Volume 114 Literary Translation in Modern Iran. A sociological study by Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam Advisory Board

7.  All quotations from Homaei, unless stated otherwise, are from our interview.

 
Chapter 5.  The post-Revolution period (1979–present)  149
censorship. In a larger context, Homaei added that the censorship mechanism in 
Iran is imposed by delaying the permission for the books, heavy censorship, or 
deletion with no justification. As we mentioned above, permission for the transla-
tion of Persuasion was granted after nine months. The publisher wrote a letter to 
the Book Bureau saying that “there is nothing to be censored in the translation.” 
The publisher received permission after nine months, with no way of knowing 
whether his letter was ever read or had any weight on the decision.
On the level of context, censorship proved to constrain the agency of the pub-
lisher by forcing the publisher to wait for the permission. Although censorship is 
a key variable constraining the publisher’s agency, the publisher can make use of 
certain coping strategies. One strategy is to avoid books such as novels, which may 
face censorship. Classic novels are believed to be subject to the lowest or no degree 
of censorship in Iran. However, the publisher argues that there is a serious lack of 
“good” translators to translate the classics. Another strategy is to put pressure on 
the Book Bureau through continuous contacts or networking. An example of this 
is the case of the Persian translation of The New Testament by Piruz Sayyar (see 
Motarjem 1388/2009). Faced with a long delay, the publisher contacted a former 
Parliament speaker in order to receive the permission. It was granted one and a 
half years after the submission of the translation.
By providing an account of the translator’s and publisher’s profiles, the back-
ground of translation, and textual and paratextual analyses, our case study has 
revealed several points about the translator’s and publisher’s agency. First, on the 
level of decision, the translator was the title selector, though the decision was 
made through consultation with a recognized agent of translation. The translator 
also exercised his agency on the meta-title level, that is, stylistic preferences for 
the translation, avoiding extensive footnotes, and discussing his royalty prefer-
ences. The publisher’s agency on this level was on the meta-title sublevel: ac-
ceptance of the project, negotiating the royalties, and designing the physical 
format and promotional materials. The translator’s motivation is shown to be 
both linguistically and culturally oriented, that is, retranslation of an English 
classic novel using the current Persian language. The publisher’s motivation was 
nonetheless twofold: confiding in the discretion of a recognized agent of trans-
lation and the low risk of censorship for classic works. On the level of context, 
censorship in the form of waiting for permission constrained the agency of both 
the translator and the publisher, whereas the translator’s stylistic preferences for 
conscious invisibility arguably constrained his textual agency in terms of time. 
However, as the analyses point out, he compensated for it with increased visibility 
in the postproduction phase.

150  Literary Translation in Modern Iran
The War of the End of the World
This case study looks at agency in the translation and production of Mario Vargas 
Llosa’s The War of the End of the World (1984), translated by Abdollah Kowsari and 
published by Agah Publishing in 1379/2000 in Tehran, Iran. This book is selected 
for three reasons. First, Latin American literate has been popular in Iran because, 
among others, the readership can identify the social themes of the novels with 
those of modern Iranian society (see Purshang 1385/2006). This is despite the fact 
that these translations, for the most part, have been made indirectly, that is, from 
English rather than from the original Spanish. Second, the translator was awarded 
the IABP, and he is known as one of the key literary translators in Iran. Third, the 
author knew the translator during his years at the journal Motarjem, and this helped 
our research. Both the translator and the publisher of the Persian translation were 
interviewed. In this case study, we will not analyze the text of the translation; rather, 
we are more concerned about their agency not only in their work on this particular 
translation but in the larger context of the publishing field. We had two meetings 
with the translator, in January 2008 and March 2009, in Mashhad, Iran (for the list 
of questions, see Appendix 5). The interview with the publisher was also conducted 
in two periods: by e-mail and telephone in May 2008 (Appendix 6) and a second 
face-to-face interview in April 2009 in his office in Tehran.
Profile of the translator
Abdollah Kowsari (b. 1946), at the time of the interview, had translated twenty-
four literary works from English into Persian, mostly novels and plays, as well as 
nonfiction works in the fields of politics and economics at the start of his career as 
a translator. As a literary translator, he published many works by well-known Latin 
American authors: Conversation in the Cathedral, Death in the Andes, The Feast 
of the Goat, and Who Killed Palomino Molero?, all by Mario Vargas Llosa; The Old 
Gringo, Aura, and Change of Skin by Carlos Fuentes; Posthumous Memoirs of Bras 
Cubas by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis; and Konfidenz by Ariel Dorfman, as 
well as a few other titles. It should be noted here that Latin American literature is 
generally translated from English rather than Spanish or Portuguese. The reason 
is the lack of professional, Spanish-to-Persian or Portuguese-to-Persian translators 
in Iran. Kowsari received his BA in Economics in 1969 from Melli University in 
Tehran and spent one year in England to improve his English. He had worked in 
a number of cultural institutions as a translator and editor in pre-Revolution Iran 
when he published his first nonliterary translation in 1973. Two years after the 1978 
Islamic Revolution, he resigned from his official job and devoted himself to trans-
lation. After his marriage in 1985, he moved to Mashhad, the second largest city 

