Difference between revisions of "Hist Trans EN 15"

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'''History of Translations'''
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=Chapter 15Mahzad Heydarian: Where Persian Language Meets Translation=
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[[Hist_Trans_EN_15]]
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Mahzad Sadat Heydarian,Hunan Normal University,China
  
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[[History_of_Translations|Overview Page of History of Translation]]
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This paper is a journey to the history of Persian language and the presence of translation into/from Persian in different historical eras. Translation has been influenced by many social and intercultural factors throughout history; in this paper, its functions from ancient Persia to the contemporary era will be surveyed.
  
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30 Chapters（0/30)
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Key Words: Translation history, Persian language, Arabic influence, Medieval era
  
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[[Hist_Trans_EN_1]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_2]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_3]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_4]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_5]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_6]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_7]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_8]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_9]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_10]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_11]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_12]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_13]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_14]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_15]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_16]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_17]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_18]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_19]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_20]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_21]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_22]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_23]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_24]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_25]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_26]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_27]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_28]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_29]] [[Hist_Trans_EN_30]] ...
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Persian Language, known as the language of great literary works by Hafez, Khayyam, Rumi and many other classical and modern poets and writers, has always been an interesting subject to study. Looking for its roots and origins and how it is changing and developing has been the interest of many linguists around the world. Like other important languages, Persian has developed and gradually changed in different eras in history. It seems that writings on translation history suffer from severe shortcomings. What is overlooked by the researchers of Persian translation history is to clarify the distinction between oral and written translation. These two have proved to be completely different subjects while they have been mixed when the writers judge its ups and downs in a specific period of time. Moreover, in the relatively limited knowledge of Persian translation history, the thematic classification of translations (e.g. literary, scientific, etc.) have not been considered.
  
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[[Book_projects|Back to translation project overview]] [[DCG-To-Do|Zur To-Do-Liste]]
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Another common but important deficiency of such historiography is the lack of scientific consideration of the source and target texts, based on advances in the study of translation during the past three decades. The socio-cultural aspects of translation have rarely been surveyed, nor has the linguistic process of evolution of Persian historically been studied. Despite the importance of such inquiries, in most studies done by the Persian writers we could rarely find traces of identifying the direction of source and target texts, let alone contemplating the process and product as two imperative factors in any study of translation. Abdolhossein Azarang, whose history of translation comes with these problems admits that none of available historical books, including his, could be mentioned as a survey without offering at least a set of simple comparisons between the source and target texts in each era (Azarang, “Tarikhe” 9).
  
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=Abstract=
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To our knowledge Persian has gone through three main changes over the years: starting from Old Persian, in transformed into Middle Persian, also known as Pahlavi, and was finally modernized into contemporary Persian—which is in use today in Iran, Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia. Persian is a branch of the Indo-European languages. As Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak (493) mentions “Over a millennium this language has been the primary means of daily discourse as well as the language of science, art and literature on the Iranian plateau.” He indicates that “Old Persian was brought into Iranian plateau in the second millennium BC by Eurasian steppes. In time, it became the language of the Achamenians (559-339 BC), a dynasty of kings who established the largest, most powerful empire in the ancient world” (493).  
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Under different historical background, the modern and contemporary translations in western countries show their different characteristics and traits which cen be concluded from several perspectives.
 
  
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=Keywords=
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Among the encyclopedic references, Britannica has put forward a good remark for the root and divisions of Middle Persian with more detailed information. It mentions that:
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Western translation; translation history; modern; contemperary
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Middle Persian is known in three forms, not entirely homogeneous—inscriptional Middle Persian, Pahlavi (often more precisely called Book Pahlavi), and Manichaean Middle Persian. The Middle Persian form belongs to the period 300 BCE to 950 CE and was, like Old Persian, the language of southwestern Iran. In the northeast and northwest the language spoken was Parthian, which is known from inscriptions and from Manichaean texts. There are no significant linguistic differences in the Parthian of these two sources. Most Parthian belongs to the first three centuries CE.
  
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=Introduction=
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Nonetheless, the Middle Persian script was abandoned in favor of the Arabic script and led to many new linguistic alterations in Persian. According to Karimi-Hakkak “The new script was far simpler and more advanced. In addition, where the Arabic script lacked essentially Persian consonants these were added to it. In short, the adoption of the Arabic script for Persian did not give rise to ruptures as significant as certain modernist reformers have assumed it did” (494). Therefore, the start of the most significant change in the Persian language dates back to the seventh century when Islam started to take over the Iranian plateau. This led Persian to find many new scopes. By adopting the Arabic alphabet, Persian became even stronger and further blossomed into many classical literary works in the following centuries.
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In this paper, western translation history in modern and contemporary ages will be introduced. Here the modern age refers to the nearly half century before the Second World War. The contemporary age refers to the half century after the Second World War. That is to say, the modern and contemporary translation in this paper refers to the translation in the 20th century. Under different historical background, the modern and contemporary translations show their different characteristics and traits which will be concluded and discussed in detail in the following.
 
  
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=The General Situation of Translation in the Modern Age=
 
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Into the 20th century, the capitalism in the developed countries developed into imperialism. On the one hand, the imperialist countries intensified their foreign expansion to oppress and exploit the weak countries and colonial people, while on the other hand, they were engaged in a fierce battle among themselves for international markets and spheres of influence. Thus, in less than half a century, two world wars broke out. Under this historical background, translation in western countries will inevitably be seriously disturbed and destroyed. However, in some specific fields and countries (such as the Soviet Union), the translation of this period also has its own traits, which can be summarized from the following four aspects.
 
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==Simplicity, smoothness and accuracy became the translation criterion.==
 
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In the translation of classics, translators no longer emphasized the elegant style of the original work, but took the simplicity, smoothness and accuracy as the criterion to measure the translation. Translators not only in France, but also in Britain, Germany, Italy, Russia and other countries began to break the tradition of poetry translation, generally advocating translating the original poem into prose, not into verse; Even when translating the works of the great poets of the past, they did not employ strict rhythm. The popular practice in translation was to translate the original poem into prose using plain language so that the translation can be understood by the reader without annotation. For example, E. Y. Rieu’s translation of Odyssey in 1946 and R. A. Knox’s translation of Bible in 1948 were typical popular translations.
 
  
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==The emphasis of translation was on Russian and Nordic works.==
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Among the encyclopedic references, Britannica has put forward a good remark for the root and divisions of Middle Persian with more detailed information. It mentions that: Middle Persian is known in three forms, not entirely homogeneous—inscriptional Middle Persian, Pahlavi (often more precisely called Book Pahlavi), and Manichaean Middle Persian. The Middle Persian form belongs to the period 300 BCE to 950 CE and was, like Old Persian, the language of southwestern Iran. In the northeast and northwest the language spoken was Parthian, which is known from inscriptions and from Manichaean texts. There are no significant linguistic differences in the Parthian of these two sources. Most Parthian belongs to the first three centuries CE.
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From the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, the literature of Russia and the Nordic countries developed greatly with the emergence of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Chekhov, Andersen, Ibsen, Strindberg and other world-renowned great writers and dramatists. Their works had attracted the attention of the people in Western Europe and North America so they were competing to learn Russian, Danish and Swedish and had these works translated into English, German and French. In the process of translation, many excellent translators emerged in various countries, among which Garnett is the first to be mentioned.
 
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===Translation of Russian literature===
 
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Constance Garnet is the most famous female translator in Britain in this century. She translated almost all classic Russian novels and is widely regarded as the most important Translator of translating Russian literature into English.  
 
  
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She published her first translation of Turgenev's novel Ru-Din in 1894. In the following decades, she devoted almost all her energy and time to the translation of Russian literature. She was the first person to translate Turgenev, Dostoyevsky and Chekhov into English, successively translating all the major works of Turgenev, Goncharov, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol and Chekhov including 12 volumes of Dostoyevsky's Selected Works translated from 1912 to 1920, 15 volumes of Turgenev's Selected Works translated from 1894 to 1899, 15 volumes of Chekhov's Novels and Plays translated from 1916 to 1922, and 6 volumes of Gogol’s Selected Works translated from 1922 to 1928. In particular, her translations of Turgenev, Chekhov, Dostoyevsky and other works were widely welcomed by the English reading community, and thus gave rise to the Russian literature craze in English literature before the First World War. She translated 70 Russian works in her lifetime, making her the most prolific translator of Russian works.
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Nonetheless, the Middle Persian script was abandoned in favor of the Arabic script and led to many new linguistic alterations in Persian. According to Karimi-Hakkak “The new script was far simpler and more advanced. In addition, where the Arabic script lacked essentially Persian consonants these were added to it. In short, the adoption of the Arabic script for Persian did not give rise to ruptures as significant as certain modernist reformers have assumed it did” (494). Therefore, the start of the most significant change in the Persian language dates back to the seventh century when Islam started to take over the Iranian plateau. This led Persian to find many new scopes. By adopting the Arabic alphabet, Persian became even stronger and further blossomed into many classical literary works in the following centuries.
  
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Two other translators who did not translate as much from Russian to English as Garnett, but who had no less influence, were the couple——Louise and Aylmer Maude. They are famous in western modern literary circles for their research and translation of Tolstoy's works. From 1928 to 1937, they spent nearly ten years translating and publishing 21 volumes of The Complete Works of Tolstoy. Later, from 1940s to 1950s, they supplemented or retranslated some of Tolstoy's works, such as What I Believe and Resurrection. In 1952, their work of War and Peace was accepted as a standard English translation and was selected for the prestigious Western Classics Series, thus establishing them as the authoritative English translators of Tolstoy.
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The need for translation soon of course rose in a language like Persian spoken by large populations and used by different dynasties. Persian language had remained consistent and independent by asking the translation firstly and more importantly from Arabic. The language itself has neither been replaced by any other languages nor substantially changed during the centuries. That is why a Persian speaker today can effortlessly understand and enjoy the language of Hafez or Rudaki, the famous poets who lived in the 14th and 9th centuries, respectively.
  
