Iranian Love Stories

"These are stories of young people in Iran who can’t freely have relationships. It’s about the life of young couples in Iran. There are no public displays of affection, you can’t choose who you marry. We’re not ignorant of what’s going on in Iran, but you don’t really realize at what level things are until you read this. Also, you learn about Iranian culture. You’re not supposed to drink, but they have these elegant parties in their apartments. The life there is not free like our life. They’re not even free to love. No, in French. It’s by a French couple, journalists, who go over there and interview different couples. The authors being a couple is kind of moving: they’re not married but want to stay together in a hotel and that’s a problem. They weren’t even supposed to be talking to people. The whole book is just really enlightening about things we need to know and take into our hearts and understand. The thing about translating is that you’re reading every single word a thousand times. It drills it into your head. You read it over and over and over and over. You read it for meaning, you read it for understanding and it becomes part of you, because you’re reading it so much. You’re just so involved, reading it word for word and letter for letter. 70 or 80. A lot. Fiction, nonfiction, adventure, outer space. All kinds. Yes, I do really love it. What’s important about comics and translating is that you need to follow the text and draw people away from the images. And then the images need to draw people away from the text. What you don’t want people doing is turning the pages to read the text. You also don’t want people turning a page and not reading the text. So you have to make sure that your translation—like the original writing—draws people in to do both."