Translating Translating Tengour

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasser Elhariry
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
First Century ◽  
French Language ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
English Translations ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Classical Arabic ◽  
Literary Arabic

Chapter 1 begins with a study of the most evidently literal, translational rewriting of a classical Arabic literary corpus. It analyses in depth Habib Tengour’s chapbook Césure (2006). I read Tengour’s literal translations of images and metaphors culled from the archive of the classical Arabic odes, alongside his American translator Pierre Joris’s rendering of his translations of translations. The juxtaposition of the old Arabic texts, the history of their English translations, and Tengour’s original French language poems, which are then cut through with Joris’s American translational idiom, produces a four- sided linguistic refraction that unravels how Tengour unwrites the Arabic, so as to rewrite it forward into a falsely, seemingly monolingual French. I situate the poetics of translation and intertextuality in relation to Tengour and Joris’s respective, trans-Atlantic editorial and publishing worlds. I pay particular attention to how they capture and maintain the ‘pseudo-opacity’ of an original translingual, translational poetics, which they premise on the multicultural plurilingualism of the Maghreb. In so doing, we revisit translation theory from Joris’s perspective as an active contemporary American translator, theoretician, essayist, poetician and poet, with a particular focus accorded to a consideration of the formative, vagrant structure and thematics of the classical Arabic odes. Together, Tengour and Joris point to a twentieth- and twenty-first-century tradition of trans-Atlantic Franco-American translations, which undercuts the place afforded to the French language. I conclude with the assertion that Tengour and Joris render the French language an effaceable, hopelessly transparent mode of translation between two series of opacities: classical, high literary Arabic on the one hand, American English on the other.

Sky-Birds & Dead Trees On Two Images in Edmond Jabès

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasser Elhariry
Keyword(s):  
French Language ◽  
Arabic Poetry ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Dead Trees ◽  
Translational Mode ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literary Archive ◽  
Edmond Jabes ◽  
Classical Arabic ◽  
Late Works

Chapter 2 concerns two recurrent images from Edmond Jabès’s late works, Un étranger avec, sous le bras, un livre de petit format (1989) and Le livre de l’hospitalité (1991). While Jabès is well known within French literary circles, analyses of his early Cairene work— and to an even lesser extent the formative roles of orality and aurality from his pre- Parisian period—are few and thin. I first contextualize the figure of the Egyptian poet in relation to the history of Jabès scholarship, and then build on Tengour’s translational poetics of the classical Arabic literary archive in order to unravel a different, sublimated translational mode that links many of Jabès’s later books. In his late and final works, which he composed while living in Paris, Jabès’s poetic imaginary reprises word for word the tropes of early Arabic verse. When read together and in relation to the same archival corpus, Tengour and Jabès represent contrasting translational and intertextual modes for comparative poetic and translingual compositions in French. Through his aphasic refuge in French monolingualism following his exile from Cairo, and his late re/discovery of classical Arabic poetry in Paris, Jabès’s sublimated recourse to early Arabic verse retraces and performs the history of the old literary forms beneath a French language surface.

Translational Literature and the Pleasures of Exile

PMLA ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 131 (5) ◽  
pp. 1435-1443
Author(s):  
Waïl S. Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
Sacred Text ◽  
Saint Jerome ◽  
Cultural Expressions ◽  
The One ◽  
International Success ◽  
Classical Arabic ◽  
Better Than

The Fundamental Concern in Translation Theory, from Saint Jerome to the Present, has Been the Relation Between a Text and its version in another language. This relation is often conceived in the Platonic terms of original and copy: the original is viewed as sacrosanct (especially when it is a sacred text but also when it is not), while the translation is seen, at best, as imperfect and deficient and, at worst, as an adulteration, a profanation, and a betrayal that is captured in the Italian phrase traduttore traditore. Conversely, that relation has on occasion also been inverted in claims that the translation can be superior to the original—for example, Jorge Luis Borges's famous declaration that “the original is unfaithful to the translation” (239) or, less radically, Gabriel García Márquez's reported remark that Gregory Rabassa's translation of One Hundred Years of Solitude is better than the Spanish original (Rabassa 43). At other times, the relation between original and translation is seen as antagonistic, the one trying to displace the other, or as its heir and only chance of survival. In this view, the original is condemned to death and oblivion because it is written in a dead language, a rival language, or a geopolitically weak language. Think of the phenomenon that Abdelfattah Kilito cites of some classical Arabic texts—such as al-Harīrī‘s Maqāmāt (“Assemblies”), written at the height of Arab civilization's power in the twelfth century—which seem to have been composed in such a way as to render their translation impossible (17-18). By contrast, notes Kilito, some contemporary Arab novelists seem to write with their translators in mind, avoiding difficult language and obscure cultural expressions that may reduce their works’ chances of being translated into English or French, the gateway to international success (19n7).