 
Chapter 5.  The post-Revolution period (1979–present)  151
in Iran, published his first literary translation, Carlos Fuentes’s Aura in the same 
year, and has lived and translated there since. He has no children, and translation 
is his only source of income.
Kowsari has received the IABP for his translations three times: in 2000 for his 
translation of Vargas Llosa’s The War of the End of the World, in 2004 for his transla-
tion of Machado de Assis’s Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, and in 2007 for his 
translation of Isaiah Berlin’s The Roots of Romanticism. In 2007, he also received 
the Iranian literary prize, Ruzi Ruzegari, for his collection of literary translations. 
Kowsari himself has been a committee member for other Iranian literary prizes, 
notably the IABP. He has no official training in translation or editing. However, he 
has given lectures on Latin American literature in Iran.
As Kowsari stated in his interviews with us (January 2008, March 2009), his 
habitus played an important role in directing him toward translation. From the early 
stages of his life, he became familiar with Persian literature through the works of 
such great poets as Sa’di, Ferdowsi, and Hafiz. He came from a literary family – his 
father knew poems by heart and never stopped reading books, and his sister studied 
English at university – and this helped him to develop an interest in Persian litera-
ture. He enjoyed reading the translated literary works of Victor Hugo, Alexandre 
Dumas, and many other European novelists popular in the 1960s and 1970s in Iran. 
Kowsari highlights the effect of a literary magazine of the time, Ketab-e Mah [the 
book of the month], in directing him and many others towards literature. He then 
developed an interest in poetry. He published his poems in literary journals, and 
in 1994, his favorite publisher, Agah Publishing, published his collection of poems. 
For Kowsari, reading the Persian translations of distinguished literary translators 
of the time, such as Reza Seyyed Hoseini, Daryabandari, Shahrokh Meskoob, and 
Abolhasan Najafi, translators of some of the classic texts from English and French 
into Persian, was very helpful, and he learned a lot from them. Kowsari, like many 
other Iranian intellectuals, has a nostalgic feeling for the 1960s in Iran. This was 
a time when many literary figures were at the peak of their careers, and literary 
translation flourished (see Boroujerdi 1996: 42–51, Gheissari 1998).
Kowsari sees translation as “indispensible” for all cultures, without which they 
are condemned to obliteration. The selection of works for translation is based on 
his own discretion. However, he benefits from interaction with his friends through 
the Internet. When asked about how he selects novels from English for transla-
tion, he maintains that he “should first approve the book and find its translation 
necessary and pleasurable, and in addition to its novelty, it is important to know 
whether it is publishable, and if there is a need for a translation that can benefit 
our literature.” Kowsari obtains his books for translation through his relatives who 
live outside Iran. He maintains that, except for some of his translations in the 
field of economics and politics, he has never accepted publishers’ suggestions for 

