Literary translation Session 1

Importance of Translation
In spite of the broad recognition among historians of culture of the major role translation has
played in the crystallization of national cultures, relatively little research has been carried out so
far in this area. As a rule, histories of literatures mention translations when there is no way to
avoid them, when dealing with the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, for instance.
How does translation help crystallize the culture of a nation?
The reason that some of the works of Iranian writers and poets are popular around the world is
that they have been translated.
When the athens empire was collapsed scholars immigrated to Europe with some books and
they were accepted by Cambridge. These people started to translate books from Latin to
European languages which became one of the important factors of the occurrence of
Renaissance.

The lack
Moreover, there is no awareness of the possible existence of translated literature as a particular literary
system. The prevailing concept is rather that of "translation" or just "translated works" treated on an
individual basis. Is there any basis for a different assumption, that is for considering translated literature
as a system?

Translation is used as a tool to convey certain ideologies to other cultures. Sadegh Hedayat was first a
translator who later on wrote some short stories.

 Model of a literary system 

Institution
(Government, educational system, religious ideologies, eastern/western ideologies)

Repertoire
(The type of language, words, techniques and style that are used by a certain author)

Producer  Consumer
(Writer) (us)

Market
(How a literary work is sold in the market)

Product
(All these factors lead to product)

Question
What kind of relations might there be among translated works, which are presented as completed facts,
imported from other literatures, detached from their home contexts and consequently neutralized from
the point of view of center-and-periphery struggles?

Two Factors
Similarity of Translated works:

1. In the way their source texts are selected by the target literature, the principles of selection
never being uncorrelatable with the home co-systems of the target literature.
2. In the way they adopt specific norms, behaviors, and policies-in short, in their use of the literary
repertoire-which results from their relations with the other home co-systems.

97 to 3 is the ratio of English to Persian works which are translated. Due to this fact, translation is an
important job in Iran.

The center of the translation market are English speaking countries and the Periphery are the ones that
are on the margin.

(One culture -from the centered countries- is looking down on another.)

The word “translator” is missing from the title and cover because translation is not as important as it is
in Iran for English speaking countries.

Books are not randomly chosen to be translated. The publisher knows about the literary taste of the
market.

Principles of selections:

1. Never being un corelated

An Assumption
One would be tempted to deduce from the peripheral position of translated literature in the study of
literature that it also permanently occupies a peripheral position in the literary polysystem, but this is by
no means the case. To say that translated literature maintains a central position in the literary
polysystem means that it participates actively in shaping the center of the polysystem.

During the last 100 years our literary system is made up of translation.

‫ آشنا میشوند اما فضای ایران اصال فضای‬Post modern ‫ شاعران داخلی توسط ترجمه با اشعار‬70 ‫در دهه‬
.‫ نیست‬Post modern

New role
This implies that in this situation no clear-cut distinction is maintained between "original" and
"translated" writings, and that often it is the leading writers (‫( )مترجم ها‬or members of the avant-garde
who are about to become leading writers) who produce the most conspicuous or appreciated
translations. when new literary models are emerging, translation is likely to become one of the means of
elaborating the new repertoire.