Staged in a pavilion of House of Authors set up in the 23^rd Tehran International Book Fair Tuesday, the panel discussion was also joined by Asqar Saberi, executive of Department of Translation Affair in the Organization of Islamic Culture and Communications, Igun Alizada, an Azeri university professor, Alexander Palchuk, a Russian university professor, Jahangir Dori, an Iranian-Russian university professor, and finally, Nemet Yelorm, a Turkish university professor.

 

Professor with Allama Tabataei University in Tehran, Mrs. Farahzad initiated the panel by a discussion of differences between criticism and assessment, arguing that assessment relates to relative quality of a given text or the abstract notion of "equivalence."

 

She then argued that criticism was distinct from assessment. In the same regard, the prominent researcher said aesthetic criticism has numerous applications and, among others, tackles a set of potential standards in choice of texts for translation whereas linguistic criticism evaluates a text from the perspectives of wording, lexicology as well as how a given translated text adapts its original.

 

Farahzad also discussed an additional class of criticism, namely socio-historical criticism, which, in his term, deals with potential impact of translation in the course of history.

 

In the same note, she said translation plays a key part in transmission of literature, scientific findings, cultural values and social norms, adding that a socio-historical criticism no more looks for correct-incorrect choices or grammatical errors, nor is informed by the notion of "equivalence," an operative term of translation studies in the 70s.

 

The professor concluded that mechanisms involved in the practice of translation are more than the quaint target-source discussion.

 

Mrs. Farahzad is widely acclaimed for her researches in translation criticism and assessment and has been working on a theory of translation assessment which is informed by critical discourse analysis or CDA.