Marcin Michalski

Almost absent literature:
Polish translations of contemporary Arabic novels
The article discusses translation of contemporary Arabic novels into Polish, from
1982 (when the fi rst versions were published) to the present day (2009). Over these
years eighteen contemporary Arabic novels, mostly by Egyptian authors, have been
rendered into Polish. The study presents statistical data that illustrates the scrarcity
of Arabic novels published in Polish by comparison with other languages. Moreover,
each of the discussed novels is presented briefl y, highlighting differences between the
novels’ original titles and their translations. Appended is the full chronological list of
the translations.
Publikacja

When a work of European literature is translated into Arabic, the language of a predominantly Islamic culture, terms referring to Arabs as a people or Muslims as a religious community, the name of Muhammad as the Prophet of Islam, etcetera, cease to be foreign and exotic and become local and familiar. The present analysis of contemporary Arabic translations of Dante’s Divine comedy, Cervantes’ Don Quijote and Scott’s Ivanhoe shows that these elements are not always simply returned to their native culture if the original text represents them in a negative, Eurocentric way, which can even be considered blasphemous by Muslims if religious content is involved but are subject to more or less significant transformations that are ideologically motivated. Instead of straightforward restitution to the native culture, what takes place is a kind of annexation of texts which consists in replacing the negatively portrayed ‘Other’ by a positively, or at least neutrally, represented ‘We’. Such manipulations may be explicit, i.e. signalled in footnotes, or tacit. In some cases, anti-Islamic passages become even sympathetic towards Islam when translated into Arabic. In this way the authors of Arabic translations liberate the texts from the dominating Western perspective and adapt them to their own vision of the world. What seems to be manipulation and censorship from the ‘Western’ point of view may be perceived in an entirely different manner inside the Arabo-Islamic culture, for instance as correction of obvious factual errors.

When a work of European literature is translated into Arabic, the language of a predominantly Islamic culture, terms referring to Arabs as a people or Muslims as a religious community, the name of Muhammad as the Prophet of Islam, etc., cease to be foreign and exotic, to become local and familiar. The present analysis of contemporary Arabic translations of Dante’s La Divina Commedia, Cervantes’ Don Quijote and Scott’s Ivanhoe, shows that these elements are not always simply returned to their native culture if the original text represents them in a negative, Eurocentric way, which can even be considered blasphemous by Muslims, but are subject to more or less significant ideologically motivated transformations. Instead of straightforward restitution to the native culture, what takes place is a kind of annexation of texts which consists in replacing the negatively portrayed “Other” by a positively, or at least neutrally, represented “We.” Such manipulations may be explicit, i.e. signalled in footnotes, or tacit. In some cases, anti-Islamic passages become even sympathetic towards Islam when translated into Arabic. In this way the authors of Arabic translations liberate the texts from the dominating Western perspective and adapt them to their own vision of the world. What appears as manipulation and censorship from the “Western” point of view may be perceived in an entirely different manner inside the Arabo-Islamic culture, for instance as a correction of obvious factual errors.

Formal aspects of medieval Arabic rhymed prose in translation: the Maqamas of al-Hariri in Polish
The author discusses the first Polish translation of two Arabic Maqamas by al-Hariri
(1054–1122). The maqama genre originated in Arabic literature in the tenth century.
It is a short picaresque narrative written in ornate rhymed prose. It features two main
characters: the narrator and the eloquent rogue, who uses his rhetorical skills to earn
his living, not always in an honest way. Translation of this genre presents specific
challenges, some of which are scrutinised. First, the problem of the intertextuality of
the Maqamas is pointed out (both the original version and the translation are
footnoted but in different ways). Then, it is argued that the rich linguistic form
(rhythm, rhyme, homonyms, even graphic properties of the Arabic alphabet)
constitutes the genre and must be preserved in translation. This, however, generates
difficulties, given the different aesthetic traditions and morphological discrepancies
between Arabic and Polish. Some interesting problems and solutions are discussed.