the Translation Group at Sultan Qaboos University was formed in 2002. However, it is .... The 19th century witnessed in Egypt a renaissance of Arabic literature.
Literary Translation in Oman: Issues and Perspectives
Edited by Dr. Rahma Al-Mahrooqi and Badr Al-Jahwari The Department of English Sultan Qaboos University
Literary Translation in Oman Issues and Perspectives
Copyright © 2011 by Rahma Al-Mahrooqi, Badr Al-Jahwari, The Omani Society for Writers and Literati, and Contributors
All rights for this book are reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright owners.
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Contents Acknowledgements The Symposium
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Literature and Translation in the Arab World: A Survey
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Literary Translation in Oman: An Overview
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Theoretical and National Bearings of Translation: Arabic Translations of Balushi Poetry as a Case in Point
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Translating Spoken Literature: The Shehri Language as an Example
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The Role of the Translation Group in Oman’s Literary Translation Movement
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The Responses of Omani Female College Students to Translated Literature
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Old Wives’ Tales: Oman’s undervalued verbal arts
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Translating Modern Omani Poetry into English and French: Current Strategies and Future Paradigms
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Beacon: A Supplement Focusing on the Translation of Omani Literature
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Acknowledgements This book would not have been possible without the contribution of several key organizations and individuals to whom we owe a great deal. We are indebted to the Omani Society for Writers and Literati for suggesting the idea of the symposium, sponsoring it, and supporting it wholeheartedly. We thank both the President of the Association, Sadiq Jawad, and the Vice-President, Dr. Saeeda Khatir, for their support. In particular, we are grateful for Dr. Khatir’s inspiration and unrelenting encouragement, especially when it came to finding a sponsor for the book’s publication and printing. Thanks are due to Sultan Qaboos University, Oman’s premier higher education institution, for hosting the event. We owe many thanks also to Dr. Abdulgabbar Al-Sharafi and Dr. Mohammed Habib Kahlawi of the English Department, and Dr. Al Hawas Masoudi of the Arabic Department, SQU for the valuable feedback they gave us on the Arabic section of the book. We are also grateful to Professor Adrian Roscoe of SQU’s English Department for his thorough and invaluable feedback on the English section of the book; also to Mr. Steve Mahony, from SQU’s Language Centre, for his work on this section. We are of course most indebted to the contributors of the articles and to the translators who worked hard at making the articles available to our readers in both Arabic and English. The translators were Ayesha Al-Habsi, Yaqoob Al-Mufaraji, Salim AlKindi, Jamila Al-Seyabi, Khalid Al-Kaabi, Sabah Al-Belushi, and Badria Al-Barashdi. A final word of thanks goes to all those who encouraged us and provided us with any kind of help, no matter how small. Rahma and Badr
The Symposium Dr. Rahma Al-Mahrooqi Badr Al-Jahwary The Department of English, Sultan Qaboos University
Translation, general or literary, is not a nascent discipline in Oman. The significant contributions in the 1960s of the Omani translator Mohammed Amin Abdullah are well known. However, translation did suffer a setback here during the last thirty years of the 20th century, though fortunately it staged a comeback when the Translation Group at Sultan Qaboos University was formed in 2002. However, it is surprising to notice that over the past eight years, since the inception of the Group, there has been little translation of Omani literature, except for a few timid attempts resulting from purely individual initiatives. Despite seven translation symposiums, plus conferences and other activities, the idea of translating Omani literature rarely arose. To make up for the absence of such an important stream of activity, and to highlight such pertinent but controversial issues as multilingualism in Oman, the idea of this symposium emerged. Though only a two-day event, it featured a significant number of papers which addressed these issues. The symposium was divided into two main parts. The first discussed the translation of Omani literature into Arabic. This surprised those unaware that much Omani literature is not actually written in Arabic but in other local languages like Belushi and Shehri and in other world languages, examples being Sayyida 5
Salma Al Said’s Memoirs of an Arabian Princess, originally written in German, and Dr Mohammed Al Mahrooqi’s An Omani Adventurer in the Jungles of Africa, which was originally written in Swahili. The symposium’s second part discussed the contemporary issue of translating Omani literature into other languages, mainly English and French, and the linguistic, social, and cultural dilemmas faced by the translator when attempting to make the Omani literary production available for foreign readers. This book documents the eight papers presented at the symposium. Since the issue of translation interests Arab and foreign readers alike, we have translated all the papers from Arabic into English, or vice versa, in the hope that this bilingual book will serve as a guide for those interested in what is more a national cause rather than merely a cultural and linguistic one.
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Literature and Translation in the Arab World: A Survey Dr. Rahma Al-Mahrooqi Badr Al-Jahwary The Department of English, Sultan Qaboos University
Abstract: This chapter aims to survey the history of literature and translation in the Arab world, giving special attention to literary translation. It builds a broad basis for its topic in an attempt to situate the translation movement within Arab history and the Arab literary context. The paper also focuses on different Arab literary genres, famous writers, and important issues related to translation, thus setting the scene for the papers that follow. Introduction Pre-Islamic Arab Eloquence Long before the Islamic era, Arabs were well known for their oral literature and eloquence. Their poetry and prose traveled throughout the Arabian Peninsula and far beyond. The poetry included epics up to a thousand lines long that told of tribal honor, generosity, courage, pride and love. While the fame of male poets often eclipsed that of the females, there were a few women whose poetry and eloquence were well recognized. Among these were al-Khansaa (575-664 AD) and Leila Al-Akhyaliah. Indeed, besides being a poet, Al-Khansaa was a literary critic who attended Suq Okaz (Okaz Market) in Mecca, the biggest literary event of the time, and even learnedly critiqued the poetry of male poets (Shaaban, 1993). 7
Although poetry was the dominant and most respected literary form in the pre-Islamic Arab world, prose was also abundant, including eloquent speeches and countless stories told to teach and entertain. As in all ancient civilizations, storytelling and folktales, therefore, were not foreign to the Arab world and literature as a whole was passed down orally from one generation to another. Arab women played a significant role in preserving the oral tradition as they in a vocational sense had charge of it and felt it a duty to hand it on. They were also the heroines of such epics as Sirat Al-Amirah Dhat Al-Himmah. Issuing from pre-literate societies, pre-Islamic literature naturally stayed mostly oral until long after the advent of Islam. Vast quantities of oral literature survived, partly because it depended on and actively encouraged memorization. Islam and Arab Literature At the dawn of Islam, not all poetry was looked upon favorably, though verse that served a good purpose and portrayed excellent human qualities was cherished. Poets like Hassan Bin Thabit, who was Islam’s poet, were encouraged and acclaimed by God’s Apostle, Mohammed. As is well known, Islam, with its clear message to Muslims and all humanity to seek learning and enlightenment, brought literacy to Arabia. Significantly, Prophet Mohammed, as a price for their freedom, asked literate prisoners of war to each teach ten Muslims how to read and write. During the prophet’s life the Holy Qur’an itself was recorded on different types of materials such as leather patches, animal bones, and slates of rock or stone. It was, therefore, the first book of any great length ever recorded in Arabic. The spread of Islam then meant the spread of literacy and the recording of much oral tradition in Arabic. In addition, during the Umayyad era, a vibrant translation movement was begun. Haroun Al-Rasheed, and then 8
Al-Mamoun, the Abbasid caliphs, (Munday, 2001) encouraged translation and employed people of different religions to translate ancient Greek books on philosophy and medicine into Arabic. The establishment of Dar Al-Hikmah, the House of Wisdom, in the days of Al-Mamoun, signalled the importance that this caliph accorded to translation. This translation movement lasted for about three decades during which major works of literature, medicine and science were translated into Arabic. (The Third Arab Conference for Translation, 2009) Gradually, new literary genres began to appear in Muslim lands, such as Muqamat, excellent examples of which are those written by Al-Hamathani, animal fables, such as those recorded by IbnAl-Muqafa, proverbs, parables and moral tales. Unfortunately, much of this Arabic written, and oral literature remained unknown to the outside world, though this was bound to change with the help of translation. When Antoine Galland published his English translation of A Thousand and One Nights in 1707, he turned the gaze of the western world towards the Arab literary tradition. The West was profoundly influenced by the exotic and mystic nature of the stories told in that ancient book. The controversial image of the violent, barbaric Arab, who is also courageous, adventurous and honorable, preoccupied the minds of western readers for a long time thereafter and created a stereotypical idea of the Muslim and Arab world. New forms of Arab literature, such as translated Arabic novels and short stories, were often read subsequently with a frame of reference based on A Thousand and One Nights. The Renaissance of Arab Literature The 19th century witnessed in Egypt a renaissance of Arabic literature. Contact with Europe and the education of some notable individuals in countries like France brought new ideas into the 9
Arab world and exposed people to seminal books published in foreign languages. Rifa’a Al-Tahtawi (Jacquemond, 2004) and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra were pioneers who translated into Arabic some major western literature. Indeed, Jabra’s translation of Shakespeare is still in use in many Arab universities, including Oman’s own Sultan Qaboos University. According to Jacquemond (2004:119), translation was “an essential commonplace of the Arab renaissance, the nahDa; and it is most significant that Tahtawi, an emblematic figure of the nahDa, was primarily a translator. Commanded by the Khedives, he translated and had translated textbooks between 1830 and 1840, legal codes in the 1870s, and made a decisive contribution to the first modernization of the Arabic language. Since that time onwards, language and translation have been central issues in Arab culture.” It is also important to acknowledge here the tremendous efforts of Father Anastas Al-Karmali and Abdul-Maseeh Wazeer in Arabizing many foreign words. In a reverse process, the translation from Arabic into European languages of scientific and philosophical texts began in the West soon after the mediaeval Crusades. Literary translation, however, began much later following the translation of A Thousand and One Nights. Much later still, modern forms of Arabic literature, such as the novel, short story, and oral verse, began to be translated in the 1930s. (Jacquemond, 2004). Bias, rather than literary merit, was sometimes the basis for choosing which works to translate and make available to the western reader (Faiq, 2004). Publishers were motivated by profit and knew that a book too foreign for the western reader might not sell well. Sometimes works were appropriated or reduced to make them closer to the culture of the target reader (Carbonell, 2004). In the words of Leeuwen (2004: 24), “Ideologically inspired translation programs aimed at presenting a faithful survey of Arab-Islamic culture are not likely to appear since they are, firstly, incompatible with the book 10
market and, secondly, contrary to intellectual conceptions, which would not accept the possibility of such representation. Selection criteria for translation are inspired by commercial considerations rather than didactic purposes, and programs to translate texts that are commercially unfeasible usually fail.” This bias, of course, could lead to misunderstanding, forming new ideas about the Arab Muslim world or strengthening old stereotypical ideas about it (Ibid). Despite these drawbacks facing literary translation, it remains an important way to bridge gaps between cultures and to exchange information about their norms, customs and traditions. The following observations discuss the most popular Arabic literary genres and works which have been translated. The Novel Novel writing can be traced to the times of Ibn Tufail and Ibn Al-Nafis, who began the tradition of philosophical novels. However, the truly modern novel first appeared in the early 1900s. According to Shaaban (1993), the first Arabic novel, Badi’awa Fouad, was written by a Lebanese woman, Afifa Karam, in 1906 and published by Al-Huda newspaper in New York! Among the most prominent Arab novelists from the previous generation were Georgy Zeidan, Khalil Gibran, Mikha’il Na’ima, and Mohammed Husayn Haykal, whose novel Zainab some consider the first truly modern Arabic novel (Shaaban, 1993), though others would choose Adraa Denshawi by Muhammed Tahir Haqqi. The most famous Arab novelist remains the late Naguib Mahfoudh, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. Other male novelists include Elias Khouri, Abbas Mahmoud Al-Aqqad, and Taha Hussain, among many others. The first translations of novels written by males appeared in the 1930s (Jacquemond, 2004) and the writer most translated was Naguib Mahfoudh. It is important 11
to note here that these first translated novels were influenced by western ideology and presented binary oppositions of west vs. east and modernity vs. backwardness. (Jacquemond, 2004). Arab women novelists include May Ziade, Fadwa Touqan, Suhayr Al-Qalamawi, Nawal Al-Sadawi, Hana Mina, Hoda Barakat, Alifa Rifaat, Ulfat Adlibi, Widad Sakkakini, Siba al-Harz, Samar Al-Moqren, Zeinab Hifni, Olwia Sobh, Raja Bakriyah, Ahlam Mustaghanimi, Badriya Al-Bashar, and Raja Al-Sanea. Indeed, novels by young Arab women are now what translators and publishers seem most to favour, in particular those by such controversial authors as Nawal Saadawi. Plays After novels came plays in the 20th century from the pens of such dramatists as Tawfiq Al-Hakim and Yusuf Al-Ani. Translations of their work started appearing in the West after 1930 (Jacquemond, 2004). Short Stories Modern short stories in Arabic appeared last on the literary scene and thus have a relatively brief history. This genre largely emulates its counterpart in English, its very name, “qissah qassirah”, being a literal translation of “short story” through the first influences came from France and Russia through Turkish, the language of the then ruling Ottoman empire. Despite its novelty in the Arab world, it has been rapidly gaining prominence. In fact, in her Arab Women Writers: An Anthology of Short Stories, Dalya Cohen-Mor claims that the short story is currently “the most popular form of creative writing in the Arab world.” (p.2) Though some critical opinion suggests that male writers pioneered this form, it is very difficult accurately to trace its history, since the pace and pattern of its 12
development have varied markedly from country to country. In 1988, an anthology of Iraqi short stories written in the 1930s was belatedly published. It included work by Mahmoud Ahmed AlSayyid, Anwar Shaoul, Dhul-Noun Ayyoub, Abdul-Haq Fadhil, and many others (Altoma, 1997). Iraqi women published such work in the 1930s too, with Suhayla Dawud Salman being the first woman to publish an anthology of short stories in 1937 (Altoma, 1997). Writers from across the Arab world have written short stories. Among the most renowned male authors are Mahmoud Teymour, Zakariya Tamer, Ibrahim Al-Faqih, Fuad Al-Takarali and Naguib Mahfouz, and they have used the form to highlight important societal issues such as the relationship between men and women, husbands and wives, and diverse aspects of the status of women. Though many Arab women have published novels and short stories since the late 1930s, compared with their male counterparts they have remained marginalized. Only recently have their novels been sought after, translated and promoted internationally though these remain fewer than those by male writers (Cohen-Mor, 2005). Among the most prominent female short story writers are Nawal Al-Saadawi, Radwa Ashour, Suhayr Al-Qalamawi, Ulfat Al-Idilbi, Hanan Al-Shaykh, Layla Al-Uthman, Latifa AlZayyat, Alia Mamdouh, Daisy Al-Amir, Salwa Bakir, Fawzia Rashid, Mona Rajab, Fadhila Faruq, Hadiya Sa’id and Ramziya Abbas Al-Aryani (Cohen-Mor, 2005, Allen, 2006). These women provide glimpses into their world as Arab females and write about issues related to growing up in Arabia, male-female relationships, marriage, customs and values, childbearing and self-fulfillment. Some, writing about controversial issues relating to love and sexuality (e.g. Hanan Al-Shaykh, Nawal Al-Saadawi, Suhayr Al-Tall, and Layla Ba’alabkki), have faced both public and governmental opposition, with their books being banned in some Arab countries. 13
Arab women writers have also received much attention from western audiences due to the West’s curiosity about the “unimaginable world of Arab women” (Mureen Harington, 1994; cited in Amireh, 1997, p. 4). As a result, many of their works have been translated into English and other western languages. Amireh (1997) states that “the effort to translate Arab women writers into English is now more systematic” (p. 2), with publishers like Garnet, and translation projects like that directed by the Palestinian poet, editor and translator Salma Khadra, making ever more literature by Arab women available in English (ibid). In her Arab Women Writers: An Anthology of Short Stories, Dalya Cohen-Mor (2005) included sixty translated short stories written by forty Arab women who come from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordon, Iraq, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain. In Oman, some female short story writers have been translated into English through the efforts of Beacon, a weekly publication sponsored by the Omani Society for Writers and Literati. Generally, in these short stories, there is a “predominance of female characters who also figure as the heroines. By contrast, there are few heroes, and most male characters are either marginalized or presented in a negative light.” (Cohen-Mor, 2005, p. 22). Casting males in inferior roles and portraying them negatively represent the female writers’ reaction against male predominance in their societies. The West’s interest in Arab women’s writing has been viewed with skepticism in Arab literary circles. Even some female Arab writers share this skepticism. According to Amireh (1997), certain critics question the innocence of this interest. For example, they question the attention that Nawal Al-Saadawi’s writing has received. Summarizing their position, she writes, “they argue that she is acclaimed not so much because she champions women’s rights but because she tells the western readers what they want to 14
hear. In this view, the West welcomes her feminist critique of Arab culture because it confirms the existing stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims as backward, misogynist and violently oppressive.” (p 2). Amireh explains this view saying that “Historically, the West’s interest in Arab women is part of its interest in and hostility to Islam. This hostility was central to the colonialist project, which cast women as victims to be rescued from Muslim male violence. The fixation on the veil, the harem and polygamy made Arab women symbols of a region and a religion that were at once exotic, violent, and inferior.” (p.3) Despite the skepticism, there is much to be gained from the translation of a broad range of material. Diversity, according to Amireh, “guards against stereotyping and pigeon-holing.” (p. 5) In addition, translators should not only translate literature, but also literary criticism. Furthermore, western audiences need to engage in objective discussion of the literature, its context and culture, so that prejudice is avoided and stereotyping minimized. (Ibid) Translating Arab Poetry As mentioned earlier, in keeping with literary chronology in most societies, poetry might well be the oldest form of Arabic literature, and it is no surprise that numerous Arab poets have achieved great fame. In discussing the translation of poetry, however, one has to note that it is the hardest literary genre to translate, since the translator faces complex linguistic, literary, aesthetic, and socio-cultural problems. In terms of linguistic challenges, the translator must find target language word equivalents, use words that collocate, and avoid obscure syntactical structures. As for literary and aesthetic problems, poetic and metaphorical structures are sometimes hard to translate because translation may fail to convey clearly the images intended by the author. Socio-cultural problems are related to expressions that contain culturally-bound 15
