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Abstract
“The poem is a bridge extending across time and encompassing all horizons,”Footnote1 writes the renowned Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani. It is through this bridge of poetry that he continues to traverse and speak to his Arab audience. As an homage to Qabbani—a master of metaphor in all his writings—this paper will compare Qabbani’s poetry in its original Arabic to that of his English translators, who have and continue to strive to bring his foreign readers from one world and language into his own poetic garden. By using examples of his approved English translations and the Skopos theory, I will argue in this paper that the bridge of translation cannot function in the same way as Qabbani’s bridge and that what prevents this bridge from succeeding is the deficiency of linguistic and cultural substances embedded in the text.
Acknowledgement
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Disclosure statements
In accordance with Taylor & Francis policy and my ethical obligation as a researcher, I declare that I have no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper.
Notes
1 Nizar Qabbani and George Nicolas El-Hage, Nizar Qabbani: My Story with Poetry, 20.
2 Jayyusi, Modern Arabic Poetry, 368.
3 Nizar Kabbani, Nayef Al-Kalali, and Lisa Kavchak, Republic of Love, 18.
4 Qabbani and El-Hage, My Story with Poetry.
5 Ibid., 15.
6 Nizar Kabbani, Nayef Al-Kalali, and Lisa Kavchak, Republic of Love, 220.
7 Qabbani and El-Hage, My Story with Poetry, 25–27.
8 Translation mine.
9 Qabbānī and Suayeh, Poems of Love and Exile, xxx.
10 Ibid., 221.
11 Ibid., 223.
12 “1960s–1970s,” in The Translation Studies Reader, 139.
13 Nizār Qabbānī, Bassam K. Frangieh, and Clementina R. Brown, Arabian Love Poems, 104–105.
14 Friedrich Schleiermacher, “On the Different Methods of Translating,” 55.
15 Qabbānī, Frangieh, and Brown, Arabian Love Poems, 42–43.
16 Ibid., 162–163.
17 Ibid., 52–55.
18 Shoshana Blum-Kulka, “Shifts of Cohesion and Coherence in Translation,” 295.
19 Arieh Loya (1975), “Poetry as a Social Document,” 481.
20 Nizār Qabbānī, Lena Jayyusi, and Sharif Elmusa, On Entering the Sea, x.
21 C.C. Barfoot, “and Never Know the Joy,” x.
22 Kabbani, Al-Kalali, and Kavchak, Republic of Love, 140–144.
23 George Nicolas El-Hage, Nizar Qabbani: Journal of an Indifferent Woman, 13.
24 Kabbani, Al-Kalali, and Kavchak, Republic of Love, 216.
25 Qabbani and El-Hage, My Story with Poetry, 15.
26 Qabbānī, Frangieh, and Brown, Arabian Love Poems, 209.
27 Kabbani, Al-Kalali, and Kavchak, Republic of Love, 160.
28 Friedrich Schleiermacher, “On the Different Methods of Translating,” 60.
29 Kabbani, Al-Kalali, and Kavchak, Republic of Love, 219–223.
30 Qabbani and El-Hage, My Story with Poetry, 124.
31 John Dryden, “From the Preface to Ovid’s Epistles,” 40.
32 Hans J. Vermeer, “Skopos and Commission in Translational Action,” 191.
33 Qabbānī, Frangieh, and Brown, Arabian Love Poems, v.
34 Vermeer, “Skopos and Commission in Translational Action,” 199.
35 Qabbānī, Frangieh, and Brown, Arabian Love Poems, vi.
36 Ibid., 12–13.
37 Ibid., 16–17.
38 Itamar Even-Zohar, “The Position of Translated Literature Within the Literary Polysystem,” 163.
39 Kabbani, Al-Kalali, and Kavchak, Republic of Love, 11.
40 Ibid., 7.
41 Ibid., 174–175.
42 Vermeer, “Skopos and Commission in Translational Action,” 198.
43 Kabbani, Al-Kalali, and Kavchak, Republic of Love, 36–37.
44 Qabbānī, Jayyusi, and Elmusa, On Entering the Sea, 126.
45 Kabbani, Al-Kalali, and Kavchak, Republic of Love, 12.
46 Vermeer, “Skopos and Commission in Translational Action,” 200.
47 Douglas Robinson, The Translator’s Turn, 182.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Tianrui Ma
Tianrui Ma is a research associate at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. He received his Ph.D. in Arabic Literature with a minor in Comparative Literature from Indiana University, an M.A. in Arabic Studies from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a B.A. in Arabic Language and Literature from Xi’an International Studies University, China. His research interests include Arabic and Chinese comparative literature, translation studies, and gender studies. He has presented his papers at major conferences, such as the American Literary Translators Association Conference and the Middle East Studies Association Conference. He is also a published freelance translator of Arabic and Chinese and writes his free verse in multiple languages.