ალ-ჰარირის მაკამების როლი 21-ე საუკუნეში
Loading...
Date
2021
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
უნივერსიტეტის გამომცემლობა
Abstract
In 2020 the English translation of the Maqamat by Arab writer
al-Hariri (1054-1122) was published in New York. From the moment
of its appearance in Europe, this text was marked as untranslatable
because of its eloquent language and play of words. Besides the
rhymed prose, verses, different styles, there are sentences in which
every word consists of entirely undotted letters (maqama 28); sentences
in which every second word contains only dotted letters and
the remaining words only undotted letters (6), there is a story or
poem that contain so many words with a double meaning that it can
be read as telling an equally coherent story about something else
(8,25,43,44); there are palindromes (16,17), legal riddles (32) etc.
According to M. Cooperson, if we want Maqamat to become popular
in modern times, metaphrase or paraphrase wouldn’t help us.
Such kind of translation might be used only with the students of
Arabic. The ordinary reader wouldn’t read it and he’d never know
anything about this wonderful piece of classical Arabic literature.
The translator should use the method of imitation. That is why Cooperson
used the possibilities of global English. He transformed Arabic
wordplay into fifty different registers in English. Instead of Arabo-
Persian proper nouns, he used Irish. Alternation of dotted and
undotted letters he replaced by the alternation of Germanic and
French words... The translator used three types of Idioms: 1) distinctive
literary style of English speaker authors as Chaucer, Woolf,
Dickens... 2) global style as Scottish, Indian, Nigerian, Singaporean,
Spanglish, Kiwi, middle Harlem Jive 1940... 3) jargon as management
speak, American college slang, Cockney, etc. The aim of al-Hariri was to show the uniqueness of Arabic as
God’s Language. As literary Arabic was pure, canonical, the author
couldn’t use too much jargon. Unlike him, Cooperson, besides the
literary and historical English, used spoken or global styles to show
opportunities of modern language just as al-Hariri tried to do that
with Arabic. Impostures is not only a result of Englishing, but it is
Transculturation as well. Cooperson explains in his Note, that his
translation is a performance, first of all, which must be read as a
celebration of language. Imposters has already earned good reviews
and several important prizes as the best translation.
This newest translation is a typical attempt of the so-called
post-orientalist approach – to appreciate the original as a literary
work and to preserve its spirit. But the translator underlines only
linguistic advantages of the maqamat and he never mentions that
the work of al-Hariri several centuries earlier than the Renaissance
Spanish picaresque novel, presented second-rate personages, who
represented different social strata; as well as not definitely bad or
good generalized characters; created artistic reality and developed
primitive social criticism, and all this was significant in the 12th century
Arabic literature under the conditions of the supremacy of literary
law.
For Cooperson good translation is domestication.The domesticated
translation is mostly ideologized. Whether he realized this or
not,, Cooperson also accented his own language. As Oxford Emeritus
Prof. van Gelder marked, “Reader of Imposters learns all about English
but not much about Arabic.”
al-Hariri’s Maqamat is a unique text, which was translated to
show the opportunities of different languages in different ages. In
the 21st century, it became the celebration of global English. American
readers asserted it as a guidebook on linguistic deceit, which has to
rescue English from its death in the Age of the Internet.
Description
Keywords
კლასიკური მაკამა, თარგმანი, გლობალური ინგლისური, Classical Maqama, Translation, Global English
Citation
აკადემიკოს კონსტანტინე წერეთლის დაბადებიდან მე-100 წლისთავისადმი მიძღვნილი საერთაშორისო კონფერენცია, თეზისები, 2021, გვ.: 107-113/ INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE DEDICATED TO THE CENTENARY OF THE BIRTH OF ACADEMICIAN KONSTANTINE TSERETELI, ABSTRACTS, p.: 107-113