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What about Translation? Beyond“Persianization” as the Language Policyin IranEsmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam & Reine MeylaertsPublished online: 07 May 2014.

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Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam and Reine Meylaerts

What about Translation? Beyond “Persianization” as the Language Policyin Iran

Against the background of language policy research on Iran, and drawing on insights fromrecent scholarship on the role of translation in language policy, this article calls into questionthe claim that “Persianization” of non-Persian peoples is the main element of languagepolicy in Iran. In so doing, the article examines closely the role of translation as enactedin two legal instruments: the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Lawof Parliamentary Elections. The study illustrates that although official communicationbetween Iranian authorities and citizens is a prototypical example of monolingualismand non-translation, voluntary translation happens between Persian and non-Persianspeaking individuals, acting as a viable and cost-effective bottom-up alternative for theinclusion of non-Persian speaking peoples, far more effective than an impractical, top-down language policy reform implicitly found in the “Persianization” claim.

Language and Translation Policy

Generally speaking, from the fifteenth century onwards language has progressivelybecome a state matter, when “the rulers of centralizing states and European colonialauthorities began to feel the need to directly claim the allegiance of their subjects, andto link this to the idea of one uniting language—and even to some extent one nationalculture.”1 Language became a national symbol, a community-building tool and thebasic principle for democratic legitimation and participation: citizens had the rightto communicate with (and control) the authorities, to understand the laws taken intheir name, to vote, to receive and understand official documents, etc. This meansthat language had to become institutionalized through language policies,2 definedhere as legal rules for language use in public education, in legal affairs, political insti-tutions, administration and the public media. Often these policies were—and still are—an embodiment of the democratic ideal of one language for one people in onenation-state. However, this monolingual ideal is at odds with the linguistic variety

Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam (PhD, Translation & Intercultural Studies) is a research fellow atKU Leuven University, Belgium. Reine Meylaerts is Professor of Comparative Literature and directorof the Center for Translation Studies (CETRA) at the same university. The authors would like tothank G. González Núñez for his useful comments on an earlier draft of this article. This work was sup-ported by a F+ grant from KU Leuven University in collaboration with a project named TIME (Trans-lation Research Training: An Integrated and Intersectoral Model for Europe, FP7-PEOPLE-2010-ITN).

Iranian Studies, 2014http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00210862.2014.913437

© 2014 The International Society for Iranian Studies

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on the ground: worldwide, authorities were—and still are—confronted withmultilingual populations and thus face the challenge of adjusting their languagepolicies in order to secure the allegiance and integration of their multilingual popu-lations. This is where translation becomes part of the picture. Indeed, any languagepolicy presupposes a translation policy: determining the rules of institutional languageuse presupposes determining the rules for translation within these same institutions.3

Translation policy will be defined here as a set of legal rules that regulate translation inthe public domain: in education, in legal affairs, in political institutions, in adminis-tration, in the media. Such translation policies can act as a tool for integration orexclusion of speakers of minority languages and therefore deserve special attention.Discussion of language policy from the point of view of translation might also actas a “compromise between the lofty aspirations of language rights and the toughchoices of language policy.”4

However, among the numerous studies on language rights, on language policies oron the integration of minorities and immigrants, the key role of a translation policy aspart of any language policy is not taken into consideration.5 In the field of translationstudies, the links between language and translation policy are explored from time totime,6 but synthetic accounts on translational justice are still lacking.

Prototypical linguistic and translational policies. Inspired by the works of scholars whohave called for various linguistic rights for minorities,7 and following van Parijs’s defi-nition of “linguistic territoriality regime,”8 Meylaerts has identified four prototypicallinguistic and translational policies for the communication between authorities andcitizens in a given context:9

1. Institutional monolingualism, i.e. one official language regulates communicationbetween authorities and citizens in public education and public settings. Thislanguage policy requires a strict translation policy. On the one hand, it entailsobligatory translation of allophone documents and messages in order tobecome official or legally valid, while on the other hand there is a (sometimesofficial) ban on translations into minority or immigrant languages in public edu-cation and public settings. Speakers of these languages are thus supposed to learnthe national language and become multilingual. Promoters of this policy claim itis favorable for minorities’ integration and for national cohesion.10 Opponentsthink it leads to a deplorable elimination of minorities’ languages and cultures,high dropout rates or poor school results, high unemployment rates, exclusion inhealth and social services.11

2. Institutional multilingualism with obligatory multidirectional translation in alllanguages for all. This policy would aim to make all languages institutionallyequal within a given territory so that all people have access to legal, politicaland administrative institutions and education in their mother tongue. Thanksto institutional translation, citizens can remain monolingual: multilingualismof institutions enables monolingualism of citizens. Of course if authoritieswere to implement this policy for each and every allophone indigenous or immi-

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grant, it would go against what is known in the legal field as the principle of pro-portionality:12 a translation service should be reasonable and justified, i.e. pro-portional to the relative size of speakers of a language. Next to financial andorganizational issues, it is therefore claimed to involve an increased risk of ghet-toization, impeding social cohesion and national identity.13

3. Institutional monolingualism combined with occasional and temporary trans-lation into the minority languages. In comparison to the two above describedextremes, this is an intermediate policy which allows for translation in well-defined situations—e.g. to obtain a translated document or an interpreter incourt, in health care, in administration, at elections, etc. Still, translationremains a granted exception, not even always explicitly enacted in law butrather the implicit result of other obligations such as non-discrimination orequal access to institutions. As such, translation does not endanger the domi-nance of the institutionalized language. However, opponents of this restrictivetranslation policy still claim that it hinders integration and instead furthers lin-guistic and other ghettoization.14

4. The fourth policy is a combination of monolingualism (1) and multilingualism(2), according to the level of governance concerned: institutional monolingual-ism at the local level and institutional multilingualism with multidirectionalmandatory translation at the superior (e.g. federal) level. Or vice versa: monolin-gualism at the superior level and multilingualism at the local level. This policy ismainly applied in countries with indigenous minorities, e.g. in Belgium orCanada where the federal state is officially multilingual, whereas the locallevel (respectively regions or provinces) is (predominantly) monolingual. TheUK government, on the other hand, is monolingual, while the Welsh govern-ment and institutions are committed to bilingualism.

