“Our” Darwin and “Their” Darwin: a Review on Persian Translations of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species

On the Origin of Species,the most influential among Charles Darwin’s works, was published in 1859 and became wellknown and was translated into 11 languages in a short time. Nevertheless the book was not translated into Persian until 1939/1318. This paper tries to make a comparative study on the Persian translations to explain the encounter between “us” and “them”. This paper claims that in the absence of the complete precise translation of the book, “we” always misunderstand Darwin’s Theory. In this article, Persian and Arabic translations of the book are reviewed and their similarities and differences with the English editions, especially the first and the 6th editions, studied.