گروه مترجمین لیان

نویسنده :گروه مترجمین لیان ا موضوع: مقالات,,

The "Turk of Shiraz" seems to fail as a poem not

because of any lapses in its rhythm, sound effects, the

vitality of its images, the freshness of its conceits, or

the force of its statements- -it may be flawless in those

terms--but because its organization of theme and

imagery does not conduce to the singleness of

impression which is associated with poetic statement.

(Hillman, 1975, p. 178)

Introduction

One of the problems faced by the Western translators when they approach the

poetry of Hafez is the cultural encounter between East and West and their

deferring horizons of expectations. What constitutes the poetic ideal in Eastern

poetry is different from its Western counterpart, hence Hillman's dismissal of

the translation of Hafez's poem as a failure. Hillman made this value judgment

in 1975 when colonialism had become a part of history but still the Western

stereotypes of the Eastern literature's imperfection as contrasted with the

"norms" established by the Western literature are quite evident. Davis (2004) in

order to delineate the collusion of two cultural grids compares Hamlet's advice

to the actors and Ayyuqi's definition of a poet: Hamlet wants the players "to

hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show . . . the very age and body of

the time his form and pressure," and the eleventh-century poet Ayyuqi believes

that "a poet is like the woman who beautifies a bride before her wedding

ceremony" (pp.315-316), based on Davis's comparison the Western artists hold

the banner of representational and mimetic art while the Eastern artists believe

in the mission of art as ennobling and idolizing the banal world.

Davis seems to have a genealogic analysis of Western and Eastern

aesthetics. However, to many 18th and 19th century European scientists the

genes of a species were referred to with an objective pose, to dis/prove the

inner worth of a species or a nation or geography. Such a treatment did not

leave the discourse of literature untouched. Eastern literatures were approached

by Western scholars who tended to dismiss what was not the same as Western

literature and this attitude can be rooted in the 18th and 19th century discourse of

orientalism at the heart of expansionist adventures of Europe. Sir William Jones Cultural

was an English philologist and scholar particularly known for his proposition of

the existence of a relationship among Indo-European languages. Jones

translated one of Hafez's poems—if that Shirazi Turk—into English under the

title of "A Persian Song of Hafiz". His Translation denotes a large cultural

formation that emerges through the encounter between the colonizing West and

the colonized East.

The humanist mission of translation is said to be rooted in the universal

humane urge to spread knowledge and to eliminate misunderstanding among

people as well as to generate a broader space for communication. What is

absent from this philanthropist definition is the workings of power and the

political agendas that influence the translator's stance and his/her interpretation

of the text that he/she is translating. The translator cannot stay detached from

the society in which he/she is dwelling, and is chained in the web of discourses

that decide the marketability, reception, objectives and the audience of his

translation. Gideon Toury (1978) describes the prerequisites of becoming a

translator:

Translation activities should be regarded as having cultural

significance. Consequently, 'translatorship' amounts first and

foremost to being able to play a social role, i.e. to fulfill a

function allotted by a community—to the activity, its

practitioners, and/or their products—in a way which is

deemed appropriate in its own terms of reference. The

acquisition of a set of norms for determining the suitability

of that kind of behavior and for maneuvering between all the

factors which may constrain it, is therefore a prerequisite for

becoming a translator within a cultural environment. (p.83)

From Toury's delineation of the factors influencing the act of

translation, we can deduct that the translation of an oriental literary text done

by a scholar who is actively involved in the discourse of colonialism would be

an ideologically pregnant text, and a rich case study for cultural translation.

Bassnett (2007), herself a comparatist, agrees with Toury's emphasis on cultural

grids and notes that the focus of translation studies has shifted from evaluating

two or more translations of one text into an in-depth cultural analysis of one44 Persian Literary Studies Journal (PLSJ)

single translation. Sir William Jones, the much esteemed British scholar

introduced Hafez to Westerners by translating this very poem and calling it "A

Persian Song of Hafiz." However, it is important to have a critical review of

Jones's reading of Hafiz and to analyze the influence of his colonial stance on

his translation/interpretation of Hafiz.

