Translation Studies

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtrs20

Franklin Book Programs in Iran (ca 1953–1978) and

the politics of translation during the Cold War

Amanda Laugesen & Mehrdad Rahimi-Moghaddam

To cite this article: Amanda Laugesen & Mehrdad Rahimi-Moghaddam (2022) Franklin Book
Programs in Iran (ca 1953–1978) and the politics of translation during the Cold War, Translation
Studies, 15:2, 155-172, DOI: 10.1080/14781700.2021.2020685

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14781700.2021.2020685

Published online: 11 Feb 2022.

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TRANSLATION STUDIES
2022, VOL. 15, NO. 2, 155–172
https://doi.org/10.1080/14781700.2021.2020685

Franklin Book Programs in Iran (ca 1953–1978) and the

politics of translation during the Cold War
a b
Amanda Laugesen and Mehrdad Rahimi-Moghaddam
a
College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia; bFaculty of Foreign
Languages and Literatures, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
During the Cold War, books in translation were considered an Cultural Cold War;
important means of strengthening ideological and cultural propaganda; Iran; cultural
influence in many regions of the world. Among a variety of diplomacy; politics of
different publishing activities undertaken, Franklin Book translation; translation
history
Programs, a US-initiated translation and publishing venture, was
designed with the specific purpose of translating American books
and disseminating them in emerging and non-aligned nations.
This article aims to analyse Franklin Book Programs’ translation
and publishing work in Iran, one of its most successful
operations. It draws on archives, interviews and the
correspondence of some of the prominent agents involved in
Franklin Book Programs. This story illuminates a significant
chapter in Iranian translation and publishing history, as well as
revealing an important, and often overlooked, dimension of the
USA’s global cultural Cold War.

Introduction
The cultural Cold War battled over the “hearts and minds” of people around the world.
Within this struggle, printing and the book played a significant propaganda and cultural
diplomacy role as both the USSR and the USA believed that words and ideas had the
power to persuade. Books and magazines that reflected the culture and values of each
side were taken to various countries and made available through libraries and bookshops;
publishers and authors were subsidized through organizations such as the Congress for
Cultural Freedom; and print infrastructure was built, from printing presses to libraries.
Despite growing scholarship around the book and publishing history of the Cold War,
translation has so far remained somewhat peripheral to discussions of the history of print
and cultural diplomacy in this period. Rundle and Sturge (2010, 3) have suggested that
translation has been “one important aspect of cultural policy [that] has been largely
ignored”. But the question of exactly what role translation played in cultural diplomacy
and in Cold War propaganda efforts, and how it was put into practice, is a critical one.
In terms of the cultural Cold War, translation was an important, indeed vital, com-
ponent; the need to translate print material into various languages in order to reach
the broadest possible audience was fundamental to Cold War cultural diplomacy

CONTACT Amanda Laugesen amanda.laugesen@anu.edu.au

© 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
156 A. LAUGESEN AND M. RAHIMI-MOGHADDAM

efforts. This article addresses the question of how such translation work was undertaken
within the fraught context of Cold War politics, and examines the issues involved.
Informed by a case study on the development of a particular Cold War translation
program that was undertaken in Iran, we argue that scrutinizing the political and cultural
infrastructure that initiates, shapes and circulates translated texts is essential to a better
understanding of the material processes and political contexts of translation.
The article positions itself within the growing field of translation history and draws on
Rundle’s argument (2014, 4) that translation can be used to understand a “given histori-
cal subject rather than [be] a historical object in itself”. In other words, studying the pro-
cesses and practices of translation work at a given moment in history can tell us not only
about how context, power and ideology might shape translation, but also how the activity
of translation itself might shape that historical moment. Further, we respond to O’Sulli-
van’s call for research into “the relationship between translation and material culture,
including publishing and book history” (2012, 131) through a close examination of the
material processes of translation in a transnational Cold War context.
We also follow the translation history work of Colombo (2019) who has argued for the
focus of translation history to expand beyond “high” literature and take into account
popular culture. Our case study tracks the translation of a variety of texts, including
non-fiction and educational material. The importance of non-fiction to the ideological
and development imperatives of the Cold War has largely been overlooked, but the trans-
lation of such texts was fundamental to those imperatives. Our case study is therefore also
a call for translation historians to consider the ways in which a range of texts in trans-
lation have historically played an important role in shaping particular cultures.
Finally, our work intersects with the agendas of recent Cold War scholarship that has
sought to examine both cultural diplomacy efforts and the broader dynamics of the Cold
War, understood by Kwon as a “globally staged but locally diverse regime of ideas and
practices” (2010, 32). Cultural diplomacy was, as Falk (2010, 8) argues, “a messy and
mutable process of collaboration and adaptation”. In turn, translation and publication
programs such as the one we study here were often “messy” in both intent and practice.
We seek to illuminate this “messy” Cold War translation experience, while also placing
this story within the broader context of what Hopkins (2017, 730) calls “post-colonial
globalization”, a process that began in the 1950s and shaped the transnational flow of
culture. Through translation programs run by the United States Information Agency
and through the efforts of the Soviets to translate and put books into circulation via
organizations such as Progress Publishers, Iran became further imbricated in a globa-
lized, transnational flow of culture and ideas.
This article focuses on the work of one American cultural diplomacy program con-
cerned with translation and book publishing in Iran, Franklin Publications, Inc. (later
Franklin Book Programs, and hereafter referred to as Franklin), which operated in
Iran from 1954 until just before the 1979 revolution. Franklin’s work has been studied
by several scholars, including a book-length study considering Franklin’s global oper-
ations by Laugesen (2017). The Iranian program is dealt with in some detail in the
work of Haddadian-Moghaddam (2014; 2016) who places Franklin’s work within the
broader history of literary translation in Iran. Finally, the work of Moradi (2013) has
demonstrated the impact of Franklin on the development of modern book publishing
practices in Iran.
 TRANSLATION STUDIES 157

