro-gressiverdquo ideas into the Iranian cultural system

The noteworthy issue in this narrative is the commonly acknowledged ben-eficial effect of translation Nearly all works credit translation with an undeniable ldquoconstructiverdquo role In Rahimianrsquos words translation is one of the factors that ldquode-veloped knowledge and transformed Iraniansrsquo thoughtsrdquo (Rahimian 2006 55)12 In Ahmadzadehrsquos terms ldquothe effects of translation and its role in transferring mod-ern thought[s] to countries like Iran is so obvious that it is impossible to imagine what Iranian society would look like if there were no translationrdquo (Ahmadzadeh 2003 91) For Kamshad many factors contributed to a cultural revival in the Qajar era one of which was translation from European languages that facilitated and even mandated broader socio-cultural changes which led to literary change as well (Kamshad 1966 10ndash11) Aryanpour argues that ldquohad these translations not existed todayrsquos literary style which is close to the language of common conver-sation and at the same time enjoys the beauty of European literary prose might never have come into existencerdquo (Aryanpour 2002a 260 Julie Meissamirsquos render-ing quoted in Ahmadzadeh 2003 95) Finally Balay asserts that translation has had an indisputable effect on Iranians because ldquothe translated Western works in-fluenced all classes of societyrdquo (Balay 2006 11 my emphasis) The assumption of all these scholars is that the benefits of translation are distributed equally between all participating parties that translation essentially leads to change that change is necessarily for good and that transformation is in essence positive

To unpack this narrative some qualifications are required especially for those unfamiliar with Iranian literary history The first issue is that the early 19th century contacts between Iran and Europe were asymmetrical as they occurred through Russiarsquos ldquocolonial pressures and the rivalries of France and Britainrdquo (Balay 2008 28)13 This colonial encounter and the ensuing political defeats of Iran against Russia (Balay 2008 28) led to a belated worrying apprehension among Ira-nians because ldquothe military and political superiority of Russia and Britain and the statersquos capitulation to these foreign powers became a significant cause for concernrdquo as ldquosuccessive Qajar regimes responded to Western aggression with complacency and weaknessrdquo (Yeganeh 1993 3) ldquoComplacency and weaknessrdquo was of course not one option among many but the only option Therefore measures were taken to compensate for the national deficiencies and the grave role of translation was to provide a socio-political model of ldquoprogressrdquo namely Europe

In this search for a model for his political career Prince Abbas Mirza ordered translations of Voltairersquos History of Charles XII 1731 Peter the Great and Alexan-der the Great from English (Balay 2006 42) The selection of the correct model was


so imperative that the translation of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Ro-man Empire by Edward Gibbon (1737ndash1794) was terminated because reactions to it were so severe (Balay 2006 43) Considering the demise of the political strengths of the Qajars and the intent of these translations to set up models of grandeur and glory it is hardly surprising that a narrative of the inevitable fall of an empire was considered inappropriate by the heirs to a weak Empire about to vanish14

The second notable issue is that translation modernization and revitalization of letters and culture are inseparable making ldquothe encounter with Europe hellip the most significant cultural problemquestion of the pre-Constitution [late 19th cen-tury] erardquo (Mirabedini 2007 18) Literary ldquochangesrdquo are effected through transla-tors by the introduction of new literary forms among them plays and the novel The encounter with Europe caused ldquointellectual awareness of the intelligentsia and the adopting of new political and cultural outlooksrdquo (Mirabedini 2007 18) which involved the ldquorereading of classical literature and the achieving of a new under-standing of literature and its social functions necessary for new prose formsrdquo (Mi-rabedini 2007 19) Kamshad reports that before The Travelogues of Ibrahim Beig (roughly 1903) the first Persian ldquonovelrdquo and the translation of James Morierrsquos The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Isfahan (translated in 1880s published 1905) some plays had been translated in 1871 and were enacted at the royal court (Kamshad 1966 19ndash20) Ahmadzadeh (2003 91) claims that ldquotranslators are the pioneers of modernization and it is through translation that the seeds of the new literary genres especially the Persian novel have been sownrdquo and Rahimian (2006 55) confirms that it was through translation that ldquoIranian authors were familiarized with [new] story writing and playwriting techniquesrdquo It is of course natural that new forms had a good chance of being imported through translation as we can see if we compare the importation of prose forms with that of poetry as Persian clas-sical literature had a rich poetic tradition not much poetry was imported whereas prose was in great demand In prose literature as in politics Europe was the origin ldquothe first Persian novels are written modeled after French historical novelsrdquo (Balay 2006 69)15 The literary revival was such a representative of change that the Novel ldquowas synonymous with modernity and Westernizationrdquo (Balay 2006 230)

Motivated by the ldquoprogressrdquo drive ldquoIranians prioritized texts that were able based on their nature and quality to give them a better knowledge of the external [advanced] world [ie Farang16]rdquo (Balay 2006 70) This was done through transla-tions of historical and educational works Translators were convinced that if they translated the books they chose into Persian modernization would be achieved and transformation realized In this vein Ahmadzadeh (2003 103 my emphasis) comments on the ldquonaturalnessrdquo of taking Western literary forms as models


the rich tradition of Persian literature in the genres of lyric epic and didactics did not provide an archetype for modern literary genres Thus it was natural that pio-neering writers tried to initiate the new literary forms originating from Western literary discourse17

The main obsession was ldquomodernizationrdquo motivated by a yearning for radical po-litical change and the installment of a European model of governance democracy

The third point relates to one of the measures that the Qajars took to tackle the shortcomings of the nation dispatching students to study in Europe The first delegation (two students) left in 1809 and the second in 1812 for England to spe-cialize in painting medicine and pharmaceutics military sciences engineering chemistry medicine English (literature) philosophy and locksmithry (Ahmadza-deh 2003 99 Balay 2006 42 Vahdat 2002 27ndash28) educational efforts climax with the establishment of the first modern school Darolfonun [literally The House of Skills] in 185118 Thus ldquomodernizationrdquo assumes concrete forms and the final re-sult of all these changes is the stirring of ldquoprogressiverdquo thoughts in the minds of Iranians (Kamshad 1966 11)19 What makes an awareness of this important is that ldquoit was from those students that the main translators and theocrats were createdrdquo (Ahmadzadeh 2003 73) Regarding their fields of study which were more often than not in technology rather than in the humanities it is possible to draw some conclusions about the translatorial and possibly translational norms for as Mi-rabedini writes ldquothese intellectuals were not sufficiently and deeply familiar with cultural and philosophical issues in Europerdquo (2007 18ndash19 also Vahdat 2002 25)

The next issue concerns the changes of Persian prose from ldquopre-modernrdquo to ldquomodernrdquo Iran Before the ldquomodernizationrdquo of the Qajar era (1794ndash1925) Per-sian prose of the Safavid period (1502ndash1736) is as mentioned above ldquonotoriously poor in the field of literature both in prose and in poetryrdquo was ldquoover-ornamented Arabicized [and] ecclesiasticalrdquo (Kamshad 1966 4) due to ldquothe propagation of Shi-ite doctrinerdquo which interrupts the ldquodevelopmentrdquo of Persian language and throws it into ldquounparalleledrdquo confusion by the imported Shiite doctors who have ldquolittle knowledge of Persianrdquo (Kamshad 1966 7) But things changed with the installment of ldquomodernizationrdquo measures Translation was a principal agent as it ldquonot only provided new material for the Persian reader but also a new generic and stylistic model for the Persian writerrdquo (Ahmadzadeh 2003 92) That is translation fetched from faraway lands spaces and materials for simpler writing and broader commu-nication likewise the purpose of ldquomodernrdquo writers was to simplify language and to bridge or as Kamshad says to ldquoremoverdquo the gap between the lively spoken lan-guage and the ossified inaccessible written language ldquoit is with the removal of this gap that modern writers have been principally concerned hellip a rhetorical written language could be used only by the educated minority hellip the exclusive possession of a fewrdquo (Kamshad 1966 39)


An example of this intellectual will for the revitalization of the language and the negotiation of the gap between writing and speech is its critical Lutheran mo-ment in 1921 when after about a century of translations from European languag-es Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh in his manifesto-like preface to Once Upon a Time ldquorecommended a simplification of literary language and invited others to write in a style closer to colloquial speech with copious use of everyday expressionsrdquo (Kamshad 1966 58) to democratize language and literature20 But the linguistic simplification met with resistance as one might have expected which slowed it down ldquomost of the development of prose literature as opposed to journalism between 1905 and 1921 was extremely languidrdquo (Kamshad 1966 40) And some other writers just ignored Jamalzadehrsquos 1921 manifesto advocating the democracy of letters Hijazi writing some 20 years after the 1921 pleas of Jamalzadeh writes his novels in an elevated and educated language and ldquodoes not insist on record-ing the natural idioms and expressions of the people he makes them speak in his own turn of phraserdquo (Kamshad 1966 83) As a matter of fact this combination of traditional style with new genres is inevitable Traditional conceptions of literature and literariness were significant factors contributing to resistance by writers and illustrating how strong literary traditions can resist change through their firmly established aristocratic conceptual institutions

