The session was held in the presence of Parviz Eghbali, the work's illustrator, Ehsan Abbasloo, critic, and Saeid Razaghi, illustration expert, yesterday (February 25, 2012) at the House of the Literati.
In his opening speech, Eghbali said that the book was debuted 8 years ago, two years after his began preparing the book.
"I did what I could to create a work worthy of the Ashura event," Eghbali said.
He went on to say that the book is not influenced by non-Iranian and non-Islamic comic strip styles and the characterizations are one based on an Iranian and Islamic style for the comic strip.
As he said, many of the illustrations are drawn from a bird's eye view for audience to see more of what went on in the pictures.
Illustration of the infallibles' countenance is not recommended in Islamic Sharia, however, the infallibles are depicted in the book bringing about a wave of mild derogations for the illustrator. "The shape of the depictions are unique in their kind and cannot be assumed to resemble anyone," explained Eghbali, "that is why the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance allowed its release."
Later in the session, Saeid Razaghi delivered a report on the 50-year history of comic strip in Iran. "In the beginning years, all the works were translations. In 1977, Sirus Rad published the first comic strip titled as Rostam and Esfandiar. Since then, the Story of Ashura is the first pacemaker comic strip in Iran in that it gives other illustrators original ideas for work."
"Even though Ashura event took place in Iraq, the illustrations are more Iranian than Iraqi," he further added.
Later in the session, Ehsan Abbaslou stated that the book has been rendered into 10 languages, including English, so far. "There are two popular methods for transition; one is used when the translator remains faithful to the source text and the other is when the translator tries to convey the message of the text and disregards the writing style of the original text," he said. "The English translation of the work has applied both of these methods and there are instances that the translator adopts the second methods of translation and only tried to convey the main idea."
source : http://abna.ir