We build on this important work by using Franklin as a case study to illuminate in

more detail the politics of translation in Iran during the period of the Shah Mohammad
Reza Pahlavi’s rule. Through doing so, we aim to contribute to an understanding of the
history and role of translation in Iran at this critical point in the country’s past. Franklin’s
story illuminates the complicated politics of translation and cultural diplomacy: while the
furthering of American and Western cultural imperialism can be considered one possible
interpretation of Franklin’s work, the Iranian office of Franklin and the patronage of the
Shah were also significant agents in how translation was undertaken, how books circu-
lated, and in deciding what purpose translated books served. The history of Franklin
in Iran reveals the critical ways in which state and foreign policies have the potential
to shape the practice and trajectory of translation work at given points in history, at
the same time as it sheds light on the critical role that translation can play in state and
foreign policy efforts.

Books, translation and Cold War cultural diplomacy

“Books are weapons in the war of ideas”, declared the logo of the Council on Books in
Wartime, an American initiative to promote books that supported the Second World
War effort. Armed Services Editions – specially designed and sometimes abridged edi-
tions of popular books – were supplied to American servicemen and women, and Amer-
ican books in translation known as Overseas Editions were produced for distribution into
liberated Europe (Hench 2010). The Council on Books in Wartime concluded operations
not long after the end of the war, but it had set an important precedent. Their work had
suggested that American books could be translated and distributed as a means of both
introducing people to American literature (and by osmosis, it was thought, to American
values) and establishing a commercial beachhead for US publishers. This model would
find itself revived as the Cold War commenced.
As the Cold War expanded to global dimensions, the US government sought to find
new ways of translating and publishing American books abroad. A variety of programs
were created to fight this print Cold War; one of these was Franklin, a program that saw
American publishing professionals working with US publishers and overseas offices to
produce American books in translation. These books were printed and distributed in
countries where Franklin set up offices, and were produced with the support of American
expertise and local resources (Laugesen 2017). American publishers agreed to be paid
below market rates for rights to the translation of selected books in selected countries,
and books were sold cheaply but commercially (rather than given away for free) in
local markets (Facts about Franklin Publications 1956, 3–4).
Franklin was incorporated in May 1952 with $500,000 in State Department funds to
underwrite the translation of American books for the Middle East, where the scarcity of
American titles was particularly acute and the political situation notably tense. Oper-
ations quickly expanded. By 1959 offices were operating in Tehran and Tabriz, Iran;
Lahore, Pakistan; Dacca, East Pakistan/Bangladesh; Djakarta, Indonesia; Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia; Beirut, Lebanon; and Baghdad, Iraq. Datus Smith, formerly of Prin-
ceton University Press, was the dynamic head of the program, supported by a number of
figures drawn from the worlds of libraries, publishing and education. The board that
oversaw Franklin’s operations included senior figures from the American corporate
158 A. LAUGESEN AND M. RAHIMI-MOGHADDAM

world, as well as the fields of publishing and education. Franklin continued to be funded
by the US government (primarily the United States Information Agency, and later the US
Agency for International Development), but also received funding from philanthropic
foundations such as the Ford Foundation, as well as financial support from governments
in the countries where they operated.
The first Middle Eastern country where Franklin set up operations was Egypt, to
translate books in Arabic for the Middle East. The aims of the program were to fam-
iliarize Arab people with American culture and way of life, to decrease the resentment
of Arab people towards the Americans, and, importantly, to contain Soviet propa-
ganda in the region. Operations in Egypt provided a template that Franklin would
follow in other countries. The Arabic program proved successful. Jacquemond
(2009, 22) observes that “while the Franklin programme was criticized by Egyptian
and Arab intellectuals hostile to American influence, it was well regarded by other
local actors”. Despite the criticism of some Arab nationalists, Franklin’s Arabic
program retained support of the Egyptian government through the 1950s and
1960s, and numerous academics and government figures were involved with Franklin,
acting both as translators and contributors to Franklin publications (Laugesen 2017,
43–57).

Establishing Franklin Book Programs in Iran

Franklin moved into Iran in 1954 after beginning their Arabic program in Cairo the pre-
vious year, at least in part buoyed by the apparent rapid success of their first operation.
Iran was of considerable strategic interest to the USA, due to its geographical position
and access to oil supplies. The US government generally held the view that Iran was
not yet ready for democracy, and that an authoritarian regime that took an anti-Soviet
position was the best type of government to have there (Cottam 1988, 85). The USA sup-
ported the authoritarian regime led by the Shah, after a coup removed Mohammad
Mosaddegh in 1953. The Shah focused on development and modernization, especially
through the 1960s with his “White Revolution” prioritizing land reform, literacy, and
education (Ansari 2003, 157). He also cultivated a mythology around his “progressive”
and “modern” policies, although this was undertaken within a repressive regime that
ruthlessly suppressed dissent (140, 180).
The person selected to manage Franklin’s Tehran office was Homayoun Sanati, an
entrepreneur who became a central figure in the work of Franklin in Iran. Franklin
began with translation commissions, but ultimately developed a considerable presence
in all areas relating to printing and publishing in Iran. It contributed to the moderniz-
ation of the country’s printing facilities through establishing an offset printing plant
for the first time, with Franklin helping to negotiate a loan for its establishment
(Cameron and Johnson 1957). The plant was established with the support of the Shah
and a number of Iranian publishing houses. Alongside this, a “Model Bookshop” was
created to help modernize the bookselling industry. While not aiming to be commercially
competitive, this bookshop was intended to help in the training of booksellers, and to
provide a demonstration of modern (American-style) bookselling techniques (“The
Model Book Shop.” 1963). It lasted from 1963 to 1966, when it was sold to publisher–
bookseller Amir Kabir (Cameron and Arnold 1966). Franklin also worked to produce
 TRANSLATION STUDIES 159

