Policy, Planning, and Translation in the Islamic Republic of Iran
A Case Study of the Revival of Islam in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan
Abstract
The dissolution of the Soviet Union signaled the end of crackdown on Islam in the newly independent Republic of Azerbaijan. This created a space for major Muslim countries, especially Iran, to attempt to revive Islam in the secularized society through the supply of translated religious literature, among other means. Assuming this to be an act of culture planning, the present paper aims to study the Iranian culture planning through translation in post‑Soviet Azerbaijan. Using a bibliography of religious literature translated into Azerbaijani and published in Iran, an attempt is made to explore this case by analyzing the agents involved (translators and publishers), the titles translated and their intended functions, and the policies that guided this culture planning endeavor. We argue that the post-revolutionary Iranian (foreign) cultural policy of ‘Islamization’ was the guiding force behind the activity, which was primarily carried out by mostly (semi‑)private publishers and anonymous translators.
Keywords:
Translation policy, culture planning, politics, Islam, Iran, AzerbaijanReferences
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Copyright Licensee: Iranian Journal of Translation Studies. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0 license).
