Disney’s Robin Hood produced by Wolfgang Reitherman in 1973 is probably the best-known representation of the personage in contemporary Iran. Set in the medieval times, the animated movie recounts – in Disney’s fashion – the story of Robin Hood and Nottingham’s citizens who are depicted as anthropomorphic animals. It has been dubbed three times into Persian. If we consider each dubbed version a translation of the foreign ‘text’, it has been, we may assume, subjected to at least three interpretations and we may expect that each would project a different image of the character. It is an image which has ‘usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface’ – or a palimpsest. All practices of translation are suspected of manipulating or rewriting, especially when it comes to dubbing in which all traces of the foreign aural-oral material can be easily effaced without the audience noticing it. New interpretations are thus easily introduced to the receiving context with myriad political and ideological implications.
