The ninth century AD was the golden age of translation. In the time of the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid, Baghdad became the capital of science and translation, with the establishment of Dar al-Hikma, which was the first Arab institution concerned with the transfer of science, literature, and knowledge from Greek, Persian, Sanskrit, Syriac, and other languages spread then.
In an attempt to find out the reality of the translation into Arabic recently, Al-Jazeera Net sought the opinions of some publishers about what motivates them to translate in the current time.
Ghassan Shabaru, director of publishing and distribution at the Arab Science House of Publishers, says they travel across continents and societies, and sometimes through time, to learn about cultures, histories and experiences, "and to build bridges of human understanding between different civilizations and nationalities."
In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, former Lebanese academic and diplomat Khaled Ziada explains that translation is a kind of culture, saying: "In order to keep pace with the development of knowledge, it is necessary to translate for new generations from multiple languages and different fields."
For her part, the editor-in-chief of the "El Saqi" Rania al-Moallem house confirms to Al Jazeera Net that she and the publishing house where she works translates "to emphasize our existence as part of the global culture, and that culture and thought are a general human condition, and it is our duty as publishers to be a link between the Arab reader and what it produces Human thought and literature is everywhere. "
Shadow clerk
Some researchers ask fundamental questions about the absence of the author’s personality and the appearance of the translator’s personality in the translated text, which is explained by Abdel Rahman Ayas - who is a translator and writer in economics, politics and science - by saying that the true author’s personality should not be absent even if the translator’s personality appears, the second is presented first in the target language In a new case, the translator’s personality is a template in which the author’s personality is developed and presented to the target language reader.
"And if there is an absence of the first and a tyranny of the second, that is a weakness that marred the translation and reduces its value, especially in the contemporary stage. Clarification and soothing in the margins or in the foreground.
On the other hand, Khaled Ziada regrets that most translators have a good knowledge of the language from which they translate, but they do not have experience with translation, which is a subject matter in its own right, and this has led to many translations which he considered "unfortunate and invalid".
In the recent years, a boom in translation has emerged in the Arab cultural scene, especially with the entry of distant and forgotten languages to the attention of the Arabic translator. The attention of the Arab translators has often been directed towards the West and its languages, but a translation movement from Chinese to Arabic is observed recently.
Ghassan Shbaro confirms that the translation movement from Chinese to Arabic is witnessing a remarkable movement after Beijing's decision to breathe new life on the Silk Road, adding that China focused on the topic of introducing Chinese culture and civilization in various languages - including Arabic - as part of its new development in the world.
Translation infidelities
While the saying that translation is a betrayal of the original text is common, some literary critics find it a creative work no less important than authorship, and some consider it authorship of another kind.
In his previous participation in the "Masarat" program, Moroccan thinker and philosopher Taha Abdel Rahman criticized the Al-Jazeera channel for the reality of the Arabic translation, and said that it is "located in the tradition and breach of creativity from two sides, being that it has neither innovation nor beauty, and that is why the Arabic philosophical translation generates explanations." It does not end, not for the depth of the idea, but for the slackness of the phrase.
On the problems of translation in contemporary Arab reality, Ghassan Shabaro monitors the seriousness of what he calls "treacherous translations" and says, "When the translator changes or distorts the texts of the author or his ideas, from lack of familiarity with the language or from bad faith, he betrays the trust of the translation that should reach the reader as She deserves this translation as the traitorous translation. "
As for the “traitorous translator” in the opinion of Abd al-Rahman Ayas, it is he who deviates from the spirit of the original text, but treachery here is not always negative, as old translations represented “betrayals”, but they were included in our heritage works, including the “Iliad” of Homer translated by Suleiman al-Bustani (died in 1925) on the Greek and formulated a formulation of genius according to the vertical and stubborn Arabic poetry, and the "virtue" of Mustafa Lutfi Al-Manfalouti (died in 1924), an exquisite translation on the French version of "Paul and Virgenie" by the French writer Bernardine Dusan Pierre.
"In both cases, the two authors did not hide that they acted with translation, and the result was two creative works. As for the negative betrayal, when the translator is not well versed in the work that addresses him, the result is a distorted work."
Among the problems related to contemporary translation, some translators exported to it without any deep awareness of the language of the text translated from it, as well as the lack of some deep knowledge of the language translated into it, and its lack of knowledge of the vocabulary and history of the field that translates it, which reflects negatively on the decline of the book industry in our Arab world.
In this context, Rania Al-Moallem explains that due to the ease in the translation process and many of those working in this field thought that it was limited to transferring a text from his mother tongue to the Arabic language, recent years have witnessed a "relative" abundance in the number of books translated into Arabic, but a few of them It came in a good way that respects the Arab reader just as it respects the original text.
Publishing errors
Many researchers are wondering how publishers choose the translated book? How important is it in its mother tongue and its importance after translation into Arabic?
Some believe that publishing houses do not attach little importance to the idea of having specialized editors who choose books, read texts and give their comments before translating, considering that neglecting this aspect comes at the expense of the quality and value of the translated book, which may push translation to miserable limits to flood markets with poor work at the level of translation .
Sparrow says that some publishers and translators resort to foreign media and press that publish the titles of the best-selling books, in addition to the latest releases to identify them from their published summaries, and that many of them investigate the publications of famous authors and winners of prizes for their work.
And Ayas believes that it is no longer the Arab translator for decades who chooses the desired work except in a few cases. Whoever chooses is the publishing house, and the decision to choose is governed by political and commercial considerations. The most prominent example of this is the large number of translations of cookbooks and astrology, and the decline in translation of literary, scientific, economic, political and historical works. The market is decided in the case of private publishing houses, while politics is decided in the case of government publishing houses.