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In addition, R. S. Townsend, R. Edmonds, Samuel Koteliansky, Ethel C. Mayne, Boris Brasol, Richard Renfield and so on were famous for translating the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Chekhov, Goncharov into English.
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The need for translation soon of course rose in a language like Persian spoken by large populations and used by different dynasties. Persian language had remained consistent and independent by asking the translation firstly and more importantly from Arabic. The language itself has neither been replaced by any other languages nor substantially changed during the centuries. That is why a Persian speaker today can effortlessly understand and enjoy the language of Hafez or Rudaki, the famous poets who lived in the 14th and 9th centuries, respectively.  
  
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===Translation of Nordic literature and drama===
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The traces of written translation in different periods of the history of Persian language have mostly been based on the king’s demands or special order by one of the influential people in the royal court, mostly for their immediate political needs. This history, before the last century, has was interwoven with political, sometimes military and less commonly scientific texts. Therefore, individual or freelance translators who had been engaged in translation of literary works, or the Persian scientists who were keen to translate texts into Persian are absent in many historical periods. Azarang (15), studying the history of Safavid dynasty (1501–1736), in which Iran had lot of communications with Europe, has associated this strange phenomenon to the lack of concern and interest for learning and evolving in Persian travelers or dispatched students who commute to western countries. He believes that Iran missed a unique opportunity to use the scientific benefits for fundamental changes during Safavid dynasty, which was concurrent with the scientific and industrial transformations of Europe. As we will see, the attempts for translating texts for Iranian users were mostly confined to translation into Arabic instead of Persian as the main language of the whole plateau in post-Islamic era. The new movement of translating texts from different subjects into Persian was seen some 100 years after Safavid kings, during mid-Qajar era (1795–1925).
  
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In the first half of the 20th century, in addition to Russian literature, western European translators showed great interest in Nordic literature and drama, including the works of Andersen, Ibsen and Strindberg.
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In this article a historical investigation of Persian translation is presented based on what is available in collecting books and articles, mostly based on four important references: Karimi-Hakkak’s article in Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (1998), Daeratol’ma’aref-e Bozorg-e Eslami (2008), Behrouz Karoubi’s important article (2017), and Azarang’s detailed chronological event book (2015). The study has been divided into five sections based on the five historical periods: Ancient Persia, Medieval Persian, The Mongol Era, Post-Mongol Era, and the Modern Period. This is more or less the same division done by Karimi-Hakkak, as the main resource of this article, but with a specific extension. This investigation refers primarily to translation into Persian and some comparatively rare cases of translation from Persian into the other languages, will exclusively be dealt with.
  
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When Hans Christian Andersen was alive, one of his works was published simultaneously in 15 languages, including English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and almost all the major languages of Western Europe. Later, all of his works were translated into different languages, and there were many re-translations in English, French, German and other countries. The first English translator was Mary Howitt, who began translating Andersen’s fairy tales in 1846. Later translators include Charles Boner, Caroline Peachey, Lady Duff Gordon, Paul Leyssac, R. R. Keigwin and R. Spink. Some of the best translations are Leyssac’s translation in 1937, Keigwin’s translation from 1950 to 1960 and Spink’s translation.
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Ancient Persia (Before 651)
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Karimi-Hakkak (493) mentions that “Translation into Persian has a long and eventful history; it has played an important part in the evolution of Iranian and Iranate civilizations throughout Western Asia and beyond.” We see the first traces of translation in medieval Persia, in which close contact and interface between Arabic and Persian occurred. He claims that “The Achamenian empire was multilingual, and many of its documents were written not only in various language of the empire, but in Babylonian and Elamite as well. Still our information about specific translation activities among these languages is too sketchy to allow any in-depth discussion of trends and patterns.” Later on, only with the formation of the Sasanian dynasty in Persia (AD 224–652) and the rise of Middle Persian the first authentic historical information about intercultural exchange could be found.
  
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The main English translators of Ibsen’s plays are William Archer and James MacFarlane. Archer translated 12 volumes of The Collected Works of H. I. from 1906 to 1912, including almost all of Ibsen’s plays and some of his previously unpublished papers. Macfarlane compiled translated eight volumes of The Oxford Ibsen from 1960 to 1977. In addition, F. E. Garrett translated Lyrics and Poems from Ibsen in 1912. Mary Morison translated The Correspondence of H.I. in 1905. Evert Sprinchorn translated H. I. Letters and Speeches in 1964.  
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Behistun Inscription as the unique masterpiece in Achamenian’s era is an exclusive phenomenon in the history of translation of the world; Azarang argues that it is one of the most important translated texts in that era as well as one of the examples of precise translation. Translation of Behistun inscribed stone seems to be done by a number of trusted linguists who probably checked the texts’ conformity more than once. This translation shows that a precise translation accompanied by artistic delicacies on the stones had reached a very good level in that time (35).
  
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In Germany, the standard German translation is The Collected Plays of Ibsen in ten volumes edited and published by G. Brandes, J. Elias, and P. Schlenther from 1898 to 1902. The standard French translation is The Complete Works of Ibsen in 16 volumes translated and published by P. G. la Chesnais from 1914 to 1945.
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Scholarship suggests that Old Persian was transmitted orally, as we have no written records from that time. There is Avesta, a religious book in what scholars have termed Avestan, a language closely related to Old Persian. Even though it was committed to writing in the fourth century AD, Avesta contains some Zoroastrian hymns thought to be in older Iranian languages” (qtd. in Karimi-Hakkak 493).
  
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Strindberg’s work was translated into English as early as 1912. For the next fifty or sixty years, many people worked on Strindberg’s studies and translations. Major English translators included E. Schleussner, Walter Johnson, M. Sandbach, Elizabeth Sprigge and Michael Meyer. Some good works are Sprigge’s translations of Strinberg’s Plays in 1963 and Meyer’s translations of The Father, Miss Julie, Storm and so on in 1964. In other major western European countries such as Germany and France, Strindberg’s plays were also translated into German and French, and repeatedly staged in Berlin and Paris.
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Medieval Persian (651-1206)
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In the post Islamic era, the most significant translation works included nearly all of extant translations are from middle Persian into Arabic. This took place, as Karimi-Hakkak mentions, in the hope to save religious or literary works from destruction by transferring them into the newly spread and mostly accepted language which was Arabic at the time.
  
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There is no doubt that the translation of modern and contemporary Russian and Nordic literature and drama was a mainstream of western translation in the first half of the century. However, at the same time, it must be pointed out that the mutual translation of modern and contemporary literary works in western European countries still enjoys considerable momentum.
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We do not still have access to any written works that reveals the exact historical events in Iran during 100 years after the Arab conquest in the middle of seventh century. We could not find an example of written translated practice in that century either. We know that written Persian had not yet developed much in that time and was not yet common around the country. Furthermore, according to Azarang, knowing the relation between some Iranians and Arab people seems not to be possible at the end of the century to understand the related linguistic relations. In the second century after Islam, however, we have evidence to show that some Iranian scientists who learned Arabic started to translate medieval works from Persian to Arabic in the fields of philosophy, logic, astronomy, medicine, pharmacology, ethics, and culture (Azarang, 95).
  
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==More and more Chinese works were translated.==
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In Medieval era almost all Persian writers and scholars were bilingual, as the dominant language especially for writing was Arabic; by most of experts and philosophers. Karimi-Hakkak puts forward a list of famous internationally recognized Persian celebrities when he states that “in addition to the historian Tabari and physician and philosopher Avicenna, three of the greatest Islamic theologians – the Shi’ite Mohammad Tusi (d. 1076), the Sunni reformist Mohammad al-Ghazāli (d. 1111), and the Mo‘tazelite Zamakhshari (d. 1144) – who was also a great grammarian and lexicographer – can be counted among these, as can the jurist and philosopher Fakhr al-Din Rāzi (d. 1209)”. These men sometimes prepared Persian versions of the works they had written originally in Arabic, or supervised their students in such tasks. This is one reason why the border between translation and original work, as envisaged in that culture, appears blurred to us (496).
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In the 20th century, more and more people in the West became interested in Chinese culture. Since the 1950s, with the improvement of new China’s international prestige, the fever of translating Chinese works had been constantly appearing in the West. Not only the Four Books, Five Classics, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West, A Dream of Red Mansions and the poems of Li Bai, Du Fu and Bai Juyi were translated into English, German and French, but modern writers such as Luxun, Maodun and Bajin were also introduced to western countries.
 
  
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In the process of translating and introducing Chinese works, excellent translators have emerged from every country. Arthur Waley, the most eminent Sinologist in Britain in the 20th century, was a translator, writer and poet. In 1916, his first translation of Chinese Poems was published. In 1918, he published his second translated work One Hundred Seventy Chinese Poems. These two translations are both from Tang poems. In addition, he also translated part of Journey to the West in 1942, published four other Chinese-English translations, and wrote three books about China or Chinese writers.
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This fluidity enabled medieval Persian scientists and philosophers to be original authors and translators at the same time. The absence of proprietary concerns in medieval times further undermines modern-day efforts to distinguish writing from translation. Acts of borrowing, adaptation and appropriation were undertaken in ways that transcend modern classifications. The corpus of philosophical and scientific works in Persian is replete with bilingual texts or hybrids, as well as those in which text and commentary are in two different languages. There are also numerous texts of an indeterminate character; these may or may not be considered original works with later commentaries or annotated translations. Within the terms of medieval Persia, such works must be assumed to have originated in Arabic unless proven otherwise (496).
  
