Not every line of Jalaluddin Mohammad Rumi translated into non-Persian languages might carry the same wisdom as the thirteenth-century Persian Sufi put in his poetry, writes Muhammad Nadeem after reading a new book that deconstructed Western Rumimania
Amir Sedaghat’s book Translating Rumi into the West: A Linguistic Conundrum and Beyond examines the intricate task of translating Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī’s poetry for Western audiences. Sedaghat draws upon translation studies and semiotics, employing various translation theories to dissect the complexities involved in translating Rumi’s Persian poetic heritage into English and other Western languages. Positioned at the intersection of comparative literature, and Persian language and literature, the book addresses linguistic, hermeneutic, ethical, and socio-cultural challenges in bringing Rumi’s symbolic mystical poetry into a Western context.
Sedaghat, an expert in semiotics and translation theory, employs a semiotic lens to dissect Rumi’s poetry, focusing on the great poet’s reception in major European languages. It explores translation norms and political agendas using conceptual frameworks such as poly-system theory and Lefevere’s ideas. The author posits that translating Rumi’s mystical texts is an epistemological quest that reveals hidden facets of the source text, addressing fundamental questions about language and meaning.
Sedaghat views translation as an interpretive act that uncovers deeper truths and explores challenges in rendering Rumi’s poetry, including linguistic, rhetorical, hermeneutic, ethical, and ideological aspects and cross-cultural communication derived from translating the poet. The author scrutinises the impact of difficulties in translating Rumi’s verses on their representation in the Western world, framing this as an ethical concern regarding semantic sacrifice for form and revealing hidden linguistic and ideological obstacles. The arguments underscore that rhetorical devices used by Rumi pose great difficulty for translation, exploring strategies to transpose elements rooted in Persian linguistic and cultural codes into target languages, with fundamental research questions framing the book around this challenge.
Distorted Translations
The author contends that translating Rumi’s mystical poetry involves distortions, loss of meaning, and alterations due to profound Persian-English differences, addressing this as an “untranslatability” issue. Sedaghat attributes Rumi’s uneven popularity in English to specific ideological vacuums and poetological norms in the Anglo-American polysystem. Sedaghat’s research also focuses on how sociological conditions and political forces led to Rumimania and Rumi’s popularity in the US.
The author employs a multidisciplinary approach, integrating linguistics, textual analysis, literary criticism, hermeneutics, poetics, cultural studies, Islamic philosophy, and semiotics. Methodologies include contrastive linguistic analysis, exploration of hermeneutic challenges in conveying mystical thought, and analysis of socio-cultural factors influencing Rumi’s reception.
Sedaghat incorporates contrastive text analysis to examine translation strategies to analyse socio-cultural circumstances affecting Rumi’s popularity within the complexity of interpreting Sufi poetry.
The book employs a rigorous comparative linguistic approach, analysing Persian and English side-by-side to reveal linguistic divergences, substantiated with explicative examples from Rumi’s Masnavi and Divan. The author’s qualitative analytical approach integrates translation and reception theories within comparative literary studies, combining Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory with Lefevere’s ideas on translation as rewriting.
A Detailed Analysis
Textual analysis of various English translations of Rumi, contrasted with French and German receptions, identifies norms and agendas governing Rumi’s reception across different eras. The author compiles excerpts from Rumi’s works and multiple translations for analysis by contributors with expertise in Persian or Western poetics, suggesting that a systematic comparative analysis of the entire Divan could further enhance the overall analysis.
By demonstrating a robust understanding of Western translation discourse and Persian Sufi metaphysics, Sedaghat critically examines previous English translations of Rumi, engaging key figures like Steiner, Benjamin, Venuti, Berman, and Rumi scholars Nicholson and Schimmel. The book navigates an interdisciplinary landscape, situating itself within scholarly traditions and exploring influential figures shaping the discourse on translating mystical poetry, such as Corbin, de Vitray-Meyerovitch, and others.
While building on existing scholarship, it establishes an original, interdisciplinary focus on core linguistic challenges in translating Rumi’s poetic tradition, and engaging with translation theories and referencing thinkers like Bourdieu and Said, the study provides new comparative insights into the discourse on Rumi’s global popularity, introducing theoretical perspectives like “rhythmic iconicity” and “infra-discourse” for describing Rumi’s rhetorical style.
Investigating Rumi
In a comprehensive analysis, Sedaghat meticulously examines an extensive dataset, including exegetical commentaries, hagiographic accounts of Rumi’s life, and over 60,000 lines of Rumi’s poetry. Through meticulous close readings of source texts and English translations, the analysis uncovers instances of mistranslations, ideological manipulations, and rhetorical loss. Utilising textual examples from Rumi’s corpus in Persian, Sedaghat presents multiple translations for critical analysis, comparing academic translators like Nicholson and Arberry with popularisers like Barks.