millions of textbooks for Iran’s educational system and produced a series of magazines
collectively known as Paik to support the regime’s work in literacy.

Franklin, patronage and translation

Franklin, as well as the Shah’s regime, acted as an influential provider of patronage to
certain writers, translators, and literary critics in Iran. The political interests and
influence of both must therefore be considered.
In terms of Franklin’s US government origins, it is evident that the endeavour began
life as a government-conceived and sponsored operation. In 1952, a Department of State
memorandum discussed what was called “Project No. 1 Covert Support of Book Publish-
ing and Export House”, with an aim to “neutralize and overcome the effects of commu-
nist activities in the book publishing and distribution field” (undated memo). The
government envisioned a private corporation that would “translate, publish and distri-
bute commercially those American books which explain and further the true aims of
the US on the one hand, expose and explode the communist aims and myths on the
other” (ibid.). The Department of State and the United States Information Agency
(USIA) would continue to tie Franklin to their “program aims” through making
funding subject to the satisfactory fulfillment of these aims. Yet in partnering with Frank-
lin, an organization that employed and worked with commercial publishers, there was
always going to be conflicting motivations at work.
American publishers initially embraced Franklin’s purpose, as well as working
alongside government, with some enthusiasm. This reflected their experiences in
the Second World War, where the industry had worked effectively with government
to use books to help promote the American cause, and to posit American intellectual
freedom against totalitarianism. These sentiments flowed into the cultural Cold War,
but caution increased. One concern of the American publishing industry was for any
book publishing activity to remain commercial in nature. George Brett (of Macmil-
lan), supported by Datus Smith, argued strongly to the US government that the
latter could not and should not engage in direct publishing activity (Brett and
Schafer 1953). In turn, Franklin shied away from being overtly political, preferring
to publish books that it believed “reflect[ed] American culture and thought”,
rather than what they called “hard-hitting” propaganda (Smith and Burdette 1954,
2–3).
Publishers continued to try to maintain a certain level of independence from US gov-
ernment interference, and to try to sustain the commercial nature of the operation,
insofar as this was possible. Franklin books were, for instance, always sold rather than
given away. Although they were cheap (and subsidized), they were not supposed to
undersell local reading matter (Minutes, Franklin Board of Directors Meeting 1953, 4).
Asserting professional expertise and control was important to Franklin, and Franklin’s
publishers thought little of the USIA’s ability in the area. Datus Smith observed in
1957 that:
USIA is not itself competent to do the job. Their people are of indifferent general quality at
best, childishly innocent of any knowledge of book publishing, and never staying long
enough in one place to permit the man who starts a textbook project to see it into pro-
duction. (Smith and Spaulding 1957)
160 A. LAUGESEN AND M. RAHIMI-MOGHADDAM

It is important to acknowledge the commercial imperatives at work within Franklin, even

as men like Datus Smith also spoke of the “moral responsibility” of publishers to assist in
such endeavours. For American publishers who granted translation rights and were
involved in Franklin activities, they supported the idea that Franklin was a way of enter-
ing the market in countries where, before the Second World War, the US publishing
industry had little or no commercial presence. Smith observed that “America’s material
interest seems to go hand-in-hand with the cultural interest of the underdeveloped areas”
(Smith and “Bowker Lecture: Moral Issues of US Books in the Non-Western World.”
1958, 26).
Franklin’s aim was to ensure that local publishers and interests had a considerable
stake in operations. In 1953, Franklin noted that books must have local “sponsorship”,
with the active participation of local intellectual and cultural figures as translators and/
or authors of introductions (Franklin Publications 1954). Homayoun Sanati was of con-
siderable importance in the success of Franklin and was clearly a good business operator.
For example, in 1960, he persuaded the Iranian Ministry of Education to purchase 25,000
Franklin books as “nuclei for school libraries” (Smith and Dalton 1960). In the case of the
Tehran office, operations became largely self-sufficient, insofar as it did not have to rely
on American funds for publishing work, although the USA supplied funds for special
projects and continued to procure translation rights and provide training and expertise,
as well as oversight (USIA Audit Report 1963, 3).
What then of more covert government interference and influence? It was perceived in
Iran, at least by some, that Franklin was a front for CIA activities. Certainly, the CIA cov-
ertly funded a number of cultural programs and operations in the Cold War. As Osgood
(2006, 303) points out, this was often in the form of supplying funds through philanthro-
pic organizations, such as the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and the Carnegie Cor-
poration. Translator Ali Solhjoo believed that Iranian leftist intellectuals considered
Franklin a “house of American spies” (2000, 23). Iraj Afshar, a prominent specialist in
Persian studies, when faced with the proposition of managing Franklin after Sanati’s res-
ignation in the 1970s, said to Ali Sadr, who looked after Franklin’s finances, “I am your
friend, do you hold any grudge against me that you want to get me entangled with the
Americans? I would not be a servant for the Americans” (Alinejad 2016, 206). Franklin
denied any dealings with the CIA, at least any that it was conscious of. In 1967, when
stories about CIA funding of cultural programs were reported in the American press,
Datus Smith sent around a memorandum to Franklin’s board of directors to state that
the organization had never knowingly received funds from the CIA (Smith and Franklin
Board of Directors 1967). When it was conceded that the Asia Foundation had indeed
been in receipt of CIA funds, Smith noted that over 15 years Franklin had received
only $179,100 from the Asia Foundation out of some $26 million of funds Franklin
had received to that point, and that the foundation had never interfered in any Franklin
operation (Memorandum to All Franklin Offices from Datus Smith 1967).
Barnhisel (2015, 10, 156), in discussing the CIA’s impact on the content of some cul-
tural programs it covertly sponsored, concludes that the actual influence of such involve-
ment on content is unclear. In reference to the US sponsorship of Latin American writers
during the Cold War, Cohn (2012, 32) similarly asserts that there is never any guarantee
that the “hidden agenda” of the US government is actually carried out; Cold War pro-
grams were often turned to other uses by those who organized and participated in
 TRANSLATION STUDIES 161

