CONTACTS AND INTERFERENCE:A CASE STUDY OF TURKISH LITERARY SYSTEM IN IRAN

Itamar Even-Zohar (1990) in his seminal paper, Polysystem Studies, believed that almost every literature has emerged through interference with a more established literature. He claimed that contacts between the literatures and cultures are preconditions for interference (Even-Zohar, 2010). However, he (2010) believed that not every contact necessarily leads to interference. Likely, Turkish literary system in Iran seems to have contacts with other literary systems both in Iran and worldwide. To study the possible contacts and interference in this case study, one of the nine hypotheses of Even-Zohar’s laws of interference has been researched. Even-Zohar (2010) hypothesized that interference may take place with only one part of the target culture; it may proceed to other parts (p.54). The present study is a descriptive research that aims to investigate into one hypothesis of the literary interference of Even-Zohar’s (2010) polysystem theory. It follows the methodology provided by Gideon Toury (1995) regarding Descriptive Translation Studies and the relationship between DTS and the Theoretical and Applied branch of the discipline. In fact through undertaking description, the research aims at examining the hypotheses of a basically cultural theory of translation namely polysystem theory. According to Nam Fung Chang (2011), one cannot judge a literary system within the framework of polysystem theory only by having a synchronic perspective. Therefore, the present research is diachronic. The research question of this paper in the case study of Turkish literary system in Iran is: does contact occur with only one part of the target literature? To answer this question, the original and translated books in the repertoire of the Turkish literature in Iran were collected and categorized and were analyzed based on genre, source and target languages, and the year of publication. National library and Archives of Islamic Republic of Iran was the only source of the bibliographical information. In addition, the trends of the translations by their genres over time have been provided. Analyzing these data indicated that the contacts have taken place with some genres then have proceeded to other genres. The findings of the research showed that the interference took place with only one part of the Turkish literary system, and then it proceeded to other parts.

کلیدواژه ها:

contact ، interference ، polysystem ، turkish literary system