Concretization of the Ethereal

The objective stance of the scientist and scholar who boasts of detachment and

disinterestedness is only a colonial gesture. According to Mackenzie (1995),

"here is no such thing as an innocent eye" (p. 53). This sentence means that

even seeing is an act of selection informed by many contextual factors. In this

case, William Jones' translation is ideologically pregnant and far from innocent.

Schroeder (1984) believes that the Hafiz presented by Jones "is simply …an

eighteenth-century Englishman of taste. His voice is the unmistakable voice of

a polite rational materialist" (p. 212). Cannon (1998) uses the word

"embroidery" to describe Jones's treatment of Hafiz. He points to the first line

of the poem1 translated as:

Sweet maid, if thou wouldst charm my sight,

And bid these arms thy neck infold;

That rosy cheek, that lily hand

Would give thy poet more delight

Than all Bokhara' vaunted gold,

Than all the gems of Samarcand. (ll.1-6)

And goes on to argue that this stanzaic translation "started the English

tradition of the Oriental dream world of pleasure, opening the literary pluralism

and showing the free reworking of the Oriental source that Edward FitzGerald,

originally inspired by Jones's writings, was to do so well for Omar

Khayyam."(p. 130).

William Jones has turned each line of Hafiz poem into a six-line stanza;

changing Hafiz's sonnet into a stanzaic 2poem is an attempt on the part of Jones

to appropriate this Persian poem for Western readers. In the first stanza the

translator has apostrophized the "sweet maid," the phrase that Jones has used in Cultural Translation: A Critical Analysis of William Jones's Translation of Hafez 45

place of "Shirazi Turk". Hafiz uses a wishful conditional sentence to show his

unfulfilled desire for the Shirazi Turk, but Jones directly addresses the sweet

maid. By apostrophizing the sweet maid, Jones decreases the unavailability of

the beloved very often highlighted in Hafiz's and other Persian poets' love

sonnets. The apostrophe reveals the presence of the beloved, hence the absence

of wishful dreams and daydreams in Jones's appropriation of Hafiz's beloved,

because Jones's beloved is not that impossible.

The "Shirazi Turk" has been translated as "Sweet Maid" in William Jones,

that is, the local and geographic identity of Hafiz's poem has been deleted and

replaced with a timeless source of beauty; therefore, Jones presents to the

Western readers a "universal" beloved; an adjective that to the eighteenth

century colonialists meant "European". Hafiz prays that the Shirazi Turk, the

ethereal beloved, may get hold of his heart. This Hafizian wish has been

transformed into such a wish that reminds one of the love poems inherited from

زمینه های فعالیت این گروه جهت ترجمه از انگلیسی به فارسی و بالعکس و ساير زبان ها به شرح ذیل می باشد: انواع متون درسی و دانشگاهی،فنی و مهندسی،مدیریتی و صنعتی،حسابداری،اقتصادی و بازرگاني، پزشکی و دندانپزشکی،حقوقی ، قرارداد های بازرگانی بین المللی ، معاهدات سیاسی ، دادخواست ، صورت جلسات شرکت ها ، پایان نامه ، کاتالوگ محصولات و خدمات ، فرآیند های صنعتی ، تولیدی ، پتروشیمی و صنعت نفت ؛ کتاب ها و مقالات کامپیوتر ، نانوفناوری ، بیوتکنولوژی ، فضانوردی ، روانشناسی ، مدیریت ، ادبیات کلاسیک و مدرن ایران و جهان، انواع بروشور ، کاتالوگ ، دفترچه راهنما ، روزنامه ، مجلات و ...

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تاریخ انتشار: دو شنبه 20 آبان 1392 ساعت: 21:17

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