چکیده
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This paper discusses translation practices from a historicist viewpoint,
contextualizing them in their emerging “episode.” The latter is a concept
drawn from sociology of literature and accounts for the rise of certain
discourses and ideologies in a society. On the basis of the argument
that translation practices are informed by the general literary and sociocultural milieu in which they are produced and consumed (also known as
ideology of representation), the paper studies the translators’ prefaces to
three translations published between 1953 and 1978—a period dominated
by Leftist and Marxist discourse in Iran. Drawing on a historically
oriented model which holds that the translator’s ideology is revealed at
the moment in which he/she chooses a text, and continues through the
discourse he/she develops to translate that text, the research embarks
on studying translation practices on two levels of choice mechanism and
prefaces. Prefaces are discussed in the light of the dominant ideology of
representation that is characterized by a revolutionary discourse. The
research demonstrates that these translators opted for a strategy that
incorporates the translations in the Persian cultural setting with minor
changes in a way that politicizes the foreign literature.
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