Establishing credibility by directly referencing Rumi’s Persian poetry, the study uses tables to quantify reception history and provides extensive source material for evaluating translations against originals. Exploring linguistic challenges such as grammatical gender, semantic lacunae, metrical constraints, homophony, and stray punctuation, the book supports the argument on distortive linguistic pressures. The textual examples serve as qualitative data for exploring outlined challenges, with the author’s inclusion of original Persian excerpts facilitating readers’ independent comparative analyses.
The book systematically navigates translation obstacles, progressing from superficial linguistic levels to profound rhetorical and philosophical aspects. It presents a compelling analysis supported by detailed textual examples and insightful conceptual discussions. Sedaghat’s argument logically outlines the multifaceted challenges in translating mystical poetry, addressing lexical gaps, rhetorical devices, and ideological filters. The semiotic perspective offers analytical clarity, with a well-organised structure transitioning seamlessly from linguistic to hermeneutic and ethical/sociological issues. The tightly constructed narrative includes insightful textual analysis within the semiotic framework, progressing coherently from granular linguistic concepts to higher-order considerations of meaning, ideology, and cultural transplantation.
The Main Argument
The argument development proceeds from conceptual frameworks to theoretical discussions, ultimately analysing Rumi’s reception models through a historical contrastive lens. The systematic application of the polysystem approach reveals underlying poetics and power structures characterising Rumimania providing insights into linguistic obstacles and cultural barriers embedded in Rumi’s poetics.
Polysystem theory, focusing on sociological dynamics in cultural production mediation, serves as the primary theoretical lens, guiding the analysis of Rumi translation. Lefevere’s model, viewing rewriting as manipulation driven by ideological control, shapes the discussion on political agendas. The author employs semiotic and translation theory concepts to scrutinize Rumi’s rhetorical devices, utilizing Jakobson’s work on linguistic relativity and non-correspondence between languages, as well as Pym’s naturalization and Venuti’s domestication thesis contextualizing Rumi translation tendencies and interpretant model for a multilayered analysis from phonological features to cultural context.
Supplementary theoretical frames contribute to a granular, philosophically grounded analysis, including Barthes’ five codes and concepts from Ricoeur, Meschonnic, and Berman. Sedaghat’s semiotic approach, emphasising the dichotomy between the literal and interpreted meaning in mystical thought, influences the book’s perspective on translation ethics, with a preference for esoteric over exoteric meaning.
A Major Study
Sedaghat’s book is a significant academic study on translating Persian literature with contemporary theory, critiquing English translations of Rumi, and making mystical Persian ideas more accessible. It expands translation studies, proposes a model, and systematically assesses translating Persian Sufi poetry with a focus on linguistic barriers. The author addresses challenges in meaning, poetic form, and cultural resonances, filling a gap in understanding Rumi’s popularity in the US versus Europe. It introduces a model for examining translation as an ideological construction and provides a taxonomy of rhetorical devices in Persian poetry, identifying categories of untranslatability in Rumi’s text.
The book, with a treasure trove of references, demonstrates interdisciplinary knowledge in translation studies and Persian literary history. Citations adhere to academic conventions, offering credibility with a range of sources in multiple languages. Sedaghat maintains academic integrity by crediting sources, serving as a valuable guide for researchers. The book exhibits rigorous academic citation practices expected in advanced scholarly writing.
Sedaghat’s academic prose is clear and meets high scholarly standards for translating Rumi’s works. The style is accessible yet occasionally includes complex rhetorical flourishes, striking a balance between rigour and readability. The writing is precise and conveys sophisticated concepts without unnecessary jargon. The book’s articulate style clarifies complex ideas for an educated readership interested in linguistics, comparative poetics, or literary translation.
This book is essential for scholars, students, and literary translators interested in translation theory, Persian language, and comparative literature. It provides valuable guidance for academic and creative translations of Rumi’s verse, with relevance for scholars in linguistics, semiotics, comparative literature, and Persian culture. Theoretical yet contributing to broader debates, it is pertinent to those exploring cross-cultural literary relations, ideology, and the global circulation of cultural products. It offers valuable insights for translation theorists, scholars of comparative poetics, and translators of Persian and Middle Eastern literature.
The book establishes transversal links between Western semiotic analysis and Iranian Islamic metaphysical discourse. Sedaghat’s interdisciplinary approach expands translation theory and enriches the understanding of Rumi. The book identifies and classifies linguistic and cultural obstacles, making valuable contributions to both theoretical conceptions of translatability and practical translator training. It unveils the cultural specificities behind America’s Rumi craze, advocating for a nuanced contextual approach to understanding literary circulation. The book demonstrates what is lost and preserved in translating influential mystical poetry.
