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FitzGerald’s Approach to Translation

FitzGerald’s Approach to Translation. Habibollah Mashhady, Mahbube Noura.
International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research 3 (2012) 4, pp. 370–384.

The present paper attempts to explore FitzGerald’s overall approach to translation by examining his translated works and particularly by focusing on his translation of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat. Khayyam Rubaiyat is selected as the text to gather data and it is compared to its English translation by FitzGerald in order to identify the strategies he used in translating it into English.

Omar Khayyam’s Epicureanism: The Spanish Translations of Rubaiyats (1904-1930)

Omar Khayyam’s Epicureanism: The Spanish Translations of Rubaiyats (1904-1930). A. Gasquet.
In: Peripheral Transmodernities: South-to-South Intercultural Dialogues between the Luso-Hispanic World and ‘the Orient’. Ed. by Ignacio López-Calvo. Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars, 2012. pp. 155-177. ISBN 9781443837149.

The author gives a brief summary of a number of translations published in Spanish-American countries. Here, and in the Phillipines twelve translations of the Rubáiyát were issued in twenty-six years. The first translation was by Juan Dublan (Mexico, 1904), followed by Gregorio Martinez Sierra (Madrid, 1907), and finally by Francisco Propata (Paris, 1930). Four works are discussed more in detail: the versions by Dublan, Muzzio Sáenz-Peña, González and Bernabé. Gasquet describes the socio-cultural conditions of their time, and the sources of their work. He also shows how the hedonist-mystic debate played a role in these works.

Victorian Poetry and Translation

Victorian Poetry and Translation. Richard Cronin
In: Reading Victorian Poetry. Richard Cronin. Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, pp. 114-140.

It was not a great age of poetic translation, but in D.G. Rossetti and Edward FitzGerald it had two great translators, and almost all the most important Victorian poets produced translations of one kind or another. Greek tragedy proved particularly attractive: Barrett Browning translated Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound not once but twice (1833 and 1850), and Augusta Webster translated it too, before going on to publish a version of Euripides’ Medea (1866 and 1868). Robert Browning accommodated within two of his later poems, Balaustion’s Adventure (1871) and Aristophanes’ Apology (1875), complete translations of two other plays by Euripides, Alcestis and Heracles . Edward FitzGerald translated the Agamemnon (1865) as well as Omar Khayyám.

FitzGerald or Fitz-Omar: Ideological Reconsideration of the English Translation of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat

FitzGerald or Fitz-Omar: Ideological Reconsideration of the English Translation of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat. Shilan Shafiei.
English Language and Literature Studies, 2 (2012) 1 (March), pp. 128-140.

The present study attempted to examine whether Edward Fitzgerald’s English translation of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat is effective in doing justice to the true philosophical/ideological image of Khayyam and his poems through investigating the extent of ideological manipulation applied by Fitzgerald in his translation, and through referring to the fundamental tenets of Post-colonialism. For this purpose, the content of all the quatrains in the first edition of the translation of Rubaiyat by Fitzgerald with their corresponding Persian equivalents, were analyzed.

Etude critique des traductions en français d’un quatrain d’Omar Khayyâm

Etude critique des traductions en français d’un quatrain d’Omar Khayyâm. Saidi Bouroujeni, Sara; Dadvar, Elmira.
Plume 6 (2011) 13, pp. 127–142

In the XXe, translation is changing. Slowly, we go from language to speech, with text as unity. We are discovering the oral of literature, not like in theatre only. Intuitively, the greatest translators have ever known it. We discover that the translation of a literal text must do what a literal text do through its prosody, its rhythm, its significance, such as o kind of individualization, a kind of form-topic that radically move the precepts of transparency and faithfulness of the traditional theory. As part of our doctorate thesis Reception of the quatrains of Omar Khayyam in France (XIX-XXIe centuries), because of failure to analyze all the quatrains, we propose to compare the translations of one of the high frequently translated robâ’i or quatrain in most of the French translations of the Quatrains.

Traduire c’est trahir: des Arabian Nights aux Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Traduire c’est trahir: des Arabian Nights aux Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Laurent Bury.
In: L’orientalisme victorien dans les arts visuels et la littérature. Laurent Bury. Grenoble, ELLUG, 2011. ISBN: 978-2843101762

Il est une forme de colonisation plus pacifique, mais aussi moins univoque, puisqu’elle autorise une influence réciproque : l’assimilation d’une culture par une autre que suppose l’exercice de la traduction. Avec l’engouement qu’elle suscite pour les langues lointaines, la « Renaissance orientale » est à l’origine d’une floraison d’arrangements et d’adaptations, dans lesquels les Victoriens refusent de s’effacer humblement, préférant rester auteurs à part entière. Comme le montrera l’exemple de quelques traductions orientales produites au XIXe siècle, l’intervention de l’interprète y est souvent très visible.

Translating Metaphor and Simile from Persian to English: A Case Study of Khayyam‘s Quatrains

Translating Metaphor and Simile from Persian to English: A Case Study of Khayyam‘s Quatrains. Morteza Zohdi ; Ali Asghar Rostami Saeedi.
About Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 1 (2011) 9 (Sept.), pp. 1122-1138.

Summary

Metaphor and simile are two figures of speech which make comparison between two things. These two figures of speech are widely used by writers and poets in their literary works and Persian poets are no exception. Metaphor and simile often create problem for translators. These problems are even more complicated in poetry due to its compactness and its obligation to preserve the sound effects. This research intends to identify the most accurate translation made of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in translating its metaphors and similes. Khayyam is a well-known poet in the west and certainly the most famous one. This fame is due to the translation of his Rubaiyat by the Victorian poet Edward FitzGerald. But FitzGerald has not rendered an accurate translation and has done a more or less a free translation. In his translation, many of the verses are paraphrased, and some of them cannot be confidently traced to any of Khayyam’s quatrains at all. Other translators also have translated Rubaiyat. This study investigates two translations of Rubaiyat (i.e. FitzGerald and Arberry) with regard to similes and metaphors.

Le Gallienne’s paraphrase and the limits of translation

Le Gallienne’s paraphrase and the limits of translation. A. Talib.
In: FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Popularity and neglect. Ed. by A. Poole et al. London, Anthem Press, 2011. pp. 175-192.

Talib shows that Richard Le Gallienne’s 1897 edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is an original work of literature that helps us understand the contemporary tensions surrounding academic and commercial translation and the place of the Rubáiyát in English literary history.

FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát and agnosticism

FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát and agnosticism. Marta Simidchieva.
In: FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Popularity and neglect. Ed. by A. Poole et al. London, Anthem Press, 2011. pp. 55-72.

The author tries to find a possible answer to Pound’s question about the success of FitzGerald’s translation. She puts the first two editions of the Rubáiyát in the intellectual context of the times, in an attempt to discover how the Persian transplants ‘correlate with the [host] system’. She contends that the poetic persona of the Persian sage, and the agnostic overlay which FitzGerald created through his choices as an editor and interpreter of the Khayyámic legacy, were as instrumental in ensuring the worldwide fame of the Rubáiyát as FitzGerald’s prowess as a translator.