words. It is especially difficult to translate these and the translator needs to use different techniques to avoid misrepresentation of the ideas (Newmark, 1981, 1988). Familiar examples of translated poets include Ibn Al-Rumi, Jubran Khalil Jubran, Al-Mutananbi, Al-Khalil bin Ahmed, Al-Buhturi, and Nizar Qabbani. Arab female poets in translation include the Lebanese Etel Adnan, and the American-Lebanese Dima Hilal, Safaa Fathi, Amal Moussa, Fatma Qandeel and Dunya Mikhail. The poetry of these women demonstrates imagination, creativity, articulateness and complexity. Among much else, it addresses issues related to identity, family, and the aspirations of Arab females. Handle’s book, The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology, contains poetry by female poets translated into English. The collection presents the voices of these women to the world and showcases their lucid poetry and diverse creative talents (Handle, 2007). The Current State of Translation in the Arab World As stated above, the Arab-Muslim world engaged in extensive translation in early Islamic times when Muslim civilization was at it’s zenith and especially during the period from the 8th to the 10th century. When this civilization declined, translation followed suit, though a reverse translation process began in the 11th and 12th centuries when Europe started translating from Arab books on medicine, science, and philosophy. Then, during the NahDa period, translation was revived in an attempt to learn from Western ways and sciences. By contrast, the West then began to be interested in the literature of the Arab and Muslim world after the translation of A Thousand and One Nights, which influenced the thinking of Europe about the Arabs for many centuries to come. In 1827, a new renaissance dawned in Egypt for translation into Arabic under the rule of Mohammed Ali Basha - with the inauguration of the first modern medical school teaching in Arabic. However, 16
the language of instruction was changed to English when Britain colonized Egypt in 1882 (Al-Khayat, 2009). Around that same period, and especially in the early 1900s, many Arab countries were under western rule, which stifled translation efforts and insisted on European languages, mainly French, English and Italian, being used in both government and education. However, when Arab nations sought their freedom and independence, they recognized the importance of Arabic as a national symbol of unity and identity. Thus, important institutions, such as Al-Zaytoona Grand Mosque in Tunisia and Al-Qarawiyoon Grand Mosque in Morocco, played a significant role in preserving the language and educating the public in it. Other civil institutions and groupings, such as the Association of Algerian Muslim Scholars, established in 1931, made it a mission to protect the Arabic language. Arabs themselves supported this by donating money to keep such organizations and associations alive and well (Saadi, 2009). Still, within the contemporary Arab scene, many see translation as weak and insignificant. In 2008, UNESCO, for instance, claimed that the Arab world, which has more than 270 million people, translated no more than 474 books into Arabic (Qutb, 2009). However, this perception, though prevalent, is inaccurate. What propagates and aggravates it is the apparent divorce between translation and press propaganda - a state of affairs that must be addressed (Ibid). In reality, translation activity is picking up steadily and an increasing number of countries and institutions are supporting it. In Egypt, the General Authority of the Book and the Supreme Council of Culture are making great contributions to translation into Arabic. Also, one cannot ignore the leading role that the Arabic Association for Translation in Beirut is playing in supporting translation from and into Arabic. Similarly, the Supreme Institute of Translation, established by the League of Arab States in Algeria, has contributed greatly to translation across the Arab world. And to establish a support network among 17
themselves, professional translators have organized themselves and established the Union of Arab Translators. Arab universities and colleges are now offering majors in translation (Ibid). They commission much translation from Arabic into English and viceversa since they communicate with higher education institutions worldwide. Thus, the overall translation scene is not as bleak as some claim, though it is not yet as strong as a concerned translator would like it to be. Efforts must be better organized and communication networks and databases of translated works across the Arab world need to be established and well maintained. Government support has to be secured, while universities and higher education institutions generally should encourage student associations and societies that seek to foster translation within their institutions and in their countries at large. In Oman, translation is witnessing a definite development through the efforts of many academic institutions, associations, publishing house, and individual translators. In a sense, translation in Oman mirrors that in the other Arab countries and this book seeks to shed light on it. It includes the contributions of different professionals who have been engaged in work involving translation of literature in its different facets and genres. Conclusion Our comments have been offered as a species of prologue to the rest of the book and especially to establish an overall framework for it by surveying the historical development of literature and translation in the Arab world and suggesting how intimately connected they are. Literature encompasses human experience and emotions, while translation conveys these to people of different tongues. Such a transfer contributes to building an interconnected world where the universality of human experience 18
is shared and appreciated. Like literary production, all translation efforts in Arab countries must be supported, because translation is a mark of advancement and signifies the pride countries take in their national languages and their literary creativity. Translation encourages cooperative transaction among countries at a time when competition is rife in our globalized world. Thus, efforts to increase translation in the Arab world should be highly regarded, encouraged and supported. References Al-Khayat, M. (2009). Plenary Speech. Third Arab Conference on Translation. Muscat, 12-13 December 2009. Altoma, S.(1997). Iraq’s Modern Arabic Literature in English Translation: A Preliminary Bibliography. Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), Fall, 1997. Amireh, A. (1997). Arab Women Writers’ Problems and Prospects. Cabonell, O. (2004). Exoticism, Identity and Representation in Western Translation from Arabic. In S. Faiq (ed.) Cultural Encounters In Translation From Arabic (pp. 26-39). New York: Multilingual Matters Ltd. Cohen-Mor, D. (2005). Arab Women Writers: An Anthology of Short Stories. New York: State University of New York Press. Faiq, S. (2004). The Cultural Encounter in Translation from Arabic. In S. Faiq (ed.) Cultural Encounters In Translation From Arabic (pp. 1-13). New York: Multilingual Matters Ltd. Handle, N. (ed.) (2007). The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology. Indiana: Dog Ear Publishing. Jacquemond, R. (2004). Towards an Economy and Poetics of Translation from and into Arabic. In S. Faiq (ed.) Cultural Encounters in Translation from Arabic (pp. 117-127). New York: Multilingual Matters Ltd. Leeuwen, R. (2004). The Cultural Context of Translating Arabic Literature. 19
In S. Faiq (ed.) Cultural Encounters in Translation from Arabic (pp. 14-25). New York: Multilingual Matters Ltd. Munday, J. (2001). Introducing Translation Studies. Theories and Applications. New York: Routledge. Newmark, P. (1981). Approaches to Translation. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Newmark, P. (1988). Textbook of Translation. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Qutb, H. (2009). The Reality of Translation in the Arab Institutions and Printing Presses. Third Arab Conference on Translation. Muscat, 12-13 December 2009. Saadi, U. (2009). Arabicisation in the Arab Maghreb as a Way to Encounter Francophonization. A Lecture given at Al-Tamimi Institution in Tunisia. Shaaban, B. (1993). Arab Women Writers: “Are There Any?” Retrieved from http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0293/9302036.htm. Accessed on July 1 2010. The Third Arab Conference on Translation (2009). Muscat, Sultanate of Oman.
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Literary Translation in Oman: An Overview By Abdullah Al-Harrasi Translated by Badria Al-Barashdi The Language Centre Sultan Qaboos University and Dr. Rahma Al-Mahrooqi The Department of English, Sultan Qaboos University
Literary translation is one of the most important and complex types of translation for a number of reasons. Perhaps the most prominent are the difficulties and obstacles arising from the translation process itself, something I will be discussing at the beginning of my talk. In addition, there is an overlap between the cultural and literary levels that render this kind of translation particularly sensitive. More profound and dangerous issues are involved than just translating a piece of literature from one language into another, among which are the cultural identity of nations, the survival or death of languages, and the role of the global cultural powers and their choice of what to translate and how. In addition, among many other issues, there is the impact of the literary translation itself on the recipient culture. I will try in this short talk to uncover the nature of literary translation in Oman by reviewing its various and most important aspects. It is worth taking you back to the year 1835, when the United States sent a delegation to Zanzibar, headed by a merchant and diplomat named Edmond Roberts, in order to negotiate a trade and friendship treaty with Sayyid Said bin Sultan, who, however, had left Zanzibar for Muscat by the time the American delegation arrived. Mr. Roberts then sailed on to Muscat aboard a ship called ‘The Peacock’ to meet Sayyid Said. However, the Americans didn’t know the Omani maritime routes or the Omani coast and 21
so ended up off Masira Island and eventually grounded their ship on its coral reefs. Despite the sailors’ efforts to free the ship by reducing its weight and trying other ways common at that time, the vessel remained aground. What made the situation worse were the attempts by armed Bedouins to approach the ship by boat to loot it, or so it appeared. The American delegation decided to use one of the longboats to sail to Muscat and call for Sayyid Said’s help. When Sayyid Said received notice of what had happened, he immediately sent an Omani ship called ’Al Sultani’ - not ‘Sultanah’ as mentioned in some contemporary sources. He also sent a letter to the governor of Sur to warn the Bedouins against attacking the American guests. This prompt help from Sayyid Said had a resounding impact on Omani–American relations. The story of the Omani ship that helped the Americans appeared in many American newspapers and magazines and was also mentioned by American explorers who visited Oman. However, a notable way of expressing thanks to Sayyid Said for his help was shown by a clergyman named Fetch W. Tailor, who sailed to Oman on ‘The Colombia’ in 1838 with a delegation to express in person American gratitude to the ruler and to all Omanis. The cleric himself wrote a wonderful poem of thanks. What is important to stress here is the issue of translation. That poem written for Sayyid Said was given to Sayyid Thuwaini bin Said, as the former was known in Zanzibar at that time, and was translated by a prominent translator named Said bin Khalfan Al-Busaidi. It was he who subsequently translated the trade and friendship treaty between Oman and the United States. He was also the special translator for Sayyid Said bin Sultan. Although we don’t have the translation of the American poem, it remains the first documented evidence of literary translation in Oman, as far as I know.
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Nowadays, Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) plays a major role in the area of literary translation. I remember that I once translated an English poem into Arabic and that it was recited during one of the university’s literary nights as an activity organized by the Al Khaleel bin Ahmed Literary Society. I believe that it was the first poem translated by a university student in Oman and then recited during a literary event. Later, the Translation Society was founded at SQU, which took local literary translation many steps forward. Soon university students started publishing translated literary texts in Omani newspapers and magazines. Later, a number of literary supplements devoted to translation appeared. Also, some students published their translated work in other important cultural outlets like Nizwa magazine. In addition, a translation society was formed at Muscat’s Cultural Club, though sadly it died out soon after its establishment. Translations of Omani Texts from Other Languages Many literary texts have been translated and published in Oman, a number of them by Omani writers who wrote in English. An example is the work by Mohammed Al Mahrooqi, who translated from Swahili the diaries of an Omani merchant named Hamed Al Margibi. It was called The Adventures of an Omani in the African Jungles, being first published among Nizwa magazine’s books and later by the Al Jamal Publishing House. Also, a poetry collection by Nasra Al Adawi entitled Between my Ribs was translated into Arabic by the Translation Society and published in 2004. In addition, the society translated an anthology by the late Ali Mahdi Jafar and published it in 2010. The Translation of Literary Texts Related to Oman A number of translated works from different languages especially English - on topics related to Oman have appeared. 23
For example, the Ministry of Heritage and Culture published Al Qaisi’s translation of the memoirs of Sayyida Salma bint Said bin Sultan, which first appeared in German. Also translated, by Abdullah Al Harrasi, are a number of literary texts written by explorers who visited Oman, like Rothenberger and Ticknor, who wrote their diaries during the two voyages they took to Oman on ‘The Peacock’ in 1833 and 1835. He also translated a text written by Thesiger about the experience of crossing The Empty Quarter, a work published in one of Nizwa magazine’s issues. Hilal Al Hajri for his part translated a number of poems and literary texts on travel literature by authors who wrote about Oman or mentioned the country in texts on other topic. Translating Omani Work into Other Languages As far as I know, some Omani literary texts have been translated into other languages. Abdullah Al Harrasi and Anton Shamas, for example, have translated poems by Saif Al Rahbi’s poems that were published in a number of issues of the magazine Banipal, which also has published translations by other Omani poets, among them Mohammed Al Harthi. The magazine has also published a translation by Ibtihaj Al Harthi, Mohammed Al Harthi’s daughter, of a text written by Jokha Al Harthi. As for publishing complete books, the novel The Taste of Patience by Mohammed Eid Al Auraimi was translated by Saleh Al Khamiasi and published in 2004. Omani literary texts have also been translated into languages other than English, one example being a work translated into Polish by Barbra Picolsca. Other examples show Omani texts being translated into languages of the Indian subcontinent, including translations from the poet Said Al Saqlawi by an Indian scholar, Dr Basheer, who formerly worked in one of Oman’s Bahwan companies.
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Other Indian translations have appeared recently of some of Saif Al Rahbi’s poems and I would also like to mention a Russian translation of Bawh Salma (The Divulgence of Salma) written by Mohammed Saif Al Rahbi. Literary Translations from Omani Translators Concerning translation from world literature at large, in 2006 the novelist Mohammed Eid Al Auraimi published his translation of Animal Farm by George Orwell. Also, Dr Ihsan Sadiq Al Lawati translated stories from Persian in a book entitled A Window onto Modern Persian Short Stories, published in 2008. In the same year, SQU’s Translation Society published two books in Lebanon on translated literature with the titles Lottery Game: Stories from American Literature and The Naive: Stories from World Literature. In 2010, the translator Zuwainah Khalfan published a translated story from English called ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’. Translation Projects As a way of raising awareness of the importance of literary translation, various activities have been conducted, especially by the Translation Society at SQU which carried out a number of literary translation projects throughout consecutive years, such as the Chinese literature project, the Indian literature project, the African literature project, and then the children’s literature, science fiction and Omani folk literature projects. Means of Publishing Literary Translations Translated work can be published through many outlets, such as public cultural supplements like ‘Shurufat’ , ‘Ashriah’ and ‘Aqasi’, where Omani and non-Omani translators publish their work. Also, there are specialized translation supplements like ‘The Bridge’, 25
‘Beacon’ and ‘Readings’ and cultural magazines like Nizwa’ and ‘Al Thakafia’. Here, it is worth mentioning translations by Ahmed Shafee that have been regularly broadcast in a program called ‘Sounds from Here and There’ since 2006. In this program also, a number of international poems have been recited. In addition, a program was broadcast in 2008 called ‘Other Writings’, which presented translations of dialogues, literary texts and articles. Finally, some translators use blogs to publish their work. Literary Translation Contests Literary translation in Oman has been enhanced and encouraged by competition awards, the most important of which are SQU’s prize for student creativity, the Cultural Club Prize, that was unveiled two years ago but not yet awarded, and the Literary Club Prize, in the contest for which competitors are asked to translate an English poem into Arabic and an Arabic poem by Sheikh Abdullah Al Khalili into English. Translations between the languages spoken in Oman Oman is considered one of the richest Arab countries in terms of language diversity and this reflects the wealth of the historical experience of Omanis. There are many languages spoken here e.g Arabic, Kamzari, Swahili, Belushi, Zidjali, Sindi or Lawati, Harsosi, Bat’hari, Shahri (also called Jabali), Mahri and Hubyot. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has declared that all these languages, with the exception of Arabic, Belushi and Swahili, are threatened with extinction. Their disappearance would be a cultural disaster because, as I mentioned earlier, languages encompass human experience and express it in the form of oral and written literature, which includes not just short stories, poem and novels but also 26
proverbs, folktales, praise songs, prayers and so forth. Here, I feel compelled to urge our educated people and literati to broaden their vision of culture in general and of literary translation in particular so that it includes inherited tradition which is considered a vital asset in contemporary world culture as well as in modern literature. I also urge an acceleration in documenting everything possible from these languages and especially from their oral literature. I have always called for translation from these languages into Arabic and vice versa because this achieves many goals, the most significant of which is self-knowledge. The Omani national identity is rich and I feel that Omanis need to know one another’s cultural heritage, whether written or oral. Such translation will greatly help in retaining the rich diversity of the nation’s culture. Here, I would like to thank Dr Khalid Al Belushi, who took the initiative to translate some Belushi literature texts into Arabic, and also Mohammed Al Shahri who translated some wonderful texts from Shahri/Jabali. In addition, I want to thank those university students who did translations from Swahili and Sindi / Lawati. It is also worth mentioning an important project conducted by Mr Ali Ahmed Mahash Al Shahri aimed at preserving aspects of Dhofari traditional culture, and in particular his work in translating an enormous number of proverbs from Sharhi/Jabali into Arabic. I think that these scattered translation attempts should be a point of focus and attention. They should be supported and enhanced by a specialized activity aimed at translating folk literature into other non-Arabic languages spoken in Oman. In addition, cultural and scientific activities need to be conducted in order to familiarize people with this literature and to encourage its study.
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Translation into ‘Nabati’ Poetry / ‘People’s Poetry’ Pioneering work in literary translation in Oman that I feel it important to mention is Abdul-Rahman Al Khozaimi’s – though it has aspects that some people might disagree with. He publishes translations of major English verse not into classical Arabic but into ‘Nabati’ (a type of Arabic poetry written in everyday dialect). Among the poems he has translated are ‘The Road Not Taken’ and ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’ by Robert Frost, ‘Because I Could Not Stop for Death’ by Emily Dickinson, and Shakespeare’s famous sonnet ‘Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?’ Conclusion This lecture has not offered a comprehensive overview of the literary translation experience in Oman as that is a matter that requires specialized study. Instead, it has mainly addressed a few important aspects including literary translation’s history, various forms and facets. These include translation from Omani texts written in languages other than Arabic, translation of foreign texts speaking about or associated with Oman, translations of Omani Arabic literature into other languages, and literary translation of international texts done by Omani translators. In addition, the lecture reviewed in a general way translation activities done in Oman, giving examples of projects, competitions and ways of disseminating them to the public. Furthermore, it discussed the issue of inter-translation between different languages spoken in Oman, and called for strengthening this significant movement. Finally, and by way of conclusion, the lecture referred to Abdulrahman Al-Akhzami’s creative experience in translating from international literary texts into colloquial Omani (Arabic) dialect.
