Update: NB: this blog now includes an account of Poldark in Farsi, or the Persian Poldark
A new member of my Women Writers: A (Feminist) Reading Group who lives in Iran sent us this photo of Jane Austen’s six famous novels in Persian (Farsi)
Aren’t they pretty? beautifully published.
She listed the books with original titles, from top to bottom:
Persuasion (ترغیب);
Northanger Abbey (نورثنگر ابی);
Sense and Sensibility (عقل و احساس);
Mansfield Park (منسفیلد پارک);
Pride and Prejudice (غرور و تعصب);
Emma (اما).
The squiggle that looks like a big comma just on the line means “and.” The alphabet used is Arabic; the usual Persian alphabet is a modified Arabic; Cyrillic is also used for Tajik.
There is an encyclopedic book on Austen in translation but I xeroxed from it only the chapters on the French and Italian translations (and adaptations). In general though most essays show that when Austen books cross into traditional (non-“western” is the term) the translation turns out to be an adaptation. These Farsi texts will probably be censored and any real rebellion or independence from family asserted by a heroine, any criticism of family authority erased out. The larger reality is until recently unless the original text was super-respected in general (beyond which is the best recent and best of all translations of Austen into French) is that everywhere most of the time the text that emerges into the translated language is much changed: Austen is actually a radical (!) voice to many traditional cultures. Sometimes alas the story itself is changed. Even when faithfulness is aimed at, there are obstacles, many. Another new obstacle is that publishers want the translator to make the book easier, smoother, more like the target language. So Ann Goldstein’s translations of Elena Ferrante’s books are actually misrepresentative even if denotatively the translation is correct: she smooths out, makes easier, less dense and therefore much less suggestive and passionate Ferrante’s books.
I’m very interested in translation (as long time readers of this blog will know) and have studied Austen in French and read two Italian translations, and offered to do a paper on Anne Radcliffe in French for one of the JASNAs. I’ve translated two sonnet cycles from the Italian (Renaissance) complete and I’ve read and studied a few of the written a paper on translating the two Italian Renaissance women poets (Vittoria Colonna and Veronica Gambara) and on translations of Austen into French. See a list of translations of Austen into French in Francophone Jane. It was published in a small online journal devoted to translations and translation theory, which has since folded.
It’s telling when you have more than one translation of a book into a given language or can compare different translations in different languages: I’ve tried this in reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace (in different English translations and comparing them to a French one). Each generation wants a new translation — another interesting reality. The original work can remain the same and yet the translation seems to need updating.
I also think that if a male translates a female’s text a new gender fault-line that is male emerges and vice-versa.
The original 1920s first set of scholarly texts done by Chapman re-packaged for commercial consumption (the image is taken from Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan), the Fanny Price character, Aubrey Rouget is walking down 5th Avenue and spies these in Scribner’s
Jim’s present to me on our first anniversary was a copy (I still own) of the very first printing of Chapman’s Sense and Sensibility text. I cherish it.
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8/19/2022 Update
My Persian friend sent me a lot more specific information on Jane Austen in Iran and in Persian (the translators, the styles, including references to Nafisi’s Lolita in Teheran, which could have been as accurately called “Jane Bennet in Iran”), all of which I put in my blog in the comments (in the interests of keeping the main body of the blog shorter and acessible).
Those interested can read what she and I said
And she sent photos of recent book covers. Since the “revolution” it has become uncommon to see women’s pictures in public so here is a 1984 cover for Mansfield Park
For women the Revolution was a big step backward. I will show only a couple. She sent one embarrassingly mawkish one for Pride and Prejudice: Elizabeth all distress over Darcy’s letter with him looking protectively on. But a recent Emma is to me very appealing:
Ellen
Reveries Under the Sign of Austen, Two 