As far as the act of translation is concerned, the particular situation we are currently experiencing is a kind of severe detachment deeply related to our language. The gap separating Asian and non-Latin languages from Latin ones is a horrific one, an abyss which turns translation into something more than translation. It is not accidental if in societies such as ours the name of translator appears on book cover in the same size or even larger and clearer than that of the foreign author. This is while in the Western tradition one hardly finds the name of translator on the opening pages of a book or in the book’s detail page unless the translator’s role in the creation of the book is more than merely that of translator, providing an introduction or footnotes or editing, for instance. Apart from ordinary and commercial works that should be translated, in the case of important and prominent works, translators do much more than translate. Translation as such, which, in a sense, is translation proper, is necessarily accompanied by interpretation. Thus, contrary to the literal meaning of the word, ‘translation’ is not only transferred and transported, it is also modified and rewritten, very similar to the life of tradition itself. The formal resemblance between the two Latin words translation and tradition as well as the idea of transportation implicit in both, shows the similarity between the ways in which they function.

The fact that in Iran there is little theoretical work done on translation as being related to the modern situation, brings certain points into light. Nearly all writings on translation are dedicated to the ‘techniques of precise translation’, language learning and ‘preservation of the Persian language’. This shows a lack of understanding regarding translation as the name of an essential break.

Morad Farhadpoor was the first to ‘think’ about translation who, instead of writing about his experiences and giving recommendation to ‘young translators’, reflected, no matter how briefly, hastily or anxiously it might have been (three adjectives that are not to be considered negative) upon the concrete experience of translation in our current situation. In two of his texts separated by a six-year time-span (the first was an introduction to his selected essays, The Depressed Reason (1999), and the second published in Pol-e-Firoozeh magazine entitled Thought/Translation (2005), we encounter an urgent thought. In these two texts (and precisely in their encounter with one another) Farhadpoor introduces the dialectical concept of translation as a negative phenomenon, tension or internal gap, a concept accompanying all the time, particularly in the case of marginal cultures, the experience of modernity.1

One can still read the introduction to The Depressed Reason as a historical document on the historical significance and experience of translation in a particular era that, following the socio-political opening of the Second of Khordad (with Khatami being elected as the chief of the state), rendered possible for certain intellectuals and many students, however only in a liminal way, the experience of a particular theoretical intervention in the current situation. (The negativity of authorship, or the inherent impossibility of authorship in such situation, furnishes it with bad conscience and an uncertain mind.) The second text, however, belongs, significantly, to the final days of the 2nd of Khordad period. Thus, Farhadpoor converts the first abstract negation to a concrete negation and internalizes the contradiction he had previously ascribed to the outside. These two texts are truly the only theoretical achievements of the Iranian intelligentsia in the field of translation as the major side of the existing politico-historical situation. His reflections on this aspect of translation are actually an organic and necessary part of reflecting on this situation as a whole, and as such, materialize the act of thinking. Reading these two texts parallel to one another (of course reading the second on its own can also be sufficient for it gives a more precise description and critique of the first text, an example of self-reflection in the context of a particular situation) and understanding the dialectical tension resulting from the encounter of the two reveals the tension and metamorphosis of the politico-historical situation of the past decade, i.e. from the dawn of reformist period to the time of its decline and increasing depoliticization. Anyhow, Farhadpoor is apparently the only speaker of this abyss, for he is the only one to understand translation as the name of a gap and not a material for filling the gaps of the existent knowledge system.

Farhadpoor has taken his own personal situation as a translator/intellectual (and to a certain extent, actually that of his generation) as the starting point for reflecting upon the situation in its totality. The main characteristics of this personal situation, parallel to other individual examples, is a kind of nearly obligatory resignation for more than a decade from the political scene and a marginal return to it during the following decade: from the 80s up to the time of reformation. With the onset of reforms, a generation of secular intellectuals (with bold borders drawn between them) succeeded in sustaining their presence in the symbolic field in the form of ‘cultural work’ and ‘intellectual activity’ in the margins of the politicism/culturalism of the reformists. This was the same generation whose youth coincided with the revolution. For those such as Farhadpoor, (theoretical) intervention in the existent situation or actually survival as a critical intellectual was only possible by means of a general and vague notion of ‘culture’ and doing culture was possible only through an understanding of Western modernity and transferring its notions, tools and problems. This meant that a discourse, no matter how radical, could only be freely continued parallel to political discourses as far as it took a cultural form. Even reformists themselves would accept and impose such an image of the secular intellectual: We do the political work, you provide the philosophic and theoretical supply. Farhadpoor’s first interpretation of the act of translation in Depressed Reason, according to himself, happened in such a context:

Throughout the 90s and in the beginning of the current decade, as long as the reformist movement and the resulting rigorous and changing political atmosphere constituted our historical situation, even one theoretical discourse was able, as a cultural discourse in the margins of reformation, to indirectly have an impact on the atmosphere of a society in transition. It can even be said that in those times theoretical discourse needed not to directly meddle in the situation or in politics, for the density and attractive power of the political changes, the power struggle and different forms of politicization was such that could give a journalistic touch to the theoretical discourse. Thus by distancing itself from the political atmosphere of the time, the theoretical discourse succeeded in playing a more critical role instead of directly interfering with every day politics which not only influencing but even judging it was impossible due to the ambiguity of what was hidden. And for the same very reason, marginal projects based on translation or ‘cultural activity’ could function as proper forms of pursuing radical theoretical thinking or at least the preparation of its requirements ….

Therefore, such theoretical intervention was to a great extent summarized in understanding and interpretation, the most prominent and unique manifestation of it being translation in its greatest significance. In 1999 Farhadpoor described the relation between thought and translation as follows: “Cultural products in different fields result from various forms of unconscious translation, i.e. they are the product of a kind of imitation and unconscious reproduction of bits of modern life and culture. […] The author has underlined in the previous years the fact that in the contemporary epoch, commencing with the Constitutional Revolution and ending probably not in near future, translation in its greater significance is the only true mode of thinking for us. My personal experience of translating and authorship, as well as the achievements of others confirm this.”2 Farhadpoor himself quotes this in his second text on thought/translation. Here the priority is given to interpretation and its hermeneutic aspect. To put it straightforwardly, this is to say that understanding one’s own self requires a proper understanding of the Other. This is the same period when Farhadpoor translated Critical Circle on hermeneutics. The main attitude was an insistence on the negative side of authorship, the impossibility of it, as well as making the act of all-encompassing imitation and translation a conscious one. Thus from the abstract distinction between thought/translation we arrive at a more concrete binary of conscious/unconscious transition. Making conscious the act of translation has also had, in the case of Farhadpoor, a formal manifestation: we are confronted on the one hand with his translations (not so many in number compared to other translators) and on the other, with the lengthy ‘translator’s introductions’, afterwards, numerous footnotes and, in times, appendices to these translated books. This writing in the margin is what comprises Farhadpoor’s endeavours as a translator/interpreter. Therefore in his books, to borrow his own terms, Farhadpoor has attempted to do translation in both of the particular and general senses of the term. Of course, his footnotes are ‘comments’ and not only explanations on the date of birth and demise of this or that author or poet whose name is mentioned in the text. These marginal comments, in their political context, naturally lead to commenting on reality, which, according to Benjamin, have theology – a present theme in Farhadpoor’s translations and comments – as their fundamental science (in the case of the former, i.e. commenting on a text, this science is philology).