The fifth point to bear in mind is that resistances notwithstanding it was eas-ier to revitalize Persian prose than poetry because of the peripheral position of prose in the Persian literary system ldquothe fact that prose fiction had no precedent in classical Persian literature was an important factor in its unhampered and undi-luted success it did not change or replace any existing traditions it created a new and socially relevant channel for literary expressionrdquo (Katouzian 1991 quoted in Ahmadzadeh 2003 100) Katouzianrsquos conception of ldquounhampered and undiluted successrdquo for prose fiction requires some qualification but it is significant that the traditional attribution of literariness to poetry alone did facilitate the develop-ment of prose21 And this was more than a simple non-literary use of prose for as Jazayery writes ldquoin 1893 lsquoliteraturersquo in Persian hellip still meant almost exclusively poetry mdash as it continued to do up until quite recently (and does for most people even today)rdquo (Jazayery 1970 257) Poetry had after centuries of institutionaliza-tion completely monopolized the literary space and the cultural division of labor assigned other functions ldquohistorical or didactic or in one or two instances alle-goristicrdquo (Jazayery 1970 257) to prose In the historical absence of fictional prose any attempt to assume the cultural functions of poetry would have had to deal with an intricate maze of frames of intelligibility which implies the difficulties or impossibility of creating a literary prose in a short time unless by radical modi-fications as discussed later in this paper Additionally Balay (2006 14) affirming the peripherality of prose narrative due to which ldquotransformations occur slower


but easierrdquo mentions the marginality as the reason it was easier for the translated materials in prose to move to the center of the literary system by displacing poetry as the literary form entering the literary system and subsequently moving toward the center (Balay 2006 19)22 The transformations of the literary system were to the advantage of prose the periphery and to the detriment of the center poetry However this being said I have to express my reservations about the success of prose to actually move to the ldquocenterrdquo of the literary system even though I could not agree more with Balay on the destabilization of poetry as the literary form in the transformations of Persian prose the results of translation and modernization to Kamshad were rendered only basically through translation but accompanied by two other forces in Balayrsquos interpretation ldquotradition hellip and national innova-tionsrdquo (Balay 2006 96) with translation acting as the engine of transformation at the heart of change paving the way for local innovations Translation plays a very decisive role by providing the model for the recycling of the classical by offering the form and the means of local innovations ldquoinjecting new blood in literaturersquos veinsrdquo (Jazayery 1970 261)

Accordingly two scenarios are possible for prose transformations in the first scenario modern Persian prose was completely simplified and constructed through translation because there were no target language norms except the cre-ation of language and coinage of terms and an arbitrary choice of equivalents for the imported concepts translation is in this case the agent which writes modern Persian and which denies the authority of the established language as a fixed refer-ence point and as a socially accepted contract for communication by insisting on creating language for the contextually absent concepts as the accepted norm the Persian language gradually dissolves and becomes radically chaotic to the point of dysfunctionality becoming a space of confusion disagreement and miscommuni-cation instead of interaction and comprehension

In the second scenario translation made modern Persian prose but used the already existing ordinary spoken language23 that is translation made way for the oral to flow into the written by providing the material for an already existing oral linguistic device this scenario can explain the appropriation of discourses by an-other language in which the incoming discourse is clad in the receiving language not necessarily conceptually coinciding with the original language24 In this sce-nario translation is a catalyst and provides a space where the spoken language in combination with the classical stretches itself to grasp the imported discourses mainly by appropriation Therefore translation has in a way modified the writ-ten language by facilitating the flow of ordinary language into the written culture implying that it did not completely create a brand new language a synthesis but not the complete formation by importation The most important problem of this scenario is the extent to which the spoken language is capable of accommodating


and expressing the ldquomodernrdquo imported discourse and to what extent this language is more ldquoexpressiverdquo than the classical pre-translational language

Both scenarios combined a third option could be imagined part compromise and part resistance concurrently affected byconstructed by the imported dis-course and remaining as before ultimately double-standardizing the language If we consider the construction of modern Persian prose through translation as valid the first scenario will apply to that part of language which was shaped by translation In this case we can conclude that there were no resisting linguistic norms and that the target language gave itself up to the original language to be re-made However tar-get language norms were not all utterly affected because ldquotraditionrdquo and ldquonational innovationrdquo (Balay 2006 39 Ahmadzadeh 2003 77) resisted transformation25

The problem is that we cannot measure the changes we can only think of language as not so thoroughly hollowed out but as a liminal partitioned space it was detached from its origins and refilled by new concepts but was not totally ldquohijackedrdquo a neither-nor state of language the ldquoeliterdquo [khavas] knew it partly and the masses [avam] recognized a different part of it but none had any idea what the whole was about projecting its own fragment as the whole

Besides translation there is another contributing factor to the simplification and revitalization of prose the press With the spread of newspapers Persian prose complying with the requirements of the medium becomes accessible and understandable for the general public and distances itself from difficult unneces-sarily bombastic incomprehensible archaic terminology (Balay 2006 49)

The encounter with Farang [ie Europe] therefore had convinced many intel-lectuals including translators that in their frantic search for a model of progress classical native culture and language had to be left behind and the European model assimilated

hellip Secular intellectuals were the pioneers of adapting Western values and expand-ing them in all dimensions of life hellip realization of progress democracy freedom and justice according to most Iranian intellectuals was only possible through ad-aptation of the European model hellip to these intellectual pioneers who believed in freedom and the reign of reason modernity was equal to Western civilization and the acceptance of this civilization was on their agenda hellip the extent of Europe-anization had no limitation for Taqizadeh [as chief editor of Kaveh a progressive journal published in Europe] and he believed that lsquoIran must become Europe-anized in appearance and in essence physically and spirituallyrsquo hellip the journalrsquos motto was lsquounconditional acceptance of Western civilizationrsquo (Ahmadzadeh 2003 74 my emphasis)

To scholars this central role of translation in the formation and construction of modern Persian prose has momentous cultural implications because through translations ldquoa civilization [which] was largely oral was becoming writtenrdquo (Balay


2006 19) In any case everyone seems to agree on this point without translation and the introduction of a new stylistics into Persian modern prose as it is would not have existed nor would it have new forms like the novel26 some even go so far as to say modern Persian prose without translation would have been inconceivable (Ahmadzadeh 2003 91) That is they claim that the construction of modern prose is entirely energized and facilitated by translation without which it could not have existed At any rate the linguistic revitalization coinciding with the introduction of new Western socio-political models of governance and ideas reaches its orgas-mic climax in the Constitutional Revolution (1905ndash6) and the establishment of the first parliament in 190627

Having said all this what concerns us here is not the soundness of histori-cal details which I have quoted from historians but the influence of this wave of translations on Persian prose and language and its effect on Iranian culture28 the significance and ramifications of which reach beyond the linguistic to wider frames of culture and politics It must be clear that the transformations were not gradual and considered neither were they rendered by the active participation of Iranians in the careful cultural appropriation of Farangi norms but were the side effects of national passivism socio-cultural inferiority and ldquobackwardnessrdquo as compared to Farangrsquos power and prestige in a frenzied struggle to naiumlvely become onersquos own Other It is the purpose of this paper to challenge the Whiggish nar-rative of the constructive role of translation in Persian literature by posing some hypothetical questions to provide a more comprehensive vision of how transla-tion has functioned this will show translation is not essentially and always con-structive and can lead to further insoluble cultural complexities Our task is to de-mystify the transformative powers of translation and to reexamine the history of modern Persian prose

3 Problems and inadequacies

How adequate is such a clear-cut account of the role of translation in the Persian literary system The scholars quoted above seem to believe in a constructive role for translation translation therefore propagation of ldquonew ideasrdquo therefore cultur-al change therefore successful modernization29 therefore mission accomplished Transfer happens only through translation and translation does not have any pre-conditions except knowledge of the language from which translation occurs

This blind quasi-theological faith in the immediate and unhampered real-ization of the textual in the actual needless of the mediation of institutional or social factors is problematic Take this example ldquothe change in prose during the years before the Constitutional Revolution was the result of changes in thought


which in its turn was the result of cultural encounter with the Westrdquo (Ahmadza-deh 2003 98) The naiumlve assumption here is that an encounter with the West hap-pens on equal grounds and is necessarily cultural and that it leads to a change of thought and prose and consequently to wider social and political transforma-tions This ignores the fact that

the existence of a specific repertoire per se is not enough to ensure that a producer (or consumer) will make use of it It must not only be available but also legiti-mately usable The constraints of legitimate usage are generated by institutions in correlation with the market hellip For many members in a society large parts of a rep-ertoire most importantly the dominating one may not be accessible due to lack of knowledge or competence (such as lack of education etc) (Even-Zohar 1997 21)

