فصلنامه مطالعات زبان و ترجمه
سال پنجاه و یکم شماره 3 (پاییز 1397)

Simone de Beauvoir and Simin Daneshvar are pioneers of women's writing and activists of women's rights in France and Iran. In their writings, both authors are engaged in offering an account of the status of women and the role they play in their societies. In their writings, they called for full-fledged gender equality in their societies. They are, therefore, in the public spotlight. Additionally, they are considered committed authors among their contemporaries due to their political and social works. The similarities between two authors’ writings, along with the influences they might have exerted on each other, may offer fertile grounds for comparative research. It is not surprising that the authors have produced similar and relevant writings in a related area and this similarity is probably caused by similar intersubjectivity and socio-historical conditions the authors had. Drawing on imagology—as a branch of comparative literature— the present research is a comparative study of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Blood of Others and Simin Daneshvar’s Savushun as far as the image of World War II is concerned. This comparative analysis suggests that the two authors yielded a different and similar image of the war. Notwithstanding the cultural and geographical distances between the two, the projected image concerns a common goal which is describing the war from political, social and cultural perspectives. The two authors have perfectly drawn the image of war for readers using such images as the fight and social conditions. They condemned the war by projecting negative images of it.

ESP textbooks play a fundamental role in the success of language teaching programs. According to Sheldon (1988), textbooks are the pivotal element of English language teaching programs. Every textbook should be evaluated before use with regard to the specific needs of the students and the classroom. This study focuses on evaluating Special English for the Students of Computer published by SAMT from both the students’ and teachers’ viewpoints. The aim of the study was to evaluate whether this ESP (or Technical English Language) textbook taught in Iran for BA students of Computer satisfied students' objectives, needs, and wants from students’ and ESP teachers’ perspectives. Participants included three ESP teachers and 83 computer students who completed a Likert scale questionnaire, attended a semi-structured interview and were observed. The results of the analysis indicated that there was no significant difference between the students' and teachers' views regarding practical concern, subject matter, skills and strategies, exercises, design and content of the book. Their overall view was that the textbook, in spite of having certain merits, focused mainly on reading skills and overlooked other skills and sub-skills including speaking and grammatical structure.

The current qualitative research was an attempt to discover the reasons that led to the interest in watching Korean films and TV series among Iranian audiences as well as making fan-produced subtitles for these products. To this end, 26 select participants (20 women and 6 men) who have been active in translating and subtitling Korean films and TV series in Iran were qualitatively interviewed. Observational data also were collected by the researchers in the fansubbing Iranian atmosphere. As for the data analysis, grounded theory procedure was mainly used. Participants ranged from 14 to 45 years of age and have been working as a fansubber from one to ten years. The academic background of the majority of these fansubbers was in engineering or natural sciences. According to the results, these Iranian fansubbers are keen enthusiasts of Korean culture and cinematic fiction. They state that their interest in Korean audiovisual fiction is due to a wide range of shared cultural similarities between the two nations as opposed to the western culture. They also point to the non-physical sexuality of the Korean films and series that seem to have an appeal to the Iranian public audiences. The Iranian audiences are also interested in use of the best and the most advanced cinematography technologies as well as the eastern color and philosophy in the Korean television products. Iranian fansubbers proport to intended to help their Persian speaking friends and fellow-enthusiasts to access these foreign language films and TV series so as to enjoy watching such programs. In addition, they also feel motivated to support their favorite Korean film actors as well as their work.

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) explores the notion of femininity in the context of a dystopian society of Gilead. In this totalitarian society, women are defined by reproduction ability of their bodies. Exploitation, objectification and alienation of the handmaid’s body can be explored in both the text and the context within which the novel has been written. In this novel, the negative and instrumental view towards female body can be explored in the light of biological and social contexts. The underlying assumption of these discourses is that female body can be manipulated and appropriated by patriarchal ideology in the name of religion and social reform. Tracing views on body in history, religion, society, and the novel itself, this paper attempts to explore how female body is represented and perceived. The following study focuses on the ways biological and social views try to define female body with certain functions and consequently identify women based on deterministic gendered ideologies. It also discusses the body’s potential to act as an empowering force to oppose different manifestations of power.

By merging reality and imagination at the heart of fictional components, the French fictional literature of the 20th century could rebuild most of the past incidents through unique narrations. A country’s History, from beyond its realistic and autobiographical literature and stories, can present the country’s identity and frameworks of thought. By resorting to the forgotten events and paying attention to evolutions of storytelling from beyond the sensual and historical experiences, the Second World War, like many other motifs, provided opportunities for contemporary French writers like Patrick Modiano to depict events in which there is no escape for anyone. The story of  Night Rounds is a probing of identity in blur and darkness, depicting realities which are placed at the heart of a nation’s or individual’s memory and distresses far from experience, the depiction of which requires one to resort to the concepts of time and place so as to be able to demonstrate the roots of fictional characters’ identitism or anti-identitism in the realm of memory and narration.

Early feminist criticism was by large exclusionary. Educated, middle-class white women initiated theories about members of their own status and ignored women’s varied ethnic, cultural racial and class identities. Although white feminists’ sexual and social self-concept stood in opposition to the dominant male-centered canon, the issues of race and class were briefly mentioned. That is why there has been an attempt in the recent years to form a feminist theory which investigates notions of race, class and gender along with the universal female problems. This project began with the necessity of developing a parallel tradition located in the unique shared political, social and economic experiences of black women. Alice Walker’s womanism is such a project aimed at the reconstruction of black female identity. Her womanist stance is a universal, non-separatist approach which explores the importance of community, wholeness and female restoration. But womanism is just the preliminary point of departure. She carried on her female empowering project and introduced eco-spirituality as an embodiment of dynamic energy, separate from the physical body, which is essential for the individual’s well-being. As part of the argument presented in this paper is to address the process of the reconstruction of the imposed identity and subjecthood of the black women, Judith Butler’s notion of “agency” is also used by the researcher to scrutinize black women’s potential for subversion and re-signifying the regulatory gender constructions to achieve agency. The present paper seeks to address Alice Walker’s 2005 novel, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart in terms of three basic critical concepts: womanism, eco-spirituality and agency. The newly-acquired agency promoted the characters to destabilize the symbolic, oppressive order, survive trauma and revive the transformative energy to work against fragmentation.