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Another outstanding Sinologist and translator in the 20th century was Franz Kuhn of Germany. From 1919, when his first translation was published, to his death in 1961, he translated and published more than 40 classical and modern Chinese literary works, including 12 novels and 34 short stories. In particular, his translation of The Fortunate Union in 1926, Second Bloom in 1927, The Golden Lotus in 1930, A Dream of Red Mansions in 1932, Water Margin in 1934, Jade Dragonfly in 1936, Romance of the Three Kingdoms in 1940, Midnight and other works from 1940 to 1955, were well received by German readers.
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According to Mary Boyce, there was an unfortunate fact that none of the literature of the Parthian period has survived in its original because of their oral form. She explains that our knowledge about Parthian literature is thus mainly through recensions, redactions, or partial translations in Middle Persian (1157–1158). Karimi-Hakkak mentions: “We also know that the Sasanian kings encouraged translations from Greek and Latin. Much historical knowledge, lost to the Persians as a result of the chaos that followed Alexander’s conquest in 330 BC, was regained in this way. The Sasanian monarch Shapur I commissioned many translations from Greek and Indian works to be incorporated into collections of religious texts” (494).
  
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==Translation in Soviet showed its unique characteristics==
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Even for the extensive Sassanian literature which we know for certain that many works of other languages were translated into Middle Persian [must be rephrased], we have regrettably no knowledge about the linguistic features of translation that were used by the translators at that time or strategies which have been prevalent (qtd. in Karoubi 596).
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After the October Revolution, the Russian nation entered the great Soviet era. Fundamental changes in the political system had brought about huge changes in everything including translation. Since then, a clear dividing line had emerged in the practice and theory of translation in the west. One is the translation of western European and North American countries, and the other is the translation of the Soviet Union. Although they have exchanged with each other, they developed along two fundamentally different routes, enriching and developing the translation cause in the West from two different aspects. Here are several distinct characteristics of translation in the socialist Soviet Union.
 
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===Marxism-Leninism became the guide of translation practice and translation theory.===
 
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Translation must serve the people and socialist construction, which became an important criterion for testing and evaluating all translated works. This marked that Soviet translation appeared on the western translation stage with an unprecedented ideological attitude, and broke away from many traditional western concepts, especially various "art for art’s sake" concepts.  
 
  
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===The translation and publication of foreign literature became organized, planned and systematic.===
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Many translated works have been reported by Younes Keramati in the 14th century, which were from Persian and Iranian Arabic into Greek. The territories under the rule of the Trabzon Empire, from the early 14th century, witnessed a short resurrection of the translation of Persian works into Greek. The importance of translation between the two languages could be shown when we see that the translation of an astronomical work attributed to Shamsuddin Bukharaei, an Iranian scientist, led to the creation of the new Persian astronomical era in the Trabzon Empire. Among many important translated works, another Byzantine physician named Georgios Choniates translated an important Persian toxicology into Greek. Keramati believes that the superiority of Iranian education in Greece through translation (whether from Arabic or Persian) is proved by the fact that in that age, compared to the translation of many Persian works, not a single work has been translated from Greek into Persian (35).  In an encyclopedic research, Ahmad Pakatchi argues that in translation from Persian to Turkish of Kharazmi, examples of literary works abound. Among them, instead of a precise translation, a kind of literary re-creation has taken place. A good example of this kinds is Khosrow and Shirin from Qutb Kharazmi (in 1341) which is the recreation of the famous poetry of Masnavi of Khosrow and Shirin by Nezami Ganjavi. In addition, the translation of Attar Neyshabouri’s Tazkerat al-Awliya is less changed because of its nature as simple prose but its translation has been done with some variations.
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This trait was to Gorky's credit. Under his initiative and leadership, a World Literature Publishing House was established in 1918 in the Soviet Union to publish translations of foreign literature. The original plan was to publish two series: a set of basic series with an estimate of 1,500 books; a set of people’s library series with an estimate of 2500 books. Although the huge publishing plan of the House was not fully realized, the principles advocated by Gorky, namely, selectively translating world classics and improving the level of translation art, had been inherited and carried forward by the Soviet translation and publishing circles. And the translation skills and quality had been improved significantly since the 1930s.  
 
  
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===The topic selection of translation was determined strictly according to the ideological, artistic and intellectual value of the original work.===   
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As argued by Karimi-Hakkak (494), “in the second half of the seventh century, Islam began to spread over the Iranian plateau gradually but steadily. This marks a unique turning point in the life of Iranians, not only religiously, but culturally and linguistically as well. The Persian language constitutes the most tangible link between Islamic and pre-Islamic Iranian cultures.”
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Soviet translation and publishing circles, basing on the principle of critically absorbing foreign culture, translated not only a large number of foreign works of the past, but also a lot of foreign modern works. Especially in the translation of contemporary works of European and American capitalist countries, they strove to use scientific, practical and realistic attitude toward the original works, neither exaggerating the shortcomings of the original work nor demeaning the ideological and artistic value of it.
 
  
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===The mutual translation of various ethnic languages in the Soviet Union was greatly developed.===
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Rozveh or Ruzbeh, better known by his Muslim name ‘Abdollāh Ebn-Al-Moqaffa’ (executed about 759), translated the Panchatantra and Khotay-namak (a collection of mythical legends of Persian kings and heroes) into Arabic. In all likelihood, he is also responsible for the translation into Arabic of accounts of the sixth century reformist prophet Mazdak, and that of his followers. Such texts, later translated from Arabic back into New Persian (Karoubi, 494).  
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The Soviet Union was a multi-ethnic country with a variety of national languages. In order to strengthen the mutual understanding and unity among the nationalities, it was necessary to strengthen the translation work among the national languages. In an article published in Pravda on December 7, 1934, Gorky stated: “It would be ideal if every work of each of the allied peoples were translated into the languages of the other peoples of the Soviet Union, for then we would quickly learn to understand the peculiarities and characteristics of each other’s cultures, and this understanding would naturally greatly speed up the process of creating a unified socialist culture...” (quoted from Fedorov,1955:123). Under the domination of this thought, many poets, essayists, writers involved in the translation and introduction of national works. In a short period of twenty or thirty years, hundreds of excellent works of various ethnic groups of the Soviet Union had been translated into Russian, becoming precious treasures of Russian literature.
 
  
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===The principles generally followed in translation were: faithfulness, accuracy and no word-by-word translation.===
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Hediscovered two parallel tendencies in the eighth and ninth centuries. “The first, consisted of a series of translations made from extant texts into Arabic, later translated back into Persian. The second activity, undertaken by Persian converts to Islam, took the shape primarily of commentaries on the holy Qur’ān’ which could not be translated. Translation strategies were especial in that time in which ‘texts were subjected. to a variety of changes; they were simplified, annotated, abridged, illustrated with pictures and diagrams, mended through sequels, or otherwise altered to suit the specific needs of the patron and the new readership” (Karoubi, 495).  
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That is to say, translation should be faithful to the original text in the ideological content and keep the artistic characteristics of the original text; In terms of the expression of the target language, it should accurately use the target language without destroying the expression habits of the language. It can be considered that the dominant method in the Soviet translation circle was the free translation advocated by Pushkin in the early 19th century and Belinsky in the middle. Of course, formalistic and low-quality translations also appeared from time to time, such as those published by some private publishing houses during the period of the New Economic Policy. But on the whole, the principle of free translation, which strives to faithfully reflect the characteristics of the original work and has the same quality as the original work, dominated the translation career of the Soviet Union.
 
  
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=The General Situation of Translation in the Contemporary Age=
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The Mongol Era (1206–1368)
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After the Second World War, the world entered a period of relative peace. After the trauma of the war, the Western countries regrouped and began to restore and develop production and economy in an all-round way. Translation cause also entered a new period of development at extremely rapid pace, taking on a new look. During this period, not only in the Soviet Union, Britain, Germany, France and other major European countries, but also in the United States, Canada, the cause of translation showed a prosperous scene. In terms of the whole western translation career, the translation after the Second World War was unmatched in scope, form, scale and achievement. German translation theorist R. W. Jumpelt called the 20th century "the age of translation" which in fact mainly referred to the decades since the end of the war.
 
  
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In 1952, the American Encyclopedia Britannica Publishing Company edited and published a set of Great Books of the Western World. This is by far the most complete set of masterpieces published in English. As English original works only account for a small proportion of the series, it is mainly a set of translated works. Among the hundreds of translations, some are new, some are old, some are from the 20th century, and some are from before the 20th century. In short, the editors’ aim is to select the best translations that best represent the original work. In this sense, Great Books of the Western World is a set of authoritative translations. Similar large literary series of translations were also published in France, Germany, the Soviet Union and other countries. Especially in the Soviet Union, the number of foreign literary series translated and published in recent decades was in a leading position. This continued in Russia after the Collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. These are the major features of western literary translation in the 20th century. However, despite the great achievements of literary translation, the 20th century is known as the "age of translation" mainly because western translation expanded into various fields during this period, which has five characteristics.
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In line with this classification Karimi-Hakkak states that “following the Mongol and Tartar invasions of the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries, new patterns of interaction emerged between Persian on the one hand and a number of Indian and Turkic languages on the other, making this history even more complex and multifarious.”
 +
The Mongol conquest of Iran in the thirteenth century gradually put an end to the influence of the Arabic-speaking neighbors of the country and, as a result, led to the reduction of works composed in the Arabic language and the increase in works originally written in Persian. Karoubi refers to Mo’jam as one good example of this tendency. The book is written by Shams-e Qays-e Rāzi’s, as an effort of literary criticism that was originally composed in Arabic and, following the Mongol invasion, rewritten in Persian. In the preface to his book, Qays-e Rāzi claims that he had rewritten it in Persian on the request of many Persian poets and literati who did not possess sufficient knowledge of Arabic and were questioning the rationale behind composing a work on Persian poetic prosody in Arabic, because in their view such a work would be useful neither for the Arab audience, who had no familiarity with Persian language, nor for the Persian readers (see Shams-e Qays-e Rāzi, 1232/ 1935, pp. 17–18) (qtd. in Karoubi 598).
 +
Nasir al-Din Tusi (d. 1274) translated the Greek basic manuals of mathematics and geometry, including Euclid’s Elements and Theodosius’s Spherica into Arabic, and the astrological judgements of Ptolemy from Arabic into Persian. In each case, he added his own comments to his translations (Karimi-Hakkak 496).
  