A similar analysis in sociology of religion asserts the same by labeling the merely present (and in my use ldquoimportedrdquo) discourse as ldquounwarrantedrdquo lacking the proof of ldquoactual existencerdquo it is the ldquoindividual meanings and institutionalized behav-iors and intentions [that] warrant the existence of organizations and institutionsrdquo and constitute ldquothe basic reality of such social phenomenardquo (Blasi and Weigert 1976 198) and not the other way round Thus

hellip socio-cultural symbols cannot of themselves warrant the existence and type of institutionalized individual meaning Nor do institutional or organizational struc-ture and dynamics warrant the existence and type of institutionalized individual meaning hellip it is the behavioral and intentional meanings externalized by indi-vidual actors which are the lsquostuff rsquo or the final warrant for abstractions referring to other levels of analysis Clearly socio-cultural symbols may be concretely em-bodied in material artifacts which currently exist independent of the action of individual actors hellip but from an interpretive perspective they remain inert and ultimately unintelligible except as actualized by the behavior and intentions of indi-vidual actors (Blasi and Weigert 1976 196ndash197 my emphasis)

In other words the effectiveness of the imported repertoire is conditional on ldquoin-stitutionsrdquo and the ldquomarketrdquo that can facilitate ldquoaccessrdquo to the repertoire and even if these conditions are met the problem remains that present historiography expects that the behaviors and intentions of the individual actors in the socio-cultural sphere must essentially actualize the translated contents that is the expropriation of the receptive population Nevertheless without meeting these conditions the imported discourse remains lsquounintelligiblersquo failing its translational purpose unless only individually operationalized falling short of a ldquomodernizationrdquo of culture

An ldquo lsquoinstitutionrsquo consists of the aggregate of factors involved with the con-trol of culture It is the institution which governs the norms sanctioning some and rejecting others It also remunerates and reprimands producers and agentsrdquo (Even-Zohar 1997 31ndash32) That is the institution controls culture and the norms


by selecting from the trafficked ones it might even take disciplining measures to effect its control and ldquomediates between social forces and repertoires of culturerdquo However mere institutionalization30 cannot contribute to culture because

in the absence of a market there is no space where any aspect of the culture rep-ertoire can gain any ground The larger the space the larger the proliferation pos-sibilities Clearly a restricted market naturally limits the possibilities of culture to evolve (Even-Zohar 1997 33)

A vibrant market implies the legitimacy of the institutionalized repertoire the mere availability or institutional confirmations of a repertoire does not guarantee it cultural success the market is the condition of proper functioning So obstacles arise the mere availability of a discourse the discourse of modernity for exam-ple is not sufficient and requires accompanying elements of legitimacy institu-tion and market to effectively interact with the consumers of the discourse and take hold In this view a simpler prose as modified or produced by translation would not suffice so long as material access is not provided that however does not even imply automatic legitimacy for a foreign discourse the novel for instance Even-Zoharrsquos cultural model drawn from Jacobsonrsquos linguistic model posits six elements necessary for proper and complete cultural communication on the two sides are the ldquoproducerrdquo and the ldquoconsumerrdquo mediated by four elements for effec-tive communication Institution Repertoire Market and Product (Even-Zohar 1997 20) The market is a space where the producer meets the consumer and sells them a product with its specific repertoire regulated by institution however in cases when there is no demand for the producerrsquos product the market cannot function Demand is indeed significant in the study of a culture why when and how will a specific ldquoideardquo or ldquorepertoirerdquo (particularly an ldquoimportedrdquo one) be in demand And what conditions the demand For a population regulated by a dif-ferent cultural set of values pre-existing the foreign discourse the demand for the imported repertoire might be almost nil because the population is already cultur-ally conditioned and institutionally regulated

Therefore translation of concepts into a culture alone cannot signify anything specific nor does it suggest any meaningful impact A repertoire modernity or the novel must be agreed between the producer and the consumer to have any impact Any analysis that leaves the consumer and the reception of the repertoire out of its calculations is merely engaged in idealistic reveries with no meaningful links to cultural reality What I would like to emphasize here is that such uncritical narra-tives are concerned with translation causes in an abstract ldquounwarrantedrdquo sense as ldquoconstructiverdquo without having seriously engaged in translation effects like readersrsquo change of mental state andor their subsequent action These effects presuppose readersrsquo access and competence and merit serious investigation


The fundamental factor of translation is that ldquoit depends for its success not only on solving the specific lsquocoordination problemsrsquo presented by the immediate situation but also on the relative positions and qualities of the participants and on the values and interests at stakerdquo In order to grasp ldquothe role of norms and models as social realities in these processesrdquo (Hermans 1996 28) we need to ldquorecognize this social dimension of the production and reception of translations as distinct from the psychological reality of the translation processrdquo (Hermans 1996 28) Some statistical information might help focus our attention on this dimension

It is of course true that books and newspapers were published in Iran but the percentage of the people who could actually contribute to this ldquowritingrdquo of the oral culture as Balay (2006 19) has it through reading or writing is not incorpo-rated in his analysis Literacy rates are telling ldquothe rate of literacy in the Ottoman Empire in 1900 was 15 percent in Egypt 10 percent and in Iran well below 5 per-centrdquo (Ahmadzadeh 2003 77) Half a century later things do not look much better in Iran in the 1950s ldquoout of the countryrsquos total population of nearly 20 million an estimated 12 million are peasants living in some 45000 villages Only 5 per-cent of the villagers are literaterdquo (Kamshad 1966 88) The data available through the same scholars on publication statistics reveal the extent of cultural impact of translation ldquothe number of publications in Iran during the period 1850ndash1914 is 162 hellip the number of publications in the Ottoman Empire during the same pe-riod was around 10000ndash20000 and in Egypt something similarrdquo (Ahmadzadeh 2003 85) These numbers indicate the very narrow reach of translation and the limited cultural effect it could have on the population as a whole nevertheless we cannot ignore its influence on those who were involved directly or indirectly in the changes and we must contextualize any analysis without unnecessary orien-talist generalizations putting Iran Turkey and Egypt in the same category they might have a lot in common in their relationship to the West but they have their own determining differences Furthermore and considering that education was the purpose or ldquoskoposrdquo of translation the causal relationship translation hence education fails translational skopos by definition is the ldquointended effect on hellip intended readers This is perhaps the main parameter for the consideration of translation errorsrdquo (Chesterman 1998 19)31 Inadequacy occurs when translation fails to have the effect it was supposed to have if translation cannot or does not communicate it engenders errors and accordingly it errs in Iran32

In the absence of sufficient empirical data it remains doubtful whether as claimed by Katouzian and Balay prose actually moved to the center of the literary system33 prose might have gained importance for the privileged educated few but for the majority of people speech remained not only the main form of com-munication but also the only one available so that oral poetry was by far the most important and preferred literary mode as data available to us on the institutional


strengths of modern schools to disseminate education also indicates Balay men-tions the number of Darolfonun graduates after 40 years of institutional function-ing as only 1100 graduates in the 1890s (Balay 2006 43) Iranrsquos population in 1900 was about 10 million34 which means that Darolfonun had accommodated only 01 of the people even if we include additional potential indirect institutional impact and unofficial educational forms as well and multiply the number by a hundred (110000) we reach 1 only Not all of the people began translating reading and writing and not all of them were concerned with literary-cultural activities this throws the wholesomeness of ldquomodernizationrdquo claims in doubt in-dicating the limited cultural spaces translation could actually affect

In my opinion the modernizing role of translation in Iranian culture has been unreasonably romanticized in the available historiographies because of contextual and conceptual errors Contextually it is true that books were translated but first in comparison with the books written in Farang they were simply an insignificant number and hence incapable of giving a ldquotrue ideardquo of European ldquomodernityrdquo and ldquoculturerdquo (to be assimilated)35 secondly in a largely agrarian and illiterate society relying on poetry and oral culture access to books both financially and compe-tently was the privilege of a very few So when Kamshad (1966 11) claims that the changes made the late 19th century the age of ldquorapidly produced and widely disseminated pamphlets by reformists and the reproduction of text-books and of translations of European works hellip [which] played an important role in stirring the minds of progressive thinkers and bringing about the subsequent revolutionrdquo one should be aware of the elitist thrust of the statement as all the fuss and fret happens among at best only 5 percent of society this also reveals the inherent contradictions of the Constitutional Revolution as a democratic revolution led by privileged aristocrats who were determined to annihilate the system which had preferred them

Conceptually and this is much more complicated how feasible is modernizing through translation using the ldquoOtherrdquo as the model As a perfect case for compari-son with the above definition by Taqizadeh (quoted in Ahmadzadeh 2003 74) con-sider De Graefrsquos understanding of ldquoEuropeanrdquo modernity (2007 145 my emphasis)

One way to continue thinking about the modern is by casting it as a condition of enforced representational responsibility a human being feels called upon to repre-sent what in this representation figures as its condition its world the whole messy mass of it suddenly requiring representation beyond its being already there mdash be-yond mere transcription that is it requires re-inscription The point of this feeling of feeling called upon is that there is no call only the sense that there is a call for it and that sense itself is what performs and is performed in the representations of the modern The sense of enforcement attending modern representational prac-tice derives from the perception of the absence or the loss of an agent properly


in charge of representation mdash let us say to cut an extremely long story short the absence or the loss or the disappearance of God

