Literature as an Apparatus for Sociocultural Change Through Translator’s Voice : Rethinking the Committed Writers’ Activism in Pre-Revolutionary Iran

In the sociopolitical conditions of the period before the Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1979, there were a lot of writers and translators who devoted their effort and their works to raising public awareness and undermining the then ruling regime. These writers as well as translators were known as committed writers. This study aims to investigate the works done by the members of this group, focusing on the translations produced by them. The trend in their selection of the works for translation shows that it was not a neutral process, but a purposeful one.
Narration was a tool in the hands of these writers and translators through which they could express their beliefs and ideas as well as their oppositional perspective, i.e. their voice. Thus, the investigation of the narratives colored by resistance theme and their translations belonging to the time span before the revolution can provide us with useful clues to identify any patterns in the acts of translation at that time.
Narratology and critical discourse analysis are the two theoretical frameworks that will be applied in this study to find out whether it is plausible to classify the translations done by this group under one paradigm. This study will investigate both the micro-structure and macro-structure of the translated texts to figure out the tendencies and patterns in the textual choices of the translators and to link these to their larger socio-political environment.