152  Literary Translation in Modern Iran
translations. He also admits that the popularity of some novels in the West has 
encouraged some Iranian literary translators to adopt those novels for translation. 
However, he stresses that he follows his own interest when translating.
Given the fact that literary agents as they are known in the West do not exist in 
Iran, Kowsari argues that his interaction with his publishers is “direct,” and trans-
lators usually offer their translations to their favorite publishers. He tells us that 
he has not thought about the role of literary agents, but, based on his experience, 
he believes that “generally mediators in Iran, this not being their main job, have 
never had a positive effect and have just been claimants and over-chargers.” He 
has “occasional” contacts with some of the authors he has translated into Persian, 
like Vargas Llosa and Dorfman, and he has sent copies of his translations to Vargas 
Llosa’s address. Many Iranian translators send copies of their Persian translations 
to the original authors, apparently as a symbolic attempt to show their respect, and 
showing their lack of power with regard to copyright. As stated earlier, Iran is not 
yet a signatory to the UCC (1952) nor to the Berne Convention for the Protection 
of Literary and Artistic Works (1886).
There is a meaningful relationship between Bourdieu’s classification of dif-
ferent kinds of capital (economic and symbolic) and the priority Kowsari gives to 
each of them. He shares the common idea of Iranian authors and translators that 
their work is mainly a reflection of their love of literature. However, he believes 
that “if Iranian translators produce quality work, they normally earn a reputation, 
credibility and money.” He feels that translation is “a cultural activity whose main 
capital is aptitude and knowledge” and maintains that without these two types of 
capital, a translator is not able to present a good translation. However, if transla-
tors combine their “aptitude and knowledge” with a good selection of titles for 
translation, Kowsari argues that they are most likely to obtain credit, or symbolic 
capital. And if the book turns out to be a best seller, there is a natural increase in 
economic capital. He stresses the fact that maintaining one’s position in the liter-
ary field needs both “perseverance and at least ten to fifteen years of work.” He 
extends this to other fields as well and sees no difference between its mechanism 
in pre- and post-Revolution Iran.
In terms of the characteristics of translation in pre-Revolution era, Kowsari 
refers to the smaller number of translators in pre-Revolution Iran and argues that a 
number of translators in pre-Revolution era were following certain political ideolo-
gies, “whose translations did not have a considerable impact on Persian literature.” 
One of the main features of translation in this period, he argues, is that there were 
very few translators who made a living from their translations, not even prolific 
translators like Qazi, and most of them combined translation with other profes-
sions. For example, Qazi, the translator of Cervantes, worked for the Ministry of 
Finance. Kowsari is of the opinion that, in post-Revolution era, the number of 

 
Chapter 5.  The post-Revolution period (1979–present)  153
“professional translators” like him is greater than before, since most of them have 
left cultural centers such as universities and state cultural institutions, or were ex-
pelled (see “Cultural Revolution” early in this chapter), and they, therefore, turned 
seriously to translation: “We had to compensate for lots of deficiencies in transla-
tion which needed more time. And I should add that some translators like me are 
more persistent in our work.” By “deficiencies” here he refers to both the quality of 
translations, which are seen as unsatisfactory, and the lack of Persian translations 
of many of the world’s great philosophical and classical works.
But what characterizes literary translation, according to Kowsari, is that the 
translation situation cannot be separated from the overall situation of culture en-
dorsed by the cultural policy of the Islamic Revolution. As regards the role of the 
government, Kowsari argues that,
[w]e have witnessed the multilateral interference of government in culture, and it 
is not just limited to censorship. Problems such as establishing state publishers in 
every ministry and department, importing paper and securing the monopoly of 
importing paper are the burden on publishing in general. (Cf. Milton 2001, on the 
problem of importing paper in Brazil, and Milton 2008, on the role of economic 
factors in translation publication)
According to Kowsari, censorship in post-Revolution era is not only enforced by 
the government; rather “the whole cultural milieu is affected by censorship, thus re-
stricting translators.” He refers to the fact that, in Iran, culture can be controlled by 
more hands than the Ministry. As a result, there have been cases where certain titles 
that had already obtained publication permission from the Ministry could not be 
reprinted due to some other kind of intervention, usually due to opposition by the 
so-called conservatives, who consider some translations to be opposed to their 
Islamic ideology. This has created problems for their authors and/or translators.
Kowsari distinguishes three groups of literary translators working side by 
side in the post-Revolution era: the older generation or the masters, such as 
Daryabandari and Seyyed Hoseini; his own generation; and the younger genera-
tion, some of whom are not aware of the intricacies of Persian and have not had 
an adequate education.
8
 In other words, according to Kowsari, these translators 
subscribe to literal translation, and their lack of linguistic skills in Persian results 
in nonaccessible translations (see Chapter 2). He generalizes the latter point to 
8.  Seyyed Hoseini (1926–2009) is best known for his translations from French of André 
Malraux’s Antimémoires and Albert Camus’s La peste. Kowsari’s generation of translators may 
include Mir’alayi (1942–1995) and Mehdi Ghabraee (b. 1945), the prolific translator of such 
works as V. S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas and H. Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. Among 
the younger generation of Iranian translators, the translations of Rezaei and Mozhdeh Daqiqi 
have proved to be successful, both of whom we cover in this book.