The Iranian ldquomodernrdquo however was conceptually constructed not by the absence or loss of God but by hisher replacement it remained essentially a ldquotranscriptionrdquo of its Other who was properly in charge and the reference of the representation This non-self-referential character makes the whole project ambiguous it nomi-nally claims ldquomodernityrdquo but it has not shifted fundamentally The self-referential thought would critically attempt to account for the vast multitude of facts awaiting comprehension which are actually not fully comprehensible due to the lack of a point of reference with which one can close representation We do not know what adequate representation is but we know what inadequate representation can be any representation is suspected of inadequacy there will be an eternal friction between the desire to comprehend and the irritatingly ungraspable complex con-dition In other words as we cannot know if we have truly overcome the complexi-ties of our condition infinite critical questioning is the condition of remaining ldquomodernrdquo The closure of representation is ldquonon-modernrdquo and so setting an exter-nal reference point of approximation that solid existent Other Farang as the con-dition of modernity negates and cancels the whole project The utter inexhaustible self-reflexivity of the modern postpones any claims to a ldquofullrdquo comprehension and as a result volatilizes the ldquoabsoluterdquo

Having the referential quality of Iranian ldquomodernizationrdquo in mind one could say that the only significant change effected by the Iranian turn to ldquomodernityrdquo through translation might have been the replacement of the master religious nar-rative (absolute 1) by the master European narrative (absolute 2) for that so-called ldquoprogressiverdquo class of society However the culture remained fundamentally ref-erential locating knowledge externally and transcendentally constructing a new organization of socio-cultural life This would include the hypothetical condition in which translation were capable of importing knowledge completely that is if it had managed to bring the whole of European knowledge into the Iranian cultural sphere without a trace of loss or fragmentation even then ldquomodernizationrdquo would have remained referential not having achieved the condition of the modern criti-cal immanent self-reflexiveness36 Therefore and this is the question with the es-sential re-refentiality of translation what remains to be investigated is whether translation truly can be a modernizing force in a peripheral culture

Returning to the issue of institutional insufficiencies these were of course not confined to translation or to schools There are instabilities of newspapers and magazines reflecting the unstable social conditions which normally affect the growth and development of the novel (Balay 2006 14ndash32) caused among other things by political strife and since the novel is intricately linked with translation


this made the path of translational influence less than smooth On the other hand as I mentioned above prose writing had its own inconsistencies as well prevent-ing the proper institutionalization of a standard language Both the instabilities of the press and the inconsistencies of prose can significantly affect the accommoda-tion of the (foreign) cultural discourses transplanted into the Iranian texture

Even institutionally limitations aside translation could not have been a straightforward modernizing or democratizing force Indeed the imported mod-ern education was in the feudal social structure accessible only to a limited class of people ldquoThe first group who began studying in the school [Darolfonun] was composed of one hundred students who were princes sons of aristocrats and high-ranking government officialsrdquo constituting the main body of translators later (Ahmadzadeh 2003 73) Given that this ldquomodernizationrdquo by the aristocracy dis-advantaged the less privileged people one cannot help asking what sort of and whose modernization is meant here In Aryanpourrsquos version of the history of modern Persian literature one important quality shared by nearly all novelists is that they owe their careers as novelists to a family tradition of literature and cul-ture (Aryanpour 2002b 239) betraying the aristocratic thrust of modern Iranian culture and Persian literature

All in all it would not be improper to conclude that the ldquomodernrdquo language structured translationally was foreign to the language of daily use inside the coun-try informed by the immediate realities of the people The language may have been renewed but it was most definitely emptied of its immediacy for people not only because of the concepts used and the reshaping of diction but also because it im-posed unrealistic expectations on a society that lived a different kind of life This was intensified by the elite social location of translators who were students and graduates of schools in and out of the country who ldquohelped to create new types of translators and writersrdquo (Ahmadzadeh 2003 86) Consequently language could not work as a tool for making the components of reality linguistically and concep-tually visible and manageable if produced only by translation The translated lan-guage however appropriated was new and was partly formed through European subjectivity the cognitive tools were designed differently and filtered aspects of Iranian reality out besides it inserted European elements that were unreal in the Iranian context this was how Iranian subjectivity was formed based on distance and distractedness of its language it was focused on the reality of the Other pri-oritized over its immediate reality and replacing the direct unpleasant reality with the desired version the Other Wanting to be its own Other it was self-estranged Insofar as reality substantiates language the Persian language was hollowed out and lost touch with reality Divorcing its own reality has led to a ldquodouble realityrdquo or ldquodouble consciousnessrdquo one subjected and immediate but postponed the other dominant and remote but desired


Translational norms come once again to the fore Who qualifies as a transla-tor Does anyone who studies at University and knows two languages translate well What social and cultural norms determined the quality of and assessed translations In the absence of proper institutions how was language change regu-lated and who ensured that change would not derail language as a social contract And considering the fact that many translators were educated in technical fields how reliable were their translations and how capable were they of using their des-ignated model in the service of genuine transformation And if translations had been ldquocorrectrdquo and properly institutionalized would it have meant that the mod-ernization project could have succeeded None of the narratives discussed here has accounted for the relationality of cultures and languages even though Balay resorts to Even-Zoharrsquos polysystem theory to explain why prose transforms more easily than poetry he fails to articulate the relationality between Persian and Euro-pean languages by including issues of inter-linguistic and inter-cultural hierarchy in his interpretation The political asymmetrical relations between Iran and the West could not help but reproduce the asymmetry on the cultural level in the relationship between classical Persian and modern European languages with its colonial implications setting the former as the borrower and making translation the forerunner of modern culture

Even-Zohar believes that translation enters the peripheries of a literary sys-tem (Even-Zohar 1990 45) however we need to consider the extra-literary force that this marginality can have in the marginal systems the peripheral translated material can exert a powerful centrifugal pull deregulating and de-centering the established institutions (religious literary etc) In this situation the centrifugal is always the more powerful system that easily or with difficulty undoes the centrip-etal system This explains the colonization of a language as the colonizer needs to channel the resources of the colonized outward towards the colonizer the colo-nized is centrifugally organized To visualize this change one has to image a stable language as circular and focused with a center on which it is concentrated mak-ing it a convex self-centered language substantially comfortable with itself This focused and functional language becomes defensively concave if it opens up to unregulated importation which means the language is ultimately inevitably split up part of it smaller and energetic would face outwards and import materials constantly reshaping the language While this more dynamic and modernizing section is shifting centuries of training has fixedly directed other parts towards religioustraditional centers The center and periphery in the absence of com-municating channels between them would be located with their backs to each other the two faces of Janus ldquothe god of doors doorways and gatesrdquo37 incapable of meaningful communication each facing its own sun38


One of the effects of translation as opening up to others is the duality of Ira-nian consciousness There is first the classical Arabicized language which might have become less common from the turn of the twentieth century but which is not necessarily completely banned from usage particularly because of the exis-tent virulent religious institutions and remains latent though not favored by the modernizing class Then there is also the language which is the product of the desire to be Europeanized (= modernized) and is produced through translation and filled with European concepts Regarding the colonial implications of transla-tion the rules of the translational passage are partly determined by power which haunts all human relations whatever the context involving ldquoagents who are both conditioned by these power structures or at least entangled in themrdquo (Hermans 1996 27) The relations of power are enacted through the agentsrsquo constant reit-eration of the foreign norms that reproduce strengthen and establish them ldquoin-volving not just individuals groups and communities but also the power relations within these communities whether these relations are material (economic legal political) or lsquosymbolicrsquo rdquo (Hermans 1996 36)

The introduction of foreign norms then can on the one hand lead to (more) political conflicts and on the other hand if the whole society and culture is not involved partition the culture by creating cultural ghettos of different normative regulations The values that (dis)connect the parties involved can finally deter-mine whether or not the social functions of translation could be met for as ldquoa communicative actrdquo translation ldquoconstitutes a more or less interactive form of social behavior involving a degree of lsquointerpersonal coordinationrsquo among those taking part (selecting and attuning an appropriate code recognizing and inter-preting the code paying attention eliminating lsquonoisersquo etc)rdquo (Hermans 1996 28) The non-communicative translational acts deny their interrelatedness and hence change the spheres of cultural meaning by slicing out the affected parts Moreover as Lambert (1995 109ndash110) points out

exporting (active) systems are in a power position from the point of view of the importing (passive) systems hellip the more a society imports the more it tends to be unstable hellip the more a given society imports from one and the same neighbor the more it is in a position of dependence hellip the more static these partners are in terms of space and time the more dependent they are on their big brothers hellip as a kind of mobility by necessity rather than by option migration does not favor stability but at least passivity or importation

In the Iranian case I would argue that translation has led to cultural instability and de-authentication of literary products