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==The scale of translation extended to the field of business, diplomacy, science and many other professional affairs.==
+
The Post-Mongol Era (1368-1789)
−
Since the end of the Second World War, due to practical needs, commercial, diplomatic, scientific and technological translation had flourished, and its momentum even exceeded literary translation, thus forming a major content of the development of modern western translation. Before the First World War, two countries used the language of the more powerful country between them in business transactions. And French was considered the language of diplomacy at international conferences and other diplomatic occasions. So there were few problems in translation before the First World War. However, after the end of the First World War, French lost its dominance, and English rose to take the lead with French, forming a situation in which French and English were used together. The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 was the beginning of this situation. In 1945, the United Nations was established with English, French, Russian, Chinese and Spanish as the five official and working languages. In 1957, the European Community was founded, consisting of six countries at that time. In 1993, the European Community developed into the European Union. By 2004, it had 25 member states, using nine languages including English, French, German, Italy, Denmark, Ireland, Greece, Spain and Portugal. That is to say, translation had become an indispensable part of daily work, both for communicating with countries in other regions and among western countries. According to UNESCO, the number of translations in the world increased four-and-a-half times from 1948 to 1970. The institutions of the European Common Market employed more than 1,300 employees to deal with translation, of whom 450 were full-time interpreters, 550 translators and others were freelance employees on short-term contracts.
 
  
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==Translation teaching was widespread.==
+
According to Karimi-Hakkak (497), “by the thirteenth century, Persian was becoming well established in India as the language of religious, literary and legal learning and communication. A number of important translations began to be made from Sanskrit and other Indian languages into Persian.”
−
With the establishment of the United Nations and its specialized agencies, as well as the establishment of international institutions such as the European Common Market (EC, EU) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the need for translators was increasing. To meet this need, a number of schools specializing in training translators had been set up. The most prominent are the High School of Translation at the Third University of Paris and the School of Translation at the University of Ottawa. Many universities in Europe and the United States also offer translation classes or courses in senior grades.
+
The variations of translation and using different languages in India have been mentioned by him as a result of creation of more multilingual society in the region. He indicates that ‘[w]ords trafficked more freely between Persian and other languages, and a degree of tolerance emerged towards mixed usages. This in turn gave rise to a divergence between the Persian of Iran proper and that of India and Central Asia. Furthermore, translations were now made into Persian not so much from Arabic but from Indian and Turkic languages, as well as English and Russian’.
−
2.3 Translators’ associations were established and publications on translation studies were launched.
 
  
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Translators in different countries set up various translation associations and publications. Each association had its own purpose to carry out its work effectively. Translation associations or federations in European and American capitalist countries, in particular, generally emphasize the following principles: to clarify the legal status of translators through legislative means; to take effective measures to protect the legal rights of translators (especially the copyright that translators should enjoy); to improve their social status and increase their economic income; to improve the learning and working conditions of translators to provide them with opportunities to constantly improve their translation skills and a good working environment.
+
1. The Modern Period in Iran (after 1789)
  
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There were more translators’ organizations in the United States than in other western countries, with a total of 30, among which the most influential were the American Society of Translators, the American Federation of Linguists and the Literary Society of America. The journal of the American Society of Translators was ATA Chronicle. The journal of the Literary Society of America was Translation Review.
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Karimi-Hakkak (497-498) mentions that with the dominance Russia over Central Asia in the latter part of the nineteenth century, ‘almost all translation activity in Persian-speaking Central Asia was realigned with Chaghatay (later Uzbek) and Russian languages. The latter part of the nineteenth century was very important for the translation movement in Iran and for Persian language’. He adds ‘after a century and a half of political instability, the Qajar dynasty (ruled 1795–1925) had returned a semblance of stability to Iranian society early in the century. More or less regular cultural contact with Europe had begun with the dispatch of Iranian students to Europe, adding to the pressing need for inter-governmental contact”. (497)
  
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In Canada, major translation associations included the Canadian Council of Translators and Interpreters, the Ontario Association of Translators and Interpreters, the Business Language Centre, and the Quebec Translation Association. The Ontario Association of Translators and Interpreters founded the journal of Inform ATIO. The most influential professional translation magazine in Canada was Meta: Journal des Traducteurs.
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Azarang (2015) and Karoubi (2017) see the measures done by the famous Qajar Prince, Abbas Mirza, (1789–1833) in the said era as the turning point in the history of translation in Iran. Karoubi mentions that:
  
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In Britain, major translation associations included the Association of Translation Companies of Great Britain, the Association of Translators and the Guild of Translators, of which the Guild of Translators was the most famous. The official publication of the guild is The Incorporated Linguist, which was published in 1962 and enjoyed high reputation in Britain.
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Following their humiliating defeat by the numerically inferior but technologically superior Russian forces in the Russo-Persian wars (1804–1828), the Iranians started to realize that over 1000 years of having limited political exchange had kept them technologically inferior. Therefore, the defeat in the Russo-Persian war served as a wake-up call for the Iranians to resort to translation as the main means to compensate for their weaknesses. Abbās Mirzā, the Qajar crown prince of Persia, played a very influential role in the initiation of the new translation movement by commissioning the first translations from modern European languages into Persian and dispatching a number of Iranian students to western Europe for education, some of whom later became involved in translation activities. It was also during his reign that lithographic printing was for the first time introduced into Iran. (P. 598)
  
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There were two major translation associations in France: the Association of French Translators and the Association of French Literary Translators. There were also two major translation associations in West Germany, one was the Association of Federation Translators and Interpreters and the other was the German-speaking World Federation of Literary and Technical Translators. In addition, Austria, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Belgium and other Western European countries also had local or national translation organizations and a variety of translation publications.
+
According to a travelogue written by Pierre Amédée Jaubert, the French diplomat and orientalist, who met Fat’h Ali Shah the king of Iran at the time, the king himself was very interested in acquiring the western knowledge, industry and culture, and therefore sought the ways in his mind for transmission of those aspects. Through the relation stablished between French and Iran, Napoleon Bonaparte sent a number of French officers and military experts to Iran. It was when the information about the French army and military regulations was begun to be translated into Persian (Azarang 221) seemingly with supervision of Abbas Mirza.  
  
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==Machine translation developed.==
+
Azarang designates the names of some pioneer translators which were ordered by Abbas Mirza as well as the Western educated individuals who had involved in the new historical movement of translation in the same era. Mirza Saleh Shirazi who was sent to England, for acquiring the printing technology was one of these names. Karimi-Hakkak referred to this phenomenon in era of Qajar Dynasty as “renaissance of translation activity in Iran”. (498)
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In the process of more than two thousand years of development, the traditional translation method had not undergone substantial changes in technology, and the translation between the two languages still had to be carried out by hand. However, due to the increasingly frequent international scientific and cultural exchanges, manual translation could no longer timely meet the needs. Therefore, when the traditional manual translation was facing the challenge of the times, machine translation should be born.
 
  
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In the 1930s, machine translation began to be envisaged. In 1933, American scientist George Artsouni put forward the idea of using machines to translate languages, and designed a translation machine he called "Machine Brain". His design had practical reference significance for electronic translation technology. However, Artsouni’s invention occurred in the age of non-electronic computing technology, so it was limited by the age. Although he started to put his idea of machine translation into practice, his machine translation idea and the "translation machine" developed by him could not truly achieve "automatic" translation due to the age limit. It was with the advent of the electronic age that the truly "automatic" translator came into being.
+
The Next part of this article is the main extract from Karimi-Hakkak article in Encyclopedia of Translation Studies which is the best expression of the history of translation in Iran, since Qajar dynasty.
  
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In 1946, under the auspices of the United States Army headquarters, J.P. Eckert and J.W. Mauchly who were both from the University of Pennsylvania developed the world’s first electronic computer named: Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator, or ENIAC for short. Computer’s astonishing speed inspired people to consider the innovation of translation technology. Therefore, in the same year, Andrew Booth and Warren Weaver first proposed the use of computers in the machine translation system. Since then, machine translation and machine translation research, driven by modern electronic computing technology officially began.
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The new translation movement was propelled primarily by the perceived need to gain access to European sciences and technology. Anxious to modernize the Iranian army and bureaucracy, the Qajar state followed the dispatching of groups of students to Europe by the establishment of a polytechnic College, modelled after European institutions of higher education. Established in Tehran in 1852 and known as Dār al-Fonūn (House of Techniques), this institution played a crucial part in modernizing Iran. European teachers were hired to teach a variety of subjects, often with Iranians as their assistants and interpreters. They also prepared a number of textbooks in various sciences which were based largely on European scientific works. Thus, translation and interpreting began to play a crucial part in the evolution of pedagogical processes in modern Iran. (498)
  
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American science, especially the development of computer science, to a large extent affected the development of computer science in the whole West and even the world. Therefore, especially in the pioneering period, the development history and model of Machine translation in America can almost be regarded as those in the whole West. In this sense,  the development of machine translation in the west (and even the world) can be roughly divided into the following five major periods, just like the development of Machine translation in the United States: initial stage; high stage; low stage; recovery stage; vigorous stage. The following is a further overview of the five development periods of machine translation in the West (mainly in the United States).
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Many early Iranian translators of European works were graduates of Dār al-Fonūn. Chief among them was Mohammad-Hasan Khān, better known as E‘temād al-Saltaneh, the last title the court bestowed on him. From 1871 to 1896 E‘temad al-Saltaneh headed a new government office called Dār al-Tarjomeh (House of Translation), designed to coordinate government-sponsored translation and interpreting activities. The office was charged with supervising all state-sponsored translation activities. Under E‘temād al-Saltaneh’s tutelage, many significant European works were made available to Iranians, often from French and frequently in more or less free versions which approached adaptation. (498)
  
