Microhistory and Translation Historiography

An alternative to cliché textual analyses, which form the major body of Translation Studies research in Iranian academia, is to explore the history of translation and its practitioners. But history, in its traditional sense, provides linear, continuous and sequential narratives of a monolithic past. Following on from Foucault, who uses the concept of rupture and discontinuity to challenge the linearity and sequentiality of history and the discourses it provides, the present paper suggests a fresh look at translation historiography as a cross-disciplinary area. It is an attempt to introduce ways of examining points of rupture in the historical narratives of translation and translators and look for different past(s) of the practice and practitioners of translation through microhistory, which explores the lived experiences of people and communities. Microhistory allows the unseen people and agents of translation to be seen and their untold experiences to be told. In this sense it creates the chance of rethinking translation traditions in Iran, as well as elsewhere.