them. However, we should also not be too quick to accept on face value Smith’s distan-
cing from government/CIA interference. Clearly, Franklin carried out US foreign policy
aims, at least to some extent, throughout its existence. And the impact of the perception of
Franklin as a CIA operation – which clearly was believed by some Iranian cultural figures
at the time – was of consequence insofar as it made Franklin a symbol of US power in
Iran.
Alongside the interests of the USA were the interests of Iran that, to an extent in this
period, coincided. The Shah and his regime saw an opportunity to use Franklin as a
means of asserting control over cultural and educational life, reflecting the Shah’s use
of American aid to shore up power. After the 1953 coup, the Shah was faced with political
enemies. In order to fight them, his regime needed its own cultural resources to counter
the strong leftist views that were widespread among many intellectuals and political acti-
vists. According to Moradi (2015, 2146), the Shah aimed for “a political deculturalization
and cultural cleansing in Iran”. Moradi continues: “the regime in order to weaken or
remove this leftist atmosphere decided to establish institutes that would spread an
utterly different culture from that of the Soviets”. Franklin, with its American resources,
offered one means to do this. The Americans in turn embraced the opportunity. It was a
win-win situation for both the USA and the Shah’s regime, one that allowed Franklin to
establish a strong presence in Iran, and successfully cleared the way for many American
books to be published in translation and circulated throughout the country.
With Franklin’s establishment, the power balance in Iran’s publishing field yielded
toward the USA, and a wave of American books spread across the country. Leftist pub-
lishing, specifically that of the communist Tudeh party, was suppressed under the Shah,
although some clandestine publishing continued. The collaboration of the Shah’s regime
with Franklin was evident in the close relationships forged in the years that followed. For
example, Franklin claimed that the regime appreciated it for its work in “enriching
[Iranian] culture” and for “open[ing] a new era in Persian education” (Cameron and
Franklin Executive Committee 1957, 5). Yet as time went on, the problems of the
regime became more evident and more challenging for those working within cultural
diplomacy roles. Richard Arndt, a cultural diplomat who served in Iran, noted by the
end of the 1960s that the Shah’s regime was authoritarian, actively limited the free
flow of information, was blind to corruption, and “identified intellect with treason”
(2005, 439).
Franklin’s publishing program involved the translation of a range of books from lit-
erature to textbooks. Categories of interest to Franklin included books that reflected
themes such as “free institutions”, “local values”, “open society”, “education”, “human
resources” and “technology” (Smith to Franklin Executive Committee 1953). These cat-
egories were inflected with Cold War concerns, as well as more general concerns con-
nected to the making of a “modern” state. Its textbook translation program was to
serve “both American national interest and [the] commercial interest of the American
publishing industry” (Project for Selection of Textbooks 1954). A Franklin board of
directors meeting noted that one of the points of Franklin was to make “possible the com-
mercial acceptance of American works in translation” (Minutes, Franklin Board of Direc-
tors Meeting 1955, 3).
How then did the nature of Franklin’s origins and operations shape the translation of
these books? Franklin’s government funding meant that books were translated and
162 A. LAUGESEN AND M. RAHIMI-MOGHADDAM

produced at least in partial fulfillment of US state aims. As we will see in the next section,
the principle of “local selection” that Franklin adhered to was not absolute in practice and
was circumscribed by the forces that shaped Franklin. But it is important to note that
books that were translated with Franklin also reflected imperatives relating to what
was “necessary” for the progress of a country such as Iran, and to the ultimate promotion
of commercial sales of American books.