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===Initial stage (1946—1954)===
+
Soon, translation activity was directed towards disciplines such as history, politics and literature and became an integral part of various modernization projects. It was almost always undertaken to make Iranians conscious of their own backwardness, in spite of a glorious past. European orientalists had been studying Persian literature and Iranian history with interest and enthusiasm for over a century, and the Romantics had glorified Persian culture and civilization, particularly of pre-Islamic times. Iranians had to be made aware of these works if they were to strive to regain the glory of their ancient culture. (498)
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The pioneering period begins with Booth and Weaver’s idea of translating natural language by computer in 1954, and ends with the birth of the first machine translation system. After the idea of using computers to translate was put forward, although there was great resistance in the United States at first, the voice supporting it was mainstream. In particular, Weaver published a memorandum on machine translation in 1949, which not only opened up a series of research topics on machine translation in the United States, but also had a wide influence in western countries. The memo makes four basic points: the problem of polysemy can be solved by context; there is a logical basis in language; there are basic probabilities in language application; there are common elements in different languages. These are still the fundamental of the development of machine translation. In the following years, machine translation research had been actively carried out in some universities and organizations in the United States and Britain. In Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the first full-time machine translation researcher Bar-Hillel arrived, he made a great contribution to the early development of machine translation and put forward the main problems and basic strategies needed to be solved in machine translation research. The first machine translation conference was held at MIT in June 1952, after which machine translation research in the United States began to accelerate. In 1954, a machine translation system for computer was developed and demonstrated. Although the machine translation system was small, consisting of only 250 Russian words, six grammar rules, and a few translation examples, it first showed the public and the scientific community the feasibility of machine translation, inspiring substantial funding from U.S. government for machine translation research over the next decade.
 
  
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===High stage(1954—1966)===
+
In broader terms, translation has been at the base of a great many philosophical and scientific enquiries, cultural speculations, social activities and political agendas in Iran throughout the modern period. It has been the chief means of introducing Iranians to new ideas, schools of thought and literary trends. It has been considered a necessary component of the drive towards modernity, no less so in the Islamic republic than in the monarchial state which preceded it. As a result, it has been pursued with an enthusiasm and determination unparalleled in the history of the Persian language. Today, almost all important works of Western civilization, from Aristotle and Plato to examples of the latest trends in American or French fiction, are available in Persian translation. (499)
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The successful demonstration of the world’s first machine translation system, the Georgetown-IBM system of United States, marked the first development climax of machine translation. The upsurge began in 1954 and lasted for 12 years. In the mid-1950s, inspired by successful demonstration of machine translation system, dozens of universities, companies, and government agencies in the United States began machine translation research programs. On the one hand, due to the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union at that time, the United States military, the National Science Foundation, the Central Intelligence Agency and so on needed to acquire a large amount of scientific and technological information of the Soviet Union, so that they invested a lot in machine translation, especially Russian-English translation. On the other hand, advanced computers in the United States provided good equipment for the development of the first generation of machine translation system. At the same time, many universities and institutions in most European countries had also carried out machine translation research.
 
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===Low Stage (1966—1975)===
 
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The advent of machine translation had opened up a new way for traditional translation research and practice. However, the complexity of machine translation was underestimated at that time and the design of machine translation system was often too rough and simple. In this case, the first generation of machine translation systems in the initial stage could not achieve ideal results, the quality of translation is often poor, so that some people gradually lost confidence in machine translation research, and some scholars also became pessimistic and disappointed.  
 
  
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In the mid-1960s, machine translation in the United States had suffered a severe blow. In 1966, the Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee, part of the National Academy of Sciences, was asked to investigate machine translation research funded by government. The committee published its report, Language and Machines, after analyzing the speed, quality, cost and demand of machine translation at that time. The report pointed out that the quality of machine translation is significantly lower than that of human translation and asserted that there was no likelihood of any commercially useful machine translation system in the foreseeable future. On the committee’s recommendation, the U.S. government withdrew the funding for machine translation research. Thus, machine translation research in the United States plummeted from a high point to a low point of development. It should be noted, however, that machine translation research and development was not in a complete demise, following the official denials in the United States. Scholars and research institutions in many countries including the United States continued to carry out researches and experiments on machine translation under relatively difficult circumstances.
+
At the same time, translation has at times been viewed as an easy road to fame, if not to fortune, particularly in the social sciences and literature. While it has attracted much talent, it has at times had a negative impact on the evolution of the culture. It has certainly thwarted efforts to explore possibilities of political, social or cultural development which do not fit into Western patterns. Be that as it may, the importance of translation as a cultural activity has encouraged almost all notable intellectuals of contemporary Iran to try their hand at it. Rarely have these intellectuals specialized in fields such as literature or the social sciences. Instead, the impulse to translate seems to follow the search for relevance or the perceived need to buttress or justify one’s own position, politically, philosophically or aesthetically. (499)
  
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===Recovery stage(1975—1989)===
+
Meanwhile, translation had remained a central component of the language learning process, particularly at university level. However, the activity was pursued in fairly traditional ways which were not always conducive to training competent, professional translators and interpreters. The main activity consisted of actual translations, with little discussion of the theoretical underpinnings or the principles governing the actual process of text production. Typically, students would offer their own translations, discussions would ensue, and a text would be suggested as the best possible rendition of a given original. (500)
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In the middle of 1970s, with the emergence of new theories and ideas in the field of linguistics and the further development of computational linguistics, the research of machine translation was aroused in the world again. After ten years of silence, machine translation research stepped on the road of recovery. The recovery period of machine translation research and development is generally considered to date from the installation of the SYSTRAN system by EURATOM and the completion of the TAUM-METEO system by the University of Montreal in Canada.
 
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===Vigorous stage（1989—）===
 
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Since the late 1980s, some new developments had changed the field of machine translation, marking machine translation research enter a new period. This is the emergence of the third generation of machine translation method that is corpus-based. Corpus-based machine translation systems include statistic-based translation and example-based translation, both of which are based on large-scale real text.  
 
  
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Practice has proved that machine translation has great vitality. It is a new science, and its research and translation have entered a new stage of development. No matter whether it can replace the human brain and hands eventually and completely liberate human from the heavy artificial translation, it will develop and exist for a long time. Both in theory and practice, machine translation and its research will exert more and more influence on traditional translation and its research.
+
Through the 1970s, efforts were undertaken at Tehran University, the College of Translation and elsewhere, to introduce a new approach to teaching literary translation from English into Persian and vice versa. Teaching was based essentially on examining existing translations and discussing their relative merits and shortcomings. It also aimed to instil a sense of the comparative grammars of the languages and texts involved. Extensive discussions of the style, diction and context of each text replaced the requirement of text production. Important as it is, translation pedagogy has never been studied in Iran as a crucial component of translation activity. (500)
  
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==Works on translation theory were emerging one after another.==
+
Azarang, refers to the absolute superiority of French as the source language in Persian translation in the early decades of 20th century. As an example, in one Iranian year around 1921-1922, only four literary titles were translated into Persian, among which not a single book was selected from English. He adds by quoting Ramezani’s comment that: ‘The number of selected stories and plays between 1921 and 1932 was a total of 180 titles. At that time, names of books translated from English to Persian were rarely seen. In addition, even those English-language works may have been re-translated from French into Persian, such as the stories of Jack London, an American author whose translations were translated from French into Persian some decades later. Quoting the available evidence, he states that it was only in later years that works by English-language authors such as Shakespeare, Dickens, Alan Poe, O’Henry and others were translated into Persian, while it is not possible to say precisely which of the works has been directly translated from English. (Azarang, “Translation from English”, 60).
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The most important feature of modern western translation is the rapid development of translation theory. After the Second World War, with the vigorous development of science and technology, modern linguistics, translation activities and the rise of machine translation, people gradually changed the traditional view of translation studies, believing that translation is not only an art or skill, but also a science with rules to follow. Translation study is a discipline related to literature and art, sociology, psychology, numerical control theory, information theory and so on. Translation theory should no longer be a by-product of philosophers, writers and translators, but should become a serious subject systematically discussed by experts in language and translation studies. In such an academic atmosphere, translation theory had been updated and the study of translation problems had made a great step forward. Theorists published a great deal of academic papers in the journals of translation societies, linguistic societies or literary societies, as well as in academic journals.It is a popular practice to divide contemporary western translation theories into different schools according to their basic approaches and methods of translation studies or the basic characteristics of thought. Here is a brief introduction to some influential schools.
 
  
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American Translation Training School: First established in 1964 at the University of Iowa, this school focused on translation practice, emphasized the literary taste and value of works, and adopted the methods of L. A. Richards and Williard V. Quine of Harvard University. Representative figures included poet and translator Ezra Pound, who translated Tang poetry and advocated the accurate restoration of details, words, fragments and the whole image description. Frederic Will of the University of Iowa, drawing on his training experience, regarded translation as a form of naming, fiction writing and cognition. Yale’s Jonas Zdnys argued that translation is an activity of subjective thought designed to explain literature. This school explores the role of the human mind in translation and raises the question of the nature of translation, but translation theory was limited to aesthetic experience and prescriptive translation rules.
 
  
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Translation Science School: it was also known as “linguistic school”. According to this school, translation is the process of reproducing language as a whole, and it aims to correctly convey the original information to readers. The school was founded by Eugene Nida, whose masterpieces include Message and Mission (1960) and Toward Science of Translation (1946). Nida proposed functional equivalence theory according to Noam Chomsky’s transformational generative grammar and his experience in Bible translation, that is, to digest the original text and understand its basic structure and meaning; convey meaning based on basic structure; obtain semantic and stylistic equivalence with the original text. Thus the translation process can be summarized as: analyze—transfer—restructure, these three steps. The school of Translation science adopted linguistic theory and the more objective description method in translation theory. In the late 1970s, emphasis was placed on the cultural background of the information age, but the research was still limited to prescriptive research and translation criteria, ignoring the role of translators’ thinking.
 
