Comparative Analysis of Retranslations of Literary Works in Iran: Retranslations of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath

Abstract

The theory of retranslation as developed by Antoin Berman and Paul Bensimon is based on the idea of ‘deviation’ of the first translations from the source language and their proximity to the target language. It is based on the belief that as time passes and as readers become more familiar with source culture and concepts, new translations move inevitably towards more source-oriented texts. The present article attempts to find out about the validity of ‘retranslation theory’ through a case study of Persian retranslations of John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath. Taking advantage of Newmark’s procedural model as applied to three major retranslations of the novel, the frequency and percentage of the procedures are determined in each case and it is finally concluded that the claims in ‘retranslation theory’ do not hold true for the retranslations of The Grapes of Wrath into Persian.