154  Literary Translation in Modern Iran
many other translators and accuses them of being copyists: “they are waiting for 
a translator to choose a writer, and then they promptly select his other books to 
translate.” For Kowsari, many post-Revolution Iranian publishers lack competence 
and are not acquainted with books, therefore “worthless books are published, while 
many invaluable ones are ignored since their authors are not known.”
What is more important than copyright for Kowsari is that translators should 
develop “professional ethics in translation.” He is not hopeful that Iran’s acces-
sion to one of the international copyright conventions would solve the translation 
problems in Iran, such as the simultaneous publication of a single title by both 
unskilled and skilled translators. Approving Iran’s need for accession, he calls for 
educated publishers who will not publish based only on what they are offered by 
translators. This call reflects a growing trend among Iranian literary translators 
and publishers towards professionalism, not only in the selection, translation, and 
production of literary translations, but also in securing a readership (i.e., readers 
who buy books), which as our overview earlier in this chapter has shown, and 
growing evidence testifies, is arguably decreasing these days.
Translating The War of the End of the World
The reason for translating Vargas Llosa’s novel The War of the End of the World 
(Figure 22), according to Kowsari, beyond his personal interest in Vargas Llosa’s 
works and the fact that he had already translated his Conversation in the Cathedral, 
is that The War of the End of the World has “high literary value and it touches upon 
the encounter of modernism and tradition and the misunderstanding of its effects 
on a scattered and poor society.” He thinks this is of interest to Iranians as well, an 
assertion that can be based on the positive reception of the translation, as he states 
(see e.g., Farhadpur 1378/1999).
The translation and its rereading took one year, during which he did not do 
anything else “except some editing.” As regards his royalty payments for the transla-
tion, Kowsari received sixteen million rials for the first print of the book in 1998, 
roughly corresponding to US$1,700 (see the translation contract and its back trans-
lation in Appendix 7). The translation has been reprinted nine times so far, and he 
has received 15 percent of the cover price for each reprint (see Table 13). It should 
be noted here that the translator receives his royalty whenever the translation is 
reprinted by the publisher, depending on the print run.
A look at the translation flow in Table 13 shows that the print run of the trans-
lation started with 3,300 copies in its first edition, dropped to 2,000 in its second 
edition, and stayed at 1,100 copies afterwards. This implies that although average 
readership has dropped to 1,100, the book has secured a fixed readership because 
there is a continuous demand for new print runs. The second edition, after the 

 
Chapter 5.  The post-Revolution period (1979–present)  155
translator won the IABP, did not change either. This is despite the fact that the 
price of the book increased from 37,000 rials in 1379/2000 to 180,000 rials in 
1390/2011, a 386 percent increase in the cover price. Nonetheless, inflation dur-
ing the period from 2000 to 2010 had dropped from 16 percent to 11.8 percent in 
2010 (indexmundi 2011). The last edition of the translation shows that the price 
doubled in just one year.
Kowsari did not have any specific contact with Vargas Llosa during his transla-
tion, or with Helen R. Lane, the translator of the novel from Spanish to English. As 
stated above, with very few exceptions, Latin American books in Iran are translated 
from their English translations into Persian and not from Spanish. Nonetheless, 
on the back cover of the subsequent editions, the original title appeared in English 
Figure 22.  The cover page of Kowsari’s translation of The War of the End of the World
Table 13.  Translation history of the Persian translation of The War of the End of the World 
(IBH 2014, and personal contact with the translator)
Edition
Year of publication
Print run
Cover price (Iranian rials) Total pages
1
1379/2000
3,300
 37,000
919
2
1382/2003
2,000
 69,000
919
3
1383/2004
1,100
 69,000
922
4
1386/2007
1,100
 85,000
922
5
1387/2008
1,100
120,000
920
6
1389/2010
1,100
150,000
922
7
1390/2011
1,100
180,000
922
8
1391/2012
1,100
220,000
924
9
1392/2013
1,100
420,000
922