  
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Translation school: it is the so-called “literary school”. This school held that the original work is the unity of sentence series and article structure, and the translator is influenced by the original view and the future model of translation in the process of translation. The founder of this school was James Holmes, an American poet, who taught translation at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands before his death. His representative work is The Name and Nature of Translation Studies (1972).
 
  
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Polysystem School: the founders are Itammar Even-Zohar and Gideon Toury of Tel Aviv University in Israel. Even coined the term Polysystem to explore the relationship between translated works and literary systems, and explained that the oriented culture of translation not only determines whether a work can be translated, but also regulates the wording. Toury held that translation belongs to the second system of multiple systems, and its role depends on the strength and development stage of the oriented culture of translation. He held that translation has no fixed identity and has multiple identities due to its social, literary and historical background. This school integrates translation studies with literary studies, social and economic factors, endows translation studies with historical significance, but it is still limited to the acceptability of translation and does not get rid of the fetters of cultural equivalence.
+
References:
  
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Deconstruction School: it is also known as “affirmative productivity school”. It originated in France in the mid-1960s and is represented by Michel Foucault, Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida. This school introduced deconstruction into translation, claiming that translators create the subject and the target language is a new language. As Foucault put it, the original work is constantly rewritten in the process of translation, and the translator rewrites the original work every time he reads and translates it. Deconstruction studies the nature and process of translation and language, and advocates that translators exist as entities. The school even goes so far as to believe that language does not involve any objective reality, and translators have their own status only when they create texts.
+
Azarang, Abdolhossein. Tärikhe Tarjome dar Iran [The History of Translation in Iran]. Ghoghnous, 2015.
  
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=Conclusion=
+
--- “Translation from English to Persian.” Great Islamic Encyclopedia. The Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, vol. XV, 2008, pp. 59-68.
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Under the influence of historical backgrounds, different periods of translation show different traits. In the modern period, the content of translation still focused on literature which included works form Russian, Nordic countries, China and so on. The way of translation was artificial and traditional. With the progress of economy and science, translation in the contemporary period also got great development. The content of translation was not confined to the field of literature. Instead, translation of science and technology, commerce, entertainment and so on became a major part of the actual translation activities. In addition, machine translation as a novel technique developed quickly. And the most important feature of modern western translation is the rapid development of translation theory thanks to many translator associations and publications on translation studies. Nowadays, under the influence of globalization, translation shows more and more importance and will get better development environment.  
 
  
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=Reference=
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Boyce, Mary.  “Parthian writings and literature.” Cambridge history of Iran, edited by E. Yarshater, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3.2, 1983, pp. 1151–1165.
  
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[1]谭载喜.西方翻译简史[M].北京：商务印书馆，2004.
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Britannica [Online Encyclopedia), https://www.britannica.com/topic/Iranian-languages#ref603427.Accessed 8 Sep 2020.
  
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[2]谢天振.中西翻译简史[M].北京:外语教学与研究出版社，2011.
+
Daeratol’ma’aref-e Bozorg-e Eslami [Great Islamic Encyclopedia]. vol. XV, The Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, 2008.
  
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[3]赵家琎.当代翻译学派简介[J].中国翻译，1996（5）：46—47.
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Karoubi, Behrouz. “A concise history of translation in Iran from antiquity to the present time.” Perspectives, vol. 25, no.4, 2017, pp. 594-608. doi:10.1080/0907676X.2016.1277248
 +
Keramati, Younes. “Translation from Arabic and Persian to Greec”. Great Islamic Encyclopedia. The Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, vol. 15, 2008, pp. 34-36.
 +
 +
Karimi-Hakkak, Ahmad. “Persian tradition”, Routledge encyclopedia of translation studies, edited by Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, Routledge, 1998, pp. 493–501.
 +
 
 +
Pakatchi, Ahmad. “Translation from Arabic and Persian to oriental Turkic”. Great Islamic Encyclopedia. The Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, vol. XV, 2008, pp. 45-47.
 +
 
 +
Parsi Nejad, Iraj. “Translation from European languages to Persian”. Great Islamic Encyclopedia. The Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, vol. XV, 2008, pp. 56-59.
 +
 
 +
Rezaee Baghbidi. Hassan. “Translation from Sanskrit and Pahlavi to Arabic”. Great Islamic Encyclopedia. The Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, vol. XV, 2008, pp. 24-33.

Latest revision as of 06:41, 15 December 2021

Chapter 15Mahzad Heydarian: Where Persian Language Meets Translation

Hist_Trans_EN_15 Mahzad Sadat Heydarian,Hunan Normal University,China

This paper is a journey to the history of Persian language and the presence of translation into/from Persian in different historical eras. Translation has been influenced by many social and intercultural factors throughout history; in this paper, its functions from ancient Persia to the contemporary era will be surveyed.

Key Words: Translation history, Persian language, Arabic influence, Medieval era

Persian Language, known as the language of great literary works by Hafez, Khayyam, Rumi and many other classical and modern poets and writers, has always been an interesting subject to study. Looking for its roots and origins and how it is changing and developing has been the interest of many linguists around the world. Like other important languages, Persian has developed and gradually changed in different eras in history. It seems that writings on translation history suffer from severe shortcomings. What is overlooked by the researchers of Persian translation history is to clarify the distinction between oral and written translation. These two have proved to be completely different subjects while they have been mixed when the writers judge its ups and downs in a specific period of time. Moreover, in the relatively limited knowledge of Persian translation history, the thematic classification of translations (e.g. literary, scientific, etc.) have not been considered.

Another common but important deficiency of such historiography is the lack of scientific consideration of the source and target texts, based on advances in the study of translation during the past three decades. The socio-cultural aspects of translation have rarely been surveyed, nor has the linguistic process of evolution of Persian historically been studied. Despite the importance of such inquiries, in most studies done by the Persian writers we could rarely find traces of identifying the direction of source and target texts, let alone contemplating the process and product as two imperative factors in any study of translation. Abdolhossein Azarang, whose history of translation comes with these problems admits that none of available historical books, including his, could be mentioned as a survey without offering at least a set of simple comparisons between the source and target texts in each era (Azarang, “Tarikhe” 9).

To our knowledge Persian has gone through three main changes over the years: starting from Old Persian, in transformed into Middle Persian, also known as Pahlavi, and was finally modernized into contemporary Persian—which is in use today in Iran, Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia. Persian is a branch of the Indo-European languages. As Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak (493) mentions “Over a millennium this language has been the primary means of daily discourse as well as the language of science, art and literature on the Iranian plateau.” He indicates that “Old Persian was brought into Iranian plateau in the second millennium BC by Eurasian steppes. In time, it became the language of the Achamenians (559-339 BC), a dynasty of kings who established the largest, most powerful empire in the ancient world” (493).

Among the encyclopedic references, Britannica has put forward a good remark for the root and divisions of Middle Persian with more detailed information. It mentions that: Middle Persian is known in three forms, not entirely homogeneous—inscriptional Middle Persian, Pahlavi (often more precisely called Book Pahlavi), and Manichaean Middle Persian. The Middle Persian form belongs to the period 300 BCE to 950 CE and was, like Old Persian, the language of southwestern Iran. In the northeast and northwest the language spoken was Parthian, which is known from inscriptions and from Manichaean texts. There are no significant linguistic differences in the Parthian of these two sources. Most Parthian belongs to the first three centuries CE.

Nonetheless, the Middle Persian script was abandoned in favor of the Arabic script and led to many new linguistic alterations in Persian. According to Karimi-Hakkak “The new script was far simpler and more advanced. In addition, where the Arabic script lacked essentially Persian consonants these were added to it. In short, the adoption of the Arabic script for Persian did not give rise to ruptures as significant as certain modernist reformers have assumed it did” (494). Therefore, the start of the most significant change in the Persian language dates back to the seventh century when Islam started to take over the Iranian plateau. This led Persian to find many new scopes. By adopting the Arabic alphabet, Persian became even stronger and further blossomed into many classical literary works in the following centuries.


Among the encyclopedic references, Britannica has put forward a good remark for the root and divisions of Middle Persian with more detailed information. It mentions that: Middle Persian is known in three forms, not entirely homogeneous—inscriptional Middle Persian, Pahlavi (often more precisely called Book Pahlavi), and Manichaean Middle Persian. The Middle Persian form belongs to the period 300 BCE to 950 CE and was, like Old Persian, the language of southwestern Iran. In the northeast and northwest the language spoken was Parthian, which is known from inscriptions and from Manichaean texts. There are no significant linguistic differences in the Parthian of these two sources. Most Parthian belongs to the first three centuries CE.

Nonetheless, the Middle Persian script was abandoned in favor of the Arabic script and led to many new linguistic alterations in Persian. According to Karimi-Hakkak “The new script was far simpler and more advanced. In addition, where the Arabic script lacked essentially Persian consonants these were added to it. In short, the adoption of the Arabic script for Persian did not give rise to ruptures as significant as certain modernist reformers have assumed it did” (494). Therefore, the start of the most significant change in the Persian language dates back to the seventh century when Islam started to take over the Iranian plateau. This led Persian to find many new scopes. By adopting the Arabic alphabet, Persian became even stronger and further blossomed into many classical literary works in the following centuries.

The need for translation soon of course rose in a language like Persian spoken by large populations and used by different dynasties. Persian language had remained consistent and independent by asking the translation firstly and more importantly from Arabic. The language itself has neither been replaced by any other languages nor substantially changed during the centuries. That is why a Persian speaker today can effortlessly understand and enjoy the language of Hafez or Rudaki, the famous poets who lived in the 14th and 9th centuries, respectively.

The need for translation soon of course rose in a language like Persian spoken by large populations and used by different dynasties. Persian language had remained consistent and independent by asking the translation firstly and more importantly from Arabic. The language itself has neither been replaced by any other languages nor substantially changed during the centuries. That is why a Persian speaker today can effortlessly understand and enjoy the language of Hafez or Rudaki, the famous poets who lived in the 14th and 9th centuries, respectively.