Franklin’s translation work as propaganda and American imperialism

For Datus Smith, writing about Franklin’s Arabic operations, Franklin was not engaged
in propaganda: teaching other countries modern book publishing skills was the broader
long-term aim and “a much more important contribution to American interest[s] and
world peace than to have every Arab schoolchild clutch the stars and stripes to his
bosom”. This was a view that he and other Franklin employees and supporters returned
to and asserted again and again over the years. For Smith, direct propaganda was not
likely to be effective because it made people suspicious; instead, it was more useful to
take “a long view” (Smith and “Policy Memorandum.” 1952, 2).
Datus Smith explicitly saw Franklin’s position as “non-political” and he strove to keep
Franklin out of “political questions at home and abroad”, seeing this position as Frank-
lin’s “most priceless asset” (Smith and Franklin offices 1966). Yet Smith failed to recog-
nize that the very act of taking American books abroad was fundamentally an act of
propaganda (whatever else it might also be), and undoubtedly a deeply political
action. Franklin’s very involvement abroad meant that it transported political and cul-
tural views that had an impact on another country and another culture. In advocating
a particular commercial culture and set of practices, Franklin also had an impact on
another country’s business culture, not least through its training of publishers in Amer-
ican techniques which served to Americanize some of Iran’s publishing processes.
Sāzemān-e Ettelā’āt va Amniyat-e Keshvar (SAVAK, the Iranian security and intelli-
gence force) recognized the cultural impact of Franklin’s work on the country. They
noted that Franklin’s books were “distributed to newsstands, barber shops, hair salons,
public baths, restaurants, cafes, apothecary shops, supermarkets, and in future, groceries
of villages”. The security agency reported that Sanati “in order to dispel the customers’
suspicion, lest they may suspect these books are rightist propaganda, five percent of
the books are being chosen in such a way that they will leave the readers with more or
less leftist impressions” (Kayhan Newspaper 2017). SAVAK’s report suggests that the
political uses of Franklin for the regime were well understood, and that Iranian political
considerations at least in part governed the choices of publications for sale.
A principle under which Franklin operated and which its leaders frequently asserted
was that Franklin always allowed for a local selection of the books that would be trans-
lated. But the extent to which this principle was ultimately circumscribed by Cold War
politics is clear. While books were indeed selected by staff working in local offices, that
selection was made from a list of books provided by Franklin’s New York office.
Further, the USIA had to vet authors of any selected book (for their political affiliations),
and they also had veto power over final selections. Personnel who worked on any book
translation and publication project had to be cleared by the USIA, who sought to under-
take “complete and repeated reviews” to ensure compliance with USIA policy
 TRANSLATION STUDIES 163

(Memorandum on Relations between Franklin Publications, Inc. and USIA 1955, 3). It is
worth stating, however, that USIA policy in this regard fluctuated over the years and
varied from country to country. For example, it was noted in late 1956 that the USIA
office in Tehran had shifted its directives away from overt anti-communist propaganda
to a seemingly more subtle approach that emphasized “honesty”, “high ethical standards”
and “person-to-person relationships” (Pratt and Smith 1956). Books were selected
accordingly.
Franklin pushed back against too much government interference in their operations,
seeing it as representing a lack of trust in their professional expertise and arguing that, as
publishing professionals, employees should be able to exercise their professional judg-
ment in running the program. This issue continued to cause tensions in the USIA-Frank-
lin relationship. But while Franklin did push back against government interference and
control of their work, it is clear that there were considerable limitations as to how far
Franklin could challenge this influence. Ultimately, books that could be selected by
local offices for translation were chosen to illustrate American life, technology, culture
and so forth, and the USIA still asserted the right of final approval of any titles that
would go forwards for translation and publication.
Translators who worked with Franklin have talked about the limitations imposed on
the policy of “local selection”. Najaf Daryabandari, perhaps Iran’s most famous transla-
tor, in an interview with Cyrus Alinejad recalls that while he was imprisoned by the Shah,
he translated Mark Twain’s (1916) The Mysterious Stranger. After being given his
freedom, Daryabandari gave the manuscript to Manuchehr Anvar, one of the principal
editors of Franklin-Tehran, but he failed to secure permission for its publication (Deh-
bashi 2017, 179). Another example is from an interview with Anvar, in which he recounts
that he struggled for six months with Franklin’s New York head office to obtain per-
mission for the publication of Faulkner’s (1929) The Sound and the Fury. According
to Anvar, the New York office believed that Faulkner’s book was “dark, negative and
difficult to understand and without market potential” (Alinejad 2016, 185). During an
interview, AbdolHossein Azarang, a scholar of publishing history in Iran, asked Karim
Emami, a prominent Iranian translator and editor at Franklin, whether books were
imposed on them from New York; he responded that they “did not do that in our
time”, but he also acknowledged the Franklin aim of being “spreading American
books all over the world” (Azarang and Dehbashi 2004, 343).

Franklin’s ambitions
Franklin’s program was an ambitious one that extended beyond the publication of a few
American books in translation. They aspired to become an influential presence in, and
patrons of, Iranian cultural life. Franklin supported the popular spread of its books
through efforts in promoting the book industry as a whole. This included support for lit-
eracy campaigns, mass education, teacher-training, promoting bookselling and working
with cultural organizations. Indeed, Franklin claimed credit in 1955 for “revolutionizing”
the book trade: “Window designs have been changed, display devices introduced, direct-
mail advertising tried on an experimental basis, a publishers’ association formed”,
reported Franklin. In turn, the “most exciting development in Iran has been the demon-
stration that there is a significant market for books in the provinces where the Tehran
164 A. LAUGESEN AND M. RAHIMI-MOGHADDAM

