Thank you for linking the twitter thread with the unlocked article. As someone who appreciates and spends time with poetry, I have read translations of Rumi. It is unfortunate (and more than...
Thank you for linking the twitter thread with the unlocked article. As someone who appreciates and spends time with poetry, I have read translations of Rumi. It is unfortunate (and more than unfortunate, I am having trouble coming up with the right word) that literal meaning has been stripped in order to avoid religious content. However, I also hope that the new translation is also poetic in English.
The article is worth reading in full. The problem it points to reminds me with the issues around westerners adopting aspects of Buddhism. But that is also a complex topic and worth its own discussion.
This was my exact thought as well when reading the article. It's a shame to strip culture from a work which is why I always appreciate forwards or commentaries in translated or ancient text which...
The problem it points to reminds me with the issues around westerners adopting aspects of Buddhism.
This was my exact thought as well when reading the article. It's a shame to strip culture from a work which is why I always appreciate forwards or commentaries in translated or ancient text which explains context to the reader.
Anybody know a good translation which doesn't strip the poetry from it's religious nature? Or at least includes footnotes explaining certain things.
In the article it's mentioned that one of the interviewees has several volumes of his more faithful translation of the Masnawi already published. Mojaddedi
In the article it's mentioned that one of the interviewees has several volumes of his more faithful translation of the Masnawi already published. Mojaddedi
This article was shared with me on a Twitter thread. I have spent most of my adult life studying and reading Persian and this article does a good job of highlighting some of the issues with...
This article was shared with me on a Twitter thread. I have spent most of my adult life studying and reading Persian and this article does a good job of highlighting some of the issues with classical poetry in English translation.
This kinda reminds me of the way anime used to be handled when it was localized from Japanese to English, and they would try to westernize or eliminate the references to Japanese culture rather...
This kinda reminds me of the way anime used to be handled when it was localized from Japanese to English, and they would try to westernize or eliminate the references to Japanese culture rather than embrace it or give context within the subtitles.
A few examples of this is when 4kids would edit Japanese foods into American ones in Pokemon or One Piece, How Phoenix Write takes place in a fictional state in the US with its own laws rather than in Japan where the laws and court procedures heavily lean in favor of the prosecution. Or how Shinto Shrines and Buddhist Temples would be changed into something more secular, western, or fictional in children's anime and games of the 8 and 16 bit generations.
We have definitely come a long way with how we treat the localization of Japanese media, but the fact that we still deal with this in literary translations from works from other cultural and religious background still shows we have a long way to go. Like we are more accepting of the cultural and religious differences in Eastern Asian cultures to the point we try to keep it intact when localizing, yet even modern books on a Persian Muslim poet will omit religious references and even entire parts of the work to keep it palatable to western readers.
I don't think I agree with the article. Not whether or not the Islamic context is removed in (some) translations (it clearly is), but how, or even if, this is "bad". Full disclaimer, I'm not from...
I don't think I agree with the article. Not whether or not the Islamic context is removed in (some) translations (it clearly is), but how, or even if, this is "bad".
Full disclaimer, I'm not from the US and don't think I've ever heard of Rumi or his poems.
1. Every translation is imperfect
I'll start by challenging what the article (almost) ends with:
That, after all, is the point of translation: to understand the foreign.
I disagree. Translation (to me, at least) means making something incomprehensible understandable, necessarily changing it in the process ("to turn something into another language" being the main definition that's applicable here). And as everyone who speaks more that one language will tell you, you always loose some details in translation. It's such a core part of translating something, that saying something got "lost in translation" is a commonly used idiom.
The author correctly points out that translators "have a responsibility to remain true to the original work", but what exactly that means will undoubtably differ from person to person. To me, it means that the core message is preserved. And going off the examples given by the article, that seems to be case.
If anything I'd say the examples given are very good at getting across the core message, especially if said core is meant to be universalism (I'll get to that in a bit).
The article criticizes the translation "Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing […]", stating:
The original version makes no mention of “rightdoing” or “wrongdoing.” The words Rumi wrote were iman (“religion”) and kufr (“infidelity”).
Except "right" and "wrong" are very much contained in the original words. I'm no scholar of Islam, but from what I know, it very much follows the idea of "acting in accordance with the will/word of God (i.e. following the "correct" religion")" = good/righteous and "going against the will/word of God (i.e. infidelity, heresy, being a apostate, pick from any of a thousand other variations...)" = wrong/evil.