As such, translation becomes something more than translation and this is the necessary subjective condition for transformation of translation into a tradition or a movement. Such tradition cannot be established through institutions and enormous budgets for “translating the classical prominent works of the West” (which, due to its material benefits, is seductive to all intellectuals) rather it requires keeping gaps and breaks empty instead of filling them with a pretence to authorship and theory-making or creating a fake translation movement. The desire to fill the gap that translation represents, manifests itself in the hysteric act of making enormous and costly proposals to governmental institutions for translating “the great works from the time of Ancient Greece up to the Modern Age” for instance (such attempts can be regarded as the logical effect of Farhadpoor’s strategy for translation as presented in Depressed Reason – the contradictions of which he reveals in his later writing, making the previous position, through a kind of Hegelian ‘multiple negation’, more concrete). For, principally in such a situation, he writes, “The problem of translation cannot be reduced only to translating works that are ‘good for translation’ rather what is important is concreteness of thought and its return to the historical situation. This provides certain criteria for the choice of texts to be translated. When the act of translation is defined by means of thought belonging to a situation, this situation itself and its tensions, contradictions and internal currents provide us with criteria according to which one can decide which texts to translate, the extent to which this translation should be in the form of a translation from one language to another and where this translation turns into translation in its greater significance. As such, translation reveals itself as a kind of tension and struggle between Western philosophy and the modernity we are experiencing. Up to this point, we discussed the hermeneutic aspect of translation. In the next section, the relation between history and modernity and another interpretation of ‘translation’ are introduced.”(Thought/Translation-2005) This ‘other interpretation’ is itself the result of an objective failure of the interpretation of, or rather the politics of translation as presented in Depressed Reason, a failure which has had its counterpart in the political scene. Cultural manifestations of such failure are varied and widespread, from the unfamiliarity of students, even in the PhD level, with foreign languages, to the horribly low print run of books that are to enhance our understanding of ‘the modernity that we are experiencing’ and the flourishing market of ‘authored translations’ and ‘translational authorships’ for which there is a great demand. Therefore, in a society where ‘research’ (in the absence of certain acceptable examples of academic research) is praised like a national myth, everything is against the process of making translation conscious; the objectively low regard for translators and the low wages they receive compared to royalties, all testify to this. But such negation is abstract. It is exactly here that the next negation happens and the gap is internalized. Farhadpoor continues his discussion and through replacing the hermeneutic paradigm with a Lacanian one (which considers split subject, focalization of lack and misunderstanding happening in the process of understanding and subjectivation) points to a new understanding of the structure of thought, one which “is the product of changes in social conditions and dominance of the political aspect of theoretical thought’ and this way ‘what we externally criticized (abstract negation) as ‘unconscious translation’, is introduced in a new form and seen in a different light.” (Thought/Translation-2005)

In the time of decline of reformism, parallel to the growing depoliticization of the main body of society manifested in the passivity and boredom of students and student activities, another process is formed whose product is in exact proximity to politics and theory, or in other words, politicization of thought and theorization of politics. In this period, what possessed a radical character under the title of ‘cultural activity’, now can very easily contribute to the depoliticization and different sorts of conservatism and compromises. Thus, it is clear that in the current conditions the meaning of ‘cultural activity’ has completely changed for it no longer acquires, through the presence of a mass movement, a political touch. Those who, consciously or unconsciously, still speak of ‘cultural activity’ and regression to civil society as a political alternative, will necessarily be stuck in theoretical abstraction and lack historical consciousness. Yet, even in this conditions, translation still names a gap, a gap that is not to, and cannot be, filled with enormous projects for publishing books that are ‘good to be translated’. On the contrary, the task is to keep this lack or void empty which also means preservation of the critical side without which every criticism is meaningless. At the end of his second text, Farhadpoor gives a brief account of the dialectical procedure of reflecting on translation in the above situations:

The aim of introducing this idea that translation is the unique and true mode of thinking in our time was to bring thought back to its historical and concrete situation as well as a transition from abstract to concrete negation, a transition on which truth and radical critical theory rely. As mentioned before, this transition had two stages. In the first stage, described with the help of Gadamer’s hermeneutic philosophy, the abstract serenity and narcissism of thought was destabilized through introducing the idea of translation. This stage can be described by the thought/translation formula. However, this formula leaves the binary oppositions and abstract poles untouched and reproduces them in a new form. One should not forget that ‘situation’, ‘concreteness’ and finally, even ‘thought’ and ‘translation’ themselves are abstract notions … [therefore] the dialectical notion of translation as a negative phenomenon, tension or internal gap of modern thought must once again be reproduced in form of an opposition between conscious/unconscious translation. Such opposition, itself the result of a hermeneutic interpretation of the metaphor of translation in a historical era when the reformist movement was at its height, still blemished and limited a historical understanding of situation and the thought belonging to it. The change of the metaphor of translation which I described with the help of Lacanian theory was a reaction to this.

And finally, the brief and exquisite formula that Farhadpoor suggests is this:

thought/translation → conscious translation/unconscious translation → thought–translation

Thus, the preliminary opposition between the general concepts, ‘thought’, and ‘translation’ is transported to both of them and cuts them from within: the slash between thought and translation changes into a dash that splits both of them.