publishers had never thought it worthwhile to spend any effort” (Smith and Annual
Report and Summary of Operations 1955, 13). Much of this work was credited to
Homayoun Sanati (Smith and Payne 1956).
Training was another important aspect of Franklin’s work, and one that called on the
expertise of American publishers. In undertaking revisions to translated textbooks,
William Spaulding, a publisher who worked with Franklin, argued that it would be
best to train Iranians so that they could make these revisions themselves, rather than
rely on American expertise. This would have more beneficial outcomes, allowing for
these skills to be used in the production of texts in the future (Minutes, Franklin
Board of Directors Meeting 1958, 5–6). With support and funding from the Ford Foun-
dation, a training program was arranged for Iranian Textbook Editors (Report 1959, 22).
In 1960, twelve editors travelled to the USA, were taught by experts from US textbook
publishing houses, and also visited France and England (Minutes, Franklin Board of
Directors Meeting 1960, 4–5). Subsequently, Datus Smith noted that the American
influence on Persian textbooks was “such as has not previously occurred anywhere
else in the world and not likely to occur again”. The people now working on the textbooks
had been trained under American direction, were drawing on US books or models and
applying American educational principles (Smith and Hendershot 1962).
Franklin also sought to have a considerable influence in the educational field, and this
area constituted one of its most successful translation and publication programs. Wilson
Dizard, a USIA policy officer in Iran, reported to Franklin on how they could better
achieve USIA aims, encouraging Franklin to produce its children’s books with the Ministry
of Education: “such a project could strengthen the foothold that American influence has in
the Iranian educational system” (Dizard and Memorandum 1955). Textbooks thus became
an important part of Franklin’s work in Iran by the end of the 1950s. It was projected in
1957 that Franklin would produce 1.2 million textbooks for Iran and half a million text-
books for Afghanistan. Titles translated for Iran included Leeming’s (1954) The Real
Book of Science Experiments, Yates’s (1952) Atomic Experiments for Boys, Conant’s
(1951) Science and Common Sense, Montagu’s (1953) Helping Children Develop Moral
Values, and Durant’s (1935) Our Oriental Heritage (Sanati and Smith 1960).
In addition, Franklin worked to spread books among the broader population through
the “wirerack project” (known as Ketabha-ye Jibi), whereby selected titles were made
available on wirerack displays set up in a variety of outlets on consignment. Franklin sup-
ported the Shah’s “Literacy Corps” program in the 1960s, producing some 320,000 lit-
eracy-teaching books by 1964 (Franklin Annual Report for the Year Ending 30 June
1964, 16). They also aided in the production of a series of magazines for new literates,
Paik, which aimed to have a circulation of 600,000 copies (Franklin Annual Report for
the Year Ending 30 June 1965, 11). In 1973 it was estimated that about 1.5 million
copies were produced per fortnight, with a readership of some 7.5 million (President’s
Comment, Board of Directors Meeting 1973).

Translation, translators and publication

We now turn to considering some of the individual translation projects that were under-
taken by Franklin’s Tehran office. Franklin translations were an important, even domi-
nant, presence in the Iranian marketplace. Homayoun Sanati estimated in 1961 that
 TRANSLATION STUDIES 165

Franklin titles represented about 50% of all translations into Persian from all sources, and
nearly 25% of all new books published in the previous seven years (Minutes, Franklin
Board of Directors Meeting 1961, 4). Haddadian-Moghaddam (2014, 111) estimates
that Franklin-Tehran published around 1,000 titles.
Many books in translation were published through Franklin, but we will just focus on
a few. One example is William L. Shirer’s (1960) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, the
production of which was overseen by Najaf Daryabandari. He wrote to Datus Smith to
comment that:
We have provided the Persian intelligentsia with a much-needed analysis of the Nazi move-
ment which had, before and during the war, its sympathizers in this country too. What
pleases me most about the success of the Shirer book is that I think it washes away the
residue of the Nazi legend which I am sure has been lurking somewhere in the minds of
those who once sympathized with Hitler. This is no small service on the part of Franklin.
(Daryabandari and Smith 1965)

Another important undertaking was the production of an Iranian edition of the Colum-
bia-Viking Encyclopedia. Money for this project came from a variety of different sources,
including the Ford Foundation and the Shah’s sister Princess Ashraf (Smith and Franklin
Executive Committee 1956). The local edition consisted of some 60–70% of existing
(American) material, and 30–40% was adapted existing material or completely new
material (Wall Street Journal [clipping] 1965).
A book that caused some issues for Homayoun Sanati was Edward Steichen’s edited
book, based on the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Family of Man. The exhibition
was a landmark in visual culture, presenting people engaged in everyday activities the
world over and depicting a democratic, universal humanity. It toured a number of
countries under USIA auspices (Turner 2012, 56). Sanati, however, had concerns
about adapting the book for an Iranian readership. He believed that the Americans
depicted in the book’s photos were not “typical” (although it was unclear what he
meant by this), and that Iranian communists would consequently twist the book to
their advantage and use it in their anti-US propaganda (Pratt and Smith 1955).
In a number of Franklin offices, a local adaptation was undertaken of Edward
R. Murrow’s popular anthology (based on his radio program that featured notable Amer-
icans discussing their spiritual beliefs), This I Believe. Arabic and Urdu editions were pro-
duced, as was one in Persian. Work on the Iranian edition commenced in 1956, with the
edition incorporating both original American entries, as well as locally written chapters
that profiled figures of importance in Iran. This project is a good example of an approach
Franklin often took with their translations: these were not just straight translations, but
rather involved textual edits, additions and omissions, along with the introduction of
forewords undertaken by local cultural figures and translators.
While accepting that the US government hoped to win favour for American culture in
Iran, Franklin also aimed to reinforce Iran’s religious values. As they did elsewhere,
Franklin published a number of books about Islam and related religious topics. Some
of the books with religious themes published by Franklin in Iran included: Kenneth
W. Morgan’s (1958) Islam: The Straight Path, W. Montgomery Watt’s (1963) Muslim
Intellectual: A Study of al-Ghazali, and Majid Khadduri’s (1940) War and Peace in the
Law of Islam.
166 A. LAUGESEN AND M. RAHIMI-MOGHADDAM

