Google tells me whenever the internet says anything new about me. And when people say interesting things, or pose interesting topics, I like to respond, as I am now:
Such works being published to wide acclaim and high sales are truly betrayals of the art of translation, not to mention gross examples of appropriation and Orientalism.
I hate to be finicky here, but I don't think you can call this orientalism, not even in the Saidian sense. (Mind you, I'm one of those folk who are proud to call themselves orientalists.)
Thanks to Edward Said's idiocy (and yes, it is idiocy,) anything seen to be an unjust treatment/use of the Islamic world is now labeled as "orientalism." But it isn't. Dan Ladinsky, for all his displays of talentlessness, isn't some schmuck who just took what he liked from Sufism and went home. Nor is he a scholar whose views were perverted by politicians and ideologues. His worldview, from what I've been able to glean from interviews (I never write a groin-crunching review like this without researching the subject thoroughly first) is a blend of New-Age American spiritism and a heavily, watered down ecumenical version of Sufism. While I personally find that concoction distasteful, it is wholly different from the scholarly rigor and generally valuable knowledge-production provided by the scholars whom Edward Said jealously slandered.
Are there any other examples you can think of where translation becomes betrayal?
Coleman Barks' versions of Rumi sometimes do this. But his work, at least, has the saving grace of at least trying to actually translated iscernible texts, instead of just making it up as he goes along à la Ladinsky.
Annemarie Schimmel said the following in an interview, alluding to Coleman Barks' Rumi versions. It is quite relevant to the topic at hand in general:
My great problem with the western interpretation of Sufism -and I say this because I love Sufism- is that they rely on very bad second hand translations. If you look at the translations made of Rumi's poetry in the West and now becoming best sellers in the colleges...I always say these translations resemble the original as much as a fly resembles an eagle. It just waters down these things. And the great attraction of Sufism for the west is that people think they can have instant illumination without working. And I always tell them "when you want to go the path, really and seriously, it's a very very hard path. You shouldn't think it's easy." Sometimes it's a kind of saloon Sufism which is practiced in the west. And I'm worried about that.
How can we promote non-appropriative, faithful translations
You can't. All translation, good or bad, is inherently appropriative. Moreover, this isn't really a bad thing, anymore than John Coltrane playing Mozart on a saxophone.
and how can we even be certain that the translations we read are faithful and respectful to the traditions they originally come from?
That's what I'm trying to accomplish with my blog. A table of contents for my translations can be found here: http://poemsintranslation.blogspot.com/p/table-of-contents.html
Hello from A.Z. Foreman
Such works being published to wide acclaim and high sales are truly betrayals of the art of translation, not to mention gross examples of appropriation and Orientalism.
I hate to be finicky here, but I don't think you can call this orientalism, not even in the Saidian sense. (Mind you, I'm one of those folk who are proud to call themselves orientalists.)
Thanks to Edward Said's idiocy (and yes, it is idiocy,) anything seen to be an unjust treatment/use of the Islamic world is now labeled as "orientalism." But it isn't. Dan Ladinsky, for all his displays of talentlessness, isn't some schmuck who just took what he liked from Sufism and went home. Nor is he a scholar whose views were perverted by politicians and ideologues. His worldview, from what I've been able to glean from interviews (I never write a groin-crunching review like this without researching the subject thoroughly first) is a blend of New-Age American spiritism and a heavily, watered down ecumenical version of Sufism. While I personally find that concoction distasteful, it is wholly different from the scholarly rigor and generally valuable knowledge-production provided by the scholars whom Edward Said jealously slandered.
Are there any other examples you can think of where translation becomes betrayal?
Coleman Barks' versions of Rumi sometimes do this. But his work, at least, has the saving grace of at least trying to actually translated iscernible texts, instead of just making it up as he goes along à la Ladinsky.
Annemarie Schimmel said the following in an interview, alluding to Coleman Barks' Rumi versions. It is quite relevant to the topic at hand in general:
My great problem with the western interpretation of Sufism -and I say this because I love Sufism- is that they rely on very bad second hand translations. If you look at the translations made of Rumi's poetry in the West and now becoming best sellers in the colleges...I always say these translations resemble the original as much as a fly resembles an eagle. It just waters down these things. And the great attraction of Sufism for the west is that people think they can have instant illumination without working. And I always tell them "when you want to go the path, really and seriously, it's a very very hard path. You shouldn't think it's easy." Sometimes it's a kind of saloon Sufism which is practiced in the west. And I'm worried about that.
How can we promote non-appropriative, faithful translations
You can't. All translation, good or bad, is inherently appropriative. Moreover, this isn't really a bad thing, anymore than John Coltrane playing Mozart on a saxophone.
and how can we even be certain that the translations we read are faithful and respectful to the traditions they originally come from?
That's what I'm trying to accomplish with my blog. A table of contents for my translations can be found here: http://poemsintranslation.blogspot.com/p/table-of-contents.html