Handling an Object without Leaving Fingerprints? Translators’s Presence in the Persian Translations of The Dead

This study investigated the translator’s presence in three Persian translations of The Dead according to the Bakhtinian approach. To this effect, the presence is traced at three levels. First, following Hermans’ advice, the translations were analyzed apart from the source text for the noticeable presence of the translator. Second, following Munday’s advice, a stylistic analysis was conducted focusing on the features of free indirect discourse in both the source and translated texts. In light of this analysis, the author identified two types of alterations in the interaction of the source voices indicating the presence of translators: suppressing the characters voice through empowering the narrator’s voice and suppressing the voice of the narrator by empowering the characters’ voice. The analysis at this level added one more piece of evidence to May’s hypothesis regarding the tendency of translators toward reducing the voices. To have a thorough examination of the translator’s presence, a third level of analysis was also added, at which translations were compared with one another to look into the presence of the antecedent translator in the work of the following one. The author justifies this last kind of presence building on the Bakhtinian concepts of dialogism, heteroglossia, and assimilation. The use of the Bakhtinian perspective for justifying what goes on in translation is extended in this study to include the notion of originality and, thereby, wise assimilations on the part of translators were reflected on.