Tag Archives: translation

Trills and Spills from ‘Gilgamesh’s Snake’

Posted on December 14, 2022 by JMN

Verses are from Ghareeb Iskander, Gilgamesh’s Snake and Other Poems, Bilingual Edition translated from the Arabic by John Glenday and Ghareeb Iskander, Syracuse University Press, 2016. Translations here are mine. (c) 2022 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

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‘We Were Limpid, So We Were Not Turbid’

Posted on December 5, 2022 by JMN

A verse of classical Arabic can be tightly packed. Besides immersion in grammar, what’s most useful to this student of the language is a highly Congruent (1) translation. It amounts to what’s called a “trot,” and is the least likely … Continue reading →

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On Saying and Meaningness

Posted on November 28, 2022 by JMN

I painted it all tried to paint my thoughts / And caught so little / The world still grows it grows relentlessly / And yet there is always less of it(From “The Old Painter on a Walk” by Adam Zagajewski, … Continue reading →

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Hardcore Arabic: ‘Treble Formation’

Posted on November 19, 2022 by JMN

The language has astonishing sweep and granularity that are explicit and penetrative to a degree redolent of lore and legend. The open-sesame to Arabic’s magic for this English speaker is Wright’s majestic grammar. (1) Here, of an early morning on … Continue reading →

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‘O Thou There, Who Barkest at the Bènū ‘s Sīd’

Posted on November 5, 2022 by JMN

Below is jargon improvised for gauging how a translation navigates its source text. Note how the verbiage is strewn with hedging adverbials, conceding a priori that the labels are judgments, which by definition are subjective, privative, compromised, blinkered and fallible. … Continue reading →

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The Precedent: El Precedente

Posted on October 28, 2022 by JMN

Traducción:“Don’t talk to me that way!”Translation:“¡No me hables así!” Traducción:I’m the Precedent of the Unighted Steaks!”Translation:¡Soy Precedente de los Bistecs Anochecidos!” Traducción:Don’t EVER talk to the Precedent that way!”Translation:¡No le hables NUNCA al Precedente de esa manera!” (Filtered from the … Continue reading →

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When Is a Viper Just a Snake?

Posted on October 21, 2022 by JMN

I share my neck of the world with rattlesnakes, water moccasins, copperheads, coral snakes (red-on-yellow, kill a fellow) and cottonmouths. I can’t tell a moccasin from a cottonmouth — they frequent water, and I don’t. When I see one of … Continue reading →

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Translating Winds and Currents

Posted on October 12, 2022 by JMN

(Continued from https://ethicaldative.com/2022/10/08/assaying-a-translation-strange-dawn/ ) An interesting feature of a translation is how “faithful” it is to the source text. Faithfulness (a slippery term) tends to be a matter of degree, to fluctuate as the translation goes forward. The translator, sailing … Continue reading →

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Assaying a Translation: ‘Strange Dawn’

Posted on October 8, 2022 by JMN

I shove off in the El Toro dinghy of my dreams to navigate Gilgamesh’s Snake (1), sailing on a sea of Arabic towards a far shore, which is the poem’s end. Ghareeb Iskander’s poem has 5 parts: I. SongII. The … Continue reading →

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Romancing ‘Gilgamesh’s Snake’

Posted on September 7, 2022 by JMN

The transliterations bracketed below are mine. In them, tā’ marbūṭa is ẗ, and I show the lām of the article as assimilated to a following solar letter. For example: [‘ayyuhā-s-sayyidu] instead of [‘ayyuhā-l-sayyidu]. My character set, contrived to avoid digraphs, … Continue reading →

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