Ahmad Samiee Guilani [1920-2023]

UPDATED [Mar 2023]: Ahmad Samiee Guilani passed away on March 2, 2023 at age 103 in Tehran.

Ahmad Samiee Guilani is an eminent writer, translator, and editor.

He was born in February of 1920 in Sangelaj neighborhood, Tehran. Having received elementary and secondary education in a northern city (Rasht), he returns to Tehran and obtains his master’s degree in Persian Language and Linguistics at the University of Tehran. Renowned as the ‘Father of Editing’ in Iran, he started his career as a literary editor in late 1970s at Franklin Publishing Company. Samiee has a great command of three languages: Persian, English, and French. Besides his mastery over literary movements and schools, he is best known for his various literary and linguistic anthologies in Persian.

Said by him:

Translating and editing are parts of literature. In fact, these are techniques to learn – just like any other techniques – by way of practice and workshop activity rather than theory. Of course, like translation, acumen plays a key role in this. To edit a text, one should consider different editorial methods depending on its being authored or translated, scientific or literary, fiction or research, as well as on its audience. In this technique, talent is equally significant. An editor should also be a critic and capable of diagnosing defects soon. An editor of a translated text should be a translator himself, and a good one indeed, so that he can skillfully overview both the source and target languages, and fully understand errands the translator has gone on to come up with a final passage.


Biblio Brief

Translations

  •  Elle et Lui – George Sand; [دلدار و دلباخته] [1345]
  • Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire – Jean-Jacques Rousseau; [1345] [خیال‌پروریهای تفرجگر انزواجو
  • Les choses – Georges Perec; [1348] [چیزها]
  • Chomsky – John Lyons; [1357] [چومسکی]
  • Syntactic Structures – Noam Chomsky; [1362] [ساخت‌های نحوی]
  • Salammbô – Gustav Flaubert; [1374] [سالامبو]
  • Diderot – Peter France; [1373] [دیدرو]

Monographs

  • Sassanid Literature [1355 h. – 1976]
  • The Principles of Writing and Editing [1366 h. – 1987]

Persian Review by Mohammad Ahmadpour

Mohammad is a graduate in sociology from the University of Tehran, a book reviewer and literary critic based in Tehran.


Translated from the Persian by Shadi Shadman.


About Mohammad Ahmadpour 6 Articles
A graduate in sociology from the University of Tehran, a book reviewer and literary critic based in Tehran.

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