Book Chapter

Translation in Motion: A Survey of Literary Translation in Lebanon and Egypt during the Nahḍa

Kesrouany, Maya I

2018,2019

Overview

We blame translators, and particularly those who translate romances, for suppressing the names of authors. What is the wisdom of doing so? If these translators claim these works to be their own, we could then say that they want to ascribe these works to themselves. But when they admit that they have only translated these works, would it not be better if they affixed the name of the author, who has consumed his brain and spent nights in research and exposed himself to bitter criticism and reproach to write a romance? … Should not his right in writing his work be preserved as we preserve our right of publishing these works?Editor of al-Hilāl.In his momentous dictionary Muḥaīṭ al-muaīṭ: qāmūs muṭawwal li-l-lugha al-ʿarabiyya (1870) [The All-encompassing Comprehensive: An Extended Dictionary of the Arabic Language], under the entry rawā (to narrate or tell a story), Buṭrus al-Bustānī surprisingly includes no reference to the neologism riwāya (novel) and its novel generic connotations, but adheres to the word's older references (basing his dictionary on Majd al-Dīn al-Fayrūzʾābādī's al-Qāmūs al-Muḥaīṭ). This seems surprising given al-Bustānī and his son Salīm's direct role in introducing and propagating the novel and story forms in Lebanon. Al-Bustānī translated The Pilgrim's Progress (1678; Arabic 1844) and Robinson Crusoe (1719; Arabic 1861), while Salīm took over the cultural journal al-Jinān (Gardens/Paradise) in Beirut, which published translations and original fiction, such as his al-Hiyām fī futūḥ al-shām (1870) (Love during the Conquest of Syria), considered a pioneering Arabic novel. Yet, under the entry rawā in al-Bustānī senior's Muḥaīṭ, we find: ‘rawā al- ḥadīth yarwīhi riwāyatan … ḥamaluhu wa naqaluhu … al-rāwī … ʿind al-muḥaddithīn nāqil al-ḥadīth bi-l-isnād … wa alladhī yarwī al-ḥadīth aw al-shiʿr yuqāl huwa riwāyat fulān’ (to narrate a story by telling it … carry it and copy/ transmit it … for the tradition transmitters the narrator is the one who copies/transmits the story through reference … and the narrative produced is the account of the one who told the story or poetry). In line with the tradition of ‘transferring’ stories in Arabic literature, al-Bustānī retains the original act of naql – to copy and transmit – significantly another name for translation.

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Subject: cultural journals / genre / Middle Eastern Studies / Nahḍa / prophecy / Syrian émigrés / Translation
• ISBN: 9781474407403, 1474407404