Article published In:
BabelVol. 65:1 (2019) ► pp.51–60
Translation and political engagement
The role of Ali Shariati’s translations in Islamic Marxists movements in Iran in the 1970s
The activist aspect of translation that has illocutionary and perlocutionary dimensions is a sort of speech act that
rouses, inspires, bears witness, mobilizes and incites to rebellion, actually participating in social movement and political change. In this
way, translators are the producers of new knowledge signifying the assertion of power by choosing deliberately to subvert the traditional
allegiance of translation and also interjecting their own world view and politics into their work, and these translators undertake the work
they do because they believe the texts they produce will benefit humanity or impact positively upon the receptor culture in ways that are
broadly ideological. This paper investigates the issue of an Islamic Marxist translators’ agency applying Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological
concepts (habitus, field, capital) in the socio-political context of Iran in the 1960s and 1970s. This study surveys how based on his
habitus Ali Shariati, an Islamic Marxist translator and thinker, translated some texts to transfer new knowledge to society as cultural
capital which intensified the initiation and facilitation of social reform and political change in Iran in the 1970s. The paper peruses some
texts translated by Ali Shariati to show that he wielded his own politics in translation to illuminate Iranians’ thought against the
imperial regime to stimulate them to subvert the Pahlavi dynasty.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Translation and Shariati’s habitus
- 3.Shariati and field of translation
- 4.Shariati’s translations and cultural capital
- 5.Conclusion
-
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Cited by
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Wang, Xiaorui
2022.
The translator as an activist: the case of Yan Fu as a pioneer activist translator in the late Qing.
Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 9:2
► pp. 170 ff.
Wang, Xiaorui
2023.
Activism in translation: Yan Fu’s translational activism against foreign imperialism in
late Qing China.
Meta: Journal des traducteurs 68:1
► pp. 78 ff.
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