Book Publication and Translation Policy Making in Iran: The Role of Franklin Publishing House

The current article is an archival microhistorical study of Franklin Publishing House s translation activities from 1954, its establishment, to 1976, the end of its activities. Examining the archives, the aim of this study was to illustrate a detailed picture of FPH translation activities in Iran. To this end, first, four sets of archival materials concerning the FPH were thoroughly investigated. Then the basic information relating to the study was extracted. A non-automated corpus of FPH translated books in literature and other fields was compiled. Consequently, bibliographical information, including the title of the book, genre, publishers who worked with Franklin, and name of the translator in each translated volume, was listed, classified, and inserted into separate tables based on text typology and date of publication. Finally, the frequency of each type was calculated. FPH was affiliated with 49 publishers in Tehran, 20 in Tabriz, and one in Isfahān. It published 790 translated books and 60 authored books written in Persian. With 175 books, the majority of the books published by and in FPH were historical books. The literary genre was in second place with a second rate of 167 books. 395 men and women translators worked with FPH. 90.88% of the translators were men, and 9.11% of the translators were women. Also, 719books (91.01%) were translated by male translators, and 71 books (8.98%) were translated by female translators, which shows the low participation of women.