The above typology aims to be global and as such should be able to describe the par-ticularities of whatever type of policies are adopted by (local, regional or national)authorities worldwide to communicate with their allophone minorities.15 There is apressing need for such empirical studies, which would then allow analysis of whichpolicies further or hinder minorities’ integration and socialization in terms of accessto key services, such as government services, health and social care and legal services.For the moment, due to a lack of empirical research, clear-cut, research-basedanswers are lacking. This study wants to contribute to this need by describing thelanguage and translation policy of modern Iran in government settings.

“Persianization” in Iran

Officially called the Islamic Republic of Iran since 1979, Iran is one of the fewcountries in the world with a unique political structure, derived from the state religion,Shia Islam. According to the 1979 Constitution the country comprises several closelyconnected political institutions. Some of them are unelected, but the president and the

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members of parliament and city and village councils are elected by universal suffrage.The Supreme Leader is the highest religious and political authority.16 He is thecommander in chief of the armed forces and appoints the leaders of the judiciaryand the heads of state broadcast media (IRIB),17 and has to approve all laws. Govern-ment legitimacy is thus based on popular sovereignty—albeit restricted—and on therule of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution.The country has been criticized for its record on human rights, political rights and

minority rights. The way it deals with minorities will be relevant in our analysis oflanguage and translation policy. Although the 1979 Constitution guarantees a widerange of human rights and fundamental freedoms, in practice “there are a number ofserious impediments to the full protection of human rights and the independent func-tioning of the different institutions of the State.”18 In particular, Iran’s ethnic minorities(see also below) are reported to be subjected to socio-economic and cultural–linguisticdiscrimination.19 Iran, however, has repeatedly denied such claims by arguing that theyare “procedurally wrong and rationally unjustifiable.”20 In the following, we would liketo focus on the role of translation policies as part of language policy in Iran. Specifically,we aim to show that translation policies can be a tool for integration21 or exclusion ofspeakers of minority languages in their contact with authorities and participation in thelife of the state, and therefore deserve special attention.Research on language policy in Iran has focused until now on either language planning

or linguistic purism22 or certain minority languages with politicized orientation;23

research on the possible role of translation in language policy in Iran is, not surprisingly,missing. For example, in a special issue of the International Journal of the Sociology ofLanguage in 2011 on aspects of sociolinguistics in Iran, the editors saw bilingualismand multilingualism as two “important areas of sociolinguist research” in Iran.24

However, translation policy in Iran or its role for Iranians abroad were mainly over-looked: one scholar studied how two ethnic groups, i.e. speakers of Armenian andTurkish who are exposed to diglossic bilingualism have different patterns of languageuse, for example in intergroup and informal face-to-face communication in the capitalTehran (see later in this article),25 and the other called for “stronger cultural motivations”on the part of second-generation Iranian immigrants in the United States to resist Amer-icanization.26 More explicit views on language policy in Iran, however, come from agroup of Iranian linguists with minority backgrounds. For example, recently, the Inter-national Journal of the Sociology of Language published a special issue (2012, no. 217)on the minority language of Kurdish.27 The editors of this issue pinpointed the compli-cated nature of research on the politicized issue of the Kurdish language; however, trans-lation policy was left out again. Because of this we have to start from a broader approachand then move to a more narrow approach. This means we have to start from previousstudies in the field of sociolinguistics, Persian/Iranian Studies, and more explicitly thoseon language policy in Iran. But first an historical overview of the Persian language and theethnic and linguistic make-up of Iran is needed.An Iranian linguist argues that “Persianization of non-Persian peoples continues to

be the building block of the Islamic regime’s language policy.”28 Taking the caseof Kurdish in Iran, the author leaves no room for translation as a tool for so-called

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Persianization. This argument raises a number of questions, all worthy of our atten-tion. Who are these “non-Persian peoples”? What kind of policy is the languagepolicy of Iran, and why should “Persianization” be the core element of this policy?More specifically, what is the role of translation policy therein? And what does thismean for the inclusion of allophone minorities? With these questions in mind, weaim to describe and examine translation policy in modern Iran, i.e. from the lateQajar era in the twentieth century to the present day. As already mentioned, wewill deal with translation in the government settings, particularly as enacted in twolegal instruments, the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Law ofParliamentary Elections.29 As translation policies are often implicit (cf. above), weneed to extract them from these official documents and examine their concreteimplementation in the context under study.

