Translation Flow from Persian to Russian: A Time Series Approach

The international circulation of translation has a core-periphery structure, where literary texts travel mostly from the core to the periphery. The unequal literary translation flows between linguistic groups result from the position a linguisitc group occupies at world level. While various studies have attempted to examine this unequal flow of translation from the central languages to the peripheral ones, few have dealt with the flows in the opposite direction. This study aimed to examine the literary translation flow from Persian to Russian as a semi-central language with a time series approach. This approach is sophisticated enough to reveal hidden patterns in a timed series of data. The data which were derived from the Index Translationum produced by UNESCO, were related to a time span of 30 years, starting in 1979 and ending in 2010. The total number of books translated from Persian to Russian was about 210. Time series analysis revealed a general downward trend in the number of books translated from Persian to Russian over the time span. Another downward trend was found in 1990s, and a cyclical component emerged between 2003 and 2009. A decline in the cultural relations between two countries as a result of the Iranian Revolution and adopting an anti-imperialism view towards Russia, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 with its socioeconomic consequences, the revival of the Russian literary tradition, and having access to the Western literary movements could be responsible for the downward trends in the data. The cyclical pattern can be attributed to Russia’s Eurasian perspective in the late 1990s and also the constructive diplomatic relations with other states during the presidency of Khatami.