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Article published In:
Babel
Vol. 66:1 (2020) ► pp.70–95

Reframing Iran’s discourse of war in the English translation of Iranian war literature

The case of One Woman’s War: Da (Mother)

| Sheikhbahaee University

Translation as interlingual and intercultural communication has always been subject to ideological manipulation. This is due to the fact that some Translation Studies scholars believe that translators are considered as responsible for the reception and survival of literary works among target language readers. The strategies the translators apply throughout the translation process are governed by those who wield power including political and social institutions like the government, the law and publishers. In view of this phenomenon, the current study explores the paratextual strategies applied by Paul Sprachman, an American translator, when he translated Da (2014) from Farsi into English. Using narrative theory, this study analyses how the English translation appears to reiterate notions of Iran and Shia identity as bellicose and anti- liberal by situating Iran’s war literature as dramatic and fictional, rather than as a testimonial to one Iranian woman’s representations of her lived experience. The findings indicate that the textual and paratextual manipulations were in line with the ideology of the receptive environment of the United States with relevance to the discourse of the war in Iran.

Keywords: narrative theory, Iranian war literature, manipulation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Five frames of narrative: The Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988)
  • 3.Narrative theory: A new approach to analyzing ‘Sacred Defence’ literature re-framed in American-English translation
    • 3.1The image of bellicosity of Iran in the title and translator’s introduction
    • 3.2The image of Islam’s anti-liberal nature and Shiism vengeful bloodshed in target text book cover
  • 4.Genderizing the blurb
  • 5.Fictionalizing the memoir through deleting the footnotes
  • 6.Framing the photos
  • 7.Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 17 February 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00142.afz
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