The Ethnic and Linguistic Make-up of Iran

Iran’s official language is Persian (New Persian or Farsi). New Persian has its roots inIranian languages—i.e. “the western group of the larger Indo-Iranian family whichrepresents a major eastern branch of the Indo-European languages.”30

Prior to the seventh century, Middle Persian or Pahlavi, the language of the SasanianEmpire (third–seventh centuries CE), was in use in Iran, and Iranians were mostly Zor-oastrians. Iranians accepted Islam in the seventh century, and Arabic became thelanguage of religion (cf. the use of Latin in mediaeval Europe); nevertheless, asMeskoob highlights, “after suffering defeat at the hands of the Arabs and after convert-ing to Islam, the Iranian people also returned to the past… Like Arabs, Iranians werenow Muslims, but they had a different language.”31Although Arabic remainedthe language of science and of religious scholars in Iran (the first Persian translation ofthe Quran appeared in the eleventh century), scholars used Pahlavi and later Persian intheir oral contact with the faithful. The return to the past mentioned above took placewith the rise of New Persian between the seventh and ninth centuries, and a numberof instruments including the Persian epics, the most exemplary being the classic workof Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (completed c. 1010), and lyric poems of, say, Shahid-Balkhi,Kasa’i Marvzi and Abu Mansur Daqiqi.32 These works and the emergence of NewPersian formed significant parts ofwhat came tobe knownas the Iranian/Persian identity.One example illustrates the importance of language in this common identity. Today, aneducated Persian-speaker can still read and understand classic Persian texts from the ninthand tenth centuries, which are still widely available in Iran.In addition to New Persian, several other Iranian languages continued to exist. The

history of Iran tells us that Persian enjoyed official status for a number of dynasties fromthe tenth century on: it was the language of the Mongol Ilkhanid empire in the thir-teenth century, and even the Safavids, who ruled Iran from 1501 to 1722, used it astheir administrative and literary language, though they spoke Turkish at court and athome.33 A recent study also shows that with a general policy of integrating religiousand ethnic minorities during the Safavids, the first two Safavids rulers held a moderate

Beyond “Persianization” as the Language Policy in Iran 5

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policy towards Kurds.34 Persian served as the language of administration in a large geo-graphical area, from today’s Bosnia in in the fourteenth century35 to the Indian subcon-tinent where it worked as a lingua franca and the administrative language of the EnglishEast India Company prior to the imposition of English in 1835.36 The general nation-alist movement across the above territory in the nineteenth century, coupled with moresignificant political events, all influenced by the colonial powers in one way or another,gradually pushed Persian to its present borders.37 In Iran, as Spooner argues, the status ofPersian has been “jealously guarded” through various campaigns on the one hand,38 andacademically challenged on the other.39

Modern-day Iran is however all but a monolingual country. According to Ethnologue:Languages of theWorld, “the number of individual languages listed for Iran is 78.Of those,75 are living languages and 3 (i.e. Avestan, Classical Mandaic and Salchuq) are extinct.”40

According to the estimates of July 2012 by theWorld Fact Book, 78,868,711, people livein Iran, of whom 61 percent are Persian-speaking, 16 percent Azeri, 10 percent Kurd, 6percent Lur, 2 percent Baluch, 2 percent Arab, 2 percent Turkmen and Turkic tribes,and 1 percent are known to have other ethnic backgrounds (Table 1).41

In terms of the linguistic make-up, the same reference reports that the first languagein use in Iran is Persian (the official language) 53 percent, followed by Azeri Turkishand Turkish dialects 18 percent. Next comes Kurdish 10 percent, Gilaki and Mazan-darani 7 percent, Luri 6 percent, Baluchi 2 percent, Arabic 2 percent, and the rest 2percent (Figure 1).Geographically speaking, ethnic Iranians live throughout Iran. Azeris live mainly in

the northwest; Kurds, who have traditionally kept a nomadic lifestyle, generally live inthe mountain areas of the west; Lurs are scattered in various provinces of the west andsouth of Iran; Arabs mainly live in the western and southern border of Iran; andBalochs live mainly in the province of Sistan va Baluchistan in the southeast borderregion. Given the considerable mobility of Iranians inside Iran in the last decades,this geographical division is no longer as sharp as it was, since people of various

Table 1. The Ethnic Make-up of Iran

Ethnicity % Numbers (millions)

Persian 61 48,109,913Azeri 16 12,618,993Kurd 10 7,886,871Lur 6 4,732,122Baloch 2 1,577,374Arab 2 1,577,374Turkmen and Turkic tribes 2 1,577,374Others 1 788,687Total 100 78,868,711

Source: Adapted from World Fact Book, “2012. Middle East: Iran.”

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ethnic backgrounds have been living visibly across the country. This mobility,however, is not something recent, because people in Iran have a history of movementthat some argue should be attributed to “linguistic” reasons above all. For Frye, whootherwise sees the political history of Iran playing its part, language is the most impor-tant historical factor in this and he finds evidence in, for example, the Tat speakingminority in the northern part of Azerbaijan, among others.42

So, despite the fact that half of the population has a mother tongue different fromPersian, Persian continues to be the official language of Iran—i.e. in all official settings,in administration, in education and in legal affairs. This is the result of an historicalevolution which we shall briefly discuss below, but prior to that a few words areneeded about diglossia in Iran. Iran is not a diglossic society in the strict sense usedby Ferguson, i.e. “the use of two or more varieties of the same language” in a singlecommunity.43 Iran is rather a special case, mainly due to high literacy rates within itsborders. Although Persian language usage fits the diglossia pattern, Spooner calls ourattention to a number of other significant elements that distinguish it from thatpattern. He finds fault in Ferguson’s overlooking “the larger context of Persian usage,historical and modern.” In addition to high literacy rate, Spooner points to thegrowing significance of past history of Persian in today’s Iran as a further evidence.44

Historical Overview of Language and Translation Policy in the Government Settings inIran

In modern Iran, i.e. from the late Qajar period, or more precisely from the Consti-tutional Revolution (1905–11), Persian, the mother tongue of the majority of

Figure 1. The Linguistic Make-up of Iran

Source: Adapted from World Fact Book, “2013. Middle East: Iran.”

