Literary Translation Competence from Literary Translators’ Perspective: Thematic Analysis of Forty Interviews from the Translator Journal

Translation training has been carried out in Iranian universities for several decades. The bachelor's curriculum of English language translation includes the course "literary translation". Despite this, in translation studies in Iran, less attention has been paid to the teaching of literary translation as an independent genre and text type. Considering the requirements of teaching and practice of literary translation, it is necessary to examine the views of the actors involved in this field, including literary translators, regarding the teaching goals of this course. The aim of the current study is to describe and analyze the points of view of professional literary translators in Iran regarding the competence of literary translation and the components of this competence (sub-competences of literary translation). In this research, we tried to describe and analyze the views of Iranian professional literary translators about the competence of literary translation and its sub-competences. For this purpose, the text of 40 interviews of the Translator Quarterly with 36 prominent literary translators of recent decades in Iran were analyzed with thematic analysis method and the sub-competences that these translators considered for literary translation were described and categorized. By analyzing the interviews of these literary translators, a total of 23 literary translation sub-competences were identified. The results of the research showed that the classification obtained in this research includes most of the sub-competences described in previous models of translation competence and some specific competences needed by literary translators in the context of Iranian society.