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While an in-depth study is required to cover the various aspects of Oman’s literary experience, this lecture reveals its multifacetedness and calls for its support and encouragement by way of translating Omani texts into other languages by Omani translators or through financing other Arabs or institutions to do the job. Also, it might be possible to include translated Omani literary texts in different competitions across the country. Encouraging translation of foreign literary texts written about Oman is bound to enhance and extend literary translation here. However, such translation should not be limited to texts written in English about Oman but should include other foreign texts, especially those written in languages spoken by people with strong historical ties with Oman such as Swahili, Persian, and languages spoken on the Indian continent. Finally, I reiterate my call for the translation of Omani literary texts from Omani non-Arabic languages into Arabic to introduce Arabic-speaking Omanis to the rich literary heritages of these languages as a way of preserving them for future generations. Cultural institutions should take the lead in this and such translations could also be included in various cultural competitions held by Omani institutions around the country.
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Theoretical and National Bearings of Translation: Arabic Translations of Balushi Poetry as a Case in Point By Khalid Al-Belushi Translated by Sabah Al-Belushi The Language Centre, Sultan Qaboos University and Dr. Rahma Al-Mahrooqi The Department of English, College of Arts and Social Sciences Sultan Qaboos University
Introduction Based on national perspectives concerning the Omani identity and theoretical principles around the concepts of translation and poetic discourse, this paper discusses the thesis that Arabic translations of Belushi poetry published during the past five years in two Omani newspaper supplements Shurufat (lit.:- balconies; terraces) and Al-Jisr (lit.:-the bridge),1 could be counted as part of Omani Arabic Literature. The paper is divided into two parts. The first deals with national perspectives – taking into consideration that Omani civilization is based on Arab national identity and Islam as a cultural and educational value, which is not a continental principle or a factor of ethnic identity but a process and an openness to different things and a universal value characterized by wide horizons. This part concludes by appreciating Arabic translation of Belushi poetry and counting it as a reinforcement of the universality of the Omani identity.
1
The author of this paper has translated a lot of Belushi poems; some of which have been published in Oman and in Ash-Shabiba newspapers.
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The second part discusses theoretical bases around two central points, approaching translation conceptually and strategically. The first point demonstrates that Arabic translation of Belushi poetry is inspired by the original and then rewritten in Arabic rather than translated literally. The second point argues that poetic discourse, with its unique lexical organization, violates normal linguistic structures and typical images, which results in a positive ambiguity that expands the scope of semantic/indicative poetry and makes it open to various interpretations. It also goes on to show how translation, in turn, violates this unique organization of poetry, causing it to be read differently from the authentic text. This part, therefore, concludes that the interpretations allowed by the Arabic translations of Belushi poetry originate from the linguistic structures of translation and the reader’s Arabic background and accordingly that these translations must be considered as part of Omani Arabic literature. 1. National Perspectives: This comes from a national vision that the Omani identity is humane in nature with a global dimension, as it is founded on Arabism and Islam as a humane value that goes beyond geographic and ethnic boundaries.
1.1. Arabism and Islam: Two fundamental pillars of the Omani Identity Arab national identity and Islam form the two most important pillars of the Omani identity. Despite the fact that “Arab” refer to an ethnicity and Islam to a religion, they, in practice, reveal a common cultural 31
value. Whatever the essence of this value is, it does not refer to a fixed principle or to a stable, clearly delineated geographic location or to a “pure” and exclusive racial identity. It is, in fact, a cosmopolitan trend, with a universal flavor, and a site where both the familiar and the strange meet, and a pot where different races melt. In other words, it represents a continuous process rather than a final product. By saying this, I am not putting forward a new theory of Arab nationhood; I am rather describing an ever-evolving social reality. If we take a close look at the literature on Arab national identity, we will see that Arabic identity has gone through two decisive, historical stages. The first was represented in the marriage of Ismail the son of Abraham (peace be upon both of them) from the Arabic tribe of Jurhum. This marriage between an Arabic and a non-Arabic tribe was the first spark that resulted in countless generations of Arabs. It is important to note that “the one who was not native speakers of Arabic has become the root for creating the Arabic sense/meaning and for anchoring and grounding it on bigger eternal senses.” (Al-Ghadhami, 2009:121) The second stage of Arab identity presents itself in the emergence of Islam as a global religion in the Arab world. The Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula translated the “universality” of Islam into a tangible reality; they spread it to the neighboring lands and so many ethnicities have become Arabized and, in their turn, had played a major role in spreading Islam and shining the light of Islamic civilization all over the world.
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Calling the first stage “The major phase of Arab identity” and the second “The minor phase of Arab identity”, the Saudi scholar Abdullah Al-Ghadhami says: “This is a great cultural feature from which the nation has benefited historically. This has also served the human race, for if we had stayed on our island, we would have been like the Tamil or Tibetans, a nation constrained and blockaded, if not for the advantage of the great intermix that began with Ismail. Then it was crowned with success by the appearance of Islam, whose most significant feature is being a universal religion” (2009:121). Another researcher called Mohammad Al-Jabri (2005: 41) expands the historical scope of Arab national identity, expressing reservations about taking the Pre-Islam period as the starting point of Arabic culture. He explains that by doing this we are disconnecting Arabic culture from its historical domain, which can be traced back to Old Egyptians, Phoenicians, Assyrians and the Tamazight. All of the above confirms that Arab national identity is a cultural process that spreads both in time and space. This expansion is simply evidence of how vigorous that cultural movement has been and how it benefited from other human races that melted into the Arabs and were shaped to be Arabic. Perhaps because of this, the Palestinian poet and researcher Ezz Ad-Din Al-Munasrah (2004: 232) does not find it strange that Arabs are proud of the Arabism of bin Khaldoun (the first Arab sociologist), Tariq Bin Ziyad (an Arab hero), Abbas bin Firnas (the first Arab aviator) and Ibn Battuta (the most important Arab traveler), even though all of those, says Al-Munasrah, are of Tamazight origin: he finds no conflicts between their cultural Arabic 33
identity and their Tamazight origins. The second pillar of the Omani identity is Islam. It is a universal religion in its vision and message was revealed on Mohammed (peace be upon him) in the Arabian Peninsula in the Arabic language. It, however, is an Arabic humane project in that there is no difference between its Arabism and universality. Each supports the other and is a requirement to ensure its growth. It is vital to emphasize that the Arabism of the Islamic project does not suggest prejudice against a certain race or blood. Nasr Hamed Abu Zaid (2000: 55) says: “This Islamic project, which can be deduced from the scripts, stands and practices of the life of its first founder, is a humane Arabic project. It is certainly a project against tribalism and against any form of prejudice in favor of a race or blood even if it was Arabic. It is a civilized, cultural, humane Arabic project. As far as this reality is realized, the project progresses, but as far as it is neglected, the project also stumbles. The history of these slips in the context of Islam is in fact the history of neglecting that reality.” We can conclude that Islam and Arabism are similar in that they both have a cultural, cosmopolitan value that overcomes all racial and political boundaries. It is no wonder then that most of the names of the brilliant Arab scholars during the golden period of the Islamic Arabic civilization2 are of non-Arab origins such as Al-Bukhari, Abu Al-Hussain Muslim, At-Termedhi, An-Nassa’i, Ibn Majah, Al-Khuwarezmi, Abu Baker Ar-Razi, Abu Al-Hussain, Abu Al-Wafaa’, Ibn Sina, 2
Perhaps the spread of the term “Islamic Arabic Civilization” confirms the Arabism of the Islamic Project and the notion that Arab identity rests on Islam.
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Al-Farabi, Abu Ar-Rayhan Al-Beiruni, and Omar AlKhayyam.
1.2.
Oman: An Example of Islamic Arabic Civilization
The vision that I would like to put forward in this paper is that Oman, historically, culturally and nationwise, both reflects and embodies this cultural value, for the country has constantly welcomed people from different lands. For instance, the tribe of Al-Uzd came to Oman hundreds of years ago from Yemen. Other peoples flocked here from Africa, Baluchistan and India. This ethnic diversity and its scores of human experiences make Omani civilization universal. Further evidence of this universality is that Oman’s modern history has always remained in contact with the world. In the seventeenth century, specifically in 1624, Oman witnessed military and commercial prosperity that turned Muscat into an international port. As a result, Oman’s influence grew to include the coasts of Baluchistan, Iran, India and East Africa, in addition to the coasts of the Arabian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. This sometimes took the form of political influence: Omanis directly controlled cities on the coasts of East Africa and Baluchistan. This contact continued to develop during the rule of Al-Busaid. The Gulf of Oman connected Muscat to the rest of the ports on the Indian Ocean. Omanis sailed to Zanzibar, Gawader, Bombay, Aden and other ports and cities and got to know nations with different traditions. This made them become more open to others and thus tolerance was seen in every aspect of life in 35
Muscat. This also created an environment suitable for investment and commerce and so traders and workers from various places came to the city. The British traveler and explorer Abraham Parson described Muscat at the end of the eighteenth century as a city international in nature. Thanks to the tolerance of the political authorities in Muscat, people of different religious and racial backgrounds coexisted in peace and freely practiced their rituals and ceremonies. (Nicolini, 2004:69). So it was no surprise to see in Muscat diverse communities from Arabia, Faris, Balochistan and India. (Wilkinson, 1987:24) This is, indeed, an embodiment of the universality of Omani civilization. We are at the beginning of the twenty-first century and our country is still a place where many languages coexist. Besides Arabic, which is the language of the Qura’an and Arabism, there are other languages that are connected to Arabic in one way or another, like Swahili3, Belushi4, Lawati and Shehri. The traditions and heritages5 of these languages, in my opinion, could be employed as sources for enriching Omani Arabic culture, provided that they are used responsibly, giving full attention to Arabic and Islam, not as (I repeat) static, concrete variables but as meanings subject to possibilities and interpretations and as a cultural value that renews its efficiency and growth and uses both local and international elements in an 3 4 5
See Al-Kharoosi (1994) regarding Arabic loan words in Swahili. Belushi has countless Arabic loan words that are used after going through linguistic changes. This area has not been dealt with yet and is worthy of academic research. “Heritage” has been used in the plural form “heritages” to emphasize the diversity of the types of heritage.
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age of globalization where everything is becoming connected. I do not believe that employing those traditions to enrich Omani Arabic culture, which is always open to other civilizations, could be a challenge or threat to the Arabic language. Besides being the language of all Omanis, no matter what their linguistic backgrounds are, it is an international language that functions in situations where other languages and dialects in Oman fail. It, too, carries religious, cultural and literal connotations that are too strong to be affected by other local languages and dialects. Based on all this, I believe that Arabic translations of Belushi poetry must be counted as part of Omani Arabic literature, which supports the universality of Omani Arabic culture. In fact, the images and connotations of Belushi poetry can enrich Omani Arabic poetry.
2. Theoretical Perspectives
There are two main points under this sub-heading: the first relates to translation as a concept and strategy whereas the second deals with poetic discourse and how translation affects that discourse. 2.1.
Translation and Translation Strategy
Catford (1965: 20) defines translation as “the process of replacing one text with another in a different language and by using characteristics equivalent to the original”. This definition is similar to that of 37
Pym and Turk (1998: 273). They define it as the ability to transfer meaning from one language into another without any radical change. We can seek the assistance of these theoreticians to use equivalence as a criterion on which translation is based. So, for a text to be classified as translation, it must be equivalent to the original text in its different linguistic features. Abdullah Al-Harrasi (2000: 11) mentions that there are two trends regarding the predisposition of a text to be translated. The first is that the meaning is different in the two languages, which means it cannot be transferred. The second, however, regards the meaning as general and independent of the language, and so can be easily transferred. Such a perspective assumes complete identification between the source (original) text and the target (translated) text, There is no doubt that such identification disregards the functions of both texts and their contexts. It is useful to remember here that Nida (1964:159), who is one of the first theoreticians in the field of the concept of equivalence, notices that the translator must attempt to achieve the closest degree of equivalence. We infer from this that he admits that meaning cannot be completely translated into another language, i.e. seeking the closest degree of equivalence indicates the relativity of the meaning that could be transferred. Taking all that into consideration, I assume that, as the gap of achieving equivalence between the target and source text widens, it is closer to being called a translation. We can use this assumption as a judgment criterion for the strategy that I am adopting in translating 38
Belushi poetry, which is based on two principles: the first is what I call “interpretive engraving”. When I read a poetic text (a poem), I become fascinated by its beauty due to personal aesthetic and intellectual criteria. There is a double process prior to translation. On the one hand, I try to explore the text and, on the other hand, I examine the sentiments, impressions and interpretations that are triggered by the source text. Finally, I try to transfer those impressions and interpretations to Arabic. Some might say that by explaining my strategy I have not really added anything new since every translator transfers what they understand and interpret, whether they are aware of this or not. Indeed, the literature of translation confirms this. For instance, according to Steiner’s (1975) philosophical thesis understanding itself is an act of translation. All this leads me to the second principle, which concerns the nature of the text that I am planning to produce. I do not attempt to translate a text that resembles the source or claims to measure up to it. I aim, however, to produce a literary work that is both artistic and effective on its own. If I feel that, to get this end result, I need to violate the source text, then I would not refrain from adding imagery to the target text which could intensify the impact, nor do I avoid leaving out what I interpret to potentially diminish that effect6. 6
This strategy provokes philosophical and ethical questions. It can be said that what I do is what Venuti (1998: 19) calls “taming” the source texts and submitting them to the culture of the target language. This strategy does not carry a judgmental value on the source texts as much as it tries to reflect an artistic and aesthetic value on my interpretations of those texts.
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Here is the literal translation of a poem written in Belushi by the poet Mubarak Qadhi: أنظروا إلى جثتي ملقاة على الشارع تدوسها المارة كما تدوس اللصوص ال أبه ما دامت حبيبتي تنعم بالحياة Look at my corpse lying on the street People treading on it as they tread on thieves I don’t mind as long as my sweetheart is enjoying life When I read this text, my interpretation was that the poet was challenging the common social discourse and was proudly announcing that he refused to be shaped and molded by prevailing ideological ideas, no matter how strong and dominant they were. I also felt that one maintains one’s individuality regardless of the degree of influence of the socially accepted discourse7. This is the explanation and interpretation that I wanted to transfer artistically to Arabic. The result was the following:
أراني جثة أراني جثة تدوسها بغال وقورة فلتمت الحياة ولتحيا روحي .الحرون
7
The word “sweetheart” in Belushi has many connotations and my interpretation in this text is that “sweetheart” refers to the poet’s unruly soul.
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I Find Myself a Dead Body I find myself a dead body Trodden on by dignified mules So let life die And let my unruly soul live The images of the dignified mules and my obstinate soul and the phrase “So let life die” are all made up by me, but are inspired by the source. I believe they add an artistic and aesthetic touch to my interpretation and thus make it more poetic8. To give another example, I present this next poem by the poet Ghulam Hussain, which is translated literally from Belushi: السحب متجمعة/ الندى يغطي المكان/ الوقت ما يزال صباحا/ ال توقظني من النوم ال توقظني من/ / أنا فوق القمر/ رأيت حلما/ نمت ليلة البارحة/ الوقت ما يزال صباحا/ النوم / يدي في يد حبيبتي/ الوقت ما يزال صباحا/ ال توقظني من النوم/ مع حبيبتي أعطيت قلبي/ الوقت ما يزال صباحا/ ال توقظني من النوم/ فوق الشفاه تلفح الشفاه الوقت ما يزال صباحا/ ال توقظني من النوم/ فليكن هللا معينا لنا/ لحبيبتي Do not wake me up/ It is still morning/ Dew covers the place/ Clouds are gathering/ Do not wake me up/ It is still morning/ I slept last night/ I saw a dream/ I am on the moon/ With me is my sweetheart/ Do not wake me up/ It is still morning/ My hand is in hers/ On lips, lips burn/ Do not wake me up/ It is still morning/ I gave my heart to my lover/ Allah is our helper/ Do not wake me up/ It is still morning
8
I must repeat that this is not a value judgment on the original text as much as it is an attempt to add artistic and aesthetic value to my interpretations of the texts.
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My interpretation of this text was that the poet was intoxicated by what was happening and was trying to keep away from what could divert him from this state of intoxication. I wanted to transfer this literary sentiment with a tenderness and delicacy that the Arabic reader could savor. Based on my understanding of the artistic taste of the Arabic recipient, I came up with this: ٌ ليلة ث ِملة ُ ُ الرقيق البلبل أيّها علي قليال ّ ِرق ْ داح الص ِ ُّ كف عن النوم ال توقظني من ِ الصباح النديّة هذي ّ في ساعة َأناش ُد َك هللا ِ ُ البلبل أيّها ال توقظني ُ رأيت في منامي فقد ُ ْإنني كنت على القمر ْمع قمر ْنهر من الجمر ٍ نسبحُ في في ليل ٍة َشبقة بيضاء ُ ُ َّخل َع ْت فيها الس وزرها حب المهووسة َ َ على أرض ذبل لسانُها من الظمأ ٍ فحبلت بالنّدى ُ ُ الرقيق البلبل أيها ّ علي قليال ّ رق ْ الصداح ّ كف عن في اللحظ ِة الطريّة هذي ّ لحظ ِة صباح ً ضيفا على حل ٍ .ليل ٍة ث ِملة
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An Intoxicated Night O gentle nightingale Be a little soft Stop singing Do not wake me up At this dewy morning hour I plead with you O nightingale Do not wake me up For I’ve had a dream That I was on the moon Along with a moon Swimming in a river of embers In a lustful white night When the infatuated clouds undressed On a land withered with thirst And became pregnant by the dew O gentle nightingale Be a little soft Stop singing At this tender moment A morning moment that came as a guest Of an intoxicated night The intoxicated night, the river of embers, the gently singing nightingale, the call upon the nightingale to quit singing, the tender moment, the infatuated clouds, and the lustful night – these are all my own images that I created to express what the source text had stirred in me.. 43
It goes without saying that what I am doing is an act of rewriting the original Belushi poems. Put in another way, I seek to impart a “literary” and “artistic” value to my interpretations. I do not set out to achieve the closest degree of equivalence to the source text. Indeed, I pay no allegiance to the source text and would deviate from it if that (I deem) leads to producing an “effective” poetic text. Based on this, and according to the definition of translation mentioned earlier, the texts that I produce are not, in the final analysis, translations, but (rewritten) artistic texts on their own. Though inspired by the original texts, my interpretations and the resultant texts are guided by my artistic taste and values that stem from Arabic culture and that I have developed from readings of Arab poets such as AlHallaj, Ibn Arabi, Abu Muslim Al-Bahlani, Saif ArRahbi, Adonis, Al-Maghout, Salah Abd As-Sabour, and the Arabic translations of Hafedh Shirazi, and Jalal Ad-Din Ar-Rumi, all of whom hold a unique place in Arabic culture. The notion that my interpretations originate from my Arabic language and culture lends support to my thesis that such translations should be considered as part of Omani Arabic literature. 2.2.