Translators and contributors played a key role in ascribing value to the translated texts
and were often foregrounded in an effort to give the texts local credibility. By using pro-
minent intellectual, academic and political figures, texts were given enhanced status and
legitimacy Senator Ebrahim Khajenouri wrote the preface to the translated edition of
John F. Kennedy’s (1955) Profiles in Courage, the Shah was credited with writing a bio-
graphical profile of his father for the Iranian edition of Sarah K. Bolton’s (1885) Lives of
Poor Boys Who Became Famous, and Princess Ashraf’s name was given as translator of
Benjamin Spock’s (1946) Baby and Child Care (Smith and Laughlin 1960; Franklin,
Local Participation by Civil and Intellectual Leaders 1958). The attachment of prominent
figures in the Shah’s regime – and the Shah himself – to Franklin translation projects also
served to stamp the program with official authority and to enhance Franklin’s position
within the Iranian cultural scene. Notable literary, political and cultural figures who
worked with Franklin included Mohammad Hejazi, Sadeq Rezazadeh Shafaq, Ehsan Yar-
shater, and Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh (Franklin, Local Participation by Civil and Intel-
lectual Leaders 1958).

Assessing the impact and legacy of Franklin in Iran

Homayoun Sanati resigned at the end of 1968, amidst some concerns from the New York
office in relation to his financial management of the Tehran office. Sanati subsequently
attempted to set up a new operation with the support of Princess Ashraf (Harris and
Munger 1969). Franklin continued to operate through the 1970s, but mainly to
produce textbooks under contract with the Iranian government (Minutes, Franklin
Board of Directors Meeting 1969). He would be imprisoned after the Revolution. Frank-
lin-Tehran became an entirely independent operation in 1976 (Program Report, Franklin
Annual Meeting 1976, 1). Franklin New York was wound up in April 1978, ending
Franklin’s global operations for good; the Iranian Revolution followed soon thereafter.
One year prior to the Revolution, the Franklin-Tehran operation had been dissolved
and all its assets were transferred to a new organization, “Sazman-e Amouzeshi-ye
Nomarz” (Nomarz Educational Organization). Two months after the Islamic revolution,
this new organization underwent further changes, becoming “Sazman-e Entesharat va
Amouzesh-e Enghelab-e Eslami” (Islamic Revolution Publishing and Education Organ-
ization). In 1993, it merged with Elmi Farhangi Publications. Today Elmi Farhangi is a
government publisher that publishes extensively in a variety of areas. Recently it pub-
lished a deluxe edition of all eight issues of a book review magazine called Ketab-e
Emrooz (Today’s Book), which was first published almost fifty years ago by Franklin.
Elmi Farhangi boasts about its origins in Franklin and attempts to keep alive the
memory of its history (Elmi Farhangi). There is a clear desire to create a sense of conti-
nuity with a publishing heritage that goes back to the opening of the Franklin-Tehran
branch.
Franklin’s impact and legacy for Iran must be regarded as complex. The work under-
taken by the Tehran office undoubtedly had an important and lasting influence on
Iranian publishing. Franklin helped to modernize the printing and publishing industry
through such work as training, building a printing press and encouraging American
bookselling techniques. Franklin introduced the publication of pocket-size books in
large print runs and revolutionized the publishing of educational books, thereby
 TRANSLATION STUDIES 167

furthering literacy and education at a critical time in which the regime was attempting to
modernize the country. Franklin also led to improvements in the design of book covers
(Moradi 2013, 30) and was behind the creation of one of the nation’s most important
encyclopedias, Mosaheb’s The Persian Encyclopedia (First Volume published in 1966)
(Alinejad 2016, 73–91; Homayounpour 2015). Franklin is acknowledged as introducing
modern professional editing to the Iranian publishing industry, and most authoritative
sources credit Franklin as the harbinger of modern book editing in modern Iran (see
e.g. Emami 2006, 88; Hariri and Ghasemnejad 2002, 1427).
In addition, recent histories of publishing in Iran have praised Sanati’s individual
impact on Iranian publishing; for instance, Nourollah Moradi, himself a veteran of the
publishing industry, believes Sanati played a crucial role in transforming Iran’s publish-
ing industry (Alinejad 2016, 46). Sanati is also credited with introducing the idea of
opening an atelier for book cover design; an unprecedented activity in Iran’s publishing
industry (51). The main drive behind the development of illustration and graphic design
in Franklin-Tehran came from the need to illustrate school textbooks. Franklin estab-
lished its own artistic atelier under the management of Hormoz Vahid, himself a
notable creative artist. Prominent Iranian artists such as Noureddin Zarrinkelk, Parviz
Kalantari, and Zaman Zamani were among the initial illustrators who worked with
Franklin (Ghaeni 2009, 136–137). The majority of artists working with Franklin at
that time are now considered as the forerunners of modern Iranian graphic art (Ghanbari
and Majid 2020).
Franklin is also considered to have played a significant role in the development of
Iranian translation practices, at least by some translators such as Kamran Fani and Kha-
shayar Deyhimi, who, in an interview with Mehrnameh magazine on the history of trans-
lation in Iran, both refer to Franklin’s importance. Fani says:
The fourth generation of translation in Iran begins from 1953 to 1978, and this span must be
considered seriously in the history of translation in Iran. This was due to organizations like
Franklin and Bongah-e Tarjome va Nashr-e Ketab [Publishing and Translating Company]
because they took on the role of publishing translations.