Without taking the colonial issues into consideration and without such a sys-temic concept we cannot properly understand change (for better or worse) its


nature and its origins (Even-Zohar 2004 2) A systemic view will take into ac-count diachronic change as well as potential synchronic elements that will sooner or later provided the opportunity actualize The static closed-system model with-in the historical narrative of translation into Persian works by reducing the poten-tial concurrent options to the installed one regardless of its functionality Cultural alternatives are absent and the model fails to explain (non-)change with regard to potential temporarily hibernating models which could (re-)surface at a later time Analytic methodology has to shift by incorporating all the known factors for the ldquopolysystemic model is to give the ability to account for all the latent diachronic sets that are not immediately operating but might come in action soonrdquo (Even-Zohar 2004 2) Soon that is in Iranrsquos case in the 1970s

Potential alternatives modern or otherwise are filtered out in the positivist interpretation of the role of translation in Iran By synchronically analyzing the field of early modern Iran we learn that institutional ignorance in the available historiographies has made religious institutions invisible and unintelligible and underestimated their significance either as contributors to modernity or as agents of resistance The ontological immorality of such a misrepresentation arises not only because it formally ignores them on the pretext that they fall on the non-modern side of essentialist normative dichotomies of religious-hence-nonmod-ern vs secular-hence-modern institutions in addition it constitutes a defective interpretation and sheer misunderstanding of the culture in question

In translation even though one choice excludes other choices it does not anni-hilate them By extension socially culturally and even politically being marginal-ized does not mean being totally destroyed but being latent for future possibilities Marginality is possibility ldquoPicking one position means that the alternatives are excluded although they remain latent as a store for future possibilitiesrdquo (Hermans 1999 87) One elementrsquos dominance does not ontologically annihilate the rest but reserves them on stand-by Therefore sporadically mentioning the role of religion in regulating how social interactions effectively change the course of events is not enough because

the presence of an intelligentsia was unique and unprecedented in traditional Ira-nian society As a collectivity this group unlike any other was alienated from a sense of solidarity with a particular class or status group The attitude of the intelligentsia to religious and political authorities ranged from detached indif-ference to outright hostility to propertied bourgeoisie from benign neglect to moral indignation and to the masses from condescending sentimentality to self-sacrificing glorification (Dabashi 1985 154)

The intelligentsia remains alienated from the established institutions in which the command-obedience mechanism is in function While the uninstitutionalized


intelligentsias were rigorously simplifying written language and naiumlvely assumed they were getting their written message across to the illiterate people the religious institutions maintained their firm grip

Therefore in spite of Kamshadrsquos (1966 57) claim that ldquowith reform in political structure came a weakening of the religious institutionrdquo Islamic institutions even though contested in the political structure by the establishment of the nation-state formally marginalizing the clergies were never pushed out of the socio-cultural life of Iranian society altogether and naturally maintained their (political) influ-ence among large parts of the population This was mainly because of their more effective communicative measures oral speeches and secondly due to their his-torically long presence in the society ldquosince the sixteenth century Shiism has been the dominant branch of Islam hellip the Shiite clergy have in consequence enjoyed an independent following amongst the populationrdquo (Yeganeh 1993 4)

An early instance of institutional religionrsquos social influence on translation is the fleeing of the translator of The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Isfahan Mirza Habib Isfahani to Turkey in 1860 (Kamshad 1966 24) because he was accused of atheism Another example is the controversy upon the publication of Once Upon a Time (1921) by Jamalzadeh after which ldquosome reactionary religious circles hellip condemned it as a piece of blasphemy offensive to national priderdquo and the pub-lisher was ldquodenounced by mullahs and threatened with exile and prosecutionrdquo (Ka-mshad 1966 94) The book was banned and the bookstore burned down These examples together with the revolution of 1979 (not entirely religiously motivated but definitely religiously led) indicate that much like the formal importation of a discourse formal deletion from the political structure might not mean as much as Kamshad assumes and might not necessarily reduce its cultural acceptance and social purchase Even though ldquocausal explanations also increase our understand-ing of why something happenedrdquo (Chesterman 2007 3) simplistic relations or unilateral readings that never come across a doubting moment wrongly interpret the situation

The homogenizing inclination of narratives about the influence of translation on Persian literature ignoring the vast cultural heterogeneities simplistically sets up a linear happy-go-merry narration of translational influence which signals the next highly significant point none of these narratives mentions whether or not women actively participated in the translational revision of culture nor do they protest womenrsquos absence if they did not At least one intention of modernization was ldquoreleasing women from bondage hellip as an important element in the strategy to modernize Iran through social and political reformrdquo (Yeganeh 1993 4) How did translatorial and translational norms account for women and what was their share at least those of the royal families as subjects in translational activity If they were absent what historical and social obstacles impeded their cultural and


literary presence In sum and considering that nouns are not gendered in Persian how would gender issues be connected to translation and its seminal role as the engine of modernization in Iran

4 Conclusion

To sum up all the problematics the jump to the cultural level without having con-sidered first the individual and then the institutional levels is a grave drawback to what extent could written translation from a secular culture have been influential in a largely illiterate and religious society dependent on oral culture

The reason we need to reconsider current explanations of Persian translation historiography is that as an instrument of understanding this narrative is not helpful I propose a focal shift from the institutional to the cultural and individual levels of analysis by (re-)investigating the translational effects the transference of ideas and the simplification of Persian prose in the late 19th century for a more warranted study of translational cultural influences this is because ldquodistance hellip not infrequently gives a romantic aura to much that looked at close range is stale un-original monotonous and perhaps quite disappointingrdquo (Jazayery 1970 257) The narrative also gives us a false idea of the status of literary genres like the novel in Persian and postpones an adequate explanation of the link between literary genres and modernity on the one hand and the transformations of genres and ideas in their transference from the Western literary system to the Persian system on the other That is to say what function does a genre or an idea perform in its original context and what does it signify there And how does it change by transference to a different context what distortions are involved and why do they happen and what meanings are involved in them For instance does the novel mean the same thing and carry out identical functions in the say English and Persian literary systems Or does it differ as its context changes If yes what do we learn from cultural differences by noticing the shifts of a genre Furthermore the narrative is utterly uninformed by gender and minority issues which mandate the rewriting of a different history of modern Persian prose reexamining the role of translation and recasting its implications for Iranian socio-cultural and political life

Acknowledgements

I sincerely thank the editor of Target and the anonymous reviewers for their comments I would also like to thank Leuven Universityrsquos Center for Translation Studies (CETRA) in particular Reine Meylaerts and Joseacute Lambert for having generously provided me with a priceless platform


where my intellectual life was enriched I am profoundly indebted to Ortwin de Graef for his al-ways enlightening points and patient intellectual sketches I warmly thank Joseacute Lambert for his improving remarks and suggestions I am grateful to Andrew Chesterman too for his encour-aging comments on the first drafts of the paper And I thank Elham Etemadi who contributed to the development of the argument from its early rugged rawness

Notes

1 The phrase ldquoMiddle Eastrdquo is an example of this (post-)colonial complexity What do the people living in the region commonly known as ldquoMiddle Eastrdquo in cultural and socio-political literature call themselves Is there an alternative less loaded term That scholars from this re-gion have to refer to themselves from an external institutionalized and alienating point of view in their attempts to grasp contextual particularities becoming their own (Middle) East should indicate how issues get distortedcomplicated from that perspective

2 It must be noted that there is no precise data available on linguistic diversity and the number of speakers of each language (or bilinguals for instance) in Iran The speakers of other languages cannot use their native tongues for education and publications in these languages if they exist at all are negligible It seems that the monopolization of print by the Persian language on the one hand and a lack of substantial publication in and information about other languages on the other has made Persian the channel of cultural change with the Iranian cultural scene (still) dependent on it

3 Prior to 1935 Persia was the official name for the country known as Iran today replaced by Reza Shahrsquos decree in formal correspondence In Dehkhoda Persian dictionary elucidations Persia has a Latin origin and was used as Persis in Greek Today it connotes a historical past of conquest and glory for those who resort to it ldquoIranrdquo literally means noblechaste and indicates the ldquoLand of the Aryansrdquo as in its Avestan form Airyanam and its ancient Persian Ariyānām

4 Kamshadrsquos assessment of the historical development of Persian prose during the historical periods mentioned has it virtues and pitfalls But as my main focus in this paper is none of these periods I do not raise any issues with Kamshadrsquos narrative and evaluations I have mentioned them here only to sketch a historical background to the period in question

5 This is a significant issue for Translation Studies in Iran does the importation of texts into the colonizing pre-Qajar Persia have the same effects as importation during the (semi-)colonized Persia And how does the receiving culture respond to the imported material at each phase To my knowledge no substantial comparative research has been conducted on these two opposite poles of the history of translation into Persian

