Translation in Arabic language and literature
Sayyed Mehdi Masboogh; Solmaz Ghafari
Abstract
Abstract The book Al-Faraj Bad al-Shedda is one of the narrative works that revives a large part of ancient popular culture and literature In this book, more than two hundred life stories of people caught in problems are depicted in the form of stories. These people have been saved by trusting ...
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Abstract The book Al-Faraj Bad al-Shedda is one of the narrative works that revives a large part of ancient popular culture and literature In this book, more than two hundred life stories of people caught in problems are depicted in the form of stories. These people have been saved by trusting God in facing the problems of life. One of the appropriate models of translation criticism is Katarina Reiss's model, which has received less attention from researchers. Considering the comprehensiveness of translation criticism techniques in Katarina Reiss's model compared to other translation models, the present study can be used as a suitable example and model by researchers in the field of translation criticism in Arabic language and literature. This research tries to provide a general analysis of the Persian translation of the book Al-Faraj Bad al-Shedda from two linguistic and meta-linguistic perspectives by using Reiss's model in the Arabic text. Because the difference in the structure of the two languages is significant and this issue can be useful in translation research and linguistic studies.Key words: Translation, Model of Katharina Reiss, Al-Faraj Bad al-Shedda, Ghazi Tanukhi, Dehestani.IntroductionThe field of translation between Persian and Arabic languages has been very prosperous for a long time. The translation of literary texts, such as Al-Faraj Bad al-Shedda, has been one of the most dynamic literary trends in ancient times. Many works in different genres and subjects have been translated from Arabic to Persian and from Persian to Arabic, and some of them have been very influential from a literary point of view. The book Al-Faraj Bad al-Shedda, is one of the prominent Arabic works written by Qazi Tanukhi, a writer of the 4th century of Hijri. Hossein Dehestani translated the book Al-Faraj Bad al-Shedda, in the 7th century. Katharina Reiss is a well-known German translator who is known as a role-oriented translator and the creator of the "text type in translation" theory. This research tries to answer the following questions by criticizing the translation of Al-Faraj Bad al-Shedda, relying on Katarina Reiss's model:Are the methods proposed in Katarina Reiss's model suitable for criticizing the translation of Al-Faraj Bad al-Shedda, if the answer is positive, what are the reasons for the usefulness of these methods?How is Dehestani translation criticized and evaluated based on Katarina Reiss's linguistic and meta-linguistic factors.Literature ReviewFew researches have been done about the Katarina Reiss model in Iran, including:The article " Reiss's Pioneering Model for Translation Criticism" written by Alireza Khanjan, who tried to introduce Kathrina Reiss's model.The article "Examination of Literary Translation Challenges" written by Ali Ganjian Khanari, who introduced the first part of Reiss's model, i.e. the type of text, in this article and it has shown the characteristics of literary texts and the challenges and problems that the translator faces in translating this type of texts.About the Katharina Reiss model in Arabic language, a few researches have been done, including:The article "Measurement and evaluation of Katarina Reiss's translation model" written by Leila Alam, who started the discussion with an introduction of criticism and translation, and continued to introduce the category of "text type" and the division of the text based on the role of language, and at the end of her discussion has finished with the criteria of translation criticism.But this research criticized the translation of the first chapter of the book "Al-Farj after Al-Shada" based on Katharina Reiss's model and it is new both in the theoretical approach and in the text of the research.Research MethodologyConsidering the volume of the book, its first chapter was selected and analyzed by descriptive-analytical method.ConclusionFrom what came in this research, the following results are obtained:Based on the balance in the type of text presented in Katharina Reiss's model, it can be said that Dehestani has disturbed this balance in determining the "dominant role". Reiss believes that a text may have different roles and what is the criterion is the dominant role. based on Katarina Reiss's model, Dehestani has presented an adapted translation. He has achieved semantic sufficiency and balance in his translation by means of semantic changes, the use of precise grammatical structures in accordance with the criteria of the target language, and significant stylistic elements.The methods proposed in Katharina Reiss's model are suitable for criticizing the translation of the book "Al-Faraj Bad al-Shedda" because in this model, Reiss directs the critic to a targeted criticism to examine and judge the literary work in terms of content, style, and sometimes from an aesthetic perspective.Relying on the two linguistic and meta-linguistic components mentioned in Reiss's model, the reasons that caused the translator to achieve semantic imbalance in his translation were criticized and his performance was comprehensively evaluated. in the linguistic component, the translator has disturbed the semantic balance due to the semantic changes and grammatical changes of the source language, the use of unique stylistic elements and the criteria of the target language, and the construction of the target text is broken. on the other hand, in the evaluation of the meta-linguistic components, the gaps in the situation and the topic of speech have been well filled by the translator and by being influenced by temporal and spatial elements, he changed the form of the original text in favor of the target language and removed the cultural gaps between the two cultures.