Poetic Discourse and the Effect of Translation
Poetic discourse characteristically differs from any other discourse in two features. First, it derives its meanings from the inspiration initiated by artistic images, uncommon vocabulary, linguistic structures, and often from violating the rules of language. Second, contrary to other kinds of discourse that rely on external context to clarify certain points, poetic discourse is cut 44
off from any external context9. It is a discourse that refers to nothing, but represents a world by itself. Since readers of different cultural, social and linguistic backgrounds bring life to this world, the shadows and connotations reflected and spread by poetic discourse will vary. Mahmoud Ameen Al-‘Aalem (2001: 64) says that “our creative taste and indicative, semantic interpretations of the poetry of Abu Al-‘Alaa’ AlMa’arri, Abu Tamam, or Ibn Ar-Rumi in our time are different from those of their time or other times. Indeed, something is relatively shared, but there is always something creatively new. Creativity is renewed according to the renewal of critical taste and interpretation, which in turn is connected to the renovation of social, historical and cultural contexts and how they vary.”10 This means that poetic discourse receives and appreciates a variety and branching of meaning, which leads to a fertile field of interpretations. By contrast, other types of discourse depend on common meanings (shared semantics) in the society and on identifying those meanings and determining them as accurately as possible.
9 10
This does not necessarily mean that in poetry actual names and places cannot be mentioned. It means that poetry cannot be read as social or historical documents. This does not suggest that the reader has right to impose a certain type of reading on the poetic text or that certain kinds of readings cannot be agreed on. Language is a social entity, always tied by definite thinking points that people in the society share. This, therefore, gives language its expressive, indicative and suggestive force. In other words, there are certain regulations controlling what poetic language can represent.
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Cook (1990; 1994) believes that the poetics of a discourse lies in its functional ability to change the mental images of the reader. This changes come about, according to Cook, as a result of the interaction of the mental images of the reader with the unique organization of the structural and linguistic features of poetry. One reads a poetic text, having preset images of language, culture and the world. We use those images to judge the ones found and uniquely structured in a text. Cook adds that the relationship between the mental images of the reader and textual images is not one-sided where the previously-formed images affect those found in the poetic text. But the textual images, in their turn influence mental images. They either reinforce the already existing ones or change them. In Cook’s opinion, if this change challenges the previous assumptions of the reader, then the discourse is, by definition, poetic. If literature fulfills its function using the unique organization of its linguistic structures, and by the interaction of this organization with the reader’s unmatched background, it is possible to infer two points about translating poetic texts. First, by violating the unique organization of linguistic and constructive structures, translation obstructs the interaction between the source text and the reader. Perhaps this violation compelled Al-Jahedh to say what he did: “Poetry cannot be translated, nor could it be transferred. If such a thing is done, the text’s structure gets broken, its beauty gone and its amazement lost.” (Al-Hayawan Part 1, P.75) The second thing is that if the reader of the target 46
text comes from (as is usual) a linguistic, literary and cultural background different from that of the reader of the source text, then their previous assumptions about the language, the text and the world can be supposed to be different. Because of this, while interacting with the translated text, the reader employs assumptions that differ from those that the reader of the original would use. My translation strategy involves taking cues from Belushi poetic texts, and then producing (rewriting) “poetic” texts in Arabic. This strategy, as said earlier, consists in a degree of deviation from the source texts, involving as it does deleting certain images and structures and adding wholly new ones. Bearing in mind that the reader of the Arabic translations comes from an Arabic cultural background, it is fair to suggest then the interaction between the unique organization of the structures of those translations and the reader’s Arabic background will lead to a discourse closer to Arabic culture than any other. And if translations of Belushi poetry result in an interactive discourse originating from the Arabic language and culture, these translations, in my view, deserve to be classified as part of Omani Arabic literature. Conclusion Based on national and theoretical principles, this paper has discussed the thesis that Arabic translations of Belushi poetry should be counted as part of Omani Arabic literature. It must be emphasized here that this thesis does not claim to be unique, as the literature on poetry translation shows that there are examples of international repute. Perhaps the most popular are Edward 47
Fitzgerald’s translations of Omar Al-Khayyam’s Farsi quatrains (Robaaiyyat). Those are read and classified as part of English literature. Mohammad Ghunaimi Hilal, an Arab literary critic, says: “Al-Khayyam’s quatrains are counted part of English literature, and not Persian literature, because Fitzgerald only borrowed from Persian literature.” (nd: 52) This is not surprising since the translator, inspired by Persian literature, expresses the anxieties, perplexities and uncertainties that Britain witnessed in the nineteenth century. Fitzgerald’s translation, in its spirit and emotion, is closer to English culture than to the Persian. Perhaps, it would be an apt concluding note to suggest that we need to research the effect of Arabic literary and cultural heritage on the Arabic translations of Belushi poetry. Arabic References: Abu Zaid, Nasr. H. (2000) Text, Authority and Reality: The Willpower of Knowledge and the Willpower of Domination. 4th edition. Beirut: The Arabic Cultural Center. Al-Jabri, Mohammad. A. (2005) The Paradoxes of the Contemporary Arabic Conception. 5th edition. Beirut: Center for Studies of Arabic Unity. Al-Aalem, Mahmoud. A. (2201) With Writing the Writer Confirms his SelfAwareness. Nizaw (25) 59-69. Al-Ghadhami, Abdullah. (2009) Tribe and Tribalism or the Post-Modernity Identities. Casablanca and Beirut: The Arabic Cultural Center. Al-Munasrah, Ezz Ad-Din. (2004) Identities and Linguistic Diversity: Readings in Light of Cultural Comparative Criticism. Amman: Majdalawi Publishing House. Hilal, Mohammad, G. (n.d.) Contemporary Issues in Literature and Criticism. Cairo: Nahdhat Masr for Printing and Publishing.
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English References: Al Harrasi, A. (2000). Metaphor in (Arabic-into-English) Translation with Specific Reference to Metaphorical Concepts and Expressions in Political Discourse. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Aston University. Al Kharoosi, N. (1994). The Linguistic Analysis of Arabic Loan Words in Swahili. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Georgetown: Georgetown University. Catford, J. C. (1965). A Linguistic Theory of Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cook, G. (1990). A Theory of Discourse Deviation: The Application of Schema Theory to the Analysis of Literary Discourse. Unpublished PhD Thesis. University of Leeds. Cook, G. (1994). Discourse and Literature: The Interplay of Form and Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nicolini, B. (2004). Makran, Oman and Zanzibar: A Three-Terminal Cultural Corridor in the Western Indian Ocean (1799-1856). (translated from the Italian by Penelope-Jane Watson) Leiden. Brill: Boston. Nida, E. A. (1964). Toward a Science of Translating. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Pym, A. and Turk, H. (1998). ‘Translatability’, in M. Baker (ed.) The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Translation Studies. London and New York: Routledge. 27377. Steiner, G. (1975). After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. London: Oxford University Press. Venuti, L (1998). The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. London: Routledge. Wilkinson, J. (1987). The Imamate Tradition of Oman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Translating Spoken Literature: The Shehri Language as an Example By Said Al-Shihri Translated by Badria Al-Barashdi The Language Centre, Sultan Qaboos University and Dr. Rahma Al-Mahrooqi The Department of English, Sultan Qaboos University
Introduction Some people believe that shedding light on Oman’s spoken languages and studying them deeply threatens classical Arabic, which is the essence of the Omani national identity, and demolishes the sense of nation and unity of the Arab homeland. I think this is totally wrong because cultural diversity within the same homeland is a source of richness in a nation’s culture. We are aware that some societies include a number of cultures and this diversity does not constitute an obstacle to national unity or the development and prosperity of those societies. On the contrary, such diversity helps consolidate the national identity and those societies become strong and united. This is how we feel in Oman. We were born in a certain cultural environment and we speak old languages and dialects. We also have certain traditions and customs that our grandparents valued because they considered them as a ‘heritage’ that we need to preserve. We find ourselves compelled to hang on to this cultural heritage; we are not free to choose whether to care for our national culture or not. This is what is observed in some national authorities. This symposium is clear evidence of the affection that educated Omanis feel towards their national culture. However, this doesn’t mean that we should be confined to our local environment which, 50
for me, is like a small room; instead we should try to expand our realm and explore within the mother culture, which I liken to a big house. Again, for me, this is like living in a flat in a big building that represents Arabic culture and this building stands close to a number of other buildings that represent the cultures of people surrounding us. In the end, all of us live in one human district or neighbourhood. At first, I would like to say that this paper presents a new initiative in translation in that it deals with translating from a non-written language, which is ‘Shehri’. The aim is to translate Shehri utterances into a written language, classical Arabic. In other words, the aim is to translate literature from an oral tradition into a written one. Some might not know that Shehri consists of oral literature that covers poetry, proverbs, folk tales, children stories and superstitions. This literature is threatened by lack of attention and by a process of being forgotten. I will present some examples of oral Shehri literature that I have translated and I will enumerate the difficulties I faced. At the end of my talk, I will outline some recommendations for preserving threatened Omani national dialects. But to comply with the demands of a scientific approach, I will start be defining the language that I will be talking about. 1. Definition of Shehri ‘Shehri’ is classified within the southern Semitic languages that are divided into northern Arabic, Habashi, and Southern Arabic, which in turn includes a number of languages and dialects such as Maeeni, Sabaei, Qatbani, Hadhrami, Mahri, Shehri, Soqotri (Socotri), Habuti, Bathari and Harsosi11. In this classification, 11
Welfeston, Israel. 1939. The History of Semitic Languages. First Edition. Al Etemad Publisher.
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some languages are called Southern Arabic to distinguish them from Old Southern Arabic (i.e. Maeeni, Sabaei and Qatabani), while the name “Modern Southern Arabic” was given to Mahri, Harsosi, Soqotri, Bathari, Habuti and Shehri - the language that I will be talking about in more detail in this paper. Some researchers divide Southern Arabic into extinct dialects including Sabaei, Maeeni and Qatabani; and old dialects such as Himyari, and modern dialects such as Shehri, Soqotri and Harsosi. ‘Shehri’ is commonly spoken in Dhofar in an area extending from Hasik in the east to Dhalkut in the west and it is spoken by around five thousand people, according to the latest statistics from UNESCO12. These statistics were based on the study done by Johnston13 and I assume that the number of people who speak Shehri now exceeds 150,000, a different figure from Johnston’s. Many educated Arabs and writers have discussed Shehri. For instance, Mohammed Redha Al Shabibi, an Iraqi (1889-1965), mentioned in a talk at the Arabic Language Academy Conference (16/1/1961)14 that an orientalist who lived in Morocco gave him a newspaper that carried some funny news that concerned every Arab. This was the discovery of four independent languages within the Arabic language that is spoken between Hadramout 12
UNESCO Website: http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?pg=00206
13 14
Thomas Moyer Johnston (1924 – 1983), Arabic Instructor, London University. He is one of the most important researchers on Arabic dialects in the Peninsula. He received his PhD in 1962 for a thesis entitled ‘Studies in the Dialects of the Eastern Peninsula’, supervised by Prof. R. B Serjent. It was published by Oxford University Press in 1967. He later published a dictionary in 1981 called A Jabali Language Dictionary. www.arabicacademy.org.eg/admin (accessed 6 / 5/ 2009).
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and the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula. These languages are: 1. Mahri 2. Batari ( or Bathari) 3. Shehri 4. Harsoshi (or Harsosi)
He adds, ‘Shehri dialect is a well-known Arabic dialect though it was distorted greatly. The ‘Shahar’ is a term used on the Yemani Coast. Al Azhari says ‘it is the far end and Ibn Siidah says that it is between the Yemani Coast and Oman’. It includes towns and wadis which were ‘Saba’ residence, as it has been said.’ Jawad Ali (1907–1987) says, ‘We find in southern Arabia some tribes that speak dialects strange to our Arabic like the Mahri and Shehri languages15.’ Some journalists who visited Oman have written about the Shehri language. Among those are Ryadh Najeeb Al Ris who said, ‘Besides Arabic, people in Dhofar speak four other languages or dialects that come from ‘Hamyari’ – close to Mahri – origin. These languages are ‘Shehri’ named after ‘Al Shahra’ who are the original mountain residents, ‘Mahri’ that comes from ‘Mahra’ who are the residents of ‘Hadramout’, ‘Bat’hari’ that comes from ‘Bat’hara’ from north Dhofar tribes and ‘Harsosi’ from ‘Harasis’, 15
Ali, Jawad. 1993. The Detail in Arabs’ History before Islam. Part 1. Baghdad University Edition. P.185.
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a name given to residents of east northern Dhofar.’16 Shehri is discussed in more detail in writers’ and journalists’ writings, but this is not a point of focus in this talk. I would like to speak a little about the distortion that happened to this language which many call Jabali. The first person to give it such a name was the writer Johnston. The name Jabali has become so popular because most people living in Salalah speak the Dhofari Arabic dialect and the name Jabali was given to all the people living in the countryside. Hence, the language spoken in the countryside was called Jabali. 2. The Environmental Importance of Shehri When we were young, old people used to warn us not to do certain things and, at that time, I was always trying to find an explanation for that, but I couldn’t. When I grew up, I realized that they did it to protect the local environment. Examples of what they used to tell us when we were young are the following:
16
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If somebody cuts down the fresh branch of a tree at the beginning of the monsoon (Khareef), all his cattle will die!
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If somebody urinates in the street, they won’t be able to light a fire. (Being able to light a fire was essential for countrymen at that time.)
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If you make fun of animals, you will get pimples on your eyebrows! Al Ris, Ryadh Najeeb. 2000. Dhofar: The Military and Political Quarrel in the Arabian Gulf 1970 – 1976. Second Edition. Ryadh Al Ris Publication: Beirut.P.36.
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If you play in the street, a snake will follow you home in the evening.
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If you kill a snake and don’t bury it, the snake’s bones, after a year, will stick in the foot of whoever walks on it!
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If you kill a scorpion and walk on it, you will get flatulence.
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If you have your hair shaved and don’t hide the hair away from the wind and others play with it, your hair won’t grow as before.
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If you pull out a grey hair, you will get ten more!
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If you whistle when it is cloudy, the clouds will change their direction and it won’t rain.
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If you play with fire, your cattle will shed tears till you stop playing!
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If you beat an animal with a stick from the Khayeer tree, the animal’s pain will stay for a year. (The Khayeer tree is rare and grows on the edges of slopes and rugged areas. People in Dhofar traditionally used the long branches of this tree in building their houses.)
There are many more examples of such things that we were told by our grandparents that I cannot now remember. Such superstitions and warnings that we received helped in preserving the environment. This suggests that the Shehri language helped to protect the local environment from the time Dhofari people started speaking it.
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3. The Cultural Importance of Shehri The cultural importance of Shehri lies in its literary and linguistic content besides its being a Semitic language from among the modern southern Arabic languages like Mahri, Harsosi and Bathari. This is an important element of Omani culture. Some Omani researchers have recently done comparative linguistic studies on Dhofari languages and Berber dialects. They have found Berberi words that are exactly the same in Shehri, like ‘gazmait’, ‘magnies’ and ‘keerat’. These studies support the Arabism of Berber. When Ibn Batootah, the explorer, visited Dhofar, he said, “there are similarities between the people in this city and the Moroccans. This similarity supports the saying that the Sinhaga tribe and other Moroccan tribes are originally from Hamyar.”17 Therefore, the similarity between Dhofari people and the Moroccans creates new scope for the Tamazight researchers who are proud of their Arabism and are happy to disprove the claim that Berberi dialects come from Indo-European origins. Here, it is important to point out that studying Omani languages is crucial for Arabic culture in general and for Omani culture in particular. This implies that preserving these languages is an important responsibility.
17
Ibn Batootah, Abu Abdullah Mohammed bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Ibrahim Al Lawati. 1938. Tuhfat Al Nuthar fi Garaeb Al Asfar. Part 1. Qairo Edition.Pp. 169 – 171.
