Ideological and legal foundations of translation censorship in Iran

ABSTRACTThe Islamic Republic of Iran exercises one of the world’s most pervasive censorship systems. This system extends far beyond political concerns to include religious, social, and ethical considerations as well. Unsurprisingly, translations as cultural products are not immune from the influence of state censorship. The main objective of the current paper is to reveal the ideological foundations underpinning the censorship system in Iran, with an emphasis on censorship in translated literature. To this end, the justifications made by Iranian high-level decision-makers for censorship are critically analyzed so that readers may have a better understanding of the motives, rationales, and worldviews of perpetrators of censorship in the Islamic Republic. This article also offers supplementary information on the legal foundations and mechanism of implementation of censorship in this country.KEYWORDS: CensorshiptranslationIranideologypolitics of translation AcknowledgmentsThe author would like to express his gratitude to Prof. Luc van Doorslaer for his invaluable help and support in the research project leading to the publication of this paper.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 See the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution’s amended resolution approved in its 660th session on 13/04/2010.2 See the book publication statistics in Iran, available on https://ketab.ir/PublicationStatistics.3 In Persian: هیات بدوی رسیدگی به تخلفات ناشرانAdditional informationFundingThis paper is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No [grant number 882688].Notes on contributorsBehrouz KaroubiBehrouz Karoubi is an assistant professor of translation studies at Azad University, Arak, Iran, where he teaches various courses on the theory and practice of translation at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Translation and Intercultural Transfer Research Unit, KU Leuven (2020-2022), where he conducted a Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions research project (Translation Under Constraint: Censorship in the Islamic Republic of Iran (sTUCk)) under the supervision of prof. dr. Luc van Doorslaer. Karoubi's research areas of interest, on which he has published several articles in international academic journals, include translation and gender, translation and ideology, translation quality assessment, translation history, and translation and censorship.