ABSTRACT
This chapter sets itself a double task. First, it lays out the manner in which translation became problematic in Iran after the 1979 revolution. Second, it shows how this problematic, with its forced double relation to European modernity and the Iranian context, produced political-social questions revolving around the very practice of translating and its modes of operation beyond the politics of the translators themselves. Three distinct strategies will be discussed: translation as communication, as intervention, and as disruption and alienation. To do so, I look immanently at strategic and tactical decisions that at least two generations of Iranian translators in literature and theory adopted in their works. I next focus on some of the problems and positions during the first decade of the twenty-first century. I argue that, because of the peculiar historical experience of Iran as a country neither fully colonized by European powers nor entirely free of their influence, postcolonial approaches fail to capture the sensitive politics of translation in Iran.
