A Postcolonial Analysis of Arthur J. Arberry’s Selected Translations of Poetry from Persian into English

Subject Areas : All areas of language and translation

Maliheh Molaei ¹ , Seyyed Shahabeddin Sadati ² , Shahin Ojaghalizadeh ³

1 - English Department, Roudehen Branch, Islamic Azad University, Roudehen, Iran
2 - English Department, Roudehen Branch, Islamic Azad University, Roudehen, Iran
3 - Persian Literature Department, Roudehen Branch, Islamic Azad University, Roudehen, Iran

Received: 2021-04-15 Accepted : 2022-04-08 Published : 2023-04-01

Keywords: Postcolonialism, Eastern identity, Western ideology,

Abstract :

Over the past few centuries, the function of translation has become wider and in addition to linguistic aspects, ideological, economic, cultural, and political factors have dominated the process of translation. Since translation is not merely a linguistic and neutral task and for too long, it assisted superpowers in colonizing weaker nations, the relationship between the original text and the translation requires considerable investigation under postcolonial approach. It is proved that there is a special relationship between ‘postcolonialism’ and ‘translation’ and many postcolonial translators and authors transmitted their own cultures in their works; therefore, this paper is focused on postcolonial analysis of English translations of five Persian poems translated by the postcolonial orientalist, Arthur John Arberry to see whether he has made any attempts to replace Eastern concepts with Western ones or not. Accordingly, the intended English translations have been selected from Persian Poetry: An Anthology of Verse Translations (2008) edited by A. J. Arberry and corresponding Persian poems have been collected from various books. The results of the analysis of the data obtained from the corpus revealed that in transferring some specific concepts in the Persian poems, the translator ignored Persian-Eastern identity, thus making the poems westernized for the readers.

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سعدی ) 5711 (. بوستان سعدی )سعدی نامه(. به تصحیح و
توضیح یوسفی، غ. تهران: انجمن استادان زبان و
ادبیات فارسی .
سنایی غزنوی ) 5731 (. دیوان حکیم سنایی غزنوی. تهران: نگاه .
عراقی ) 5761 (. کلیات شیخ فخرالدین ابراهیم همدانی )متخلص به
عراقی( شامل غزلیات، قصائد، ترکیبات، مقطعات، مثلثات،
نامه یا ده نامه، لمعات و اصطلاحات ‌ ترجیعات، رباعیات، عشاق
عرفانی با مقدمه هیری، ن. چاپ اول، تهران: گلشائی .
مولانا محمد بلخی در شمس تبریزی ) 5731 (. جذبات الهیه
)منتخبات کلیات شمس الدین تبریزی(، چاپ دوم، تهران:
خواجه .
ناتل خانلری، پ. ) 5711 (. ماه در مرداب: مجموعه شعر. تهران: معین.