156  Literary Translation in Modern Iran
and not in Spanish. Kowsari maintains that he already had some familiarity with 
the history of Brazil, where the novel is set, and he did not have any particular 
problem translating the novel, although some book reviews were of great help to 
him in getting close to the story. Kowsari consulted the Encyclopedia Americana 
and the Encyclopedia Britannica when faced with historical problems.
With respect to his interaction with Agah Publishing, Kowsari stresses that he 
has been a friend of the managing director for the past twenty years. The publisher 
consults him about the publication of books in general, and Kowsari has total con-
fidence in him. Kowsari argues that he usually does not accept offers to translate 
literary works. He also tells us that the publisher did not give him any instruction 
about the translation of The War of the End of the World.
As regards any possible censorship of the novel on his part, Kowsari argues 
that he “had to adapt the text sometimes, but generally these cases were not many, 
because the novel in general does not need censorship, so to speak.” Because the 
translation was published in 1379/2000, he could not remember whether the trans-
lation faced any state censorship by the Ministry. He was not able to provide ex-
amples of the adaptations, but it can be assumed that they are the common cases 
of adaptations in Iran, which were previously mentioned in the “Overview” at the 
beginning of this chapter.
Kowsari states that none of his translations have been linguistically edited; 
rather, he himself reads the translation once or twice, and sometimes consults his 
friends. He also points out that, while he gives the first handwritten manuscript to 
the publisher, he believes that rereading the proof of his translation is “necessary” 
before submitting it to the publishers. As usual, he checks the proofs before the 
translation is published.
Kowsari argues that the translation of Vargas Llosa’s The War of the End of 
the World was well received, as is clear from the number of reprints, the e-mails 
he has received from readers, and the personal talks he has had with his readers. 
A number of reviews of his translation have also been published. Kowsari thinks 
that good reviews can encourage the translator. Finally, he states that many Iranian 
publishers ask him to translate for them, especially Latin American novels.
Discussion
Kowsari is a literary translator, a consecrated member of the field of cultural pro-
duction, who has translated “quality” novels (not necessarily best sellers, though 
many of them have turned out to be so) in post-Revolution era. His translations of 
Latin American authors have mostly sociological themes, thus he reflects on trans-
lation as a medium for expressing his sociocultural concerns as a translator who 
has struggled to reach a compromise between the literary and commercial logic 

 
Chapter 5.  The post-Revolution period (1979–present)  157
of the publishing field. While he admits that his agency as a translator of novels 
in post-Revolution era is primarily concerned with and maintained by symbolic 
capital, he, as a full-time literary translator, confirms the importance of economic 
capital, though he argues that the accumulation of symbolic capital is a prerequisite 
for the accumulation of economic capital. This is in line with what is at stake in 
the field: social agents are in competition with each other and, as such, they need 
to accumulate various kinds of capital in order to find a position for themselves 
in the field.
His translations indicate a translation policy highly informed by the clever 
or coping strategies that he has adopted to translate certain novels, and this has, 
in turn, brought him both symbolic and economic capital. Some of his strategies 
include the careful selection and translation of novels that face little or almost no 
state censorship, and the limitation of his selection to Latin American literature, 
which is popular in Iran. He has been doing this in a country where there is a 
general understanding that reading levels are low and books do not sell, and the 
cultural policy of the post-Revolution era, reflected in the practice of the Ministry, 
normally tends to inhibit the translation of novels.
The interview with Kowsari shows that the habitus of the translator is impor-
tant in shaping one’s career as a literary translator. The milieu he grew up in and 
an early familiarity with Persian literature and English novels formed his habitus, 
the effects of which are reflected in his long-term occupation as a literary transla-
tor. His habitus has been both durable in terms of his long-term occupation as a 
literary translator and transposable through his practice as a literary editor and his 
emerging role as an expert on Latin American literature in Iran.
In the absence of literary agents in Iran, Kowsari highlights the fact that literary 
translators function as “tastemakers” for publishers and readers. This seems to be a 
general tendency in Iran. However, in the case of Kowsari’s translation of The War 
of the End of the World, a contradiction exists between what the translator and the 
publisher say. The publisher tells us that he asked Kowsari to translate the novel, 
while Kowsari argues that he usually does not accept any offers to translate literary 
works. He also confirms that his selection of works for translation is very personal. 
He informed us that he did not have any contact with Vargas Llosa or with Helen 
R. Lane, the translator of the novel from Spanish into English.
Kowsari confirms that the cultural policy of the post-Revolution era endorsed 
by the Ministry is one of the key variables that have constrained the publication 
of novels in translation. This is reflected in his generalization of censorship to 
society as a whole and the fact that the publication of books can be controlled 
by more agents than the Ministry, which may not find the books in line with its 
political or religious interests. As regards literary prizes, Kowsari confirms that the 
IABP, as one of the reflections of cultural policies in the post-Revolution era, has