Mudir-i Madrasah (The School Principal)

Jalâl âl-e Ahmad was a famous Iranian intellectual and writer (1923-1969). Virtually none of his works have been translated into English—shame on us—but since I read another of his novels a decade or more ago, he and it have stayed in my mind. So I decided to tackle this short book, really a novella at 100 pages; it is widely acknowledged to be his best work. Very sadly, the translation—though it often reads easily (and, also, too often, clumsily)—is a travesty. It is embarrassing that this ever saw the light of day and even worse that no other translation into English exists. I found it odd that I could find nothing about the translator online. I was so completely baffled at why The School Principal is considered a great book show more that I spent a long time online reading about the author and, in some cases, this version. It’s hard to find out much about the work since the author is all-but-unknown in the West and the book itself is extremely difficult to find. And although it took a lot of digging, I did eventually find a very helpful review of the book and this translation in a highly specialized academic journal by a professor in the field of Iranian literature. I excerpt from his review:

“Al-e Ahmad's works are esteemed as much for their sharply critical portraits of contemporary Iranian society as for the nervous, idiomatic quality of his prose. The School Principal is a generally successful wedding of both these attributes.”​
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“Despite the many passages which [the translator] has translated both accurately and well, the work as a whole is so marred by errors and inaccuracies of every sort that it only dimly reflects the quality of the original.”​
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“It is not the extreme wrongness of any individual error that makes the translation so objectionable…. Rather, it is the cumulative effect of renderings that are wrong or only infelicitous added to English that is too often clumsy or even ungrammatical, compounded by a rich variety of typographical and editorial mistakes which makes it so unsatisfactory."​

The story is a first-person narrative by a teacher-turned-school principal in 1950s Iran. The principal quickly finds that, contrary to his expectations, his new responsibilities are disagreeable and frustrating. His teachers are self-involved, spending far more time on their own problems than teaching. The national ministry of education is a nightmare of bureaucracy, and the parents of the school’s students show up only when they have a complaint. Although the narrator may be capable and considerate, he is clearly also self-absorbed and very unhappy. The book is a critique of the social, economic, and intellectual circumstances Iran found itself in during the 1950s. But the translation makes it difficult to discern much more than that. (To be scrupulously even-handed, I will say that you will find a different take on the work at “The Complete Review.” Though I generally find Orthofer a reliable reviewer, I honestly believe that he missed the boat on this one, unless he read a different and far better translation. Should I have succeeded in piquing your interest in Jalâl âl-e Ahmad, look instead for his other work—far better translated—called By the Pen. It’s also scarce, but I found a number of copies by searching online.) show less

«بله، نان گدایی، فرهنگ را نو نوار کرده بود»

مدیری دلسوز که ابتدا با رویکرد «به من چه ربطی داره» مدیر می‌شه، اما طبیعتا به این شیوه نمی‌تونه مدیریت کنه.
توصیفات اول داستان بسیار خوب و دلنشین بودن و هر چقدر به آخر کتاب نزدیک تر می‌شدم، انگار صبر و حوصله نویسنده و به نوعی خود مدیر تموم می‌شد و سر می‌رفت.

"With the publication of The School Principal (1958), Al-e Ahmad became a major spokesman for the non-establishment Iranian intelligentsia, a role he held until his death in 1969." Reviewed at http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/iran/aleahmj2.htm