Sartre's The Words and its Two Persian Translations

During several centuries, the reflection on the translation was one of the major concerns of the literatures and it holds true even now days. It is situated in the center of the debate concerning the orientation towards the source language or the target language. Among the writers whose works have been translated in Iran, Sartre seems to us to have brought to light the distinctive features for his irony and for his political and social commitments. His book entitled The Words is certainly a masterpiece and from its publication in 1964, it aroused an extraordinary enthusiasm in the intellectual circles of various countries. This book was translated into Persian on four occasions in 1972, 1973, 2007 and 2009 by various translators. With respect to the permanent change of the language over time, we are interested, in this study, in the first and last translations of this work in Persian (H. Djavahertchi, in 1972 and A. DJ. Aalam, in 2009) by examining the transfer of structures of L1 to L2, more particularly when the phenomenon leads to interventions of translator himself. It should be mentioned that for practical reasons, we have chosen some extracts which represent only a small selection of the whole work and its translations. Because the translation is never a neutral operation, we tried to examine and to bring to light the interventions of the translators, realized within the framework of their membership appropriate for the Persian culture.