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Iranians, became the official language of the state. According to article 4 of the Elec-toral Law of 9 September 1906, those elected must have the following qualifications:“they must know Persian, they must be able to read and write Persian, they must bePersian subjects of Persian extraction,” among others.45 This is probably the first leg-islative enactment of language policy in modern Iran. Kia argues that in the Sup-plementary Fundamental Laws of 7 October 1907, compulsory instruction inPersian had to be regulated by the Ministry of Sciences and Arts. However, evidenceshows that there is no mention of “Persian” in the law.46 In the Fundamental Law of1906 or its supplement in 1907 there was no room for translation, and Persian was theofficial language of the Iranian state, administration, political institutions and judi-ciary. It is therefore reasonable to expect that there was virtually no translation intothe minorities’ languages to facilitate communication with the authorities. Furtherenactments and development of language policy occurred in the following period.Reza Shah took power in 1925 and succeeded in bringing back political stability to

Iran through his military power and tribal policy. In this policy, informed by his pan-Persian nationalist and centralizing sentiments, tribal life and culture was damaged,and power was centralized in Tehran, from where Persian-speaking governors andmayors were sent to Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic provinces,47 a tradition that isstill relevant. Moreover, Reza Shah and his successor Mohammad Reza Shah werealso equally determined to modernize Iran along the European lines, a policy which“proceeded hand in hand with secularization and Persianization.”48 The above consti-tution and its supplement saw further revisions up to the Islamic Revolution of 1979;however, Persian as before remained the official language of the country, adminis-tration, education, political institutions and judiciary.While assimilation policy in the early modernization campaigns in ethnic environ-

ments on the one hand and, on the other hand, nationalism and the need for a strongstate in which state-building was equal to nation-building49 formed much of the Per-sianization language policy in pre-Revolution Iran, for the revolutionaries of the post-Revolution era (1979–present) there was only one nation, and that was the nation ofIslam. Arabic was the first language of Islam and Persian was the second.50 However,the revolutionaries soon realized that they should guard the role of Persian as an offi-cial language. According to Sheyholislami in his study of Kurdish in Iran,51 thelanguage policy in post-Revolution Iran is thus not different from the previous twopolicies and is characterized by three components: “treating multilingualism as athreat to the country’s territorial integrity and national unity; restricting the use ofnon-Persian languages; and promoting the supremacy of Persian as a venue for unify-ing the ethnically and linguistically heterogeneous body politic.” In sum, the languagepolicy of modern-day Iran, the author argues, is “Persianization of non-Persianpeoples.”52 What does this mean exactly for the various autochthonous minoritiesin Iran? Is translation playing any role in their inclusion or integration, and by exten-sion in their participation in democratic procedures?The definitive legal instrument on language policy in Iran on which such views are

based is Article 15 of the Constitution of the Islamic Revolution:

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The official language and script of Iran, the lingua franca of its people, is Persian.Official documents, correspondence, and texts, as well as textbooks, must be in thislanguage and script. However, the use of regional and tribal languages in the pressand mass media, as well as for teaching of their literature in schools, is allowed inaddition to Persian. (Article 15 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic ofIran)53

Although the constitution makes some provision for minority languages (see below),it is Persian that shapes the monolingual policy of Iran, the use of which is obligatoryin all government settings, in administration and in education (all school textbooks arein Persian). As explained in the typology above, this policy entails obligatory trans-lation of documents and messages not in Persian in order to become official orlegally valid, while written communication between the Iranian authorities (local ser-vices, regional services, central services) and the inhabitants is subject to a non-trans-lation policy. For public messages, for public signage, for forms, in official meetings,and so on, Persian is the only legal language. Speakers of minority languages(Turkish, Kurdish and Baluchi, to name just three), do not have the right to usetheir language in official communications with authorities, and they should befluent enough to read and understand official texts in Persian. For example, for aTurkish speaker it is obligatory to file a complaint in Persian, even though he isnot obliged to speak Persian to the public servant who receives the complaint. As aconsequence of this policy of monolingualism and non-translation (at least forwritten messages) and, as mentioned in the typology above, minority speakers oftenfind themselves disadvantaged, e.g. in terms of public employment rates.54 So, forexample, the Baluch minority in Iran are concerned “about the low level of Balochparticipation in public life, given that they are underrepresented in high-ranking Gov-ernment positions.”55

A similar situation characterizes political institutions. The Iranian parliament ismade up of representatives (MPs) from all across the country, including representa-tives from areas populated by autochthonous linguistic minorities. These MPs aswell as MPs from recognized religious minorities (Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians)should use Persian as the only official language in official settings, communicationsand in administration. Apart from the occasional use of Arabic by some MPs intheir speeches (usually in the form of Qur’anic verses or Hadith to illustrate apoint or to support a claim), Persian is the default language and non-translation isthe official policy in the parliament of Iran, regardless of occasional translation thatmight be available for official, international ceremonies where non-Iranian statesmenare present.56 Nevertheless, none of these MPs are obliged to use Persian with theirconstituents, either in their offices in the parliament or in the cities they represent.However, a small test of the official websites of some of the MPs with ethnic back-grounds reveals that they are Persian-only and that there is neither bilingualcontent nor any translation offered (e.g. the website of Reza Rahmani, the MPfrom Tabriz).57 In other words, monolingualism and non-translation have led to

