Archives

Dis-contenting Khayyam in the Context of Comparative Literature

Dis-contenting Khayyam in the Context of Comparative Literature. An Invitation to Translating Rubaiyat with a Focal Shift from Content to Form. Sajad Soleymani Yazdi
In: International journal of comparative literature and translation studies, 7 (2018) 1, p. 24-30

Abstract

Since its conception in France in 1877, Comparative Literature, always subject to a critique of Eurocentrism, has been in a state of perpetual crisis. In “The Old/New Question of Comparison in Literary Studies: A Post-European Perspective” (2004), Ray Chow argued for a Post-European perspective in which comparatists begin with the home culture and look outwards to the European cultures, contrary to the dominant approach of doing just otherwise. Missing in Chow’s argument is the position of translation in this post-European perspective. In the 14 years between 2004 and 2018, the grandiose claims of comparative literature have been problematized and addressed; the lay of the land, however, remains predominantly Eurocentric, as it still focuses on content disproportionately. In this paper, through a study of English translations of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, and taking Chow’s argument further, I argue that with its commitment to transfer the form of a text as much as the content, translation studies can further help comparative literature to distance itself from Europe. To exemplify the implication of this, I suggest that a translation of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat from Farsi to English would be more faithful to the original if its translations were to focus on the poem’s form rather than the content. I argue that translating with a focus on form would foreignize Khayyam’s poetry, hence an act of resistance against cultural hegemony.

The Afterlife of Edward FitzGerald s Poem

The Afterlife of Edward FitzGerald s Poem. A Comparative Study of FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát and Housman s A Shropshire Lad. Mostada Hosseini
In: Contemporary Literary and Cultural Studies , (2018) 1, p. 19-34

Abstract

The present paper seeks to address and examine Edward FitzGerald’s globally-known poem afterlife, The Rubáiyát. Translation can serve as a force for literary renewal and innovation. For many years translation was regarded as a marginal area within comparative studies, now it is acknowledged that translation has played a vital role in literary history and great periods of literary innovation tend to be preceded by periods of intense translation activity. The significance of FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát lies in how the poem was read when it appeared and in the precise historical moment when it was published. The impact of FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát was such that on the one hand it served as a model for a new generation of poets struggling to make the skepticism and pessimism a proper subject for poetry, while on the other hand it established a benchmark for future translators because it set the parameters in the minds of English-language readers of what Persian poetry could do. The present chapter tries to show that FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát had a role in forming pre-modern English poetry, notably Housman’s poetry, in terms of form and content. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad and FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát have undeniable similarities.

The Crowded Borderlands of an Iconic “Translation”

The Crowded Borderlands of an Iconic “Translation”: Material and Immaterial Paratext of FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Christine Ruymbeke
In: The Routledge Handbook of Persian Literary Translation. Shabani-Jadidi, Pouneh; Higgings, Patricia J.; Quat, Michelle (eds.) London, Routledge, 2022. ISBN: 9781003052197

Summary

The starting hypothesis of this chapter is that the Victorian verses, known as the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, constitute a paradigmatic case study for Persian literary translation studies. FitzGerald’s poem is representative of the Victorian art of translating classic and non-European literature and especially poetry; it has also become the scapegoat that enables the criticism and rejection of many older translations of Persian literature. Nevertheless, criticized as the “translation” may be, Persian studies are indebted to it for a great part of their romanticized image in the English-speaking world, which soon overflowed into other European cultures. Its astounding success lasted from a few years after its first version over more than a century. Much has been said about the English poet’s relation to his medieval Persian model or source, and about his picturesqueness; this chapter is an opportunity for reminding ourselves of the translation tradition prevalent at the time of its creation and for revisiting the scholarship around “Rubaiyat studies.” Departing from existing scholarly discussions of this über-famous poem, the chapter looks at the paratext of the first edition of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Elements such as the title, the presence and absence of the author’s and translator’s names, the introduction, and the foot- and endnotes contain an impressive amount of information, shedding some new light on the process and decision-making behind the production of FitzGerald’s “translation” of a collection of Persian verses.

