A Study of Ahmad Shamlou’s Translation of Federico García Lorca’s Poems in Iran from the ‎Viewpoint of Descriptive Translation Studies and Cultural Turn

Abstract

The works of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca have been translated into Persian by many ‎translators. But the narrative produced by Iranian contemporary poet Ahmad Shamlou seems to ‎have earned a unique place among Iranian intellectuals. The “accepted” Lorca in Iran is a ‎revolutionist who meets a painful death in opposing the fascist regime of Francoist Spain. Lorca ‎becomes a symbol for the Iranian intellectual of the 1970s by Shamlou’s pen to evoke the senses ‎of opposition and resistance. In this manner, Lorca’s works are translated into Persian somehow ‎guided by the idea of his heroic death and have become popular poems with the theme of ‎revolution. As a result, these poems are more the works of a Lorca created by Shamlou in the ‎process of translating/rewriting and less those produced by the Spanish Lorca. The purpose of this ‎study is to analyze the elements which have made Shamlou’s Lorca into a hero and compare ‎Shamlou’s narrative with credible biographies of the Spanish poet and take a brief look at the most ‎important changes introduced by Shamlou in poems of Lorca and realize how he changed the ‎poems into the poems of a hero. It needs to be mentioned that the aim is not to appraise the ‎authenticity of this narrative and poems; rather the aim is to find the reasons which have led to the ‎acceptance of this specific narrative of life among all existing choices and countless possible ‎narratives.‎