Translation and Ideology: The Case of the English Translation of Parinoush Saniee’s The Book of Fate

Translation has always been subject to the influence of ideology. The Book of Fate by Parinoush Saniee is a representative case. The book is translated into 26 languages and is one of World Literature Today s 75 Notable Translations of 2013. The Italian edition also earned Saniee the 2010 Boccaccio prize. The present study, as library-based qualitative research, tries to answer the question of why a book that has no literary merit in the source language gains such wide reception and popularity in the target language. In spite of the changes that the translator makes in the original text to improve it, the translation has still the weaknesses of the original text: characters are exaggerated, sentimental and stereotypical. In addition, the protagonist’s depictions of the social life lived in the tumultuous period in the history of Iran are extremely one-dimensional and superficial. The study concludes that the novel s success as a bestseller in many Western countries is because it reaffirms and reinstates the Western Stereotypical image of the East and Easterners. In this stereotypical image of the East, the female protagonist is angelic and her cruel father and brothers are represented as demonic characters. Thus, the Western reader finds a novel that reinstates the Western discourse of the East and Easterners.