Sufis in Mecca

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasser Elhariry
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
French Language ◽  
Francophone Studies ◽  
Current State ◽  
Sacred And Profane ◽  
Lyric Voice ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Poetry ◽  
Classical Arabic

This chapter directly picks up where Stétié ends, with a textual analysis of a poetic cycle of chapbooks by Meddeb. I argue that a renouveau in the Francophone lyric is made possible through his translations of classical Arabic and Sufi poetry. In his chapbooks, Meddeb attempts to refashion himself, after his two successful and widely acclaimed first novels Talismano (1979) and Phantasia (1986), as a mystical, wandering Sufi poet. With Tombeau d’Ibn Arabi (1987), Les 99 stations de Yale (1995), and Aya dans les villes (1999) in particular, Meddeb manically focuses on an adaptational, modern rewriting in French verse of the history of Sufi saints, poets and poetry. Meddeb simultaneously draws on the formal and structural poetics of the pre-Islamic odes (as we will have seen with Tengour and Jabès), but he recasts them in light of the life of the Sufi saints and mystics rather than the pagan poets. Meddeb’s major innovation lies not only in the poetic combination of sacred and profane poetic registers, but also in an original combination of French and Arabic poetic registers with the world of modern American poetics. A central literary case whom I revisit in the conclusion to Pacifist Invasions, a critical re-evaluation of Meddeb reveals him to be indispensable for the successful poetic reconstruction of Francophone studies. I demonstrate how, much like the Sufi poet, and in keeping with ‘Ā’ishah al-Bā‘ūniyyah’s Principles of Sufism, Meddeb’s new Francophone lyric self-inflects as consciousness in search of what lies beyond its knowledge of its current state: situated in relation to itself, its paradoxical internal genealogy, its contemplative meditational mode. The poetic import of Meddeb’s lyric consists of the masterful blending of the figure of the Sufi poet and the Arabic tongue with contemporaneous intonations in French poetry. Meddeb’s writing transverses concurrent and widely divergent poetic trends, and connects them to one another in an original French-language arabesque. Beneath the surface of his first poetic experiments, Meddeb had couched a hidden, propagative poetics of the trace, barely perceptible, held together by thematic and generic modulations, a double lyric voice, and the infralinguistic.

DIATOPIC AND DIACHRONIC VARIATION OF VERBAL FORMS (BY FRENCH MANUSCRIPTS OF THE XIII-XIV CENTURIES)

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (99) ◽  
pp. 130-137
Author(s):  
ANNA Y. LUKINA
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
French Language ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
History Of ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
The One

This article deals with a new diasystemic approach to studying the variation of verb forms in the history of the French language. The author describes two variations - diatopic and diachronic. The new diasystemic approach allows us to build a classification of the verb form variants taking into account the intra- and extralinguistic criteria: historical, geographical and stylistic. Horizontal and vertical studying of variation in verb forms (L. A. Stanova's method) helps to identify the main trends in the evolution of the French language, on the one hand, and the characteristic features inherent in one or another regional written tradition, script, on the other.

Homer the South African

English Today ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-61
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Murray
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
American English ◽  
First Century ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Slight Variation ◽  
English Version ◽  
English Prose ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Canonical Text ◽  
Anglo American

When reviewing a much-translated canonical text such as Homer's Iliad, it has become something of a topos to question the need for yet another translation of it. In the twenty-first century alone, Homer's Iliad has benefited from at least six published English translations already: Rodney Merrill (2007), Herbert Jordan (2008), Anthony Verity (2011), Stephen Mitchell (2011), Edward McCrorie (2012) and James Muirden (2012). Richard Whitaker adds his translation to the list with a slight variation on the standard Anglo-American English translations already available, presenting his readers instead with a ‘Southern African English’ version. With such a variety of Standard English prose and poetic translations already on offer, is there really a need for yet another Iliad? Will the novelty of its subtitle, as a ‘Southern African English’ Iliad, justify its publication, and what will prevent it from being judged merely as a postcolonial curiosity?

Beyond Judaisms: Metatron and the Divine Polymorphy of Ancient Judaism

2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Boyarin
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Son Of Man ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Specific Project

AbstractMy specific project in this paper is to combine several related and notorious questions in the history of Judaism into one: What is the nexus among the semi-divine (or high angel) figure known in the Talmud as Metatron, the figure of the exalted Enoch in the Enoch books (1-3 Enoch!), "The One Like a Son of Man" of Daniel, Jesus, the Son of Man, and the rabbinically named heresy of "Two Powers/Sovereignties in Heaven?" I believe that in order to move towards some kind of an answer to this question, we need to develop a somewhat different approach to the study of ancient Judaism, as I hope to show here. I claim that late-ancient rabbinic literature when read in the context of all contemporary and earlier texts of Judaism—those defined as rabbinic as well as those defined as non-, para-, or even anti-rabbinic—affords us a fair amount of evidence for and information about a belief in (and perhaps cult of) a second divine person within, or very close to, so-called "orthodox" rabbinic circles long after the advent of Christianity. Part of the evidence for this very cult will come from efforts at its suppression on the part of rabbinic texts. I believe, moreover, that a reasonable chain of inference links this late cult figure back through the late-antique Book of 3 Enoch to the Enoch of the first-century Parables of Enoch—also known in the scholarly literature as the Similitudes of Enoch—and thus to the Son of Man of that text and further back to the One Like a Son of Man of Daniel 7.

