The Role of Translation in Introducing Foreign Linguistic and Cultural Elements into Contemporary ‎Persian Literature: The Case of Ahmad Shamlou’s Poetry ‎

Abstract

Nowadays with the advancement and spread of translation, the mutual influence among peoples ‎and nations is inevitable. This influence is evident in various fields, especially in the field of culture ‎and literature. Our country is no exception to this fact, and contemporary Persian language and ‎literature have been influenced by other nations in terms of linguistic and cultural elements, which, ‎in fact, is the product of the spread and progress of translation. One of the contemporary Persian ‎poets in whose poetry one can find signs of alien linguistic and cultural elements is Ahmad ‎Shamlou. This paper aims to examine Shamlou’s poetry so as to determine the amount of the ‎entrance of elements of foreign language and culture and to express the origin of these elements. ‎In doing so, the effect of western literature and culture on Shamlou’s poetry was investigated in ‎the four main categories of 1. linguistic and lexical elements, 2. thematic and content elements ‎‎(including mythological, historical and cultural elements), 3. poetic borrowings, and 4. stylistic and ‎syntactic elements. It was observed that Shamlou’s poetry, both linguistically and thematically, has ‎been greatly influenced by world literature and world social and cultural developments, which, in ‎turn, owes much to the development and promotion of translation.‎