This is a case where a more literal translation would be less comprehensible and less faithful to the original. At least to everyone that is not a religious fundamentalist and doesn't draw their morality directly from what they think is and isn't the will of some god.
Removing the Islamic framing allows a reader who isn't deeply familiar with Islam to understand what is at the core of Rumis poem.
[Mojaddedi's translations of the “Masnavi”] are also riddled with footnotes. Reading them requires some effort, and perhaps a desire to see beyond one’s preconceptions.
I'd argue what lost in his translation is the beauty and comprehensibility. Giving all the "necessary" context needed to understand a text can directly hinder the very understanding you wish to achieve. Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad Mojaddedi's translations exist, but saying only this version is the correct one is on the same level to me as saying the King James Bible is the only true version of the bible. It's a translation, it can't be perfect. It's either comprehensive, or comprehensible.
2. "Spiritual Colonialism"
Oh boy, where to start... Well, first off: Criticizing Colonialism: ✓
Can't have a modern article about societal issues without it. I wonder if capitalism gets mentioned as well. No? Interesting...
Anyway, next up:
bypassing, erasing, and occupying a spiritual landscape […]
That is not what is happening here. On so many levels it is not. I'm not even sure how you would "occupy a spiritual landscape". Actually, I'd even grant that "bypassing" is happening. But that also makes it impossible to occupy it. You can't bypass and occupy something at the same time, those are diametrically opposed concepts. "Erasure" also isn't happening. No one is saying "This old/original version of the text is wrong and shouldn't be read." The only thing happening here is "This version works better for me/my culture." No one is trying to erase the original texts or spiritual teachings. I'd argue the exact opposite is happening: the translators are trying to spread the spirituality to another culture. To me that is the exact opposite of erasure.
Extracting the spiritual from the religious context has deep reverberations.
Very true. It allows it to be applicable to more things. It's how Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is still extremely influential today, even though the grecco-roman pantheon and mythology has almost no followers. It's how Descartes "Cogito, ergo sum" is still a pillar of many modern philosophies, even if they have nothing to do with Christianity or outright reject it.
Removing the religious context also isn't about how "Islam is regularly diagnosed as a “cancer,” it is something that is done to make something more universally applicable.
Oh, also: Criticizing anything to do with Trump: ✓
Wait, when was this written that Trump is mentioned as "President-elect"? 2017? Ah, that explains the "missing" capitalism reference. I guaranty that if this article was written today, the section criticizing Trump and islamophobia (both very correct, but completely unnecessary in such an article) would be replace with one explaining how capitalism requires stripping any meaningful creative work of all meaning in order to reach as many customers as possible, making us all mindless robots doing meaningless work.
Moving on:
Rumi used the Koran, Hadiths, and religion in an explorative way, often challenging conventional readings.
One could say he looked outside of (his) religion for beauty, truth and morality (at least that what I take away from all this).
Imagine, then, a Muslim scholar saying that the basis of faith lies not in religious code but in an elevated space of compassion and love. What we, and perhaps many Muslim clerics, might consider radical today is an interpretation that Rumi put forward more than seven hundred years ago.
If anything, this proves even more how Rumi's works are not representative of Islam (today).
Safi has compared reading Rumi without the Koran to reading Milton without the Bible.
If we're talking about Paradise Lost, sure. If we are talking about Areopagitica, then no. I don't need to know about the bible to follow his criticism of censorship. Sure, Christianity plays a role in his arguments, but you don't need a degree in Christian theology to follow his arguments.
From what I can gather from the article, Rumis poems are more in the Areopagitica category.
3. Universalism, but only in my terms!
This will be a short segment, but it's very emotionally charged for me, because this entire thing just oozes of hypocrisy to me.
How someone can on the one hand praise a message about universalism and mutual understanding, and then on the other say "you have to do it in exactly this way, otherwise you commit spiritual colonialism!" is completely baffling to me.
“Historically speaking, no text has shaped the imagination of Muslims—other than the Koran—as the poetry of Rumi and Hafez”
That's great! Now let it do the same to the western world. But on its terms, not the terms of Islam. Otherwise you'd have an actual case of "Spiritual Colonialism" if you go "This is an important teacher in my religion, now change your view on right and wrong in exactly this way!"