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4. Translation from Shehri Poets and academics have translated some texts from Shehri. An excellent example is the work done by the poet Ali Suhail Al Mashani in his book Glimpses from Folk Literature in Dhofar. What is special about this book is that the poet set down the original Shehri oral text in Arabic transcription and inserted it into the text he had translated. Thus, he had the original text with the translation, while leaving space for other researchers to translate the same material. Recently, Dr Mohammed bin Musalam Al Mahri published his book Dhofari Folktales which includes sixty-nine folktales diverse in theme, style and plot. However, the translated stories don’t appear alongside the original texts as it is difficult to write down a Shehri folktale in Arabic, though these tales can be tape recorded. Hence, I would urge all those who are working on documenting any folk heritage material to tape record it so that other researchers have an opportunity to hear the language and know how it is spoken. The researcher Ali Ahmed Al Shehri included some translated proverbs and superstitions in his book Aad Language, writing the proverbs in Arabic characters and then translating them from Shehri into Arabic. Some people aren’t aware of the fact that Shehri literature exists. In fact, it has literary forms that are lyric, such as Nana, Dabrarat, Al Wid, Al Tarkeez and Madabi, work poems, folktales and children’s stories. We can say that Shehri is rich in literary forms that can be studied. Hence, I call upon those who speak the language to start studying its literature. In the past, translation theory was limited to the field of linguistics and focused on translating from the original language into the target one. Yet, with continuous studies and research, it was found 57
that clarifying meaning not only concerns language or the text per se but depends on three factors, which are the author, the reader and the language18. These are the three essential pillars for meaning formation. When I tried to translate some Shehri oral texts into classical Arabic, I found that I had to understand the original text of the Dabrarat or tales, locate what I had to translate within Shehri literature, and then explain it. In other words, I didn’t - as other translators have done - explain the words in the text in Shehri but tried to understand the author’s intention in translating the Dabrarat and the hidden motives in the oral folktale. 5. Examples of translated texts One of my projects was to translate poetry from Nana and the Dabrarat and some folktales and stories. 5.a Nana Nana poetry usually consists of two measured or rhymed parts. Sometimes it has three and thus is called a “trinity”. This type of poetry is used to express wisdom, courtship, and emotions when poets handle a social issue. Traditionally, it was performed by women only, but lately men have started participating as well. Nana is famous in the eastern part of Dhofar, specifically in Mirbat and Sadah.
18
An article on translation. Aiwi Shi, University of Ganshw, Shigahai. Translation of Ayman Hmooda. ‘Al Tarjama’ magazine’s Accessed 27 / 5/ 2010.
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Here are some examples of Nana. The poet Mahfoodh Aran Al Shehri says:
“ هري بهوين عر�ضك يغي�شك اك�سله .”تخيدم ات عجز بيفله تكني �شله Translation: If you accompany a lazy man, so will be you To serve till you’re old, or be like him. The poet Yahya Ahmed Al Amry says:
“ هير نيشك إمحبن بدر بعيد هجك ”بك ُكنك شي تفرح أمن خطر عجك
Translation: If you forget your loved ones, And your love was shining elsewhere, It was you who’d chosen not to be with me And no one forced you to do so. Another poet says: أصرك شيء بجهد بل هيمك تح ِترف .عك تا بلي تعبك من اسهيب لغيرف
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Translation: You let me down, Fleeing in ignorance Thinking that when I tire I shall drink from the sea. 5 b. ‘Dabrarat’ These are long poems that consist of a number of rhymed verses where the poets express their opinions and comment on issues. They furnish their poems with beautiful language and compose them to praise, elegise or satirize. Among the most famous poets creating this type of poetry is Mahad Kashoob – also known as Mahad Al Fahad. 5 c. Work and Barbecue Party Poetry These poems are recited during work and recreation when, for example, people are catching sardines or cutting mutton on social occasions. Repeating such poems adds excitement to work. 5 d. Folktales These are stories told to children and most of the heroes in them are animals (e.g. insects and birds). An example of these stories is one that I am going to narrate. It is the only story that I clearly remember from those my mother used to tell me. They had a real effect on me. I wouldn’t sleep before listening to them and dreaming of their heroes. Once upon a time, there was an orphan girl who had lost her mother. Her father remarried and when his new wife gave birth to a girl, she asked her husband to banish his eldest daughter, the orphan, 60
if he wanted to continue his life with her. One day, the father took his daughter to the desert. When he saw a shady fig tree, he asked her to climb it and pick the figs. He said he would sleep until she got down. When the girl climbed the tree, she started eating the bitter figs that she picked, keeping the sweet ones for her father. When she got down from the tree, she wanted to wake her father up but decided to wait until he woke himself up. When the sun started to set, however, she took the blanket off her father, though to her surprise she found a tree trunk instead, meaning that her father had run away! She cried but said, ‘God protect you, Dad, wherever you go.’ Later, some angels approached her and asked her questions like ‘Where does the sun rise and set? Where does this wadi flow when it floods?’ She answered all their questions without hesitation. Before going to sleep, they asked her to wake them up by beating them with a whip when the sun set and the sky became red. When dawn broke, she cried but didn’t beat the angels. Later, they took her and immersed her in the sea and she emerged covered with gold and jewels. They asked her where she wanted to go and she said, ‘To Dad’s cottage.’ When she reached the cottage, her golden necklace dropped into her father’s wife’s hands while she was cleaning the cottage. The latter said, ‘Wow! How lucky I am to have this necklace!’ The girl said to her, ‘No auntie. The necklace is mine.’ When the father came back home in the evening, his wife asked him to banish her daughter as he had done with his orphan girl. He again did what he was told. Unlike the orphan girl, when the wife’s daughter climbed the fig tree she started eating the sweet figs and kept the bitter ones for her father. When she took off the blanket and didn’t find her father, she said, ‘Go to hell, father. May God keep you away from home.’ When the angels asked her questions, as they did with her sister, she made fun of them and didn’t tell them the truth. She also whipped them severely on their backs when they asked her to do so in the morning. And when they immersed her in the sea as they did with her sister before, she emerged covered with snakes 61
and scorpions. Like her sister, she asked the angels to take her to her father’s cottage. When she reached there, a scorpion dropped onto her mother’s head. Her mother was terrified and ran away. Her daughter shouted, ‘Leave that scorpion. It’s mine!’ Conclusion The language I have discussed today is beginning to die out because of the spread of schools and their use of standard Arabic, and because Shehri is an oral, non-written language. Some people feel that neglecting this language and not speaking it is a way of being modern. Hence, it is not surprising to hear that UNESCO has recently listed it among the world’s languages threatened with extinction. Those of us who are speakers of these languages have a huge responsibility to preserve them. It is also the responsibility of concerned bodies that deal with cultural matters in the Sultanate. And here I urge the acceleration of efforts to save what can be saved through studying these languages and giving researchers full release time to pursue their studies. I also urge the nation’s academic institutions to introduce scholarly courses to teach Omani languages and their dialects (e.g. Shehri, Mahri, Harsosi, Bathari, Habuti, Belushi, Lawati, Shahi and others). Also, our media need to shed light on these languages and produce reports on them. ‘The Countryside’, a program that was produced by Omani TV in the 1980s, should be rebroadcast. This program dealt with Shehri oral arts, especially Nana and the Dabrarat.
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The Role of the Translation Group in Oman’s Literary Translation Movement By Younus Al-Harrasi Translated by Jamila Al-Seyabi and Khalid Al-Kaabi The Language Centre, Sultan Qaboos University and Dr. Rahma Al-Mahrooqi The Department of English, Sultan Qaboos University
Abstract In spite of the fact that it was established only recently and is a student association, the Translation Group at Sultan Qaboos University plays a significant role in translation in Oman. This paper highlights aspects of its founding and projects, the methods and approaches followed in carrying out its work, and in particular the role it has played in translating Omani literature. The paper also sheds light on aspects of the Omani translation scene which led to establishing a translation group in the Cultural Club some time ago and to including translation in the literary competition activities of the nation. The paper will also discuss the vital role that the group has played in encouraging translation from Omani non-Arabic languages into Arabic, its diverse activities, and the challenges and difficulties it has encountered. Launching the Group and its Translation Activities The Translation Group was established at SQU on September 14th 2002 by a number of English Education specialists and English Arts students headed by Ahmed Al Mu’ani. Dr. Abdullah AlHarrasi invested much effort in helping to found the Group, which is based in the College of Arts and Social Sciences. Its 63
organizational structure comprises a president, two deputies, and a number of committees concerned with translation projects, editing and organizing functions. Since its inauguration the Group has organized numerous lectures and workshops dealing with translation and cultural issues in general. This is in addition to internal courses run for its members and external ones offered to SQU students across the campus. The Group’s first publication was “Literary Translations Written by Omani Pens” in the second issue of Al-Shurufat Supplement, which is part of a national newspaper. Publishing has since expanded to include different newspapers and magazines such Al Watan Newspaper, Al Shabeeba, Al Zaman, Nizwa, the electronic magazine Horizon and others. Worth mentioning here is the prominent role played by Dr. Abdullah Al Harrasi, who has facilitated communication between the Group and these different newspapers and magazines. Al Harrasi has also extended his outreach by encouraging young translators and strengthening their acquaintance with cultural developments and introducing them to different writers in the Sultanate, such as Saif Al Rahbi, Ahmed Al Falahi and others. This has given these translators a sense of acknowledgement and appreciation which will encourage them to continue to be aware of the significance of the work they do. The Group publishes its annual output in a book called Shatha Wa Nawafeth (Fragrance and Windows). Also, the Group in 2008 published two books with Dar Al Intishar Al Arabi Publishing House. The title of the first was Al Yanaseeb, (The Lottery), and it contained translations of a selection of short stories from American literature. The second was Asathaja (Naivety), which included a variety of stories from world literature. The Group has striven to keep in touch with translators and those interested in translation by launching its internet site www. transqu.net. This has proved effective in promoting the Group’s 64
objectives, projects and interaction with interested participants inside and outside Sultan Qaboos University. However, in spite of the site’s large number of participants (more than 1,000), the visitor to this site will notice that there is little active participation. The reasons are probably that participants are required to offer serious contributions and log on using their real names and that there is a dearth of Omani translators and people interested in the nation’s cultural movement and in on-line interaction. Yet, if we take a close look at the topics offered for discussion and the list of published articles and books, we can see that the writings deal with issues far removed from the random and superficial fare of some Omani sites. Besides translating short stories and poems from world literature, the Group has started organizing translation projects that cover particular writers and their work. Hence, its African literature project translated short stories and poetry by individual East African authors. Another project covered short stories and poems from Indian literature, while yet another translated Japanese (Haiku poems) and Chinese literature into English. The Group has also translated short stories written by the French writer Guy Maupassant and by the English writer George Orwell. Other translations include children’s literature, science fiction, and, recently, short stories by Ambrose Bierce and poems by John Keats. Several other projects are pending. The Group has an effective system for selecting texts and choosing those who will translate them and revise the finished product. Specialists occasionally conduct workshops to teach the necessary skills of editing and revision. It is clear that the Group has played a major role in pushing forward the Sultanate’s translation movement through the channels mentioned above. This has contributed greatly to strengthening the 65
presence of translation within the contemporary Omani cultural scene. And this intensive presence has encouraged translation as an area for competition in Muscat’s Cultural Club Competitions and at Sultan Qaboos University. It has also encouraged a number of Omani and non-Omani scholars to translate and publish in local newspapers and magazines and fostered the emergence of student translation groups in private and public universities and colleges. The Role of the Translation Group in Translating Omani Literature The Group’s role in translating Omani literature has been a pioneering one, and so deserves great credit. It began with a book of verse, A Window Within Myself, by Nasra Al-Adawi, proceeds from the sale of which went to the Omani National Association for Cancer Awareness. Next came publication of seventeen stories from Omani folklore and then a project covering fifteen Omani short stories, six poems and a book chapter from Hikayat Sijn, written in English by the late Mawled Mohammed Al Haj Al-Mukheini. Translated poems by the late Ali Mehdi were read during a memorial evening for him at the Cultural Club. In addition, Group members translated work by two Omani writers in Noon, a cultural supplement which published the original texts and their translations. They also published work in Beacon, an English supplement issued by the Omani Society for Writers and Literati. It is worth mentioning here that Badr Al Jahwari, one of Beacon’s main editors and founders, was previously a most active Translation Group member. The Translation Group was also a pioneer in encouraging translation from Omani languages other than Arabic. Members translated from these languages and communicated with people who spoke them, eventually publishing a collection of translated works from these languages in Al Jesr’s monthly supplement. 66
Some Belushi poems translated by Khalid Al Belushi, a short story and a Shehri poem translated by Mohammed Al Shahri, a Lawati song story translated by Aqila Al-Lawati, and a Swahili story written by Nasra Al-Adawi and translated by Abeer AlHadhrami were all published in the Al Jesr supplement. Because of the Group’s role in addressing these languages, there are now calls to give them more emphasis and to document their literature which might otherwise die out. This is especially true since some of them are listed as endangered due to the small number of their speakers. Their death would mean the death of a rich cultural legacy they have built up down the ages. The Group also from time to time publishes for local readers translated texts written about Oman by foreigners. For instance, Aisha Al Habsi has translated excerpts from Philip Ward’s Travels in Oman and from Angel Bert Kempher’s Muscat in the Seventeenth Century. The Group has also published Poems with the Scent of the East and The Empty Quarter, which were translated by Hilal Al-Hajri, and Jabal Shams Through the Eyes of an American, translated by Khalsa Al-Agbari. Dr. Al Hawas Masoudi has translated from French a description and history of Hormuz Straits taken from a book called Travels and Notices by Dollpulai. Finally, the Group has published “A Day in Muscat” by Pierre Loti, translated by Ya’qoub Al Mefragi, and “Muscat in the Seventies of the Nineteenth Century” by Gratn Jeary, translated by Rashid Al Thuhli, Asem Al Saqri and Ya’qoub Al Mefragi. The Group’s Translation of Some World and Scientific Literature As indicated earlier, the Translation Group has enriched the Omani context with many translations from world literature. Extending 67
its reach, it has also translated intellectual and scientific articles, research and news in the monthly supplement Al Jesr, which it started to issue under the auspices of the Cultural Club. The Group’s Activities The Group’s role is not restricted to translation and publishing. It goes beyond these and organizes translation functions such the Annual Translation Week that includes many activities, one of which is a symposium on translation issues and invites specialized translators and translation teachers from inside and outside Oman. It also organizes other events accompanying the symposium, such as an exhibition that brings together different translation groups in the Sultanate and a series of lectures called “Towards a Sophisticated Translator”, which deal with cultural issues that can enrich the translator’s knowledge and widen his/ her horizon. Workshops on translation and revision techniques are held plus courses every semester in, for example, journalism translation, legal translation, business translation and general translation. Obviously, these courses range between being specialized, primary and advanced. More than two hundred Sultan Qaboos University students studying different majors take them. It goes without saying that these activities can only enrich the Omani context, promote translation and increase awareness of its importance. Challenges Despite its uniqueness and leading role, there are a number of challenges that the Group has encountered. Most members are speakers of English and Arabic only since their study is in these two languages. Hence, the Group has tried to overcome this problem by using a language mediator or by getting in touch with translators who are proficient at languages other than English. 68
Another challenge is that the Group does not have a venue where members can meet to plan, coordinate, work and produce. This is a big obstacle that hinders communication between members and the exchange of ideas. A group venue would enable new members to visit and interact with old members and use material from the Group’s library. The problem of minimal membership continues; indeed the situation has deteriorated after a number of old members refused to take leading posts in the Group and because many experienced translators have graduated. This has meant that the Group has suffered a loss of valuable expertise, and hence a decline in the Group’s output which will probably affect its quality in the future. Another problem that the Group faces is its affiliation with the translation group at the Cultural Club. Instead of gaining any advantage from this connection through learning from the experience of members there Group members have found themselves alone and required to work on two fronts because of the failure of many experienced Omani translators to participate in cultural activities or join the group. Due to all this, the Group’s overall translation production has declined because of its concentration on the Al Jesr supplement. This impact of this still remains and will likely affect the Omani translation scene in particular and Omani culture in general. I hope the Group will resolve these issues just as it has earlier resolved others. I also hope that, due to the significant importance of the Group, which is a major pillar of the translation movement in Oman, the Deanship of Student Affairs will redouble its efforts at finding a solution in the very near future to the Group’s ‘homelessness’ problem. Conclusion To conclude, the Translation Group has played a leading role characterized by excellence in organization, continuity and diversity. It has translated from different cultures and from old and modern Omani literature. It has been a pioneer in giving 69
attention to local Omani languages and translating from them, thus introducing them to the Arab reader inside and outside the Sultanate. It continues organize translation functions and contributes to arranging such functions with other institutions. We have seen how the Group has adapted to in administers its work and endeavors to maintain the quality of its production. It is notable that the Group has actively encouraged the speakers of other languages to translate from their language and publish their work. It has also provided the Omani context with translators whose work is now appearing in published form. Therefore, the experience of the Translation Group is unique indeed and has enriched the Omani cultural scene, adding an exceptional element to it.
