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Sight translation is the oral translation of a written text and is a mixture of translation and interpreting. Sight translation is a widely-used activity in translation training programs. Yet, this mode of translation has rarely been applied as a reading instruction technique in Iranian EFL instruction context in spite of the growing interest in using sight translation in language teaching and learning. This study aims at investigating the effect of sight translation on the reading comprehension ability of Iranian undergraduate EFL students. This is a quasi-experimental study involving treatment. To this end, four reading comprehension classes involving 70 learners were divided into two groups, with the experimental one receiving reading instruction with sight translation exercises and the control group receiving reading instruction without sight translation exercises. The posttest results revealed that the experimental group performing sight translation exercises in classroom outperformed the control group who had not engaged in sight translation. This study has implications for ELT instructors and learners in an Iranian context as they can use sight translation exercises as an effective technique for improving the reading comprehension ability of their learners.

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Post-colonialism and orientalism have inspired literary scholars to study various aspects of literature and literary translation in the post-colonial era. One of the implications of post-colonialism for literature as a discipline is the idea of cannibalism and cultural manipulation. This corpus-based study aims to analyze the notions of “cultural manipulation” or “cannibalism” in the Persian translation of Haji Baba by Mirza Habib Isfahani, to explore the translator’s strategy, as an intercultural mediator, in modulating the source novel’s colonial stance and adapting it to the religious, literary and cultural tastes of the Iranians. Our findings reveal that two main techniques—of omission and euphemism—have been applied in rendering the novel into Persian. Using these techniques, the translator has attempted to challenge the imperial stance of the main writer and come up with a version of the source novel which is much less insulting to Iranians’ cultural values. That is why this translation has been widely received as a literary masterpiece in Persian literature. One implication is that it might be claimed that cannibalism and cultural manipulation can be used to explain the trend of manipulating western literature in countries which have never been colonized, but that have suffered from the colonial stance of colonial writers.