Voice in Khayyam’s Rubaiyat and FitzGerald’s English translation

Voice in Khayyam’s Rubaiyat and FitzGerald’s English translation. Saeedeh Bisayar; Mahdi Safari; Mousaahmadian
International journal of English language, literature and translation studies, 2 (2015) 1, pp. 114–124.

This study attempted to examine the concept of “voice” in Khayyam’s Rubaiyat compared with Fitzgerald’s English translation through investigating the extent of ideological changes Fitzgerald applied in his paraphrase and through analysis of the existing voice in every selected quatrain of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat. For this purpose, six Persian quatrains by Khayyam have been selected randomly and their equivalences have been traced in the first edition of the translation of Rubaiyat by Fitzgerald.

Balkan Rubaiyat. The post-Ottoman polysystem between East and West

Balkan Rubaiyat. The post-Ottoman polysystem between East and West. R. Mueller.
Paper, online available at Academia.edu, June 2014.

In the Balkans, two important national thinkers produced their own Rubaiyat translations. In 1920, Safvet-Beg Bašağić (1870-1934), Oriental scholar and father of Muslim nationalism in Bosnia, published the first translation of the acclaimed Rubaiyat in a South Slavic language. In 1926, Theofan Stylian Noli (1882-1965), ordained Orthodox priest, national intellectual and once-Prime Minister of Albania, published the first Albanian-language version of the Rubaiyat. What are we to make of the temporal and geographical convergence of these individuals and their text, their parallel projects of making a behemoth of modern world literature—itself situated in an unstable place between East and West—available to audiences in a newly post-Ottoman sphere?

Woestijn waar ik dit paradijs aan dank – Claes vertaalt FitzGerald vertaalt Chajjaam

Woestijn waar ik dit paradijs aan dank – Claes vertaalt FitzGerald vertaalt Chajjaam. B. Crucifix.
Filter 21 (2014) 2, p. 7-19.

Paul Claes is a notorious Flemish translator, most famous for his translations of classic and modernist texts; but he is also a novelist and a poet, a critic and a scholar. This article examines how translation and writing interconnects in Claes’s translations and pastiche of Edward FitzGerald’s (free) translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Because of a cultural difference in legal status and representation, translating and writing are often considered to be strictly separate activities, establishing a hierarchical distinction between ‘creative’ and ‘derivative’ modes.

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.

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.

Translation and optical media: spirit-channeling in Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Translation and optical media: spirit-channeling in Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Karin Littau
In: Amodern 8, 2018.

Summary

This essays gives a snapshot of the mid-Victorian period to address the ways in which Edward FitzGerald, wittingly or unwittingly, co-opted optical media into his translational practice and theory. His stance on translation – like that of his contemporary Dante Gabriel Rossetti – while imbued with older cultural beliefs and practices, such as the transmigration of spirits and souls, is also strikingly contemporary when it comes to one of the key media technologies of his age: the magic lantern. The focus on these little noticed connections between translation and optical media is intended as a step towards a more comprehensive media history of translation that pays attention to translation not only in the familiar contexts of oral and written cultures, but also in visual and screen cultures.

Inhoud …

A translation quality assessment of two English translations of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam based on Juliane House’s Model (1997)

A translation quality assessment of two English translations of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam based on Juliane House’s Model (1997). Sonia Ghafouripour; Razieh Eslamieh
International Journal of English language & translation studies, 6 (2018) 2, pp. 217–226

Summary

Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) is a fast-growing sub-field of Translation Studies. It focuses on the relationship between the texts translated from ST into TT. This study applied House’s (1997) TQA model to English translations of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, in order to evaluate the quality of these translations. It was found out that both translators have successfully translated Khayyam’s poetry. However, the first translation by Saeed Saeedpour (2012) has fewer errors (68 errors) in comparison with second translation (95 errors) by Edward Fitzgerald (1859), as a conclusion, ST native speaker could master the implications better, so he could translate better than the TT native speakers.