4. This is nothing new
What I mean by this title is that since the birth of culture have different cultures exchanged teachings of philosophy, morality and religion. Those ideas are then adapted to the new culture, morphed and recombined with existing elements, potentially creating something completely new. It's how Christianity developed from Judaism, Islam from both Christianity and Islam, coupled with local religious movements, how Buddhism diverged from Hinduism, having subsequently a big influence on many other religions and philosophies. It's why during the Islamic Golden Age Aristotle was seen in very high regard. You know, the very time and place Rumi was writing in?
In conclusion, I'd say that removal of Islam is very much happening in translations of Rumis poems, the same way it is happening to most works that use religion but we, as a secular society, say have some teachings that could be useful. I've long been a opponent of the view that philosophies have to be accepted/adopted or rejected wholesale.
If you read something that is meaningful to you, adopt it. If it is even more meaningful for you if you change it slightly, do that, too.
It's a great point. As an Indian (though not an adherent of a Dharmic religion) its always irritating to see the Western stereotypes of Hinduism and Buddhism.
It's a great point.
As an Indian (though not an adherent of a Dharmic religion) its always irritating to see the Western stereotypes of Hinduism and Buddhism.
Thank you for linking the twitter thread with the unlocked article. As someone who appreciates and spends time with poetry, I have read translations of Rumi. It is unfortunate (and more than unfortunate, I am having trouble coming up with the right word) that literal meaning has been stripped in order to avoid religious content. However, I also hope that the new translation is also poetic in English.
The article is worth reading in full. The problem it points to reminds me with the issues around westerners adopting aspects of Buddhism. But that is also a complex topic and worth its own discussion.
This was my exact thought as well when reading the article. It's a shame to strip culture from a work which is why I always appreciate forwards or commentaries in translated or ancient text which explains context to the reader.
Anybody know a good translation which doesn't strip the poetry from it's religious nature? Or at least includes footnotes explaining certain things.
In the article it's mentioned that one of the interviewees has several volumes of his more faithful translation of the Masnawi already published. Mojaddedi
This article was shared with me on a Twitter thread. I have spent most of my adult life studying and reading Persian and this article does a good job of highlighting some of the issues with classical poetry in English translation.
Mirror for those hit by the paywall:
https://archive.is/Oceyh
Much appreciated
This kinda reminds me of the way anime used to be handled when it was localized from Japanese to English, and they would try to westernize or eliminate the references to Japanese culture rather than embrace it or give context within the subtitles.
A few examples of this is when 4kids would edit Japanese foods into American ones in Pokemon or One Piece, How Phoenix Write takes place in a fictional state in the US with its own laws rather than in Japan where the laws and court procedures heavily lean in favor of the prosecution. Or how Shinto Shrines and Buddhist Temples would be changed into something more secular, western, or fictional in children's anime and games of the 8 and 16 bit generations.
We have definitely come a long way with how we treat the localization of Japanese media, but the fact that we still deal with this in literary translations from works from other cultural and religious background still shows we have a long way to go. Like we are more accepting of the cultural and religious differences in Eastern Asian cultures to the point we try to keep it intact when localizing, yet even modern books on a Persian Muslim poet will omit religious references and even entire parts of the work to keep it palatable to western readers.
I don't think I agree with the article. Not whether or not the Islamic context is removed in (some) translations (it clearly is), but how, or even if, this is "bad".
Full disclaimer, I'm not from the US and don't think I've ever heard of Rumi or his poems.
1. Every translation is imperfect
I'll start by challenging what the article (almost) ends with:
I disagree. Translation (to me, at least) means making something incomprehensible understandable, necessarily changing it in the process ("to turn something into another language" being the main definition that's applicable here). And as everyone who speaks more that one language will tell you, you always loose some details in translation. It's such a core part of translating something, that saying something got "lost in translation" is a commonly used idiom.
The author correctly points out that translators "have a responsibility to remain true to the original work", but what exactly that means will undoubtably differ from person to person. To me, it means that the core message is preserved. And going off the examples given by the article, that seems to be case.
If anything I'd say the examples given are very good at getting across the core message, especially if said core is meant to be universalism (I'll get to that in a bit).
The article criticizes the translation "Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing […]", stating:
Except "right" and "wrong" are very much contained in the original words. I'm no scholar of Islam, but from what I know, it very much follows the idea of "acting in accordance with the will/word of God (i.e. following the "correct" religion")" = good/righteous and "going against the will/word of God (i.e. infidelity, heresy, being a apostate, pick from any of a thousand other variations...)" = wrong/evil.