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The Responses of Omani Female College Students to Translated Literature By Dr. Rahma Al-Mahrooqi The Department of English, Sultan Qaboos University
Abstract: Foreign language learners come to the literature classroom possessing a native language and culture that might be very different from the English language and its culture. This could have a profound effect on how these learners interact with and respond to the literature of the target language. This paper reports on a study that investigated the influence of the linguistic and cultural orientations of Omani female students on their response to translated literature. Two short stories were chosen for the purpose of the study: an Arabic story translated into English and an English story translated into Arabic. The major finding of the study indicated that the learners’ culture had a powerful influence on their comprehension of and response to the two stories. After reviewing the available literature on the importance of learners’ background knowledge for their reading comprehension, this paper discusses the study that was carried out at Sultan Qaboos University. Most importantly, it discusses the learners’ response categories, demonstrating how both language and culture came into play in their reading process. The paper concludes by suggesting that teachers should utilize students’ background knowledge in their reading classroom. Arabic Short Stories in Translation According to Dalya Cohen-Mor (2005), since the 1950s, the short story has become the most popular literary genre in the Arab world. Male Arab authors are said to have begun this tradition and much of their work has been translated into English and other 71
languages, making it available to an international audience. Until recently Arab women writing remained submerged and marginalized, but now many Arab women writers have burst onto the literary scene and their translated work has been acclaimed both nationally and internationally. In particular, a Western interest has fueled the translation process. The anthology compiled by Dalya Cohen-Mor (2005) provides a “broad spectrum of works of fiction by Arab women.” (P. 2). It has sixty short stories by forty women from fourteen different Arab countries. Among the most prominent Arab women short story writers are Nawal al-Saadawi (Egypt), Alifa Rifaat (Egypt), Radwa Ashour (Egypt), Daisy Al-Amir (Iraq), Aliya Mamdouh (Iraq), Ulfat Al-Idilbi (Syria), Najiya Thamer (Syria), Colette Al-Khouri (Syria), Fadhila AlFaruq (Algeria), Ummaya Al-Khamis (Saudi Arabia), Wafa Munawar (Saudi Arabia), Fawzia Rashid (Bahrain), Samiya At’ut (Palestine), Layla Al-Uthman (Kuwait), and Layla Ba’labkki (Lebanon). The availability of Arabic literature in English translation enriches the English as a Foreign Language classroom. Research has found that Arab students like to read stories from their own culture, written by their own people and translated into English. In fact, research has also found that Arab students respond better to and comprehend more Arabic literature in translation than literature written by native speakers of English (Al-Mahrooqi, 2003). Therefore, Arabic short stories translated into English can be effective material for use in the EFL classroom. Literature and the EFL/ESL Classroom Dictionaries usually define literature as excellent or at least higher forms of writing. Definitions are often broad and confusing because they do not set criteria for excellence or for what they consider as 72
a higher form of writing. Advocates of teaching literature define it as creative writing that has artistic quality - writing that appeals to the reader’s and emotions, involving and stimulating him/her to continue reading and to interact with the written message. Such qualities are what make a piece of writing excellent and worth teaching. Learning with literature of course is not new to the language classroom (Al-Mahrooqi & Tuzlukova, 2010; Al-Mahrooqi & Sultana, 2008). Although such learning suffered many attacks in the 1970s, it has staged a comeback since the 1980s due to the prevalence of the communicative and whole language approaches. Literature serves many functions in the ESL/EFL classroom. Through it, learners encounter all kinds of communicative techniques that speakers use in their interactions, and so it can serve as a teaching aid for all language skills. Since it represents authentic language, the interactions it portrays are natural and meaningful, not contrived and context-free. Literature portrays the broad human experience and so, if presented at an appropriate language level and handled effectively by the teacher, it can engage learners emotionally, morally, and intellectually (Ibid). Therefore, it can help learners become global thinkers and develop an appreciation for foreign as well as local cultures. Through exposing learners to various ways of living and thinking, and comparing the similarities and differences of these to the learners’ own, literature can help learners to become critical thinkers. Thus, literature is a valuable tool that language teachers can use in their EFL classroom. Down the years, many if not most teachers have focused on interpreting the information present in literary texts, with the result that students are often convinced that their interpretations are not good or are at least inadequate, and that their teacher’s interpretation is the only correct one. Usually, teachers themselves guide students to arrive at this conclusion because, even in their attempts to involve students in discussion of the text, they lead them 73
to their personal interpretation of it. This, alas, persuades students that their response to the work is inferior to the teacher’s. The product of such an emphasis on interpretation is that students learn that this is the key way to interact with the text. Any association of events or characters with events and characters in students’ own lives is reduced in status or condescended to in the act of deriving meaning from the text. Sometimes, a student may indeed experience an overwhelming self-involvement with the text, but to him this is still not really connected to any valid response to or interpretation of the text. According to Rosenblatt (1980, 1982, 1985a, 1985b, 1992, 1995) an emphasis on one accurate interpretation reduces the pleasure of reading. Instead teachers should help students to value the text by transacting with it and reading it aesthetically rather than efferently. Framework of the Study There are several theories in the field that stress the role literature can play in language learning and acquisition. Vygotsky’s theory (1978, 1986) of social interaction illustrates literature’s potential to create contexts for social interaction inside the classroom. Literature can foster interaction through group and pair work, which can create an ambient social atmosphere. Negotiation of meaning between students and between students and the literary text can promote learning and knowledge retention. And since it appeals to the senses and emotions, literature can foster personal involvement, which can be shared and discussed among learners inside and outside the classroom, leading to more interaction and negotiation of meaning. Reader response theory stresses the importance of interaction between the reader and the text in the process of creating meaning. The reader brings to the text a wealth of experiences, 74
memories, personality traits, attitudes and needs that affect his/her comprehension and perception of the text (Rosenblatt, 1980, 1982, 1985a, 1985b, 1994, 1995). Therefore, the reader’s background knowledge and schema need to be stimulated and involved in all textual discussion. For the teacher to ensure the active involvement of learners in a literary work, s/he needs to make clear that their experiences are valid and important in the process of making sense of the text they are working with. By the same token, learners need to be made aware that there is no one definite or final interpretation and that any interpretation that takes into consideration what appears in the text is as good as any other. Foreign language teachers, therefore, need to encourage interaction between their students and the text. This interaction can only be meaningful if students’ experiences and background knowledge are effectively utilized. What Type of Literature is Suitable for the Foreign Language (FL) Classroom? The learners’ level of language proficiency, their interests, and the objectives of the course should help the teacher to determine the appropriate literature type to be used in the FL classroom. For beginners, literature with familiar contexts will work better as it will free the learners from contextual nuances and complications which could hinder comprehension. After learners have developed linguistic competence, and in order to develop their critical thinking, varying contexts can be introduced. What determines how much students benefit from the literature they study? The amount of interaction the learner is involved in is the answer to this question. The more the teacher activates learners’ schema, emotions and thoughts, the more involvement s/he will encourage among them.
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The Study: The present study aimed to explore the effect of the cultural and linguistic orientations of Omani female college students on their comprehension of and response to translated literature. The sample included twenty-three female students from the English Department. Females were chosen because they were more accessible to the researcher and because they volunteered to participate in the study. The main task for the participants was to respond to two translated short stories written by women writers. The stories chosen were an American short story “The Abortion” by Alice Walker, translated into Arabic, and an Arabic short story, “The Duties of a Working Mother”, by Wafa Munawar, translated into English. Here is a synopsis of each of them: “The Abortion”: The main character in this story is an educated African-American woman (Imani) who is pregnant with her second child (not counting the abortion she had while in college). She does not seem sure whether she wants to keep the child she is carrying or not. On the one hand, she thinks that she does not need another child, since she has one who is hardly two years old. She also thinks that having a second baby will consume her energies and make life more difficult for her. On the other hand, she subtly seeks support from her husband, and she wants him to show that he would really like to keep the child; but he puts the matter solely in her hands due to his preoccupation with work and support of the local African-American mayor. Imani decides to go ahead with the abortion because her husband did not fight to save the child. When she does that, she realizes that her already troubled marriage has come to an end. Her husband remains oblivious of her struggle, which she carries on inwardly for the most part, but in the end it causes her marriage to disintegrate. 76
“The Duties of a Working Mother”: Women’s main role, as perceived in the Gulf, is that of housewives and homemakers, though this vision is starting to change. When women choose to work, they have to bear the responsibility of managing the housework, raising the children, and doing all that is required in their places of work. The main character in the story has to cater for a million responsibilities. Her husband asks her to retire from her job, but she refuses because she derives much self-gratification and satisfaction from it. Her husband does not help with the housework or with the children. His life is almost free of stress. He naps after work, brings in visitors, sleeps early at night and leaves everything for his wife to take care of. This saga depicts typical practice in many Omani households. Educated women who choose to work have to bear the burden of two different roles: their profession and their duties as housewives and mothers. In order to persuade her husband to allow her to keep her teaching job, the main character in this short story works very hard to balance her work and family duties. She finds time to do everything without depending much on her husband. Her ability to accomplish all her duties makes her a role model for normal working women. “The Duties of a Working Mother” is written in clear and straightforward language. Sentences are short and words are simple. The story was translated by acclaimed and widelypublished people. It comes from a book of translated Arab women’s short stories entitled Voices of Change: Short Stories by Saudi Arabian Women. “The Abortion” has long sentences and the original English version is more complex in terms of sentence structure than the translated version of “The Duties of a Working Mother”. However, the students read the translated version of “The Abortion”, not the original English version. In terms of length, “The Duties of a Working Mother” is shorter than “The 77
Abortion”, but the latter is not very long, considering the length of most short stories by Alice Walker and other American women writers. The two stories were divided into sections. The students read each section and then wrote their free response to it. At the end of each story, the students answered a number of questions about their reaction to the text they had read. Analysis The responses were categorized according to types of response specified by Squire (1964). The response categories included: • Interpretation: responses portraying students’ attempt to interpret the events and actions of the characters • Literary judgment: responses including students’ comments on the writing style of the story • Narration: responses in which students retell the events of the story in their own words • Association: the memories students associate with the events and characters of the story • Self-involvement: responses where students show their feelings about the events, actions and emotions of characters • Prescriptive judgment: responses that included students’ judgment or advice for the characters • Miscellaneous: responses that are not related to the above All responses under each category were tallied in order to determine the total number of responses to each of them. This was done for both stories to enable a comparison to be made between students’ responses. Percentages were then obtained for each type of response. 78
Results and Discussion The study yielded rich data, which were analyzed in terms of types of response. Each separate idea was considered a response. Each response was then categorized in terms of response type. The following table shows the results for each of the seven response types: Response Categories
“The Duties of a Working Mother”
Interpretation
47.29 % 6.9% misinterpretations
58.79 %20.2% misinterpretations
Literary judgment
.76 %
5.16 %
Narration
34.65 %
27.00 %
Association
10.69 %
4.73 %
Self-involvement
4.59 %
2.82 %
Prescriptive judgment
1.73 %
1.04 %
Miscellaneous
.29 %
.47 %
“The Abortion”
As shown in the table above, students had significantly more association and self-involvement responses when reading and responding to the Arabic story translated into English than when reading and responding to the American story translated into Arabic. They offered more literary judgment when reading the American story as they thought that the style was not straightforward and that the sentences were long. When looking at interpretational responses, students tended to interpret more when reading the American story. This reflects their attempt to make sense of the events which were not very familiar to them. What is more important to note here is the fact that students made far more misinterpretations when reading and responding to the American story, despite their familiarity with its language. Thus, the results show that students better understood the Arabic story 79
translated into English. They were also more involved in reading it and had more memories to associate with it as well. Conclusion and Recommendations The results show that the participants’ culture, rather than language, had a profound effect on their understanding of and response to literature. This means that in literature classes it is important to involve the learners’ background knowledge to explain the context and setting of the story and to engage the learners in a dialogue between cultures. In addition, translated literature might be a very useful tool for teaching the foreign language as it introduces language in a context familiar to students and thus it frees them from concern over foreign language’s cultural nuances. Therefore, their attention would be focused on the language itself, which might speed up their language acquisition. References Al-Mahrooqi, R. (2003). The Influence of the Cultural and Linguistic Orientations of Omani Female College Students on Their Responses to Literature. An Unpublished Ph D Dissertation. University of Pittsburgh, USA. Al-Mahrooqi, R. & Sultana, T. (2008). Promoting Integrated Skills through Short Stories. Paper presented at the 8th Oman International ELT Conference: Integration of Skills: Creative Methods and Techniques in ELT. Muscat, Oman. Al-Mahrooqi, R. & Tuzlukova, V. (2010). The Influence of the Cultural and Linguistic Orientations of Sultan Qaboos University Students on their Responses to Literature on the Internet. In R. Taiwo (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Discourse Behavior and Digital Communication: Language Structures and Social Interaction. 2, (pp. 667-699). New York: Information Science Reference.
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Cohen-Mor, D. (2005). Arab Women Writers: An Anthology of Short Stories. New York: State University of New York Press. Rosenblatt, L. M. (1980). “What facts does this poem teach you?” Language Arts, 57, 386-394. Rosenblatt, L. M. (1982). The Literary Transaction: Evocation and Response. Theory into Practice, 2121, 268-277. Rosenblatt, L. M. (1985a). The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. In C. R. Cooper (Ed.), Researching Response to Literature and the Teaching of Literature (pp. 33-53). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Rosenblatt, L. M. (1985b). The Aesthetic Transaction. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 20 (4), 122-128. Rosenblatt, Louise M. (1994). The Reader, the Text, the Poem. Southern Illinois University Press. Rosenblatt, Louise M. (1995). Literature as Exploration (5th Ed.). New York: The Modern Language Association. Squire, J. R. (1964). The Responses of Adolescents while Reading Four Short Stories. NCTE Research Report No. 2. Champaign, Illinois. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press.
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Old Wives’ Tales: Oman’s undervalued verbal arts Thomas Roche The English Department, Sohar University
This paper focuses on verbal arts and attempts to address Reynolds’ statement that folklore is “one of the richest and yet least studied aspects of human culture, although it is constantly present in the lived experience of everyday life” (Reynolds, 2007, 25). After exploring the concept of orality, this paper describes a current attempt to record and explore women’s folklore in the Sultanate of Oman. Literature gives us access to stories which reveal the desires and concerns of individuals, communities and ages. Beacon, the literary supplement of the Times of Oman, which is produced by the Omani Society for Writers and Literati, has worked for over a year to translate some of Oman’s literature into English and bring it to a wider audience. However, since beginning to work with the Beacon team and students at Sohar University, it has come to my attention that there are many stories in Oman which, while equally insightful, cannot be comfortably described as literature. The word literature comes into English from the Latin literae, meaning letters, and in the minds of most users today literature is indeed something written or recorded in written form. In 1971 a survey estimated that, of 3,000 extant languages, only 78 had a written literature (Edminson in Ong, 1982). These language communities often preserve tales about their societies in unwritten or oral forms. Commonly referred to as folklore, these tales can also include epics, sayings, proverbs and jokes. Both written and oral stories can be described as “texts”, which comes from a root meaning to weave and gives written and oral narratives equal recognition as constructed art forms. The stories I will focus on in 82
this paper are woven together (rhapsodein Greek, cf. rhapsodize) verbally (Ong, 1982). We should note here that cultures do not have to be preliterate to maintain rich oral traditions. The Grimm Brothers collected their fairy-tales in Germany long after the spread of literacy in Central Europe. Before I begin to describe our research project on Omani verbal arts I will briefly suggest why these arts should be studied at all. Some might venture that there is nothing to be gained from studying what are in fact old wives’ tales, which is synonymous with saying that such stories are a bunch of worthless lies. Such a description of verbal arts could not be further from the truth. Verbal arts are an incredibly rich source of knowledge about, for example, place. Literate explorers have often relied on verbal arts to help them “discover” new territories. The Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen crossed the Arctic with the help of an illiterate Innuit guide Pukerluk through territories where Pukerluk had never been. He, however, found safe passage through dangerous ice stretches and saastrugi (hard ridges of snow running parallel to winds). Pukerluk did not guide Rasmussen using maps but through singing stories which recorded the topography of areas they crossed. A parallel tale of a European discovery relying on knowledge from an illiterate society can be found in the late 1700s in Micro and Polynesia. Captain James Cook took Tupai as a navigator on ‘The Endeavour’ for a journey of over 4000kms from New Zealand to Tahiti. Tupai had never traveled there before but could navigate among Pacific islands by calling up stories that described those islands and their whereabouts. (Olson, 1994) Beyond their utilitarian value, verbal arts also share information about the people who tell the tales: their beliefs, fears and desires. Beowulf, in a wonderful translation by Seamus Heaney, is a written version of the Anglo-Saxon verbal epic. Therein we can find out much about the patriarchal tribal society of the Anglo-Saxons, 83
