Archives

The tradition of Translating the Rubaiyat of Khayyam – An Approach to Culture Specific Terms

The tradition of Translating the Rubaiyat of Khayyam – An Approach to Culture Specific Terms. Zahra Buali, Behrouz Ebrahimi.
TranslationDirectory.com, (2008), nr. 1547.

As the linguists and the translators argue, there are some words- calling culture specific terms which are rooted in the culture of any nation and country. Since there are often so many culture specific terms in poems, translating these terms and transferring them from one language to another one having two different cultures is a difficult process. Transferring of culture specific terms from one culture to another and understanding them by the target audience in the target culture is dependent on having familiarity with the source culture and traditions.

Khayyam, Omar xi. Impact on literature and society in the West

Khayyam, Omar xi. Impact on literature and society in the West. Jos Biegstraaten.
Encyclopaedia Iranica Online, December 2008.

The first scholar outside Persia to study Omar Khayyam was the English orientalist, Thomas Hyde (1636-1703). In his Historia religionis veterum Persarum eorumque magorum (1700), he not only devoted some space to the life and works of Khayyam, but also translated one quatrain (robāʿi) into Latin. The first quatrain in English was published in 1816 by Henry George Keene (1781-1864) in the famous magazine Fundgruben des Orients/Mines d’Orient. Although the founder of the Fundgruben, Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (1774-1856), translated a few of Khayyam’s poems into German in 1818, and Sir Gore Ouseley (1770-1844) into English in 1846, Khayyam was to remain relatively unknown for some time

Nozhat al-Majales

Nozhat al-Majales. Moḥammad Amin Riahi.
Encyclopaedia Iranica Online, 2008

NOZHAT AL-MAJĀLES, an anthology of some 4,000 quatrains (robāʿi; a total of 4,139 quatrains, 54 of which have been repeated in the text) by some 300 poets of the 5th to 7th/11th-13th centuries, compiled around the middle of the 7th/13th century by the Persian poet Jamāl-al-Din Ḵalil Šarvāni. The book is arranged by subject in 17 chapters (bābs) divided into 96 different sections (namaṭ). The anthology also includes 179 quatrains and an ode (qaṣida) of 50 distiches written by the author himself, who is also credited with one lyric (ḡazal) in Moḥammad Jājarmi’s Moʾnes al-aḥrār.

Edward FitzGerald”(1809-1883), British translator of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam …

Edward FitzGerald”(1809-1883), British translator of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (by far the most famous translation ever made from Persian verse into English), as well as Jāmī’s Salāmān o Absāl and ʿAṭṭār’s Manṭeq al-ṭayr. D. Davis.
Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, December 15 1999.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is by far the most famous translation ever made from Persian verse into English, and it had a considerable influence on the development of late Victorian and Edwardian British poetry as well as the awakening of a much wider interest, in English speaking countries and Europe, in Persian literature than had previously been the case

Os Rubaiyat de Manuel Bandeira e de Torrieri Guimarães

Os Rubaiyat de Manuel Bandeira e de Torrieri Guimarães. Denise Botman.
In: Revista InComunidade, Edição de ABRIL de 2017.

Summary:
This article discusses a number of peculiarities in the translations into Portuguese by Bandeira and by Guimarães, both said to be based on the French translation by Toussaint. After examination and comparison of the text it appears that the translation by Guimarães is not based on Toussaint, as claimed by the translator but on Bandeira, which is considered to be an example of plagiarism or fraud, or both.

Umar Khayyam

Umar Khayyam. Mehdi Aminrazavi; Glen van Brummelen
In: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring 2017

Summary

The authors argue that Umar Khayyam was a philosopher-sage (ḥakīm) and a spiritual-pragmatist whose Rubā‘iyyāt should be seen as a philosophical commentary on the human condition. The salient features of Umar Khayyam’s pioneering work in various branches of mathematics were also discussed. Khayyam’s mathematical genius not only produced the most accurate calendar to date, but the issues he treated remained pertinent up until the modern period. For Khayyam, there are two discourses, each of which pertains to one dimension of human existence: philosophical and poetic. Philosophically, Khayyam was the last Peripatetic in the Persian speaking world before philosophical thinking eclipsed the Eastern part of the Islamic world for several centuries. Khayyam defended rationalism against the rise of orthodoxy and made an attempt to revive the spirit of rationalism which was so prevalent in the first four centuries in Islam. Poetically, Khayyam represents a voice of protest against what he regards to be a fundamentally unjust world. Many people found in him a voice they needed to hear, and centuries after he had died his works became a venue for those who were experiencing the same trials and tribulations as Khayyam had.