Deyhimi acknowledges that “Franklin changed the very ideas on books and the interest-
ing point is that all these books were translations. Franklin is the starting point of mod-
ernization of translation in Iran” (Khojaste Rahimi and Shabani 2010, 49). These
comments perhaps demonstrate an uncritical view of Franklin in Iran that ignores the
program’s ideological roots in countering Soviet and leftist influences in Iran, as well
as its Americanizing and Westernizing influences. Before 1960, most Iranian intellectuals
were Westernizers, with many supporting the modernizing and Westernizing aspirations
of the Pahlavi regime; post-1960, intellectuals increasingly came to question this, with
Western ideas and habits being associated with Western political and economic domina-
tion (Keddie 2003, 179, 189). In addition, we should note that Nanquette (2013) has
argued (as Franklin themselves did) that Franklin played a significant role in shifting
the bulk of translated works from French material to English, and especially American,
works.
Criticisms of Franklin have emerged from Iran’s intellectuals and some of its leftist
writers, predominantly because of Franklin’s American connections and influence.
Mahmoud Eʿtemadzadeh (known as Behazin), a renowned Iranian translator, who was
168 A. LAUGESEN AND M. RAHIMI-MOGHADDAM

one of the prominent members of the Association of Writers of Iran, derides Franklin in
his diaries by calling it “the American establishment of Franklin” (Eʿtemadzadeh 2008,
34). Most of the criticisms of Franklin seem, however, to date from the time of its activity.
For example, Samad Behrangi, a famous Iranian writer and teacher, criticized the trans-
lations of psychology and education books from America, arguing that “such books are
written by American educators for their own people and society” (1969, 5). He cited the
Persian translation of W. B. Featherstone’s (1951) Teaching the Slow Learner, criticizing
the translator and suggesting that it would have been much better had he translated a
book from a country such as Turkey, Afghanistan or Pakistan, since these countries at
least had some shared characteristics and common cultural traits with Iran (12).
Another critic at the time was Jalal Al-e-Ahmad, a prominent Iranian writer and intel-
lectual. He observed – if perhaps in a somewhat hyperbolic fashion – that Franklin exer-
cised an insidious effect in the way in which it made other publishers dependent on it. He
wrote:
I warn all readers, authors and booksellers, from now on … if you want to write something,
publish a poem, if you want to establish a publishing house, if you write school books, if you
are a book peddler, if you want to run a prestigious magazine and you do not want to suffer
financial damage or unanticipated consequences, you have to negotiate with Franklin,
beforehand. (Al-e-Ahmad 1963, 85)

These criticisms indicate an ongoing strain of concern within the Iranian intelligentsia
that suggests that many were not seduced by Franklin’s modernizing efforts and
queried its dominant presence in the Iranian publishing field.
Another assessment of Franklin’s influence in Iran comes from the “hardliners” who
today condemn it as one of the most visible aspects of the US “cultural invasion” of Iran.
In 2017, Kayhan, a hardliner Iranian paper, published a series of articles against Franklin
and its legacy in Iran. According to Kayhan, Franklin’s activities were manifestations of a
so-called “cultural infiltration” and the whole program was aimed at denigrating the
Islamic values of Iranian society. In this narrative, Franklin’s sole purpose was to dispa-
rage Iranian society’s religious values and beliefs (Kayhan Newspaper 2017). As we have
seen already, Franklin’s propaganda dimension was focused on countering communism
and, to that end, it did not shy away from taking advantage of dominant religious senti-
ments in the Middle East, publishing books on Islamic subjects. The hardliners reject a
narrative that would accept that without Franklin the Iranian publishing industry could
not have been successful in undertaking such a rapid and all-encompassing transform-
ation into a modern one (Haddadian-Moghaddam 2016, 382–383). Nevertheless, they
reflect the ongoing anti-Americanism that has persisted since the Revolution.

Conclusion
Laetitia Nanquette has argued that most translated works in Iran have ultimately been
imported from the West. She writes that “Iran in translation is in a subordinate state;
it receives from Western nations but is rarely able to export its culture” (in Moradi
2013, 129). Our case study has shown one of the factors that has created this situation:
the politics of the Cold War. This shaped not only why and how books were translated,
but also shaped the broader development of the publishing industry in countries such as
 TRANSLATION STUDIES 169

Iran. This article has sought to contribute to the broader project of understanding how
Western texts were translated and then circulated and received in countries that were
seen as central to the work of the cultural Cold War. More work remains to be done.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Note on contributors
Amanda Laugesen is a historian and lexicographer, and is currently an associate professor at the
Australian National University. She is the director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre
and chief editor of the Australian National Dictionary. She is the author of a number of articles
and books in US and Australian history, including Taking Books to the World: American Publishers
and the Cultural Cold War (2017), Globalizing the Library: Librarians and Development Work,
1945–1970 (2019), and Rooted: An Australian History of Bad Language (2020). Her research
ranges across book and publishing history, the history of language ideology and attitudes, and
the history of professional identity.
Mehrdad Rahimi-Moghaddam has an MA in Translation Studies from the University of Tehran,
Iran. Recently, his chapter “Translators as Organic Intellectuals Translational Activism in Pre-
revolutionary Iran”, co-authored with Amanda Laugesen, has been published in The Routledge
Handbook of Translation and Activism. His current research focuses on literary studies, literary
theory and criticism, and comparative and world literature.

ORCID
Amanda Laugesen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3290-6574
Mehrdad Rahimi-Moghaddam http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0228-8207

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