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the absence of minority languages in the Iranian parliament and in written communi-cations between MPs and their electorates.58 Similarly, when it comes to the mostemblematic act of the democratic process, casting ballots, non-translation prevails.Although the right of voting is the legal right of all Iranians above the age of 18,there is no mention of translation in the Law of Parliamentary Elections as a toolfor active participation of ethnic groups. In sum, it is through a fairly strict policyof monolingualism and non-translation that Persian remains the only official languagein Iran, regulating communication between authorities and citizens.Indeed, article 15 sees Persian and Persian script working as a lingua franca for

Iranian people who might otherwise be bilingual (mother tongue plus Persian). Inother words, the policy of non-translation and language learning go hand in handin Iran. The Iranian authorities rely on learning Persian “as the common languageof communication among all Iranian ethnic groups,”59 and thus as a community-building tool between the different autochthonous minorities. And although languageis one of the strongest symbols of shared culture and identity, Meskoob does not con-sider the use of Persian by such minorities, whom he sees as Iranians after all, as athreat or negation of their “cultural identity.” He moreover argues that:

the adoption of Turkish, Kurdish, or Baluch[i] as provincial languages, for example,would have significant ramifications, not only for interethnic relations with Iran,but also for Iran’s relationship with its neighbors. The whole problem hasbecome intensely politicized, and it is within a political framework that it can beanalyzed meaningfully.60

It is clear that political unification is seen as a process that entails the imposition ofone language, entirely in the traditional spirit of one language for one people inone nation-state and that language diversity is seen somehow as a menace. Weagree with the author about the political nature of problem, not to mention some pol-itically slanted research so far; nevertheless, a political framework alone might not payattention to the role of translation.61 Meskoob also added that he would not advocatea monolingual policy at the price of other minority languages. In other words, Persianshould continue “as the common language of communication among all Iranianethnic groups” while other ethnic languages “exist and thrive alongside each other.”62

Indeed, in practice complete monolingualism and non-translation are rather utopianpolicies because they risk hampering communication between authorities and min-orities, impeding accessibility of services, and endangering integration and inclusion.Thus, according to article 15 of the constitution, “the use of regional and triballanguages in the press and mass media, as well as for teaching of their literature inschools, is allowed in addition to Persian.”63 Thismeans that although ethnicminoritiesare still required to learn the official language, they are no longer required to abandontheir own language and culture.64 Article 19 of the constitution further maintains that“all people of Iran, whatever the ethnic group or tribe to which they belong, enjoy equalrights; color, race, language, and the like, do not bestow any privilege.” So all Iranian

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ethnic groups (Azeris, Kurds, Lurs, etc.—see Table 1) are born in Iran, are Iranians bylaw, and therefore have equal rights. However, several sources report a discrepancybetween the law and the practical implementation. For example, there are somereports that Kurds experience problems in the public display of their ethnic culture,language or traditions.65 Moreover, according to Amnesty International, Iran’sethnic minority communities also have problems using their languages in governmentoffices (in written form) and for teaching in schools, which remain prohibited.66 Simi-larly, althoughAzeris are said to be well integrated in government and society, they com-plain about their language being banned in schools.67

In sum, official communication between the Iranian authorities and citizens seems tobe a prototypical example of monolingualism and non-translation (category 1), despitethe presumed risks for minorities’ access to government services and overall integration.Keeping their institutions monolingual, Iranian authorities expect their minorities tobe(come) bilingual (mother tongue plus Persian), illustrating the general sociolinguisticprinciple that minorities learn the majority language and not vice versa.68 Here the roleof public education is crucial. Generally the children of ethnic minority families growup in a bilingual environment in which both their language and Persian are spoken andused to varying degrees. However, once they start public education at the age of six, theyare exposed only to Persian as the language of instruction and of textbooks. The Persianlanguage and Persian textbooks are the main educational resources throughout studiesup to university level.69 From the age of six onwards, children fromminority groups arethus exposed to a monolingual education. This approach, the argument runs, puts thesestudents in an unequal situation of double learning: learning Persian and general lit-eracy.70 However, it goes against an international trend towards “the recognition ofthe fundamental importance of language and culture for indigenous people” duringthe last three decades.71Moreover, “study after study confirms that indigenous childrenalmost universally have among the highest dropout rates and the poorest academicresults.”72 According to a 2008 report of the IranianMinorities’Human Rights Organ-ization (IMHRO) many non-Farsi-speaking children leave school before they shouldand the literacy rates of minorities are very low.73 Other studies have however shownthat there is no significant relationship between the learning style and the student’s edu-cational advancement of Persian monolingual students and bilingual students, i.e.Kurdish and Azeri students.74 Additionally, indigenous peoples themselves are notalways in favor of education in their mother tongue.75 Still, research has shown inthis respect that although the use of Persian is more rewarding for bilingual Azeris inTehran, there is a growing sense of what Bani-Shoraka calls revitalization of this par-ticularminority language and culture.76While the jury is out on the pros and cons, min-orities’ additional difficulties in following Persian in school are illustrated through aninteresting translation practice. Quite often, pupils or their teachers find themselvestranslating between Persian and minority languages. As far as the educational level isconcerned, volunteer translation77 is thus used as a tool for linguistic inclusion ofthe autochthonous linguistic minorities.Volunteer translation into the minority languages also takes place when it comes to

official communication between authorities and citizens, especially in cities with con-

