A Comparative Study of the Translation of The Days (Al-Ayyam)

This research is about a comparative study of the translation of the Days, Taha Hossein’s autobiography (Al-Ayyam) . This book has been translated into Persian by Hossein Khadivjam about three decades ago, and has been highly regarded by some of the famous literary figures in Iran. In this article, the writer has compared the translation of the first volume with its main text and has noticed that in spite of the great efforts exerted by Khadivjam in translating this book, it seems that his translation suffers from considerable problems. In the present study, the researcher has tried to extract and show some sentences and phrases, and investigate and criticize the translation from three aspects: indirect translation, addition in translation, and errors of translation. The result of this study is summarized in three basic points: A. despite some stylistic beauties in the translation, it suffers from errors that cannot be ignored; B. this study is based on scientific method and lack of personal point of view; C. indicating some conditions and limitations for the translators in order to reach a good translation.