The Restaurant

Migrant City ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 225-253
Author(s):  
Panikos Panayi
Keyword(s):  
Eating Habits ◽  
First Century ◽  
Mass Consumption ◽  
History Of ◽  
East End ◽  
Post War ◽  
The One ◽  
The City ◽  
Vast Range

This chapter explains how migrants have impacted the eating habits of all sections of the population in both social and geographical terms. While the evolution of modern London remains inconceivable without the role of migrants, the chapter shows that they may have had a more profound impact upon eating out than any other aspect of the history of the city. In the first place they have opened and staffed some of the most famous restaurants in the world. But this only tells one side of the story because settlers from Europe and beyond have, at the other end of the scale, also opened up establishments which serve up the dishes that characterize mass consumption, from the first fish and chip shops in the East End to the Chinese and Indian restaurants of the post-war period and the vast range of foreign food establishments which exist in the global capital of the twenty-first century. While, on the one hand, these restaurants cater for the ethnic majority, which increasingly became a vanishing concept, many migrants have also opened up restaurants for their countrymen as such establishments form a key part of local ethnic economies.

Islamic Charities and Islamic Humanism in Troubled Times

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Benthall
Keyword(s):  
Charitable Giving ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
General Introduction ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

This book is the fruit of twenty years’ reflection on Islamic charities, both in practical terms and as a key to understand the crisis in contemporary Islam. On the one hand Islam is undervalued as a global moral and political force whose admirable qualities are exemplified in its strong tradition of charitable giving. On the other hand, it suffers from a crisis of authority that cannot be blamed entirely on the history of colonialism and stigmatization to which Muslims have undoubtedly been subjected – most recently, as a result of the “war on terror”. The book consists of seventeen previously published chapters, with a general Introduction and new prefatory material for each chapter. The first nine chapters review the current situation of Islamic charities from many different viewpoints – theological, historical, diplomatic, legal, sociological and ethnographic – with first-hand data from the United States, Britain, Israel–Palestine, Mali and Indonesia. Chapters 10 to 17 expand the coverage to explore the potential for a twenty-first century “Islamic humanism” that would be devised by Muslims in the light of the human sciences and institutionalized throughout the Muslim world. This means addressing contentious topics such as religious toleration and the meaning of jihad. The intended readership includes academics and students at all levels, professionals concerned with aid and development, and all who have an interest in the future of Islam.

Great projects and crude realities

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Ángel Giménez Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
Universal Schooling

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the circumstances that have conditioned the development of education in Spain from the enlightenment to the present day. Design/methodology/approach – Multidisciplinary scientific approach that combines the interpretation of the legal texts with the revision of the doctrinal and theoretical contributions made on the issue. Findings – From the beginning of the nineteenth century, the history of education in Spain has been marked by constant fluctuations between the reactionary instincts, principally maintained by the Catholic Church and the conservative social classes, and the progressive experiments, driven by the enlightened and the liberals first, and the republicans and the socialists later. As a consequence of that, the fight for finishing with illiteracy and guaranteeing universal schooling underwent permanent advances and retreats, preventing from an effective modernization of the Spanish educative system. On the one hand, renewal projects promoted by teachers and pedagogues were inevitably criticized by the ecclesiastical hierarchy, obsessed with the idea of preserving the influence of religion on the schools. On the other hand, successive governments were weak in implementing an educational policy which could place Spain at the level of the other European and occidental nations. Originality/value – At the dawn of the twenty-first century, although the country has overcome a good part of its centuries-old backwardness, increasing economic difficulties and old ideological splits keep hampering the quality of teaching, gripped by neoliberal policies which undermine the right to education for all. The reading of this paper offers various historical clues to understand this process.

Mathematics and Politics: Thomas Pynchon, against the Day

2018 ◽  
pp. 24-58
Author(s):  
Nina Engelhardt
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Pynchon ◽  
History Of Mathematics ◽  
First Century ◽  
Complex Numbers ◽  
Mathematical Concepts ◽  
Crisis Of Representation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
Concrete Concepts

Chapter 1 on Pynchon’s Against the Day focuses on interrelations between mathematics and politics as domains that are both shaken by crises of fundamental beliefs. It examines how Pynchon’s novel draws on the history of mathematics and on concrete concepts to explore the crisis of representation, the transformation of anarchism from political to artistic expression, and the possibilities inherent in imaginary domains. Main mathematical concepts and metaphors include imaginary and complex numbers and the ‘foundational crisis of mathematics’, which Against the Day establishes as producing a mathematics that is ‘an-archistic’ in terms of its loss of foundations and that forms part of the exploration of anarchism across the twentieth century. This chapter demonstrates the centrality of mathematics to Against the Day’s renegotiations of possibilities and responsibilities of the political and the literary, and it shows how the novel’s reimagining of modernism illustrates the relevance of mathematics in developing twenty-first-century responses to the crisis of modernity.

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