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siderable ethnic groups, like Tabriz, Yasuj and Sanandaj. The translators here can bebilingual public servants, close family members of the individuals in need of translationor others who are bilingual. The same happens at elections. Because the ballot is inPersian, considerable volunteer translation again happens between Persian and min-ority languages in the country’s most democratic exercise. In the absence of empiricaldata, the exact extent of this type of translation remains unmeasured however.Though translation in the official setting happens in reality, it is not regulated(neither forbidden nor imposed) by the authorities and is left to private initiative.The response to the official non-translation policy is circumstantial translation by cir-cumstantial bilinguals.78 It may illustrate the utopian character of complete non-trans-lation and citizens’ need for effective communication with the authorities.What does the above translation policymean for the immigrants and their languages?

The current statistics show that the number of refugees and asylum-seekers in Iran, fromAfghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, is 863,350.79Moreover, since 2006 around 1.2millionAfghans have remained in Iran, despite various repatriation policies in collaborationwith the UNHCR, Afghanistan and often Pakistan. Many of these refugees were gen-erally able to communicate in Persian; therefore, the language does not seem to be animpediment to their integration. Some studies, for example, have shown that thesecond generations of these groups, who have been exposed to Persian as the languageof education, have drawn on their educational achievement and occupational skills forbetter integration in Iran.80 With Persian playing no major role in the integration ofAfghani immigrants in Iran, other key factors such as state restrictions on certain occu-pational categories available for immigrants, the unattractiveness of labor jobs for theIranian workforce and, above all, a deteriorating economy are seen as factors influencingintegration, as indicated by one study,81 which nevertheless can be seen asmore effectivethan language and translation policy in this case. It is in this view that the issue of inte-gration as it is understood in Europe is different in case of immigrants in Iran.

Conclusion

This paper aimed to describe and examine the nature of translation policy in govern-ment settings in modern Iran, i.e. from the late Qajar era in the twentieth century tothe present day.The discussion showed that Persian has remained the core element of language

policy in Iran. On the one hand, it forms a major part of Iranian identity, and onthe other hand it masks the heterogeneous reality of various ethnic groups living inIran. It was also shown that assimilation of ethnic groups up to the Islamic Revolutionof 1979 was the underlying political and linguistic policy in Iran, and learning Persianwas a tool for the inclusion of these groups.82 The post-Revolution policy wasnonetheless shown to be more nuanced and flexible in granting these groups theuse of their languages in the press and mass media, and for teaching their literaturein schools. However, some scholars see this as no different from the previous policiesand tend to see “Persianization” at its core.

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The examination of translation policy in the Constitution of the Islamic Republicof Iran and in the Law of Parliamentary Elections showed that legislative enactmentsdo not have provisions for translation as a possible tool either for maximizing citizens’participation in the democratic processes or for their inclusion in the majority.Inclusion or integration for that matter was said to have different implications forIran, which has historically been a melting pot of various ethnic groups, and has ideo-logically used both religion and nationalism83 as two powerful tools to resist separa-tionist campaigns.In addition, despite the apparent lack of institutional translation, there is a con-

siderable volume of volunteer translation happening in practice, the implications ofwhich are important for Article 15 of the constitution and the role of institutionaltranslation or lack of it in the inclusion or integration of minorities. This further con-firms the theory that there is no language policy without translation policy.84 Withoutusing the word translation, the language policy in Iran neither provides provision fortranslation, nor prohibits its non-official practice, i.e. volunteer translation.Finally, and in lieu of a conclusion, the following claims can be made here, all of

which call for further empirical studies:

1. Learning Persian is an essential segment of the language policy and one of thekey elements of linguistic inclusion of minorities in Iran. The question ofinclusion of ethnic groups in Iran should nonetheless be understood in thelarger political context and growing politicized discourse of minority languagesof a geographically and virtually dispersed space.

2. Non-translation policy in the government settings of Iran does not amount tothe linguicide of the minority languages in Iran per se, as some have argued.85

Volunteer translation works as an effective tool for the speakers of minoritylanguages to maintain their language and resist the assumed linguicide.

3. Translation offered in both government and educational settings in Iran largelydepends on the goodwill of public servants and teachers respectively.86

4. The increasing mobility, growing access of Iranian ethnic groups to modernmedia and the growing political conflicts in the region might bring somechanges in the language policy (more specifically in the educational setting),and in Iran’s non-translation policy in the long run. This is more plausiblethan imagining an idealized “fundamental change in Iran’s political and admin-istrative structure” as a precondition for such changes.87

From a more general perspective, the long-term theoretical goal of these kinds of casestudies is to generalize over the cases in order to complement existing theories oflanguage policy with the key element of translation policy and to develop a modelfor analyzing the relation between translation policies and patterns of integrationand socialization and of internal cohesion. The applied goal is to use the theoreticalmodel to formulate best practices for authorities’ long-term strategic approach forensuring minorities’ integration and socialization worldwide.

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Notes

1. De Varennes, “Language, Rights and Opportunities,” 3.2. Although language policy following Spolsky is seen as language practices, language beliefs and

language managements in a given context, in this paper, we define it in a more restricted way aslegal rules for language use in the public domain (cf. above), see Spolsky, Language Policy; andSpolsky, “What is Language Policy?”