The traces of written translation in different periods of the history of Persian language have mostly been based on the king’s demands or special order by one of the influential people in the royal court, mostly for their immediate political needs. This history, before the last century, has was interwoven with political, sometimes military and less commonly scientific texts. Therefore, individual or freelance translators who had been engaged in translation of literary works, or the Persian scientists who were keen to translate texts into Persian are absent in many historical periods. Azarang (15), studying the history of Safavid dynasty (1501–1736), in which Iran had lot of communications with Europe, has associated this strange phenomenon to the lack of concern and interest for learning and evolving in Persian travelers or dispatched students who commute to western countries. He believes that Iran missed a unique opportunity to use the scientific benefits for fundamental changes during Safavid dynasty, which was concurrent with the scientific and industrial transformations of Europe. As we will see, the attempts for translating texts for Iranian users were mostly confined to translation into Arabic instead of Persian as the main language of the whole plateau in post-Islamic era. The new movement of translating texts from different subjects into Persian was seen some 100 years after Safavid kings, during mid-Qajar era (1795–1925).

In this article a historical investigation of Persian translation is presented based on what is available in collecting books and articles, mostly based on four important references: Karimi-Hakkak’s article in Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (1998), Daeratol’ma’aref-e Bozorg-e Eslami (2008), Behrouz Karoubi’s important article (2017), and Azarang’s detailed chronological event book (2015). The study has been divided into five sections based on the five historical periods: Ancient Persia, Medieval Persian, The Mongol Era, Post-Mongol Era, and the Modern Period. This is more or less the same division done by Karimi-Hakkak, as the main resource of this article, but with a specific extension. This investigation refers primarily to translation into Persian and some comparatively rare cases of translation from Persian into the other languages, will exclusively be dealt with.

Ancient Persia (Before 651) Karimi-Hakkak (493) mentions that “Translation into Persian has a long and eventful history; it has played an important part in the evolution of Iranian and Iranate civilizations throughout Western Asia and beyond.” We see the first traces of translation in medieval Persia, in which close contact and interface between Arabic and Persian occurred. He claims that “The Achamenian empire was multilingual, and many of its documents were written not only in various language of the empire, but in Babylonian and Elamite as well. Still our information about specific translation activities among these languages is too sketchy to allow any in-depth discussion of trends and patterns.” Later on, only with the formation of the Sasanian dynasty in Persia (AD 224–652) and the rise of Middle Persian the first authentic historical information about intercultural exchange could be found.

Behistun Inscription as the unique masterpiece in Achamenian’s era is an exclusive phenomenon in the history of translation of the world; Azarang argues that it is one of the most important translated texts in that era as well as one of the examples of precise translation. Translation of Behistun inscribed stone seems to be done by a number of trusted linguists who probably checked the texts’ conformity more than once. This translation shows that a precise translation accompanied by artistic delicacies on the stones had reached a very good level in that time (35).

Scholarship suggests that Old Persian was transmitted orally, as we have no written records from that time. There is Avesta, a religious book in what scholars have termed Avestan, a language closely related to Old Persian. Even though it was committed to writing in the fourth century AD, Avesta contains some Zoroastrian hymns thought to be in older Iranian languages” (qtd. in Karimi-Hakkak 493).

Medieval Persian (651-1206) In the post Islamic era, the most significant translation works included nearly all of extant translations are from middle Persian into Arabic. This took place, as Karimi-Hakkak mentions, in the hope to save religious or literary works from destruction by transferring them into the newly spread and mostly accepted language which was Arabic at the time.

We do not still have access to any written works that reveals the exact historical events in Iran during 100 years after the Arab conquest in the middle of seventh century. We could not find an example of written translated practice in that century either. We know that written Persian had not yet developed much in that time and was not yet common around the country. Furthermore, according to Azarang, knowing the relation between some Iranians and Arab people seems not to be possible at the end of the century to understand the related linguistic relations. In the second century after Islam, however, we have evidence to show that some Iranian scientists who learned Arabic started to translate medieval works from Persian to Arabic in the fields of philosophy, logic, astronomy, medicine, pharmacology, ethics, and culture (Azarang, 95).

In Medieval era almost all Persian writers and scholars were bilingual, as the dominant language especially for writing was Arabic; by most of experts and philosophers. Karimi-Hakkak puts forward a list of famous internationally recognized Persian celebrities when he states that “in addition to the historian Tabari and physician and philosopher Avicenna, three of the greatest Islamic theologians – the Shi’ite Mohammad Tusi (d. 1076), the Sunni reformist Mohammad al-Ghazāli (d. 1111), and the Mo‘tazelite Zamakhshari (d. 1144) – who was also a great grammarian and lexicographer – can be counted among these, as can the jurist and philosopher Fakhr al-Din Rāzi (d. 1209)”. These men sometimes prepared Persian versions of the works they had written originally in Arabic, or supervised their students in such tasks. This is one reason why the border between translation and original work, as envisaged in that culture, appears blurred to us (496).

This fluidity enabled medieval Persian scientists and philosophers to be original authors and translators at the same time. The absence of proprietary concerns in medieval times further undermines modern-day efforts to distinguish writing from translation. Acts of borrowing, adaptation and appropriation were undertaken in ways that transcend modern classifications. The corpus of philosophical and scientific works in Persian is replete with bilingual texts or hybrids, as well as those in which text and commentary are in two different languages. There are also numerous texts of an indeterminate character; these may or may not be considered original works with later commentaries or annotated translations. Within the terms of medieval Persia, such works must be assumed to have originated in Arabic unless proven otherwise (496).

According to Mary Boyce, there was an unfortunate fact that none of the literature of the Parthian period has survived in its original because of their oral form. She explains that our knowledge about Parthian literature is thus mainly through recensions, redactions, or partial translations in Middle Persian (1157–1158). Karimi-Hakkak mentions: “We also know that the Sasanian kings encouraged translations from Greek and Latin. Much historical knowledge, lost to the Persians as a result of the chaos that followed Alexander’s conquest in 330 BC, was regained in this way. The Sasanian monarch Shapur I commissioned many translations from Greek and Indian works to be incorporated into collections of religious texts” (494).

Even for the extensive Sassanian literature which we know for certain that many works of other languages were translated into Middle Persian [must be rephrased], we have regrettably no knowledge about the linguistic features of translation that were used by the translators at that time or strategies which have been prevalent (qtd. in Karoubi 596).

Many translated works have been reported by Younes Keramati in the 14th century, which were from Persian and Iranian Arabic into Greek. The territories under the rule of the Trabzon Empire, from the early 14th century, witnessed a short resurrection of the translation of Persian works into Greek. The importance of translation between the two languages could be shown when we see that the translation of an astronomical work attributed to Shamsuddin Bukharaei, an Iranian scientist, led to the creation of the new Persian astronomical era in the Trabzon Empire. Among many important translated works, another Byzantine physician named Georgios Choniates translated an important Persian toxicology into Greek. Keramati believes that the superiority of Iranian education in Greece through translation (whether from Arabic or Persian) is proved by the fact that in that age, compared to the translation of many Persian works, not a single work has been translated from Greek into Persian (35). In an encyclopedic research, Ahmad Pakatchi argues that in translation from Persian to Turkish of Kharazmi, examples of literary works abound. Among them, instead of a precise translation, a kind of literary re-creation has taken place. A good example of this kinds is Khosrow and Shirin from Qutb Kharazmi (in 1341) which is the recreation of the famous poetry of Masnavi of Khosrow and Shirin by Nezami Ganjavi. In addition, the translation of Attar Neyshabouri’s Tazkerat al-Awliya is less changed because of its nature as simple prose but its translation has been done with some variations.

As argued by Karimi-Hakkak (494), “in the second half of the seventh century, Islam began to spread over the Iranian plateau gradually but steadily. This marks a unique turning point in the life of Iranians, not only religiously, but culturally and linguistically as well. The Persian language constitutes the most tangible link between Islamic and pre-Islamic Iranian cultures.”

Rozveh or Ruzbeh, better known by his Muslim name ‘Abdollāh Ebn-Al-Moqaffa’ (executed about 759), translated the Panchatantra and Khotay-namak (a collection of mythical legends of Persian kings and heroes) into Arabic. In all likelihood, he is also responsible for the translation into Arabic of accounts of the sixth century reformist prophet Mazdak, and that of his followers. Such texts, later translated from Arabic back into New Persian (Karoubi, 494).

Hediscovered two parallel tendencies in the eighth and ninth centuries. “The first, consisted of a series of translations made from extant texts into Arabic, later translated back into Persian. The second activity, undertaken by Persian converts to Islam, took the shape primarily of commentaries on the holy Qur’ān’ which could not be translated. Translation strategies were especial in that time in which ‘texts were subjected. to a variety of changes; they were simplified, annotated, abridged, illustrated with pictures and diagrams, mended through sequels, or otherwise altered to suit the specific needs of the patron and the new readership” (Karoubi, 495).

The Mongol Era (1206–1368)

In line with this classification Karimi-Hakkak states that “following the Mongol and Tartar invasions of the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries, new patterns of interaction emerged between Persian on the one hand and a number of Indian and Turkic languages on the other, making this history even more complex and multifarious.” The Mongol conquest of Iran in the thirteenth century gradually put an end to the influence of the Arabic-speaking neighbors of the country and, as a result, led to the reduction of works composed in the Arabic language and the increase in works originally written in Persian. Karoubi refers to Mo’jam as one good example of this tendency. The book is written by Shams-e Qays-e Rāzi’s, as an effort of literary criticism that was originally composed in Arabic and, following the Mongol invasion, rewritten in Persian. In the preface to his book, Qays-e Rāzi claims that he had rewritten it in Persian on the request of many Persian poets and literati who did not possess sufficient knowledge of Arabic and were questioning the rationale behind composing a work on Persian poetic prosody in Arabic, because in their view such a work would be useful neither for the Arab audience, who had no familiarity with Persian language, nor for the Persian readers (see Shams-e Qays-e Rāzi, 1232/ 1935, pp. 17–18) (qtd. in Karoubi 598). Nasir al-Din Tusi (d. 1274) translated the Greek basic manuals of mathematics and geometry, including Euclid’s Elements and Theodosius’s Spherica into Arabic, and the astrological judgements of Ptolemy from Arabic into Persian. In each case, he added his own comments to his translations (Karimi-Hakkak 496).