6 Translation from European languages began earlier than 1851 but it was only then that trans-lation was officially put to institutional use The 1921 manifesto was the sum total of the transla-tion movement which had concluded that simpler prose was more democratic and better suited to ldquoenlightenmentrdquo purposes However other neighboring historical events and periods like the two world wars the first (1925ndash1941) and second Pahlavi (1941ndash1979) and the post-1979 peri-od with their ensuing cultural shifts and changes have undoubtedly affected translation in vari-ous ways and deserve close investigation But reexamining concepts and terms that have been


taken for granted like ldquomodernizationrdquo and placing translation into Persian in an international frame necessarily precede such investigations Without a rigorous reexamination we are likely to reproduce the intellectual error of overestimating or wrongly analyzing translational effects by ignoring contextual particularities and without proper internationalization we create a ghetto (or reinforce an already existing one) by which the relationality of cultures remain analytically unintelligible A meaningful investigation needs to account for both cultural particularities and the international mobility of ideas

7 Even despite the undeniable significant role of translation (for good or bad) in the Per-sian literary system there are only two journals published on the topic in Iran Motarjem and Motalersquoat-e Tarjome quarterlies According to the information available on the database of Ira-nian journals (wwwmagirancom) the former was established in 1991 (ie 1370 in the Iranian calendar) and its last issue 46th was published in 2007 (1386) It focused more on practical translation than theoretical speculation even though there are articles dealing with theoreti-cal issues The latter journal is based at the Iranian Center for Translation Studies at Allameh Tabatabarsquoi University Tehran Launched in 2003 the journal is a bilingual Persian-and-English publication much more focused on issues in Translation Studies However what is problematic with both journals is the absence of a critical stance and a well-formulated theoretical position The problem with an uncritical reception of ldquoforeignrdquo ideas is not specific to Translation Studies in Iran and requires further investigation

8 In the above mentioned journals a few articles concern themselves with translation in a cul-tural context See the following articles in Motarjem Mokhtari Ardekani Mohammad Ali 2002 (1381) ldquoEstemar va Tarjomerdquo [Translation and Colonization] 36 45ndash52 Ghazanfari Moham-mad 2004 (1383) ldquoJelvehaee az Baztab-e Ideology dar Tarjomerdquo [The Reflection of Ideology in Translation] 38 81ndash93 Solhjou Ali 2005 (1384) ldquoTarjome va Sharayet-e Farhangirdquo [Translation and Cultural Conditions] 42 5ndash14 Ashouri Dariush 2006 (1385) ldquoBaraye Dashtan-e Zaban-e Baz dar Tarjome Bayad Farhang-e Baz Dashtrdquo [An Open Culture Conditions an Open Language in Translation] 43 77ndash78 Solhjou Ali 2007 (1386) ldquoTarjome Napaziri-e Farhangirdquo [Cultural Untranslatability] 46 39ndash43 Fokouhi Naser 2007 (1386) ldquoEnsan Shenasi va Tarjomerdquo [An-thropology and Translation] 46 95ndash102 Bolouri Mazdak (tr) 2007 (1386) Even-Zoharrsquos ldquoThe Position of Translated Literature in Literary Polysystemrdquo 46 132ndash139 These papers briefly in-vestigate various issues in relation to translation ideology colonization cultural translatability translation theories and anthropology However the issue is the absence of dialogue between them which would lead to a specific theoretical discourse they remain intermittent pieces standing alone without having interested the community of scholars and simply fade away Be-sides the fact that Even-Zoharrsquos ldquoThe Position of Translated Literature in Literary Polysystemrdquo was not translated into Persian until 2007 is reason enough to think that the study of translation and culture is still in a pre-systemic phase of the conception of literature and culture in Iran The following papers in Motalersquoat-e Tarjome take up a similar position Mollanazar Hussain 1382 ldquoMotalersquoat-e Tarjome Farhang Zaban va Adabrdquo [Translation Studies Culture Language and Literature] 1(1) 7ndash30 Hashemi Minabad Hassan 1383 ldquoFarhang dar Tarjome va Tarjomey-e Anasor-e Farhangirdquo [Culture in Translation and the Translation of Cultural Elements] 2(5) 31ndash50 Ghazanfari Mohammad ldquoBaztab-e Boomi Garaee dar Tarjomerdquo [Domestication in Transla-tion] 3(11) 39ndash52 Khatib Mohammad and Khanjani-Khani Marjan ldquoNegahi be Tafavothaye Farhangi va Rahbordhaye Tarjomerdquo [An Overview of Cultural Differences and Translational So-lutions] 3(11) 64ndash65 Mirza Zahra and Khanjan Alireza ldquoBaznemood-e Ideology va Qodrat


dar Tarjomerdquo [The Representation of Ideology and Power in Translation] 3(12) 7ndash28 Siami Tohid and Kord Alieh and Zafaranloo Kamboozia ldquoRooykardi Neshane Shenakhti-Ejtemaee be Bar-resi Masaleye Barabari dar Tarjome Mafahim-e Ideologyrdquo [A Socio-Semiotic Approach to Equivalence in the Translation of Ideological Concepts] 6(21) 49ndash64 Fazeli Mohammad ldquoBinesh-haye Nazari darbareye Jame Shenasi Tarjomerdquo [Theoretical Insights into the Sociology of Translation] 7(25) 29ndash46 Farahzad Farzad and Madani-Givi Farah ldquoideology va tarjomerdquo [Ideology and Translation] 7(26) 93ndash94

9 Even though my primary concern in this paper is not a comparative study of translation historiography cultural relatedness not only with neighboring countries and cultures but also with those located farther away and the asymmetrical nature of such relations have been ac-knowledged as a fundamental and formative part of the argument

10 The discourse on ldquoproserdquo in Persian is pretty young historians usually begin recounting the formation of modern prose through translation then mention journalism as a contributing fac-tor in its development and finally list the ldquoliteraryrdquo works written in ldquomodern proserdquo forming new genres These ldquoprosesrdquo are all cast as continuous and there is not much of a differentiation between the languages of journalism translation and ldquonativerdquo literary prose considering such a generic indiscrimination the discourse on prose and literary genres still has to develop

11 Even though the main channel of translation into Persian was the French language (definitely so between 1851 and 1921) the first substantial work on ldquomodern proserdquo was written in English by Hassan Kamshad (1966) Christophe Balayrsquos work (1998 but published in Persian in 2006) was the first attempt in French to deal with the early translations into Persian from French In other words there is a linguistic rupture between the actual influences and the major sources that constructed the historiographical discourse There are also books written in Persian like Hassan Mirabedinirsquos four volume (2007 first published in 1999) and Yahya Aryanpourrsquos three volume (reprint in 2002) histories of modern Persian literature that deal with translation and the formation of prose but they never seem to have any quarrels with the discourse constructed in other languages about modern Persian prose This might indicate that Iran is still part of a colonial internationalization whose history is mainly written abroad

12 All translations from Persian sources are mine unless otherwise stated I have chosen Rahi-mianrsquos book for a particular purpose It is published by SAMT (The Organization for Research-ing and Composing University Textbooks in the Humanities) and it can give us a view of the institutional approach to translation historiography in the current education system Even this post-1979 book does not seem to have any reservations about the historiographical discourse of translation into Persian

13 During the Qajar era Russia gained territorial rights over large parts of the Persian Empire that the Qajars had ldquoinheritedrdquo The first war with Imperial Russia was in 1803 which ended in the Golestan Treaty (1813) and Russiarsquos occupation of Georgia and most of the Caucasus region The second war (1820s) ended with the Torkamanchay Treaty (1828) by which Russia gained control of the entire South Caucasus The Russian influence in the north of Iran was contested by the British presence in southern regions

14 This search for a model in Iran continues into the Pahlavi period as well Reza Shah was try-ing to do in Iran what Ataturk was doing in Turkey It seems improbable that countries which were struggling against colonial expansion of some European countries should not have much


in common in their relationship with colonization however the extent of the effectivity of the ldquomodernizingrdquo measures taken by leaders in their respective countries definitely depended on contextual specificities as discussed later on Therefore ldquomodernizationrdquo might have taken different turns and had different meanings in different contexts especially as filtered through translation For more on this topic see Hyun and Lambert (1995)

15 Specifically those of Alexander Dumas as the most popular and widely read novelist in translation in early 20th-century Iran French literature as mentioned above was the main translational source of and influence on Persian literature between 1851 and 1921 The Anglo-American influence becomes explicit during the second Pahlavi period (1941ndash1979) and after the joint UK-US coup drsquoetat toppled the Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 Even though things changed to the disadvantage of French it did not lose much of its influence with high culture probably because of the leftist and anti-American sentiments in Iran However this does not necessarily apply to the post-1979 period when the dynamics of culture and politics had become much more complicated prioritizing ironically English over French

16 According to the Dehkhoda Persian dictionary Farang is the Persianized form of France and its derivative Farangi literally means lsquoof or related to Francersquo lsquoEuropeanrsquo or lsquoChristianrsquo Originally Farangi was used to refer to people who had travelled to and experienced Farang that is France but a lack of familiarity with Europe gradually changed its meaning to connote ldquoEuroperdquo Another derivative of Farang Farangi-Marsquoab means someone who acts or behaves like the Farangis the Europeans These terms are not common in current linguistic use