3. Meylaerts, “Translation Policy.”4. González Núñez, “Chapter Three: Translation Anyone?”5. See van Parijs, “Linguistic Diversity as Curse”; van Parijs, “Linguistic Justice and the Territorial

Imperative”; Spolsky, Language Policy; Spolsky, Language Management; Arraiza, “Blueprints forBabel”; Ginsburgh and Shlomo, How Many Languages Do We Need?; Patten, “The Justificationof Minority Language Rights”; de Schutter, “Language Policy and Political Philosophy.”

6. E.g. Cronin, Translation and Identity; García González, “Translation of Minority Languages”;García de Toro, “Translation between Spanish”; Gülmüş,Muttersprachliche Ansprache Als Integra-tionsstrategie; Schäffner, “Behindert Übersetzung die Integration”; De Pedro et al., Interpreting andTranslating in Public.

7. E.g. García González, “Translation of Minority Languages”; Beukes, “Governmentality and theGood.”

8. Van Parijs, “Linguistic Justice and the Territorial,” 4.9. See Meylaerts, “Translational Justice,” for concrete examples of the implementation of these four

prototypes.10. Schuck, “Immigrants’ Incorporation”; Wong and Pontoja, “In Pursuit of Inclusion.”11. See Gülmüs, Muttersprachliche Ansprache Als Integrationsstrategie; de Varennes, “Language, Rights

and Opportunities.”12. “The principle of proportionality is a well-established and practiced legal principle under the dom-

estic constitutional and administrative laws of many countries and in international law. Essentially,it tries to balance individual and state or general public interests.” “[W]here public authorities at thenational, regional or local levels face a sufficiently large number of individuals, they must use to anappropriate degree their language.” See de Varennes, “International and Comparative Perspectives.”

13. Van Parijs, “Linguistic Justice for Europe.”14. See e.g. for the UK, Easton, “Cost in Translation”; and van Parijs, “Linguistic Diversity as

Curse,” 21.15. Meylaerts, “Translation Policy,” 745.16. The Assembly of Experts, according to Farahi (“Assembly of Experts,” 48) is “a body of 86 scholars

of Islamic law… tasked with selecting and dismissing the supreme leader in case of the inability toperform constitutional duties or determination that from the beginning certain qualifications werenot met.”

17. Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.18. UN General Assembly, “The Situation of Human Rights,” 3.19. United Nations Human Rights Council, “Report of the Special Rapporteur,” 18.20. High Council for Human Rights, “Statement on the Report”; cf. Secretary of Iran’s High Council,

“UN Rights Reports on Iran.”21. Given the specific focus of this essay, integration is here narrowly defined as access to government

services and thus as communication between authorities and allophone minorities.22. Sadeghi, “Language Planning in Iran”; Majid-Hayati and Mashhadi, “Language Planning”; Marsza-

łek-Kowalewska, “Iranian Language Policy.”23. Sheyholislami, “Kurdish in Iran”; Hassanpour, “The Indivisibility.”24. Modarresi, “Aspects of Sociolinguistics, 1.”25. Nercissians, “Bilingualism and Diglossia.”26. Modarresi, “The Iranian Community”; for an update of the situation, see Mobasher, Iranians in

Texas.

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27. According to Paul (“Kurdish Language”), Kurdish “is a continuum of closely related dialects thatare spoken in a large geographic area spanning several national states, in some of these statesforming one, or several, regional substandards (e.g. Kurmanji in Turkey; Sorani in northernIraq). Such a definition, in addition to linguistic and non-linguistic variables, depends on awhole combination of larger social, cultural and political factors.” It is perhaps because of thisthat there is yet no common ground among scholars on a common definition of Kurdish.

28. Sheyholislami, “Kurdish in Iran,” 21.29. Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Law of Parliamentary Election.30. Windfuhr, The Iranian Languages, 1.31. Meskoob, Iranian National Identity, 34.32. Katouzian, The Persians, 112.33. Ibid., 85–6.34. Yamaguchi, “Shāh Tahmāsp’s Kurdish Policy”; cf. Newman, Safavid Iran, 106 and 120.35. Spooner, “Persian, Farsi, Dari, Tajiki.”36. See Bonakdarian, “India viii. Relations.”One scholar argues that “the economic objective of the East

India Company was maximal profit, and any tool that served as a stumbling block to that objective,such as the Persian language, had to be weakened or dismantled”; see Farokh, “Book Review.”

37. However, Persian has continued to be either spoken as a local dialect or used as a literary language inparts of India, in Afghanistan (as Dari), in Tajikistan (as Tajiki), and in parts of UzbekistanAdditionally, it is expanding geographically through its diaspora, and is a heritage language forsecond and third generation of the latter’s children.

38. Spooner, “Persian, Farsi, Dari, Tajiki,” 89.39. E.g. Sheyholislami, “Kurdish in Iran”; Hassanpour, “The Indivisibility of the Nation.”40. Ethnologue: Languages of the World.41. World Fact Book, “2013. Middle East: Iran.”42. See Frye, “Historical Evidence.”43. Ferguson, “Diglossia,” 325.44. See Spooner, “Persian, Farsi, Dari, Tajiki,” 112–16.45. The original Persian of the quoted section is as follows:

دنشابهلخادتیعراثلاث،دنشابهتشادیسرافداوسایناث،دننادبیسرافنابز . It should be noted that Browne’stranslation is an example of explicitation, i.e. he makes the implicit هلخادتیعر (i.e. Persian/Iranian serf) explicit in the translation (Persian subjects of Persian extraction). See Browne, ABrief Narrative, 68.

