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Whatever Happened to The Little Black Fish?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Kaveh Bassiri
Kaveh Bassiri*
Affiliation:
University of Arkansas
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Abstract

This essay uses retranslation studies to trace the defanging and domestication of Samad Behrangi’s The Little Black Fish, a children’s story once hailed as a major revolutionary and literary text. Behrangi’s book is the only modern Iranian prose work to have been translated multiple times both before and after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The study compares the texts from several of these retranslations, by considering whether they have been domesticated for their English readers, as well as their context, by looking at the cultural impact of such factors as the Islamic Revolution and US‒Iran relations. It looks at how various translators and publishers have interpreted the story and how their perspectives reflect Iranian history, the influence of Middle East studies, and the interests of the Iranian diaspora. The result sheds light on translation norms, as well as on the circulation and interpretation of Iranian literature in the global context.

Keywords

Retranslation studiesworld literatureIranian diasporachildren's literaturedomestication and foreignizationSamad Behrangimodern Persian proseCommitted Literature
Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 5 , September 2018 , pp. 693 - 716
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2018

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