Tag Archives: Arabic-English

How Translations ‘Fail’

Posted on October 27, 2025 by JMN

(Update, Oct. 26, 2025. Some time after writing what’s below I’ve encountered Mitch Teemley’s citation of Psalm 37:23. What’s a good word for how the Quran and the Bible interact? I’ve no expertise in either, but I see signs of … Continue reading →

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‘Sheathed in Fetters’ or ‘Bound in Chains’?

Posted on September 26, 2025 by JMN

Afterthought foregrounded: This will go down as a wildly utopian, presumptuous, naive, impractical proposition. Imagine a world in which the devout were schooled from an early age to read the foundational scriptures of their respective creeds in the original languages … Continue reading →

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Hill Country, Texas Camper’s Song

Posted on August 7, 2025 by JMN

Down I lay me now to sleep and prayFor come who might to whats-it in the sky.Not dead before I wake may I be found.To sleep and pray now down I do me lay.The ocean’s mighty large and wet, they … Continue reading →

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How Disparate Writings Intertwine

Posted on January 27, 2025 by JMN

“Over the past eight years, I have been tested and challenged more than any president in our 250-year history.” (Donald Trump, from Second Inaugural Address) Mr. Trump dictates revelation for his irrupting dispensation. There are impromptu connections one makes in … Continue reading →

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‘When All Three Pounds of Me Came Earthside…’

Posted on January 11, 2025 by JMN

The tiny speaker in Megan Denton’s “A Girl and Her Fireplace” (Poetry, December 2024) is off to a shaky start. Born on a new moon, one minute after my sisterand one pound less, my ribcage was full of roosting songbirds … Continue reading →

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‘I Aimed for English Renderings That Could Stand on Their Own’

Posted on November 27, 2024 by JMN

It’s a handsome volume* with gloriously voweled Arabic texts opposite English versions by James E. Montgomery, Sir Thomas Adams’s Professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity Hall. The poems are by, and attributed to, Abū … Continue reading →

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Thinking About Translation While Reading the Quran

Posted on November 13, 2024 by JMN

Nabokov and Borges differed over how translation should be done, the former favoring literalness (“The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase”), the latter transformation (“Translation is… a more advanced stage of writing”). I … Continue reading →

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Infinite Scroll on the Scripture Front

Posted on October 22, 2024 by JMN

The cross-referencing contained in scripture reminds me of the infinite scrolling feature that afflicts social media. In the scriptures it doesn’t have pernicious intent, but can lead, nevertheless, to addictive chasing after the satisfaction of curiosity if one isn’t careful. … Continue reading →

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From the NSFW Annals of Aesop

Posted on October 3, 2024 by JMN

For preservation of decorum in public speech, generations of writers have stood on the shoulders of people like Sir Richard Burton, 19th-century translator of the Arabian Nights. He fathered workarounds with which to buffer readers from Anglo Saxon four-letter words, … Continue reading →

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Quran 3:78 —> Vance

Posted on September 17, 2024 by JMN

Like the King James Bible for Judaism and Christianity, the Holy Quran is for Islam a monument to luminous language in a spiritual setting. As a student of Arabic I study Quranic texts to strengthen my grasp of the language … Continue reading →

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