Prefacial Visibility of Contemporary Iranian Translators: Implications for Translator Trainers

Although the existing research has advanced our understating of sociological issues such as translators’ prefaces, a paucity of studies into languages of limited diffusion, including Persian is strongly felt. To partly fill this gap, this study aims to explore Iranian fiction translators’ (in)visibility from the perspective of paratexts. Paratextual elements, especially prefaces, are among the most privileged translators' commentaries that provide opportunities for translators to have a direct contact with readers and foreground their presence and status in their profession. Drawing on a convenience sampling technique, the corpus of the study comprised the prefaces of 300 Persian translated works of fiction from English. The corpus under investigation encompassed a wide spectrum of English writers and Persian translators. The prefaces of the translations were analyzed in accordance with the “thematic analysis” procedure, where the prefaces were examined multiple times, and meaningful patterns were extracted and grouped under several headings sharing the same content. The results showed that a large proportion of the extracted themes from translators’ prefaces elaborated on introducing the original authors and their source texts. Consequently, these commentaries, even under the translators' name, did not significantly contribute to highlighting the visibility of translators within their work. This study may provide implications for novice translators regarding their stance and voice in their translations. Keywords: Preface, Paratext, Theme, Translators, (In)visibility.