But what is the relation between the current writing and a reading of Farhadpoor’s texts? In other words, how does the internalization of the gap in the concrete experience of us translators reveal itself? I belong to the very generation who experienced culture with Second of Khordad, a generation that had newly entered university, one of the most important arenas for the political manifestation of the symbolic realm, and needed to read the books of Soroosh, Farhadpoor, Shayegan and others; again, the very generation that, at least in my own experience (which is the experience of students that were not fond of direct political activity or members of Islamic Societies of universities, etc.) the one and only way of throwing yourself into the cultural arena and ‘establishing yourself’ through writing poetry, stories or, more importantly, translating. Of course, this desire itself was fundamentally a political one and, at the same time, the product of a more general political desire. Actually this intersection point of politics and culture, politics and youth or politics and joy of life, is exactly the same point where my generation is bound with Farhadpoor’s.

At least for me, this period, which was the beginning of my attempts at translating, was spent in failure, with erratic and incomplete translations, the main translation among them being a collection of essays by Walter Benjamin, including his Task of the Translator. This translation was a true failure, but one which induced me to keep struggling with the same essays over the past few years. In 2004 I translated the Task of the Translator anew for Karnameh magazine, which also later proved to be erratic. The successful version was finally the one edited and revised in collaboration with Morad Farhadpoor and published in The Puppet and The Dwarf. Interestingly, this brief but concentrated experience of mine with translation turning it into the most important aspect of the politico-historical situation of those who, like me, chose translation as their profession, to a great extent happened in the form of translating and editing the very text that forms the basis of the current writing. As seen in a Weberian reading of the Lutherian notion of ‘Beruf’ or profession, it seems that every profession has some sort of fate and calling (Berufen) with it. When in a particular society and a particular politico-historical situation (i.e. a society experiencing the vortex of modernity) the act of translation becomes so important and necessary that (without enhancing the material conditions of translators) so many choose it as their profession, one is really tempted to speak, in a Lutherian sense, of fate. Phenomenology of places such as translation bureaus in Tehran, which are mostly located in the centre and south of the city, can clearly show the visual ambience of this fate and the boredom implicit in translation as ‘profession’. Translation bureaus, which not long ago were more active, are dark, gloomy and gruesome places, reminders of old archives with bored and pessimistic humpbacked inhabitants, the usual image of Third World bureaucracy appearing in Nikolay Gogol’s stories. It is interesting that most texts referring to translation bureaus are of a juridical and legal nature, thus such translators should necessarily be skilful in communicating the meaning and significance of texts. In translation bureaus, there is no sign of literal translation.

Translation, for the young, is usually the best way of stepping into the cultural sphere. Writings of young authors are usually received with scepticism. Yet, one can penetrate the symbolic field by hiding behind this or that Western writer or such and such a philosophical or literary text, i.e. by aspiring to become their translator. With translation, one has more chance. Thus, even from such a viewpoint, the experience of translation has been emancipatory for my generation. I remember the first article that after six months of waiting I published in a real magazine (i.e. not a student’s periodical rather one with a broad audience). It was titled Martin Buber and Philosophy of Dialogue. Before my name I had written with much awe and anxiety: “translated and written by”. Definitely a funny title, yet this is what usually happens to most writings here, even, in a sense, in the case of writings whose topic is directly related to our traditional culture and literature, for the very formation of the notion of ‘tradition’ fundamentally requires stepping into the space of modernity and history and consequently confronting the abyss of translation. In any case, the term ‘written’ under the title of that article, comprises the erased part of most arenas, a point adequately elaborated by Farhadpoor in the above-mentioned texts.

* This text is taken from the first pages of Theology of Translation: Walter Benjamin and the Task of the Translator published last year by Farhang Saba publications in Iran.

1. For a generation of Jewish intellectuals brought up in German modern culture, translation was a rigorous obligation, something more than a mere cultural act. The work of Moses Mendelssohn of the 18th century, and Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig of the 20th century retranslating the Bible (the Old Testament) as well as translation of Hasidic stories by Buber into German show undoubtedly an irresistible enthusiasm. Such attempts are probably not as much for the sake of introducing one’s so-called culture to others as encouraging some sort of collective self-reflection. In the case of Walter Benjamin this happens more consciously and tragically.↩
2. I remember in 1999 many of young translators including myself who had read the introduction to Depressed Reason, considered it a promising and justifying source for what we were doing. The thesis had encouraged all of us busy doing awkward translations (or actually make attempts to translate.) I have repeatedly encountered, and am still encountering, in the articles and notes of the authors of my generation references to Farhadpoor’s thesis on translation as a unique mode of thought.↩