their faith in strong men and acts of valor. Such a text can also bridge 1500 years. We find examples of flyting or insulting in Beowulf, similar in essence to the insults and instances of bragging which we can find today in the lyrics of 50cent and Akorn. Verbal arts not only highlight the particular beliefs of a people but also show that which is common to all cultures. From verbal arts we learn not only about place but also about the capacity of the human mind. Milman Parry and Albert Lord’s studies of epic poetry in Montenegro astounded psychologists and folklorists alike when they recorded illiterate bards who could recite poems consisting of 16,000 memorized lines. Oral tales are also a source of enjoyment in their own right. Many texts which we consider the cornerstones of western literature were not originally conceived as books but as stories to be narrated to live audiences. The oral traditions of Greece produced the Iliad and Odyssey. The Kalevala from Finland or King Gesar from Tibet, and Manas from Kyrgyzstan are considered fantastic tales. During my work at Sohar University, it has become clear that there is a dearth of literature relating to verbal arts in the Sultanate and no literature at all which focuses on women’s folklore (verbal and material). There is some excellent work focusing on the UAE and some work done on the dress of men in Oman, but nothing relating specifically to Omani women. In May 2010 a team of four researchers and a dozen student translators began a project to survey Omani women’s verbal arts region by region: Muscat, AlBatinah, Al-Dhakhiliyah, Al-Sharqiyah, Musandam, and Dhofar. For this project semi-structured qualitative panel interviews based on flexible generalized questions are being used with 5-6 participants (with some diversity in terms of age) per site, who 84
can talk openly with each other and the interviewer (through the translator). Utilizing existing social and kin networks, the researchers spread out across the Sultanate to collect tales. Treatment of data, in the initial stages of fieldwork, will consist of open-ended exploratory research; as the research progresses, grounded theory will be used to treat the data and reveal patterns that are locally salient and meaningful. Interviews will be recorded with electronic dictaphones and verbatim translated transcripts will be produced. Due to the nature of oral tradition, verbal arts (proverbs, folktales, songs and other genres) will vary from village to village, participant to participant, and telling to telling. It is exactly some of this variety that the project aims to capture. Research into oral literature does not try to capture canonical or original texts and it is felt that a local audience is important for gathering such data. This research is important as it will record and explore women’s folklore in the Sultanate as it is at the present time. We cannot stress how valuable this study will be to researchers in the field and to the Omani public. Because of its evanescent nature we are always in danger of losing folklore. As the Sultanate is rapidly modernising and its people are becoming more than ever before exposed to cultures from around the world, some of these folkloric products (items of dress, jewellery and related stories, songs, proverbs) are likely to vanish soon under the homogenising influence of imported goods. It is essential that these are documented and recorded now. The project is still at its beginning; however, it is thought that within a year we will have collected and collated a small yet representative sample of Omani verbal art. Once this has been collected our team intends to help to bring it to Arabic and Englishspeaking audiences in both print and online formats. The exciting possibility of recording some stories in audio and publishing them 85
online will help preserve the tradition as it presently exists for future generations to enjoy as they were intended – as told tales for a listening audience. References: Olson, D. The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Ong, W.J. (1982) Orality and Literacy: Technologizing the Word. London: Methuen. Reynolds, D. (2007). Language and literature- Arab folklore: A Handbook. Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press
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Translating Modern Omani Poetry into English and French: Current Strategies and Future Paradigms Dr. Mounir Al-Jilani Ben Zid The Department of English, Sultan Qaboos University
Introduction No one with an interest in literary translation can fail to notice that the situation would appear to be one of great confusion and tension, with no consensus regarding the types of paradigms and the kinds of methods to be used in the translation of literary works. Pessimistic statements on the translatability of poetry in particular are much more common than affirmative ones, as the American poet Robert Frost remarked when he stated: “Poetry is what gets lost in translation” (in Schub, 2003: 81). In this regard, opponents of literary translation argue that translations of literary works “[are] meddling with inspiration” (Showerman, 1916:100), that they are “as tasteless as a stewed strawberry” and are, as the French critic Gilles Ménage has suggested, “like women, either beautiful or faithful, but not both at the same time” (1990: 231). There are several reasons for such a pessimistic view. One of the reasons for the difficulty - even impossibility - of achieving a faithful or perfect translation of poems is the cultural-social component that the translator has to face, since the meaning, the content and the form of a poem, depend a great deal on the source and target culture. Putting forward a parallel assertion, Walter Benjamin contends that “no poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, and accordingly no original for a translation” (1992: 72). 87
Another argument against poetry translation is that the translator is likely to find himself under constant pressure owing to the conflict between form and meaning, which often results in a considerable loss of either the meaning or the stylistic qualities of the original. In addition to the cultural, social and stylistic difficulties the translator may face in translating poetry, there are also pragmatic problems and losses of allusions, images and references hidden in the author’s special choice of words. As Yves Bonnefoy expresses it, the difficulty of translating a poem lies in the retention of “the spiritual statement” or the poem’s “secret life” (in Older, 1994: 29). Nevertheless, showing very little concern for such a useless debate on the translatability or untranslatability of poetry, yet recognizing the difficulty of the task, this study argues that it is worth turning our attention away from matters that can impede the development of literary translation and focus on models of a more positive nature. To this effect, this paper begins with the exploration and development of two currently prevalent theoretical positions on the translation of poetry. One is a conventional approach based on the principle of “equivalence”, which strives to “foreignize” and adapt to the original poem in order to meet the cultural expectations of its stylistic forms and which eventually results in a faithful carbon copy of the original SL text. The other translation paradigm is a strategy which, while de-emphasizing the source text, focuses more on the target-reader and recreates a new TL hologram where the author-translator’s role is not only to be faithful to the source text but also to “domesticate”, reinvent, recreate the target text and suggest “something beyond its literal sense” (Eco, 2004: 7). It is this second paradigm that the present study is advocating. 88
Finally, and in contrast to some critics’ argument that poetry loses in translation, the present paper aims to show that, although some of the original aspects of poems cannot be transposed, they can be recreated and re-painted and that “new arrangements may be even more luminous than the original” (Kopp, 1998). 1. The Current Conventional Approach to Poetry Translation In accordance with the traditional approach, a considerable number of translation theorists and scholars emphasize the fact that poetry translation is complex not only because a poem is rich in linguistic, cultural, social and aesthetic value, but also because translators engage in “an intense reaction to linguistic, psychological, anthropological and cultural phenomena (Schulte, 1987: 2). One of the most pivotal principles of the conventional approach to literary translation has been the question of “equivalence” or “faithfulness” to the source text. In this respect, a good translation is seen as something that tries to stay as close to the original text as possible in content, language and rhyme. According to this translation paradigm, the translator offers a literal translation of a given poem and ‘foreignizes’ the target language text, i.e. sticks to “the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text”, keeping the source language values and making them salient in the target language. Accordingly, the target language readers will feel that the translator is ‘visible’ and they can tell “they are reading a translation” (Munday, 2001: 147). Furthermore, discussing poetry translation from this conventional standpoint, Willis Barnstone asserts that the purpose of ‘literal’ translation is to transfer the meaning of words as faithfully as possible rather than to “reinvent the formal qualities of the 89
message [or] to ‘recreate’ dramatically the signifier itself” (1993: 229). In this sense, the translation of poems consists in a faithful reproduction, word for word, of the original poem, rendering the meaning of the source text, without adding to or substracting from it. Hence, the translator is called upon to ‘foreignize’ and conform to the grammatical and idiomatic conventions of the source text. 1.1 Application This part of the paper is devoted to a discussion of three modern Omani poems composed during the years 1970-1990 and translated into English and French by the present author, treating a range of ‘glocal’ issues, from personal to universal, such as love, memory and nature. It starts with a literal translation of the original poems and then shifts to a domestic re-creation of the target language text. The three poems selected for translation into English and French are from the works of three modern Omani poets, namely Said Al-Saklawi, Hilal Al-Amri and Badr Al-Shibani. The three poets are reflecting on the theme of love and memory, lamenting the loss of a poetic vision and dreaming of a better position in the kingdom of love and beauty. In my translation of the three poems, I have adhered to the conventional premises and I have tried to remain as close and faithful as possible to the source text in order to give readers an insight into the original poems. Based on this translation strategy, the literal (word for word) rendering of the three original poems is faithful to the meaning of the original form, to its content and stylistic features. However, such a translation has given little attention to sound and rhythm and has not been able, in my view, to create an aesthetic effect since some lines in the three poems are too long and lack rhythm and rhyme.
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Source Texts: Arabic )1الدموع الحائرة تحت أظالل األماني نمت في عطف صباه فهو للصب حياة ,وهو للقلب مناه لست أدري أين ولى ...لست أدري منتهاه ان دمعي من عيوني في انحدار كالمياه ال تلمني في بكائي ,فأنا أبكي هواه ال تلمني يا صديقي ال تلمني ,ال تلمني أين دنياي وحبي ونجومي الزاهرات؟ أين قيثارة بدري ...أين همس النسمات؟ أين زهري ,وربيعي ,وشموسي المشرقات؟ ضاع حبي ,تاه قلبي ,في بحور مظلمات أتراها من جديد ستعود األمسيات هل ستخضر غصوني أو ستبقى ذاويات؟ هل ستكسو الشمس صبحي أو سيكسى ظلمات؟ هل ينير النجم ليلي وتغنيني الحياة؟ سعيد الصقالوي
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)2ينام العشق بعينيك الموج بعينيك روايات تحكي التاريخ وتحفظه وتعد األزمان تشبه عينيك البحر برعشتها ورموشك كاألمواج تسافر في دنيا األحالم بال عنوان نظراتك تغسل أحزاني كالموج الحافي يغسل آالف الشطآن نام البحر بعينيك طويال وتال الليل دواوين العشق جاءت أمواج الحب بزورقها تبحث عن عينيك لتبحر فيها تبحث عن أهدابك تحرسها لينام العشق بعينيك ولتلقى األحزان بعمق البحر هالل العامري )3حبك أكبر أحس بحبك أكبر أكبر ألرسم حبك في كل دفتر ألن الحقول بعطرك تزهر أحس فؤادي الى الخلد يعبر تقول بأنك أجمل منظر يسير الوجود اليه فيسكر لتغدو الحقول أرق وأنظر ليصبح نورا لطيفا وجوهر
اذا ما تغيم السماء وتمطر فأكتب شعرا جميال جميال وأمأل حقلي عطورا عطورا اذا ما يرق النسيم ويخطر ألن فؤادي يراك بعين وأنك خمر ...حالل حالل ومنك الربيع يصير ربيعا ومنك الصباح يشع ابتساما
بدر الشيباني A) Target Texts (English): Literal translation 92
1) Confused Tears by Said Al-Saklawi In the shades of aspirations, in his childhood’s tenderness I slept For he is my prime of youth and he is aspiration for my heart I know not where he has gone, I know not where it’s going to end My tears are falling down from my eyes like water, blame not my tears, I’m weeping for his love Blame me not my friend, blame me not, blame me not Where is my life, my love, and my flourishing stars? Where is my dawn’s harp, where is the whispering of breeze? Where are my flowers, my spring, and my shining sun? My love went astray, my heart lost its way in the dark seas Will evening gatherings be back again? Will my branches get green or will they remain branchless? Will the sun clothe my morning or will it be dressed in darkness? Will the star enlighten my nights and will life sing for me again? (My translation)
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2) Love is Sleeping in Your Eyes by Hilal Al-Amri And I can see and love the sea in your eyes For the waves in your eyes are tales That tell, preserve history, and count times Your trembling eyes look like the sea And your eye-lashes are like waves that travel in the world of dreams Barren of any destiny Your glances wash my sadness as a bare wave washes thousands of beaches The sea has slept in your eyes for so long And the night has told records of love And the waves of love came on a boat Searching for your eyes to sail on them Searching for your eye-lashes to protect them So that love can sleep in your eyes So that grief is thrown into the deep sea (My translation)
3) Your Love is Greater by Badr Al-Shibani
I can feel your love is getting greater and greater, when the sky is cloudy and rainy And I write beautiful, beautiful poems to paint your love in every book And I fill my field with perfumes, with perfumes, for the fields flourish with your perfumes And I can feel my heart can break all boundaries, if the breeze commiserates and forewarns, 94
For my heart can see you with an eye that says you are the most beautiful sight And that you are permissible, permissible wine, and that existence gets drunk whenever it comes to you And it is from your love that spring remains spring And it is with your smiles that the morning can shine, can turn into a soft light, into a pearl. (My translation) B) Target Texts (French): Literal translation 1) Des Larmes Confuses Said Al-Saklawi
A l’ombre de ses ambitions, dans la tendresse de son enfance, j’ai dormi Car il est ma jeunesse et l’aspiration de mon coeur Je ne sais pas ou il est allé, je ne sais pas ou est-ce que ça va finir Mes larmes tombent de mes yeux comme l’eau, il ne faut pas m’en vouloir, Je pleurs son amour Ne m’en veux pas mon ami, ne m’en veux pas mon ami, Où sont ma vie, mon amour, et mes étoiles florissantes? Où est l’aube de ma harpe, ou est le murmure de la brise? Où sont mes fleurs, mon printemps et mon soleil rayonnant? Mon amour s’est perdu, mon coeur a perdu son chemin dans les mers obscures Est-ce que les soirées reviendront de nouveau? Est-ce que mes branches seront coloriées de vert ou seront sans feuilles? Est-ce que mes matins seront vêtus de soleil ou vont 95
plonger dans le noir? Est-ce que les étoiles vont éclairer mes nuits et la vie chantera pour moi encore une fois? (My translation) 2) L ‘amour Dort dans tes Yeux Hilal Al-Amri
Je peux voir et aimer la mer dans tes yeux Car les vagues dans tes yeux sont des histoires Qui racontent, protègent l’histoire et comptent le temps Tes yeux troublants ressemblent á la mer Et tes cils ressemblent á des vagues qui voyagent dans le monde descrêves Sans destin Tes clins d’oeuil nettoient ma tristesse comme une vague nue nettoie les plages La mer a longtemps dormi dans tes yeux Et la nuit a pu préserver des histoires d’amour Et les vagues d’amour ont navigué Chercher tes yeux pour y voyager Chercher tes cils pour les protéger Afin que l’amour puisse dormir dans tes yeux Afin que la tristesse soit jetée dans des mers profondes. (My translation)
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3) Ton Amour est Plus Grand Badr Al-Shibani
Je peux sentir que ton amour devient de plus en plus grand quand le ciel devient nuageux et pluvieux Et j’écris de beaux poèmes, de beaux poèmes afin de peindre ton amour dans tous les livres Et je rempli mes champs de parfums, de parfums, car les champs prospèrent avec ton parfum Et je sens que mon coeur peut briser tous les obstacles, quand la brise compatit et m’avertit Car mon coeur te voit avec un oeil qui dit que tu es la plus belle Et que tu es du vin, oui, du vin bénit, et que l’existence devient ivre quand elle te rencontre Et que c’est avec ton amour que le printemps demeure printemps Et qu’avec tes sourires que les matins brillent, qu’ils deviennent une lumière douce, une perle. (My translation)
2. Future Translation Paradigm Since the translation of the three Omani poems is intended mainly for a readership that can neither read nor appreciate them in their original language (i.e, Arabic), it logically follows that the translation paradigm chosen in this paper must be first and foremost conditioned by the needs of the receptor of the target language. Hence, the future translation paradigm adopted in this paper steps beyond conventional principles and procedures and is more than a mere literal translation involving a great deal of recreation and interpretation. According to this approach, the 97
translator’s special role is by no means a passive and mechanical one, but rather that of an artist, a re-creator and an actor. Several scholars share this view and consider literary translation a creative process. Gui, for instance, believes that “translation is not merely a transformation of an original text into a literal equivalent, but must successfully convey the overall meaning of the original” (1995: 135). In a similar vein, Jackson declares that literary translation is not imitation or a carbon copy of the original, but rather a counterpart or an equivalent for expressions used in the source language. In his article entitled “From Translation to Imitation”, Jackson argues much the same point. He holds that a translator must consider that “what he writes is similar, but not the very same, and the similarity, moreover, should not be like that of a painting or statue to the person represented, but rather like that of a son to a father, […] as the bees make honey, not keeping the flowers but turning them into a sweetness of our own, blending many different flavors into one, which shall be unlike them all, and better” (2003). Similarly, Walter Benjamin argues against literal translation, that is a faithfulness or fidelity in the translation of an artistic work. In The Task of the Translator, he emphasizes that it is important to recreate the mode of significance of the source text and that “real translation is transparent, it does not cover the original, does not block its light, but allows the pure language to shine upon the original” (1992). Others, like Lambert, also maintain that literary translation is literary interpretation and that it is “the fruit of a substantial creative effort by the translator, who is the key agent in the subjective activity and social practice of translation” (1988: 133). This meshes with Vermeer’s Skopos translation theory which also 98
favors the principle of openness, i.e. an open relationship between the source text and the translated one. Vermeer assumes that the communicative value of the source text is more important than faithfulness to the source text, and that the translator of a poem should therefore be allowed a great deal of freedom as long as he adheres to the essential meaning of the original poem. 2.2 Application Target Texts: Domestic Trans-creation In view of the future translation paradigm adopted by the present study, more emphasis is placed on the principle of re-creation, interpretation and domestication of the source text in my translation of the three Omani poems into English and French. My goal as a translator here has been to reproduce a text which is a translation of the original and which is at the same time a poem in its own right within the target language. In other words, I was influenced by my personal tastes and preferences in addition to adhering to formal translation criteria when creating a counterpart for the original poems. It is my view, therefore, that, despite some sort of stylistic and semantic loss in translating the three Omani poems, all these renderings have succeeded to some extent in capturing the original style, images and wording. All these variations, moreover, have compensated for the loss of rhythm and rhyme, have introduced an equivalent for the consonant sounds, and have added structural devices such as parallelism in order to reproduce an equivalent aesthetic effect.
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A) Target Texts (English): Domestic Trans-creation 1) Tears at a Loss by Said Al-Saklawi
Under the shade of ambition, in his childhood’s tenderness I slept For he was my youthful prime and model for my heart I know not where he’s gone, I know not where it will end My tears flow down like water Blame not my tears, I’m weeping for his love Blame me not, my friend, blame me not Where my life, my love, my flourishing stars? Where my dawn’s harp and the whispering breeze? Where my flowers, my spring, my shining sun? My love strayed far, my heart quite lost in the darkest seas Will the gatherings of evening come back again? Will my branches grow green or stay without shoots? Will the sun clothe my morning or dress it in dark? Will the stars light up my nights and life sing for me once more? (My translation) 2) Love Can Sleep in Your Eyes by Hilal Al-Amri
And I can see and love the sea in your eyes For the waves in your eyes are tales That tell, keep history, and count times Your trembling eyes look like the sea Your eye-lashes are waves that traverse the world of dreams 100
Barren of destiny Your glances wash my sadness as a bare wave washes beaches The sea has slept in your eyes for so long And the night holds records of love And the waves of love came on a boat Searching for your eyes to sail on them Searching for your eye-lashes to protect them So that love can sleep in your eyes So that grief can be thrown into the depths of the sea.
