Aesthetic poetry and creative translations: a translational hermeneutic reading

Abstract

This paper investigates the hermeneutic processes involved in translating instances of imagery in Arabic poetry into English across a period ranging between 1789 and 1993. It examines ten translations of two verse lines from Labīd’s Mu’allaqa. The paper does not aim to determine whether a given translation is correct—its purpose is, rather, to use translational hermeneutics as a key analytical tool to identify which translation products may be considered acceptable within the scope of this theory. Translational hermeneutics conceives of translation as re-formulation and, hence, re-creation. The notion of identity is minimised, in translational hermeneutics as well as in this study, by investigating how a source text’s aesthetic message can assume a different form when translated. The assessment of different translations in this paper’s case study demonstrates that translating responsibly is, first and foremost, translating responsively.