Translation in Arabic language and literature
Amir Afshin Farhadian; Seyyed Mehdi Masboogh
Abstract
Beyond its literary and artistic values, Hafez's poetry is known as a mirror of Iranian culture and worldview. Therefore, familiarity with it by people of other languages and cultures will open a window to the perception of Iranian art and culture. From this point of view, the quality of the translation ...
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Beyond its literary and artistic values, Hafez's poetry is known as a mirror of Iranian culture and worldview. Therefore, familiarity with it by people of other languages and cultures will open a window to the perception of Iranian art and culture. From this point of view, the quality of the translation of Hafez's poems into other languages becomes especially important. So far, at least nine selected or complete translations of Hafez's poems have been published in Arabic, which shows the appreciation of Arabic speakers for Hafez's poetry and thought. One of the most recent translations is the translation of Ali Abbas Zulaikha. because every metonymy expression, in addition to lexical meanings, also contains cultural, historical, and ethnic attachments, translating metonymies into another language that is current in a different context is one of the difficulties of translation is considered. In this research, which was carried out with the method of content analysis and in a descriptive-analytical way, 10 sonnets of Hafez containing 29 metonymies were randomly selected and analyzed using Kendall and Smith's table of numbers. The results of the research showed that in 8 cases, the meaning of the phrase was translated acceptably, and in 21 other cases, the Arabic translation faced serious problems. It is worth noting that 5 out of 21 cases of wrong translation were caused by misreading the Persian text.Keywords: Hafez's Poetry, Arabic Translation, Metonymies Translation, Ali Abbas Zulaikha.IntroductionHafez has a privileged position among numerous poets in the history of Persian literature. Any selection of the best examples of Persian poetry will contain examples of his poetry. This high position is the result of establishing a balance between the two characteristics of beautiful form and deep meaning. Hafez's extraordinary linguistic ability, along with his aesthetics and extraordinary skill in poetic art, has made his poetry desirable to lovers of literature. But regarding the meaning of the word, perhaps it can be considered as the summary of Iranian culture and worldview. "Hafez is not only the great poet of Iran, he is the miracle of Persian literature and the summary of this culture" (Shaygan, 2014: 114). The first feature makes it difficult to translate Hafez's poetry, but the second feature adds to the importance of the quality of his poetry translation. Hafez's poetry shows resistance to being translated in terms of the complexities of the form and the visible and hidden relationships of the words, but since his poetry is the manifestation of a part of the identity of Iranian culture, the correctness of the translation audience's perception of the pure manifestations of Iranian culture and worldview has a direct relationship with the quality of the translation of his poems. Dick Davis in his article " On Not Translating Hafez" says: " Certain poets are held to be untranslatable, or virtually so, and often they are thought of as those that most intimately express the poetic soul of their people (…) The fact that it is often precisely the poets who seem to sum up a poetry’s idiosyncratic potential and identity who are those whose works are most resistant to translation" (Davis, 2011: 74).The importance of Hafez's poetry translation benefiting from a suitable quality, with all its inherent difficulties, makes the mission of the translator of Hafez's poems heavier. Walter Benyamin explains the mission of the translator as follows: "This mission consists of finding that intention or meaning in the target language that echoes the original text in this language" (2003: 44).The world fame of Hafez's poems has been a strong motivation for translators to translate his poetry into many living languages of the world. Among others, we can mention its numerous translations in French, German, English, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, Armenian, Kazakh, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, Turkish, Japanese, Arabic, etc. (Hafez Encyclopedia, 2017: pp. 542-585).Due to the extent of cultural exchanges between Persian and Arabic languages, the Arabic translations of Hafez's Diwan are very important. "Numerous translations of Hafez's poems, as well as various academic articles and theses, on the subject of his poems and personality, show that Hafez as a literary-mystical figure in the Arab world has attracted the attention of many writers and poets, including Taha Hossein, Shawarebi, Seyyed Qutb, Salah al-Sawi, Omar Shebli and..." (Zinivand and Almasi, 2011: 57).So far, Hafez's poems have been translated into Arabic nine times, most of which contain excerpts of poems. Mohammad Al Forati (selection), Mohammad Mehdi Javaheri (selection), Mohammad Amin Al-Shawarbi (sonnets), Salah al-Sawi (selection), Youssef Victor Al-Kakk (selection), Muhammad Ali Shamsoddin (selection), Omar Shebli al-Sawairi (selection), Ali Abbas Zulaikha (selection) All Poems) (Azizi, 2013: pp. 75-93) and Nader Nezam Tehrani (sonnets) are the translators of Hafez's poetry in Arabic.Ali Abbas Zulaikha, born in 1958 in Syria, is a doctor and embryologist. The result of his interest in the Persian language and literature was the translation of several famous works of Persian literature into Arabic, among which we can mention the translation of Hafez Shirazi's Diwan, Molana's Masnavi, Attar Neishaburi's Diwan and Asrarnameh (Kakavand and Valvi, 2019: 10). His translation of Hafez's Diwan, which is examined in this article in terms of translation of metonymies, is one of the most recent Arabic translations of Hafez's poetry and includes the entire Diwan of Hafez based on the famous correction of Qazvini and Ghani.Literature ReviewRegarding the Arabic translations of Hafez's poems, articles have been published so far, but in none of them, the translation of the metonymies in Ali Abbas Zulaikha's translation has been investigated.Behrouz Ghorbanzadeh and Shahram Ahmadi in the article "The mystical concept of metonymy in Omar Shibli's Arabic translation of Hafez's diwan based on the theory of Antoine Berman" criticized Shibli's translation of some metonymies in Hafez's poetry and concluded that in many cases the translator understood the metonymy of the expressions. He did not, and for this reason, he has turned to literal translation or ignoring the metonymic expression."Criticism and review of rhetorical translations in the Arabic translation of Hafez's poem by Salah al-Sawi" written by Gholamreza Karimifard is the title of an article that examines the translation of Al-Sawi from a rhetorical aspect. A part of this article is devoted to the analysis of a few cases of translation of metonymies in Hafez's poetry."Examination of the translations of the semantic contrasts of Hafez's sonnets in Ali Abbas Zulaikha's translation" is an article written by Owais Mohammadi and his colleagues in explaining examples of semantic contrasts in Hafez's poems and criticizing Zulaikha's translation of those examples. It is necessary to explain that the study of metonymies was not intended in this article. Hossein Mohseni and Amin Sheikh Bagheri, in an article entitled "Pathology of Transferring Multilayered Semantics in the Translation of Hafez's Poems Based on Catford's Theory of Formal Changes (A Case Study of Al-Shwarabi and Abbas Zulaikha's Translations)" have investigated the translation of the multilayered concepts of words and terms of Hafez's poetry in the translation of the two aforementioned translators.MethodologyContent analysis and descriptive-analytical methods have been used in this research. Overall, ten sonnets from Hafez have been randomly selected using Kendall and Smith's table of numbers for review and analysis in this research. Because the translator used the Qazvini and Ghani correction of Hafez's poems as the basis of his translation, the selected sonnets in this article are considered based on the same order. In each of the selected sonnets, first, the Arabic translation of Zulaikha's verses that contain metonymic compositions was translated into Persian, and then the translator's success in translating those phrases into Arabic was evaluated. It should be noted that in some sonnets, the translator has translated verses into poetry in addition to prose. In dealing with such verses, we have translated both Arabic poetry and prose into Persian and analyzed them.ConclusionThe results of analyzing the translation of metonymies in Zulaikha's translation of Hafez's ten sonnets indicate the failure of the translator to correctly translate those phrases from Persian to Arabic. Seventy-two percent error in the studied population is significant. The main reasons for this failure can be classified into two categories. The first reason that includes the number of translation errors is the failure to correctly understand the metonymic meaning of the phrases in the Persian language, which indicates the translator's lack of respect for the subtleties and details of the text being translated. But another reason is the misreading of the Persian text. The error that occurs in this category, which unfortunately includes nearly a quarter of metonymies translation errors, basically occurs before entering the translation because the text is misread in the same source language, and the resulting translation will be far from the original text. It is clear that Hafez's poem, despite its wide acceptance among Persian speakers, is relatively difficult, and the evidence of this is the large number of commentaries written on it, but this difficulty and complexity is not an acceptable justification for the erroneous translation of a significant literary work. It should be noted that Zulaikha's translation of Hafez's poems is one of the most recent Arabic translations from this Diwan and other examples of Arabic translations of Hafez's poems have been available to the translator. Also, many Persian commentaries of Hafez's poems have been published, which could prevent many misreadings. Undoubtedly, the quality of the translation of the poems of one of the most prominent poets of Iran will have an important effect on the understanding of his words and his literary position in the society of the target language. Zulaikha has not been very successful in carrying out this mission.