This is a case where a more literal translation would be less comprehensible and less faithful to the original. At least to everyone that is not a religious fundamentalist and doesn't draw their morality directly from what they think is and isn't the will of some god.
Removing the Islamic framing allows a reader who isn't deeply familiar with Islam to understand what is at the core of Rumis poem.
I'd argue what lost in his translation is the beauty and comprehensibility. Giving all the "necessary" context needed to understand a text can directly hinder the very understanding you wish to achieve. Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad Mojaddedi's translations exist, but saying only this version is the correct one is on the same level to me as saying the King James Bible is the only true version of the bible. It's a translation, it can't be perfect. It's either comprehensive, or comprehensible.
2. "Spiritual Colonialism"
Oh boy, where to start... Well, first off:
Criticizing Colonialism: ✓
Can't have a modern article about societal issues without it. I wonder if capitalism gets mentioned as well. No? Interesting...
Anyway, next up:
That is not what is happening here. On so many levels it is not. I'm not even sure how you would "occupy a spiritual landscape". Actually, I'd even grant that "bypassing" is happening. But that also makes it impossible to occupy it. You can't bypass and occupy something at the same time, those are diametrically opposed concepts. "Erasure" also isn't happening. No one is saying "This old/original version of the text is wrong and shouldn't be read." The only thing happening here is "This version works better for me/my culture." No one is trying to erase the original texts or spiritual teachings. I'd argue the exact opposite is happening: the translators are trying to spread the spirituality to another culture. To me that is the exact opposite of erasure.
Very true. It allows it to be applicable to more things. It's how Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is still extremely influential today, even though the grecco-roman pantheon and mythology has almost no followers. It's how Descartes "Cogito, ergo sum" is still a pillar of many modern philosophies, even if they have nothing to do with Christianity or outright reject it.
Removing the religious context also isn't about how "Islam is regularly diagnosed as a “cancer,” it is something that is done to make something more universally applicable.
Oh, also:
Criticizing anything to do with Trump: ✓
Wait, when was this written that Trump is mentioned as "President-elect"? 2017? Ah, that explains the "missing" capitalism reference. I guaranty that if this article was written today, the section criticizing Trump and islamophobia (both very correct, but completely unnecessary in such an article) would be replace with one explaining how capitalism requires stripping any meaningful creative work of all meaning in order to reach as many customers as possible, making us all mindless robots doing meaningless work.
Moving on:
One could say he looked outside of (his) religion for beauty, truth and morality (at least that what I take away from all this).
If anything, this proves even more how Rumi's works are not representative of Islam (today).
If we're talking about Paradise Lost, sure. If we are talking about Areopagitica, then no. I don't need to know about the bible to follow his criticism of censorship. Sure, Christianity plays a role in his arguments, but you don't need a degree in Christian theology to follow his arguments.
From what I can gather from the article, Rumis poems are more in the Areopagitica category.
3. Universalism, but only in my terms!
This will be a short segment, but it's very emotionally charged for me, because this entire thing just oozes of hypocrisy to me.
How someone can on the one hand praise a message about universalism and mutual understanding, and then on the other say "you have to do it in exactly this way, otherwise you commit spiritual colonialism!" is completely baffling to me.
That's great! Now let it do the same to the western world. But on its terms, not the terms of Islam. Otherwise you'd have an actual case of "Spiritual Colonialism" if you go "This is an important teacher in my religion, now change your view on right and wrong in exactly this way!"
4. This is nothing new
What I mean by this title is that since the birth of culture have different cultures exchanged teachings of philosophy, morality and religion. Those ideas are then adapted to the new culture, morphed and recombined with existing elements, potentially creating something completely new. It's how Christianity developed from Judaism, Islam from both Christianity and Islam, coupled with local religious movements, how Buddhism diverged from Hinduism, having subsequently a big influence on many other religions and philosophies. It's why during the Islamic Golden Age Aristotle was seen in very high regard. You know, the very time and place Rumi was writing in?
In conclusion, I'd say that removal of Islam is very much happening in translations of Rumis poems, the same way it is happening to most works that use religion but we, as a secular society, say have some teachings that could be useful. I've long been a opponent of the view that philosophies have to be accepted/adopted or rejected wholesale.
If you read something that is meaningful to you, adopt it. If it is even more meaningful for you if you change it slightly, do that, too.
It's a great point.
As an Indian (though not an adherent of a Dharmic religion) its always irritating to see the Western stereotypes of Hinduism and Buddhism.