17 The classics of Persian literature are numerous but some of most canonized are Ferdow-sirsquos (940ndash1020) Shahnameh Omar Khayyamrsquos (1048ndash1131) Rubaiyyat Attar Neishabourirsquos (1130ndash1220) Mantegho-Tair Nezamirsquos (1141ndash1209) Panj-Ganj Sarsquoadirsquos (1209ndash1291) Bustan and Golestan Rumirsquos (1207ndash1273) Masnavi and Divan-e Shams and Hafezrsquos (1315ndash1390) Di-van ldquoModern poetryrdquo was made in complete rupture from classical poetic rules and was much resisted however some canonized poets of the modern period (since 1900) are Nima Yooshij (1896ndash1960) Mehdi Akhavan-Sales (1928ndash1990) Simin Behbahani (1927) Forugh Farrokhzad (1935ndash1967) Ahmad Shamlou (1925ndash2000) Sohrab Sepehri (1928ndash1980)

18 Vahdatrsquos list of the Darolfonun curriculum as local education shows similarities with what students headed for abroad ldquoengineering infantry cavalry artillery medicine and surgery mineralogy and natural sciences including physics chemistry and pharmacology hellip history geography cartographyrdquo (2002 28) From these fields Vahdat rightly concludes that technical advancement was the main focus

19 Social and political unrest and consequent revolutions as a result of the importation of ideas is not specific to Iran in South-East Asia as well as in Turkey similar patterns are wit-nessed What has to be investigated comparatively is how similar they are and what differenti-ates under what contextual conditions their responses For Translation Studies in Iran this seems almost inevitable and demands serious attention

20 This move however was by no means unprecedented in world literary history For an in-vestigation of the link between modernity and language and the possibility of using ordinary language for poetic purposes in British Romanticism mainly Wordsworth see De Graef (2007)


21 For an investigation of the interaction between poetry and prose and the shift from the oral-ity of poetry to literacy and written prose see Ong (1982)

22 Notice that the cultural dynamics are much more complicated than mere translation and translational effects particularly when a very well established literary tradition precedes transla-tion For an investigation of these dynamics and the effects of tradition and production besides translation in the formation of a literary system see Lambert (1980)

23 Kamshad does mention the existence of a dynamic oral language side by side with an edu-cated Arabicized and educated written culture To him translation was not an invention of the language but a space for new mixtures

24 Whatever the actual consequences of this we must bear in mind that the language of trans-lation and that of literature are different from each other In the case of the Persian literary system it seems that the language of translation was taken as literature and set as a model for lit-erary productions in the forms that were imported through translation This must also indicate how the imported literary discourse was appropriated For the difference between the language of translation and that of literature see Boyden et al (2007)

25 As mentioned above the cultural dynamics cannot ignore the preceding traditions See Lambert (1980)

26 The novel as well as the short story both in prose and with their own specificities were for the first time imported through translation into the Persian literary system We need to be reminded that the novel in the Persian language preceded the Persian novel

27 One of the most significant issues for Translation Studies in Iran is to see the main sources (what languages which authors and through whom) of change and revolution prior to the Revolutions of 1905 and 1979 For instance in the latter case in addition to variant forms of Islamic ideology the Marxist influence was remarkable however what is significant for Trans-lation Studies is to see how the influence of Marxist ideology was filtered and appropriated in Persian and how meaningful the shifts wereare It must already be common knowledge that transcultural movement of ideas ldquodistortsrdquo them But how they occur and what they mean in the new context tell us a great deal about the cultures under investigation

28 Persian as the dominant language of the Iranian sphere has been significantly influenced by translation and because Persian has been the institutional language of education and culture it might have transferred its effect to the people who use the language culturally or educationally However whether or not the same effect is visible in their mother-tongues has to be established by further research This will be much more interesting considering the fact that no substan-tial translation channels exist between Iranian languages to make the translational effects of the ldquonewrdquo Persian on other languages traceable despite the fact that the building of a multi-language nation depends on the facilitation of interaction between the languages inside In my study I have taken the influences of the Persian language as being reflected in Iranian culture even though Persian is not an adequate representative of Iranian

29 What makes one uncomfortable with a term like ldquomodernizationrdquo is that the intention of the so called ldquomodernizationrdquo movement was to become totally ldquoEuropeanrdquo in appearance and manners as well as in thought and speech This process would be better labeled ldquoEuropeaniza-tionrdquo as ldquomodernizationrdquo seems not to have ever been a serious theoretically framed and defined


movement in Iran It seems to me that the desire for change and progress is so huge that any change regardless of its meaning is hailed as ldquomodernizationrdquo and as constructive to the cultur-al life What is more it is based on such a definition of ldquomodernizationrdquo that the 1979 revolution is interpreted as anti-modern approving post-revolutionary reactionary policies The first step is to challenge these terms and concepts and as translation was the basis of change Translation Studies has a graver task in cultural analysis in Iran

30 Institutionalization does not also imply homogenization of culture because other latent in-stitutions might reject the dominant discourse contesting it and its rise to political significance

ldquowhen a certain repertoire may already have succeeded in occupying the center schools churches and other organized activities and bodies may still obey certain norms no longer acceptable to the group who support that repertoirerdquo (Even-Zohar 1997 32) Nevertheless while all institutions are heterogeneous the absence of institutionalization proper can defi-nitely move from heterogeneity to the chaotic deregulation by lack of control

31 ldquoIntendedrdquo purposes or readers might arouse suspicions however in the case of translation into Persian the intentions of translators were quite explicitly emphasized ldquoprogressrdquo based on the ldquoFarangirdquo model To them the translation of the selected books into Persian could change people and culture and lead to ldquoprogressrdquo

32 The error is further intensified by the fact that not all Iraniansrsquo mother-tongue is Persian

33 Even in todayrsquos literary system prose is highly contested by poetry Any empirical data at-tempting to clarify the position of prose and poetry in the literary system must adopt a sound and clear measuring methodology in addition one also has to think of the literary system as a part of the whole linguistic system in which language might be put to several uses like transla-tion journalism daily communication etc

34 httpwwwunorgDeptsescappopjournalv10n1a1htm

35 Even if the translated works could communicate this ldquotrue ideardquo of Farangi modernity the fact that these translations enjoyed no critical reception remains problematic In this case trans-lation as a colonial apparatus performs the expropriation of the ldquoinfectedrdquo population This however does not mean that the population was totally passive because consciously or not they were already patterned by their literary and cultural tradition which would have resisted a sudden and total expropriation

36 For a brilliant investigation of the relationship between incompatibilities of the imported ldquouniversalrdquo ideas and local realities the possibility of modernization through importation of ideas and literary-critical adequacy in a peripheral literature depending on centers see Schwarz (1992 2001)

37 httpenwikipediaorgwikiJanus

38 Bakhtin uses the image of Janus to stress the double-voicedness of language

In actual fact each living ideological sign has two faces like Janus Any current curse word can become a word of praise any current truth must inevitably sound to many other people as the greatest lie The inner dialectic quality of the sign comes out fully in the open only in times of social crises or revolutionary changesrdquo (Bakhtin 1929 Quoted in Morris 1997 55)


He develops this image (1996) in relation to the concepts of a unitary vs double-voiced lan-guage heteroglossia and the centripetal vs centrifugal forces that constantly influence a lan-guage In my use the heteroglot is unconscious of its doubleness and assumes the role of the whole without qualifying for it This pertains to deeper problems with modern literary forms in Persian particularly the novel and cultural communication methods and requires a separate space for investigation

References

Ahmadzadeh Hashem 2003 Nation and Novel A Study of Persian and Kurdish Narrative Dis-course Uppsala Uppsala University Press

Aryanpour Yahya 2002a Az Saba ta Nima [From Saba to Nima] First volume Tehran Zavvar Press

Aryanpour Yahya 2002b Az Nima ta Roozegar-e Ma [From Nima to Our Time] Third volume of Az Saba ta Nima [From Saba to Nima] series Tehran Zavvar Press

Bakhtin Mikhail 1973 [1929] Marxism and the Philosophy of Language [with Valentin N Vo-loshinov Marksizm i filosofija jazyca Leningrad 1929] Translated by Ladislav Matejka and I R Titunik Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bakhtin Mikhail 1996 [1930s] The Dialogic Imagination Four Essays [essays originally pub-lished in Voprosy literatury i estetiki Moscow 1975] Holquist Michael ed Translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist Austin University of Texas Press

Balay Christophe 2006 Peidayesh-e Roman-e Farsi [La genese du roman persan modern 1998] Translated by Mahvash Ghavimi and Nasrin Khattat Tehran Institut Francais de Recher-che en Iran and Editions Morsquoin

Balay Christophe 2008 Sarchashme-haye Dastan Koutah-e Farsi [Aux sources de la nouvelle per-sane 1983] Translated by Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak Tehran Institut Francais de Recherche en Iran and Editions Morsquoin

