Challenges of Literary Translation from Persian into English: An Analysis of Francis Gladwin's Translation of Gulistan

Translating literary texts has always been regarded as one of the most challenging tasks in the history of translation. However, it becomes a more complex task when we translate Persian-Tajik classical literary texts into English. Saadi Shirazi’s Gulistan, a world literary masterpiece, has a unique style, distinguished features, and characteristics that pose particular problems and challenges to translators. The present paper proposes to analyze how linguistic and stylistic issues, culture-religious bound terms, and artistic devices have been dealt with within the English translation of Gulistan. The researcher will take Francis Gladwin’s translation as an example for discussion.