Translator's Tyranny: A Critical Analysis of the Book Entitled “A Consideration of the Translation of Modern Political Thought's Texts: A Case Study of Machiavell's Prince “

Moghimi, Shervin; Jeirani, Yashar

Translator's Tyranny: A Critical Analysis of the Book Entitled “A Consideration of the Translation of Modern Political Thought's Texts: A Case Study of Machiavell's Prince “

Document Type : Research

Authors

Shervin Moghimi ¹

Yashar Jeirani ²

¹ Assistant Professor of Political Science, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies

² PhD in Political Thought, Tarbiat Modares University

Abstract

This paper is a review of Javad Tabatabee's book titled A Consideration of the Translation of Modern Political Thought' Texts: A Case Study of Machiavell's Prince. In this book, Tabatabaee argues that two main factors of unreliable translation in the field of political philosophy are translator's artistic playing with words and his lack of knowledge about current and important interpretations of major works of political philosophy. In this paper, we argue that Tabatabaee's claims are for the most part plausible. Nevertheless, it seems that Tabatabaee ignores another important factor responsible for unreliable translations, i.e., translator's alteration of literal translation of philosopher's text by virtue of his assurance that he has a sufficient understanding of philosopher's meaning. Therefore, we try to argue that even if we observe two main conditions of good translation mentioned by Tabatabaee, this will not necessarily lead to a reliable translation. Thus, in addition to Tabatabaee's two main conditions, the translator also must observe the literal approach in translating philosophical texts.

Keywords

Political Philosophy

Javad Tabatabaee

Machiavelli

Theory of Translation

Subjects

political science

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