Translation, a Battleground for Languages and Cultures:

A Case Study of Persian Translation of Shakespeare’s Othello by Abu’l-Qāsem Qarāgozlu

Abstract

Translation has always been a battleground for different languages and cultures, and the translator, willingly or unwillingly, constantly faces the challenge of demonstrating their linguistic abilities and the capabilities of the target language. Abu al-Qāsem Khān Qarāgozlu, one of the first translators of Shakespeare in Iran, deliberately and consciously responds to the challenge of translating Shakespeare and claims that Shakespeare can be translated by relying on the capabilities of the Persian language. The aim of this article is to examine the role of translation, by evaluating Qarāgozlu's claim, in confronting Western linguistic and cultural hegemony during the Qajar period. To this end, one hundred samples of his translation were selected and compared with the original. It was found that the translator, avoiding literal translation and calquing, used two methods of "substitution" (64 cases) and "creation" (36 cases). In "substitution," the translator found equivalents from the Persian repertoire for Shakespeare's expressions and replaced them, and in "creation," the translator invented new expressions, thus showing that the Persian, without calquing English phrases, has sufficient capability to translate Shakespeare's language; so that, hypothetically, it could have provided Shakespeare with the possibility of writing this tragedy in Persian. Thus, the translator, unlike his contemporaries, in a period of flourishing translation from European languages and at a time when intellectuals were looking for translations of Western works to fill the scientific void, while intimidated by Western language and culture, showed the power and capability of the Persian in the face of English through his translation method.