The Post-Mongol Era (1368-1789)

According to Karimi-Hakkak (497), “by the thirteenth century, Persian was becoming well established in India as the language of religious, literary and legal learning and communication. A number of important translations began to be made from Sanskrit and other Indian languages into Persian.” The variations of translation and using different languages in India have been mentioned by him as a result of creation of more multilingual society in the region. He indicates that ‘[w]ords trafficked more freely between Persian and other languages, and a degree of tolerance emerged towards mixed usages. This in turn gave rise to a divergence between the Persian of Iran proper and that of India and Central Asia. Furthermore, translations were now made into Persian not so much from Arabic but from Indian and Turkic languages, as well as English and Russian’.

1. The Modern Period in Iran (after 1789)

Karimi-Hakkak (497-498) mentions that with the dominance Russia over Central Asia in the latter part of the nineteenth century, ‘almost all translation activity in Persian-speaking Central Asia was realigned with Chaghatay (later Uzbek) and Russian languages. The latter part of the nineteenth century was very important for the translation movement in Iran and for Persian language’. He adds ‘after a century and a half of political instability, the Qajar dynasty (ruled 1795–1925) had returned a semblance of stability to Iranian society early in the century. More or less regular cultural contact with Europe had begun with the dispatch of Iranian students to Europe, adding to the pressing need for inter-governmental contact”. (497)

Azarang (2015) and Karoubi (2017) see the measures done by the famous Qajar Prince, Abbas Mirza, (1789–1833) in the said era as the turning point in the history of translation in Iran. Karoubi mentions that:

Following their humiliating defeat by the numerically inferior but technologically superior Russian forces in the Russo-Persian wars (1804–1828), the Iranians started to realize that over 1000 years of having limited political exchange had kept them technologically inferior. Therefore, the defeat in the Russo-Persian war served as a wake-up call for the Iranians to resort to translation as the main means to compensate for their weaknesses. Abbās Mirzā, the Qajar crown prince of Persia, played a very influential role in the initiation of the new translation movement by commissioning the first translations from modern European languages into Persian and dispatching a number of Iranian students to western Europe for education, some of whom later became involved in translation activities. It was also during his reign that lithographic printing was for the first time introduced into Iran. (P. 598)

According to a travelogue written by Pierre Amédée Jaubert, the French diplomat and orientalist, who met Fat’h Ali Shah the king of Iran at the time, the king himself was very interested in acquiring the western knowledge, industry and culture, and therefore sought the ways in his mind for transmission of those aspects. Through the relation stablished between French and Iran, Napoleon Bonaparte sent a number of French officers and military experts to Iran. It was when the information about the French army and military regulations was begun to be translated into Persian (Azarang 221) seemingly with supervision of Abbas Mirza.

Azarang designates the names of some pioneer translators which were ordered by Abbas Mirza as well as the Western educated individuals who had involved in the new historical movement of translation in the same era. Mirza Saleh Shirazi who was sent to England, for acquiring the printing technology was one of these names. Karimi-Hakkak referred to this phenomenon in era of Qajar Dynasty as “renaissance of translation activity in Iran”. (498)

The Next part of this article is the main extract from Karimi-Hakkak article in Encyclopedia of Translation Studies which is the best expression of the history of translation in Iran, since Qajar dynasty.

The new translation movement was propelled primarily by the perceived need to gain access to European sciences and technology. Anxious to modernize the Iranian army and bureaucracy, the Qajar state followed the dispatching of groups of students to Europe by the establishment of a polytechnic College, modelled after European institutions of higher education. Established in Tehran in 1852 and known as Dār al-Fonūn (House of Techniques), this institution played a crucial part in modernizing Iran. European teachers were hired to teach a variety of subjects, often with Iranians as their assistants and interpreters. They also prepared a number of textbooks in various sciences which were based largely on European scientific works. Thus, translation and interpreting began to play a crucial part in the evolution of pedagogical processes in modern Iran. (498)

Many early Iranian translators of European works were graduates of Dār al-Fonūn. Chief among them was Mohammad-Hasan Khān, better known as E‘temād al-Saltaneh, the last title the court bestowed on him. From 1871 to 1896 E‘temad al-Saltaneh headed a new government office called Dār al-Tarjomeh (House of Translation), designed to coordinate government-sponsored translation and interpreting activities. The office was charged with supervising all state-sponsored translation activities. Under E‘temād al-Saltaneh’s tutelage, many significant European works were made available to Iranians, often from French and frequently in more or less free versions which approached adaptation. (498)

Soon, translation activity was directed towards disciplines such as history, politics and literature and became an integral part of various modernization projects. It was almost always undertaken to make Iranians conscious of their own backwardness, in spite of a glorious past. European orientalists had been studying Persian literature and Iranian history with interest and enthusiasm for over a century, and the Romantics had glorified Persian culture and civilization, particularly of pre-Islamic times. Iranians had to be made aware of these works if they were to strive to regain the glory of their ancient culture. (498)

In broader terms, translation has been at the base of a great many philosophical and scientific enquiries, cultural speculations, social activities and political agendas in Iran throughout the modern period. It has been the chief means of introducing Iranians to new ideas, schools of thought and literary trends. It has been considered a necessary component of the drive towards modernity, no less so in the Islamic republic than in the monarchial state which preceded it. As a result, it has been pursued with an enthusiasm and determination unparalleled in the history of the Persian language. Today, almost all important works of Western civilization, from Aristotle and Plato to examples of the latest trends in American or French fiction, are available in Persian translation. (499)

At the same time, translation has at times been viewed as an easy road to fame, if not to fortune, particularly in the social sciences and literature. While it has attracted much talent, it has at times had a negative impact on the evolution of the culture. It has certainly thwarted efforts to explore possibilities of political, social or cultural development which do not fit into Western patterns. Be that as it may, the importance of translation as a cultural activity has encouraged almost all notable intellectuals of contemporary Iran to try their hand at it. Rarely have these intellectuals specialized in fields such as literature or the social sciences. Instead, the impulse to translate seems to follow the search for relevance or the perceived need to buttress or justify one’s own position, politically, philosophically or aesthetically. (499)

Meanwhile, translation had remained a central component of the language learning process, particularly at university level. However, the activity was pursued in fairly traditional ways which were not always conducive to training competent, professional translators and interpreters. The main activity consisted of actual translations, with little discussion of the theoretical underpinnings or the principles governing the actual process of text production. Typically, students would offer their own translations, discussions would ensue, and a text would be suggested as the best possible rendition of a given original. (500)

Through the 1970s, efforts were undertaken at Tehran University, the College of Translation and elsewhere, to introduce a new approach to teaching literary translation from English into Persian and vice versa. Teaching was based essentially on examining existing translations and discussing their relative merits and shortcomings. It also aimed to instil a sense of the comparative grammars of the languages and texts involved. Extensive discussions of the style, diction and context of each text replaced the requirement of text production. Important as it is, translation pedagogy has never been studied in Iran as a crucial component of translation activity. (500)

Azarang, refers to the absolute superiority of French as the source language in Persian translation in the early decades of 20th century. As an example, in one Iranian year around 1921-1922, only four literary titles were translated into Persian, among which not a single book was selected from English. He adds by quoting Ramezani’s comment that: ‘The number of selected stories and plays between 1921 and 1932 was a total of 180 titles. At that time, names of books translated from English to Persian were rarely seen. In addition, even those English-language works may have been re-translated from French into Persian, such as the stories of Jack London, an American author whose translations were translated from French into Persian some decades later. Quoting the available evidence, he states that it was only in later years that works by English-language authors such as Shakespeare, Dickens, Alan Poe, O’Henry and others were translated into Persian, while it is not possible to say precisely which of the works has been directly translated from English. (Azarang, “Translation from English”, 60).



References:

Azarang, Abdolhossein. Tärikhe Tarjome dar Iran [The History of Translation in Iran]. Ghoghnous, 2015.

--- “Translation from English to Persian.” Great Islamic Encyclopedia. The Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, vol. XV, 2008, pp. 59-68.

Boyce, Mary. “Parthian writings and literature.” Cambridge history of Iran, edited by E. Yarshater, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3.2, 1983, pp. 1151–1165.

Britannica [Online Encyclopedia), https://www.britannica.com/topic/Iranian-languages#ref603427.Accessed 8 Sep 2020.

Daeratol’ma’aref-e Bozorg-e Eslami [Great Islamic Encyclopedia]. vol. XV, The Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, 2008.

Karoubi, Behrouz. “A concise history of translation in Iran from antiquity to the present time.” Perspectives, vol. 25, no.4, 2017, pp. 594-608. doi:10.1080/0907676X.2016.1277248 Keramati, Younes. “Translation from Arabic and Persian to Greec”. Great Islamic Encyclopedia. The Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, vol. 15, 2008, pp. 34-36.

Karimi-Hakkak, Ahmad. “Persian tradition”, Routledge encyclopedia of translation studies, edited by Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, Routledge, 1998, pp. 493–501.

Pakatchi, Ahmad. “Translation from Arabic and Persian to oriental Turkic”. Great Islamic Encyclopedia. The Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, vol. XV, 2008, pp. 45-47.

Parsi Nejad, Iraj. “Translation from European languages to Persian”. Great Islamic Encyclopedia. The Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, vol. XV, 2008, pp. 56-59.

Rezaee Baghbidi. Hassan. “Translation from Sanskrit and Pahlavi to Arabic”. Great Islamic Encyclopedia. The Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, vol. XV, 2008, pp. 24-33.

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