Blasi Anthony J and Weigert Andrew J 1976 ldquoTowards a Sociology of Religion An Interpre-tive Sociology Approachrdquo Sociological Analysis 373 189ndash204

Michael Boyden Joseacute Lambert and Reine Meylaerts 2007 ldquoLa langue de la litterature institu-tionnalisation des lettres par le biais du discoursrdquo Plus Oultre Meacutelanges offerts agrave Daniel-Henri Pageaux Etudes coordineacutees par Sobhi Habchi Preacuteface de Pierre Brunel Introduc-tion de Jean Bessiegravere et Jean-Marc Moura Postface de Sobhi Habchi Paris LrsquoHarmattan 17 455ndash470

Chesterman Andrew 2008 ldquoThe Status of Interpretive Hypothesesrdquo Gyde Hansen et al eds Efforts and Models in Interpreting and Translation Research Amsterdam Benjamins 49ndash61

Chesterman Andrew 1998 ldquoCauses Translations Effectsrdquo Target 102 201ndash230Chesterman Andrew 2007 ldquoOn the Idea of a Theoryrdquo Across 81 1ndash16Dabashi Hamid 1985 ldquoThe Poetics of Politics Commitment in Modern Persian Literaturerdquo

Iranian Studies 1824 147ndash188De Graef Ortwin 2007 ldquoGrave Livers On the Modern Element in Wordsworth Arnold and

Warnerrdquo ELH 74 145ndash169Even-Zohar Itamar 1990 ldquoThe Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysys-

temrdquo Poetics Today 111 45ndash51


Even-Zohar Itamar 1997 ldquoFactors and Dependencies in Culture A Revised Outline for Poly-system Culture Researchrdquo Canadian Review of Comparative Literature XXIV1 15ndash34

Even-Zohar Itamar 2004 ldquoPolysystem Theory (Revised)rdquo Even-Zohar Itamar Papers in Cul-ture Research electronic book available at httpwwwtauacil~itamarezworkspaperspapersps-revisedpdf

Hermans Theo 1996 ldquoNorms and the Determination of Translation A Theoretical Frame-workrdquo Romaacuten Aacutelvarez and M Carmen-Aacutefrica Vidal eds Translation Power Subversion Clevedon Multilingual Matters 25ndash51

Hermans Theo 1999 Translation in Systems Descriptive and System-oriented Approaches Ex-plained Manchester St Jerome

Hyun Theresa M and Lambert Joseacute eds 1995 Translation and Modernization Volume IV of Earl Miner and Haga Toru general editors ICLA 1991 Tokyo The Force of Vision Pro-ceedings of the XIIIth Congress of International Comparative Literature Association Tokyo University of Tokyo Press

Jazayery Mohammad Ali 1970 ldquoModern Persian Prose Literaturerdquo Journal of the American Ori-ental Society 902 257ndash265

Kamshad Hassan 1966 Modern Persian Prose Literature Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Katouzian Homa 1991 ldquoIranrdquo Robin Ostle ed Modern Literature in Near and Middle East 1850ndash1970 London Routledge 130ndash157

Lambert Joseacute 1980 ldquoProduction Tradition et Importation une clef pour lrsquoeacutetude de la liteacuterra-ture en traductionrdquo Canadian Review of Comparative Literature VII2 246ndash252

Lambert Joseacute 1995 ldquoLiterature Translation and (De)colonizationrdquo Theresa M Hyun and Joseacute Lambert eds Translation and Modernization Tokyo ICLA 1991 Tokyo Congress Head-quarters 98ndash117

Mirabedini Hassan 2007 Sad Sal Dastan-Nevisi dar Iran [A hundred years of story-writing in Iran] First volume Tehran Cheshmeh Press

Morris Pam ed 1997 The Bakhtin Reader Selected Writings of Bakhtin Medvedev and Voloshi-nov London and New York Arnold

Ong Walter J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technologizing of the Word London MethuenRahimian Hormoz 2006 Adabiat-e Moaser-e Nasr Advar-e Nasr-e Farsi az Mashrooteh ta

Enghelab-e Eslami [Contemporary prose literature the phases of Persian prose from the Constitutional to the Islamic revolution] Tehran SAMT

Schwarz Roberto 1992 Misplaced Ideas Essays on Brazilian Culture John Gledson ed London and New York Verso

Schwarz Roberto 2001 ldquoNational Adequation and Critical Originalityrdquo Translated by R Kelly Washbourne and Neil Larsen Cultural Critique 49 18ndash42

Vahdat Farzin 2002 ldquoGod and Juggernaut Iranrsquos Intellectual Encounter with Modernityrdquo New York Syracuse University Press

Yeganeh Nahid 1993 ldquoWomen Nationalism and Islam in Contemporary Political Discourse in Iranrdquo Feminist Review 44 3ndash18


Reacutesumeacute

Presque toutes les eacutetudes consacreacutees agrave la rencontre entre lrsquoIran et lamoderniteacute europeacuteenne met-tent en relief le rocircle de la traduction en tant quevecteur des formes litteacuteraires nouvelles au sein du systegraveme litteacuterairepersan mais aussi en tant que moteur principal du changement et pluspreacuteci-seacutement de la modernisation de la culture Cet article srsquoattachesuccessivement au reacutecit constructi-viste du discours historiographique encours et agrave lrsquoenvironnement traductif entre 1851 et 1921 en Iran Apregraves avoirdeacutecrit lrsquounivers de la traduction pendant la peacuteriode citeacutee jrsquointerroge laconcep-tion peu critique de la traduction comme une force positive drsquounepart il srsquoagit drsquoexaminer de pregraves les hypotheacutetiques implicationsculturelles et linguistiques de la traduction drsquoautre part il srsquoagit demettre en question lrsquoimpact de la traduction en soi sur la modernisationsocio-cultu-relle un pouvoir qui lui est attribueacute dans le discourshistoriographique ambiant Cette mise en question privileacutegiera les effetstraductifs individuels et culturels par rapport aux effets institu-tionnelssupposeacutes

Mots-clefs prose persane moderne mouvements de traduction le Darolfonun la reacutevolution constitutionnelle lrsquohistoriographie de la traduction la moderniteacute iranienne

Authorrsquos address

Omid AzadibougarDepartment of Literary StudiesKatholieke Universiteit LeuvenBlijde Inkomststraat 21PO Box 33113000 LEUVEN Belgium

OmidAzadiartskuleuvenbe


history but it is generally considered additional to the history of the national cul-ture In most cases various kinds of relations with the surrounding cultures are part of this historiography but translation is rarely an object of study in this field At the same time the history of translation(s) has become an object of study at a relatively late stage in Translation Studies and is often considered to be a subtopic within the cultural approach to translation

However some national historians are aware of the phenomenon of transla-tion and in this article I want to observe such a case namely the situation of Iranian cultural history in recent centuries This is particularly significant because the desire for participation in international cultural networks coupled with a fear of isolation has led to the ldquolocalrdquo historiographiesrsquo uncritical reiteration of those formulated abroad In my discussion I cannot yet answer larger cultural questions concerning the explanation of the sudden interest in translation among Iranian historians and whether this is a general interest in translation among historians or rather a specific interest in connection with particular moments in the coun-tryrsquos history This would require me to take into account the historiography of the surrounding countries (Israel Turkey India etc) including the history of coloni-zation and shifts in colonial (or postcolonial) relationships eg in the transition from more Europe-oriented partnerships into more USA-oriented partnerships (andor globalization) and that is beyond the scope of the present article

Not only history and historiography are complicated concepts in the context of the (Middle) East1 In presenting a study of narratives and narrativity I cannot establish a clear distinction between literature and cultural history as most West-European historical handbooks would do more or less explicitly It is clear that no historian would reduce his object of study only to literary texts nor to literary writings but the Great Books in many cultures tend to have literary qualities and also literary prestige

In Iranian culture however literary writings have a rather explicit position in the history of textual traditions but unlike European traditions Iranian ldquoLitera-turerdquo with a capital letter was not supposed to be written in prose until a given mo-ment in the early 20th century which implies that there are genre complications to the extent that narrative prose writing is the result of import (and translation) from European languages This may be one of the explanations of the unavoid-able link from the Iranian perspective between narrative prose (in literature) and translation

Nevertheless writing about translation in Iran is a difficult task for various reasons To begin with we are dealing with a colorful linguistic scene as there are other languages and dialects in use in todayrsquos Iran in addition to Persian (Farsi) which happens to have been the dominant and official language and the main source of cultural change however only 58 of the population speaks Persian







































































































4 Conclusion



Acknowledgements




Notes




















































References



































Reacutesumeacute












































































































4 Conclusion



Acknowledgements




Notes




















































References



































Reacutesumeacute








Notes




















































References



































Reacutesumeacute



















































References



































Reacutesumeacute


























Reacutesumeacute






Translation historiography in the Modern World: Modernization and translation into Persian

Documents

Transcript of Translation historiography in the Modern World: Modernization and translation into Persian