Translation and Paratexts: A Study of Animal Farm in Persian

Abstract

Translators’ ideology permeates all non-technical translations, and the need to study the extent to which ideology plays a vital role in the manipulation of literary texts with a political edge is undoubtedly important. As of Iran, the state ideology has been changed from secular to religious (Islamic) after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. This shift of ideology has influenced society in many facets, including language use. Therefore, individuals were encouraged to produce religious discourse to appear popular and this encouragement includes translation too (Amirdabbaghian 2019). This study aims to describe the ideological impact of the social situation (Islamic Revolution) in Iran on the translation of George Orwell’s well-known political novel, Animal Farm (1945) into the Persian language. The research will apply van Dijk’s (1998) theory of ideology and Lefevere’s (1992) theory of translation, rewriting and manipulation of literary fame, to discuss the paratextual differences in both the source and target texts. The target text which has been chosen for the current research is Hosseini and Nabi Zadeh’s (2003) version published by the Doostan publication in Tehran, Iran. Using the paratext of Animal Farm translated into Persian, this article makes an effort to prove that the translators’ ideology influenced by their life experience, social status, and occupation as well as the situation and environment in the target language country may be revealed in the set of tactics used in translating the literary work, in the use of language and in the interpretation of the source text author’s ideas expressed in the text.