(My translation)
3) Shall I Describe Thy Love? by Badr Bin Ali Al-Shibani
I can feel your love is growing always, whenever the sky is cloudy and rainy And I write beautiful poems to paint it in my books And I fill my field with perfumes, yes, with perfumes, for the fields flourish with your fragrance And I feel my heart break the bounds when the breeze commiserates and forewarns, For my heart sees you with an eye that says you’re the loveliest That you are permissible, yes, permissible wine, and that life gets drunk whenever it meets you And it’s with your love that spring remains spring And it’s with your smiles that morning can shine, can become a soft light, Can become a pearl. (My translation) 101
B) Target Texts (French): Domestic Trans-creation 1) Des Larmes à Mi-Chemin Said Al-Saklawi Je m’endormais à l’ombre, dans la tendresse de son enfance Car il est pour moi la jeunesse et tout ce que le coeur désire Je ne sais où il a disparu, je ne sais où il va en finir Mes larmes coulèrent comme des gouttes d’eau, ne m’en veux pas, Je pleurs l’amertume de son amour Ne m’en veux pas, mon cher, ne m’en veux pas Où sont partis mon amour et mes étoiles rayonnantes? Où sont l’aube de ma harpe et le bruissement de la brise? Où sont mes fleurs, mon printemps et ma jeunesse? Mon amour, mon coeur ont perdu le chemin dans les mers profondes Les soirées, les retrouvailles, reviennent-elles un jour? Mes branches, seront-elles de nouveau vêtues de joie ou ne verront-elles plus le jour? Mes jours, seront-ils vêtus de soleil ou plongeront-ils dans le noir? Mes nuits, seront-elles éclairées d’étoiles et la vie chantera-elle pour moi de nouveau? (My translation)
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2) L’Amour S’en Dort Dans Tes Yeux Hilal Al-Amri
Je perçois et j’adore la mer à travers tes yeux Car les vagues deviennent des contes dans tes yeux Des fées qui racontent l’histoire du temps Tes yeux frémissants ressemblent à la mer Tes cils sont des vagues qui traversent le monde des rêves Dénudés de toutes destinations Et tes regards me purifient de mon chagrin comme les vagues vierges nettoient la plage La mer a longtemps rêvé dans le royaume de tes yeux Et la nuit a longtemps raconté des fées d’amour Et les vagues d’amour ont pris la mer A la recherche de tes yeux pour y voyager A la recherche de tes cils pour les protéger Afin que l’amour puisse dormir dans tes yeux Afin que le chagrin se dissolve dans les mers les plus profondes. (My translation)
3) Dois-je Décrire ton Amour? Badr Al-Shibani
A chaque fois que le ciel est nuageux et pluvieux, je sens que ton amour devient plus puissant Ainsi, je compose de beaux poèmes pour peindre ton amour dans toutes les oeuvres d’art Et je couvre mes champs de parfum car les champs ne se parfument que de ton parfum Et à chaque fois que la brise, d’un air compatissant, me 103
fait signe, je sens que mon coeur se débarrasse de tous les obstacles Car mon coeur te voit d’un oeil qui déclare que tu es la plus ravissante Et que tu es du vin, oui, du vin bénit, et que la vie s’ enivre en te rendant visite Et que c’est seulement grâce à ton amour que le printemps garde son printemps Et que c’est seulement grâce à tes sourires que le soleil rayonne, et se transforme en une lumière douce, en une perle. (My translation) Conclusion The present study has attempted to disclose two prevalent approaches to the translation of three Omani poems, with a special emphasis on a paradigm which advances the claim that language and stylistic features are not everything in a poem, that a poem should focus more on aesthetic effects and has to be appreciated in the first place. Touching upon currently dominant translation theories, the study has presented what I consider a more efficient translation strategy, which discourages the tendency towards over-faithfulness, equivalence and fidelity to the original poem, which moves beyond the words set on the page, recreates the poem’s aesthetic aspects, and domesticates the source language text by changing the source language values and making them readable for the target language audience. Yet, giving myself much freedom and license to naturalize the three Omani poems does not mean that the authors and source 104
texts have been ignored in the translation process, nor does it insinuate that a poem is open to endless renderings. This study has also argued against the belief that “the clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase” (Nabokov, 1986: 12). Also, an attempt has been made to show that, in case of discrepancy between the meaning of a poem and the demands of its readers, a legitimate interpretation is needed and more emphasis should be put on the tenet of recreation. In brief, this study has striven to demonstrate that no translation of a poem is ever “the same as” or “equivalent to” the original poem itself. As James Holmes puts it: ‘Equivalence’, like ‘sameness’ is asking too much…What the translator strives for is…not over-all sameness or equivalence... Rather it consists in finding what I should prefer to call “counterparts” or “matchings” – words, turns of phrases…that in many and appropriate ways are closely akin to the words etc. in the language and culture of the original and its reader. (2005: 47) References Albir, A.H. (1990). La Notion de Fidelite en Traduction. Paris: Didier Erudition. Barnstone, W. (1993). The Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Practice. New Haven: Yale University Press. Eastman, M. (1936). Pushkin and His English Translators. New Rep., 89.187188. Eco, U. (2004). Experiences in Translation. In Urbancic, ed.: 5-12. Gui, G. (1995). Das Wesen des Ubersetzens ist Kreativ. In Babel 1995, 41,3,129-139.
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Holmes, J.S. (2005). Translated! : Papers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies. Netherlands: Editions Rodopi B.V Jackson, R. (2003). From Translation to Imitation. Online article. Retrieved May 5, 2010 from the World Wide Web. Kasparek, C. (1986). “The Translator’s Endless Toil”. The Polish Review, Vol. XXXI, no. 2-3, pp. 127-135. Kopp, M. (1998). Poetry in Translation. Online article. Retrieved February 22, 2010 from the World Wide Web. Lambert, J. (1988). “Literary Translation”. In M. Baker, ed. Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London: Routledge, 130-134. Landers, C.E. (2001). Literary Translation: A Practical Guide. New Jersey University Press, Multilingual Matters. Menage, G. (1990). “Elles me rappellent une femme que j’ai beaucoup aimé à Tours, et qui était belle mais infidèle”. Quoted in Amparo Hurtado Albir, La Notion de Fidélité en Traduction, Paris, Didier Érudition. Munday, J. (2001). Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications. London: Routledge. Nabokov, V. (1986) “Translation”, Encyclopedia Americana, 27. Nida, E.A. (2003) Towards a Science of Translating: With Special Reference to Principles and Procedures Involved in Bible Translating. Brill: Leiden, Boston, 2003. Nida, E.A. & C.R. Taber (1969) The Theory and Practice of Translation. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Okla, E (n.d.). The Art of Failure: Poetry in Translation. Retrieved 25 April, 2010 from the World Wide Web. Older, J. (1994) “Poeming a Translation.” Poets and Writers Magazine. July/ August, pp. 27-31.
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Pedersen, V. H. (1988) Essays on Translation. Studies in Business Language, 16. Copenhagen: Erhverus Okonon. SIC Forlag. Showerman, G. (1916) The Way of the Translator. Unpopular Rev.,5. 84.-100. Schub, M.B. (2003) That Which Gets Lost in Translation. The Middle East Quarterly. Philadelphia, Vol. X: Number 4, pp. 81-85. Schulte, R. (1987) Translation Theory: A Challenge for the Future. In Translation Review, 23: 1-2. Sontag, S. (1964) “On Style”, Against Interpretation: and Other Essays. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, pp. 95-104. Venuti, L. (1994) “The Translator’s Invisibility: The Evidence of Reviews”, In Other Words, Nr. 4, pp. 16-22. Vermeer, H.J. (1989) Skopos and Commission in Translation Action. In Readings in Translation Theory, Chesterman, A., ed. Helsinki: Oy Finn Lecturn Ab. Walter, B. (1992) Illuminations Translated by Harry Zohn. London: Fontana Press. pp. 70-82.
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Beacon: A Supplement Focusing on the Translation of Omani Literature By Azza Al-Kindi The Department of English, Sultan Qaboos University Translated by Khalid Al-Kaabi and Jamila Al-Seyabi The Department of English, Sultan Qaboos University and Dr. Rahma Al-Mahrooqi The Department of English, Sultan Qaboos University
Abstract This paper discusses Beacon, which is a newspaper supplement issued by the Omani Society for Writers and Literati and devoted to translating Omani literature into English. The aim is to introduce this supplement and highlight its procedures and most important achievements; also to identify the difficulties and challenges which the supervising team as well as the supplement itself have encountered. The paper touches on some future changes which will contribute to enhancing translation in Oman and to conveying Omani thought and intellectualism to those who do not speak the nation’s language. Introduction Before starting to discuss Beacon’s experience, I must mention the idea that lies behind its objectives. This is the significance of translating any type of literature from any society. Nations have not risen to be isolated and to keep their history in locked boxes. Otherwise, we would have lived our present just as our forefathers lived their past. Cultures have not evolved to be expressed in secret codes that are only known to their people. Cultures and 108
countries have not been established in this way. By the same token, literature produced in one language is not meant to be read only in that language, otherwise we would have lost or constricted our identity in a world teeming with literary names. Beacon started and has grown in the midst of numerous challenges, but it has always striven to achieve its important objectives. For the benefit of my readers, I should describe this supplement before starting to state its objectives and main points. Beacon is issued by the Omani Society for Writers and Literati, is dedicated to translating Omani literature into English, and endeavors to introduce Omani literature and culture to non-Arabic speakers. It is issued by the Times of Oman on the first Tuesday of every month. I want to shed some light on a number of points related to Beacon’s translation project: its origins, organization, difficulties, achievements and future aspirations. Beginnings of the Supplement The initial idea of the Beacon project was different from what the supplement actually is now. The first idea was a supplement that contained translations of texts that were published in Noon, a publication by the Omani Society for Writers and Literati in cooperation with the Omani newspaper Al-Shabeeba. However, this idea did not prove to be successful because in the Arabic Noon supplement there were texts that were not worthy of being translated or texts that would have lost their linguistic properties and richness if they had been translated. Further, many of the articles published in this supplement were news or occasion reports, which were unsuitable since by the time their translation, editing and formatting were finished, they had become outdated. 109
Since the project’s objective was to pass on Omani thought and ideas to non-Arabic speakers, this called for a proper selection of texts to be translated and in a manner accessible to the foreign reader. Therefore, it was decided that the format for Beacon should comprise literary texts selected according to particular criteria, and without having come from one source only. The search circle was thus expanded to seek translatable texts from various literary sources: supplements such as Noon, Shurufat and Ashre’a, and books written by Omani writers. Sometimes, writers themselves now send their books for translation. It was not an easy task to find volunteer translators to work on texts to begin the project. It was not easy either to edit the texts and examine the quality of the translators’ work. Yet, where there is a will, there is a way. Seven volunteer translators, most of them students from Sultan Qaboos University, supported the foundation of this supplement. They worked hard and long translating different texts - for example, short stories, articles, poetry and reports - before launching Beacon. This produced a stock of translated work sufficient for three consecutive issues of the supplement. Fortunately, the Omani Society for Writers and Literati became both sponsor and supporter of Beacon, and the Times of Oman newspaper has now adopted the practice of printing the supplement on the first Tuesday of every month. Cooperation with the Department of Public Relations and Information at Sultan Qaboos University has been maintained in order to supervise the design of the supplement; and also with the Photography Society and Fine Arts Society to provide photos and paintings. Beacon was launched at the Omani Cultural Club on November 3, 2008, an event attended by a number of academics, ambassadors and journalists. Copies of the first issue were distributed and some 110
translations that were published in that first issue were presented at the gathering. Management The supplement comprises eight pages whose varied translated texts include articles, short stories and poetry. It may also contain interviews with prominent Omani personalities, reports on scholarly investigation, or a summary of a book written by an Omani writer. The cover page features an introduction written by different people who are board members or creative writers. Specific planning committees work on the supplement to ensure both quality and a smooth production flow. These are the Editorial Supervision Committee, the Text Selection Committee, the Paintings Selection Committee and the Public Relations Committee. The issue of each month does not rely on the materials prepared specifically for that month like other supplements and newspapers. Translated texts are selected from a store prepared well in advance, a store sufficient for other upcoming issues. The process takes place as follows. The Text Selection Committee looks for works that are translatable and sends them to the editorial supervisor, who in turn stores these texts according to their type. He then sends a text to each translator and a deadline is set for the text to be translated. The translator returns the completed text to the supervisor who collects it and passes it on to the Revision Committee. This committee ensures that the translated text matches the original and that the translator has not changed the writer’s ideas. This process is called preliminary revision and is carried out by Beacon members. After this revision, the text is sent to the language editor, Thomas Roche, who is Assistant Professor and Head of the English Department at Sohar University. He does 111
the final revision of the translated text in terms of its linguistic accuracy and readability. The editorial supervisor then receives the revised version and checks again that the language editor has not made any changes that could affect the writer’s ideas. The text is then considered as being ready for publication. This is, then, a non-stop process where translators are continuously involved, while editors perform their roles to make sure that texts are publishable. Difficulties and Challenges Some may think that issuing a supplement for translated literary texts is simple and that all it takes is selecting texts, translating them and publishing them. Yet the work is not that simple. Team members have faced many challenges and difficulties in their work at Beacon. For examples: · The concept of voluntary work, on which Beacon is based, has raised doubts in many people’s minds about the sustainability of this supplement. The idea that it is issued by members who are not monetarily compensated for their work is not very common in Oman. We may find people who do not appreciate the idea and value of voluntary work. Yet Beacon’s founding members have striven determinedly to make the supplement stand on its feet on a voluntary basis. They have tried to constantly encourage new members to translate and work according to this principle. Fortunately, the Omani Society for Writers and Literati decided to assign a budget for the supplement and a small amount of money has now been designated for the translators of each work as a token of appreciation for their efforts.
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· Finding texts that are worthy of translation is another challenge that Beacon’s team has encountered. As indicated earlier, not all literary texts published in cultural supplements and books are translatable or worthy to be translated. The strength of some of these texts is in their language rather than in the message they contain. Sometimes these texts are purely linguistic, and therefore working on translating them involves no significant objective. Sometimes the texts are so long that they do not match the technical criteria set for Beacon. Sometimes, texts are related to specific events and are discarded because by the time the long translation and revision processes are over, the events have lost their impact. Hence, we believe that the process of choosing texts should be critically selective, not random. It therefore requires a reader who is capable, in Arabic and English, of differentiating between what is good for translation and what is not. • Beacon has faced a decline in its store of translated work which is a fundamental basis for the survival of the supplement. A decrease in the number of translators and translated texts has contributed to this problem. I mentioned earlier that most of Beacon’s founding members were senior SQU students and that most of them were in their final year at the university. After graduating, their involvement in their workplaces and engagement in social commitments led to this shortage of translated work. For some of them the responsibilities of their new jobs were very exhausting and time-consuming. Finding a solution to this dilemma was imperative since it became impossible to rely on a group of translators who had new obligations beyond their control. Therefore, the search for new members to join Beacon started and a number of SQU students from the English Department who were keen to join the supplement were contacted. Choosing 113
nominees was not a random process. Those interested sat a preliminary exam to check their translation abilities, the exam comprising a literary text being given to the participant to translate. The translation work was checked and evaluated. After that, the participants were contacted to inform them of the result. The process did not finish there, but actually went on to include workshops for the new members and revising their work in order to polish their translation skills. • A change that took place in the size of the Times of Oman disturbed Beacon and led it into a state of confusion. Its size had to match the new size of the newspaper. Yet the size that was adopted in the first month of change did not satisfy the team members at Beacon. It looked like a twopage newspaper, and not a cultural supplement that people might read for enjoyment and knowledge. A discussion was held with the newspaper decision-makers in the hope that a new size for the supplement, more in line with its cultural and literary message, could be accommodated. After some serious negotiations, approval was reached for returning the supplement to its previous size, along with a new layout that matched the graphic approach of the newspaper. Achievements and Aspirations Although it has been only a year and a half since Beacon was launched, it has been able in this short time to prove itself within the knowledge and general society, inside and outside the Sultanate. It has been comprehensive and diverse in its themes and approaches. Many have complimented it and many nonOmanis have come to consider it a door into a hidden garden full of Omani fruit. 114
Beacon, for instance, has dedicated special issues to particular themes. There was, for example, a symposium on “The Word: Between Spaces of Freedom and Limitations of Questioning” which was organized by the Omani Society for Writers and Literati at the Cultural Club. This issue included many discussions that arose during the two days of the symposium. A celebratory issue was published to commemorate Beacon’s first anniversary in which translators talked about their experience at Beacon and the benefits they gained from their work with the supplement. This issue also contained a survey of readers who were non-Arabic speakers, who described their experience with Beacon and the messages it had managed to send them. The seventh issue attracted the attention of many readers due to its focus on poems produced by the late Ali Mehdi: this followed a memorial event held for him at the Cultural Club. A special issue of Beacon was also devoted to the Omani Women’s Symposium. It carried an interview with Saeeda Khatir, a translated investigation into the role of women in Omani creativity, an article on the portraiture skills of Sayyida Latifa Al-Said, and poems written by a young poet called Safa Al-Nabhani. All these items dealt with the roles of the Omani woman as a mother, wife and working woman. Furthermore, they highlighted the extent to which His Majesty has paid attention to women’s rights and the privileges he has granted them. It is important to note that the entire team that worked on this issue consisted only of Omani women. Beacon does its utmost to convey Omani thought and ideas to non-speakers of Arabic. One of its priorities is to publish interviews with Omani scholars and artists, whether the interview had been conducted and translated by one of Beacon’s members or published elsewhere in another supplement and then translated by Beacon’s team. An interview was published with Dr. Nasser Al-Taei, Head of the Musicology Department at the University 115
of Tennessee, USA. He discussed his experience with Omani music and expressed his views on the attention the Sultanate has given to music and to promoting youthful talent. A translated interview with the writer Dr. Abdul Aziz Al-Farsi was also published wherein he spoke about his short stories and novels and his style of writing. Another translated interview, with the writer Suleiman Al-Mamari, was also published. It shed light on his writing journey and his role as a poet and head of the Omani Society for Writers and Literati. An exclusive interview with Dr. Sadek Jawad Suleiman, current head of the Omani Society for Writers and Literati and president of the Counseling Centre for Arab Dialogue in Washington, which included his comments on the concept of freedom of speech, was also published. Beacon has also opened its door to international contributions other than translations. Writers such as Rory Alan, Dr. Thomas Roche, Naser Al-Taei, Asmaa Al-Dawoodi and Badr Al-Jahwari have all had their English writing published in Beacon. This ranges from short stories to articles. Special thanks must go to Dr. Thomas Roche, who has constantly published translated Omani oral literature such as traditional songs, thus helping to propagate knowledge of Oman’s cultural heritage. Beacon’s team members look forward to increasing the number of its pages, but this requires the availability of sufficient translators so that the supplement can maintain its standards. We hope that this will eventually happen so that Beacon, as its name suggests, will truly become a shining light of knowledge and enlightenment. Beacon has prepared a plan to ensure that the standard of its translated work is maintained and preserved as a legacy for the next generation. This in part will involve publishing an annual volume of its work, of use to both researchers and the general reader. Preparations for the first volume have already begun. 116
Conclusion Creating Beacon has been a huge step, a leap forward to convey our literature and heritage to other cultures and to non-Arabic speakers. The supplement works according to a system in which an agreed policy is followed to ensure quality and the availability of translated texts. The Beacon team members insist on constant renewal and on overcoming challenges in order to keep the supplement alive. The supplement’s achievements so far have been numerous and important, especially as these relate to the key areas of literary translation in Oman.
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