46. Article 19 only states that: “The foundation of schools at the expense of the Government and thenation, and compulsory instruction, must be regulated by the Ministry of Science and Art.” SeeBrowne, A Brief Narrative, 90; Kia, “Persian Nationalism,” 32.

47. Katouzian, The Persians, 213–14.48. Kia, “Persian Nationalism,” 32.49. Safran, “Nationalism,” 78.50. For an illustration of how “attacks on the Persian language” were provoked, see Meskoob, Iranian

National Identity, 16.51. Sheyholislami, “Kurdish in Iran,” 21.52. Ibid. Be that as it may, this reductive view does not operate beyond a static categorization, as if there

is nothing in between. If such claims are made for granting official status to any of the languagesmentioned earlier (Table 1), there is no guarantee that the political problems of, say, Kurds, in theregion and Iran are solved overnight, not to mention that it remains unclear whether the rightsshould be granted individually or collectively, each of which are open to discussion, see e.g. Mar-Molino, The Politics of Language.

53. To the best of our knowledge, there are no other pertinent laws, policy documents, pronounce-ments, etc. that deal with the languages of the ethnic minorities in Iran. The English translationof the constitution is reportedly provided by the Iranian Embassy in London, and has been referredto in various publications without much deliberation about its accuracy or translators, see the entry

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for Iran here: ICL, “Iran-Constitution.” The UNHCR calls it the official translation: see “Consti-tution of the Islamic Republic.”

54. United Nations Human Rights, 19.55. Ibid., 33.56. Article 16 of the constitution has made learning Arabic compulsory for all Iranian students up to

the secondary level. Of course, university-level students are also obliged to take some courses such asthe Quran which are in Arabic.

57. Rahmani, personal website. Accessed January 2013. http://rezarahmani.org58. Although the judiciary is not our concern here, the Iranian judiciary, which according to the con-

stitution is an independent power and “protector of individual and social rights” of all Iranians, hasa Persian-only website and all the local websites of judiciary offices in the provinces of East Azer-baijan, Kurdistan, and Sistan va Baluchistan are monolingual in Persian. These three provinces aremainly populated by Azeri, Kurds and Balochs.

59. Meskoob, Iranian National Identity, 18.60. Ibid., 18, emphasis added.61. E.g. Sheyholislami, “Kurdish in Iran.”62. Ibid., 18.63. Various provinces in Iran receive TV and radio programs in their own minority languages.

However, it is not yet clear how and through what medium the literature of these ethnic groupsare taught in schools. In addition, access to the internet and the use of officially banned satelliteprograms in Iran have increased the access of minority speakers to a more global media. Recentstudies have explored this aspect, see e.g. Sheyholislami, “Identity, Language, and New Media.”

64. This was actually one of the provisions of the 1989 ILO Convention but Iran did not ratify it.65. See for example some of the reports by Iran Human Rights Documentation Center; cf. US Depart-

ment of State, “Country Reports on Human Rights.” Cf. notes 20 and 85.66. Amnesty International, “Annual Report 2012, Iran.”67. US Department of State, “Country Reports on Human Rights.”68. Meylaerts, “Au-delà Des Oppositions.”69. With the exception of using limited non-Persian texts for religious and cultural courses, e.g. the use

of Armenian, see Nercissians, “Bilingualism and Diglossia,” 65.70. See e.g. Amirghasemi, “Kasti-ha-ye bahreh-bardari.”71. De Varennes, “Language, Rights and Opportunities,” 17. The indigenous people referred to here are

in the same situation as what we have called “autochthonous minorities” in the context of Iran.72. Ibid., 30.73. UK Border Agency, “Iran. Country of Origin.”74. Shams-Esfandabad and Emamipour, “The Study of Learning Styles.”75. De Varennes, “Language, Rights and Opportunities,” 32.76. Bani-Shoraka, “The Iranian Language Policy.”77. Recommended term for community translation, crowdsourcing and collaborative translation. See

Pym, “Translation Research Terms.”78. Next to issues about the quality of the translation provided by these non-professionals, this raises

ethical issues which fall outside the scope of this article.79. UNHCR, “2013 UNHCR Country Operations.”80. Abbasi-Shavazi et al., “Marriage and Family Formation.”81. Ibid., 844.82. Whereas assimilation entails a coercive measure, inclusion is seen to be the opposite.83. Following Chatterjee’s arguments in The Nation and its Fragments, one Iranian scholar argues that

Persian nationalism is made of two domains of the material and the spiritual. The former concernsscience and technology, owned by the West and desired by Iranians, the latter being Shitte Islamand pre-Islam Persian heritage in conflict with each other over supremacy, see Kia, “Persian Nation-alism,” 9.

84. Meylaerts, “Translation Policy.”

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85. Hassanpour, “The Internationalization of Language.”86. Cf. the case of Flanders and Wales in Gonzalez and Meylaerts, “Translational Justice. For Whom.”87. Sheyholislami, “Kurdish,” 45. As this article goes to press, there are some signs of change in Iran. For

example, Gilaki is now being adopted as a working language in the city council of Rasht, and theIranian minister of education is talking about teaching minority languages at Iranian schools. Thelatter has already stirred up a discussion at, say, Iran’s Academy of Persian Language and Literature,and in the Persian press, see e.g. Zare’ Kahnamuyi, “Tadris-e zaban-e madari.”

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