Translation in Arabic language and literature
Seyed Mehdi Masboogh; Solmaz Ghafari
Abstract
Aesthetic theory is one of the theories in the field of literary criticism that was developed by the followers of the German school of Constance under the influence of the school of phenomenology. Since this theory focuses on the reader and his perception of the work, it seeks to examine the multiplicity ...
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Aesthetic theory is one of the theories in the field of literary criticism that was developed by the followers of the German school of Constance under the influence of the school of phenomenology. Since this theory focuses on the reader and his perception of the work, it seeks to examine the multiplicity of horizons in the reception process based on the translators' strategies and their interpretations of reading the text. The novel "Season of Migration to the North" by the Sudanese writer Al-Tayyib Saleh is one of the best novels of the twentieth century and has a high literary status. This research, which is organized by the descriptive-analytical method and confrontational approach with the aim of explaining the uncertainty of meaning and the reader's activity in reading the text, has investigated the various semantic readings of this novel based on the aesthetic theory of receiving at three levels of words, phrases, and structure in three translations of Davis (Arabic-English), Ghabraei (English-Persian), and Ameri (Arabic-Persian), and examined how to accept the text on the basis of establishing the artistic position of the work in different horizons and its richness from one translator to another. The result showed that a reader who, in response to white spaces and gaps, interprets and updates the text in a natural way and provides an explicit reading in accordance with the rules of the target language, can overcome the aesthetics of the target text. Accordingly, Ghabraei as a reader has been able to move from a simple reading to a critical understanding by filling in the gaps in accordance with the spirit of a culture. His participation in the reading process, relying on his semantic horizon, has both preserved the beauty of the source text and added to the aesthetic components of the target text.
Solmaz Ghaffari; Sayyed Mahdi Masboogh; Sedigheh Zoodranj
Abstract
The close connection between Persian and Arabic language and literature has led to numerous exchanges between the two languages. Among them is the translation of Saad al-Din Varavini's book "Marzbannameh" by Ibn Arabshah in the ninth century. Ibn Arabshah has taken an adaptive and free approach in his ...
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The close connection between Persian and Arabic language and literature has led to numerous exchanges between the two languages. Among them is the translation of Saad al-Din Varavini's book "Marzbannameh" by Ibn Arabshah in the ninth century. Ibn Arabshah has taken an adaptive and free approach in his translation and tried to disguise his translation by creating a metamorphosis and recreating the original text. The present study is based on the model of Vinay and Darbelnet and aims to evaluate the quality of Ibn Arabshah's translation and explain his use of the components of adapted translation. Due to the wide volume of the book, its fifth chapter was examined as a body of research. The result of the research showed that "Fakheh al-Khalifa" is an adapted translation of Marzbannameh and the translator has made the translation language normal by substituting simple expressions instead of complex structures, increasing and decreasing the meaning of words, and using equivalents in the target language. In adapting his translation to the model of Vinay and Darbelnet, it was also found that the translator has presented another metamorphosis of the precious work of "Marzbannameh" through indirect translation and using the techniques of transposition, modulation, equivalence, and adaptation. He brought the target text closer to the horizon of the Arabic-speaking reader in a way that, in addition to providing a readable context, enabled the Arabic-speaking reader to communicate well with the text.