AN INVESTIGATION OF RETRANSLATION HYPOTHESIS IN ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF RŪMĪ’S POETRY

Abstract

Retranslation has been considered “a positive phenomenon inevitable in the field of literature, offering various interpretations of the same original” by scholars like Sirkku Aaltonen. It was usually “related to canonical literary texts; as there were few great translations of these texts, retranslations came to existence.” Theoretical assumptions about retranslation developed in the 1990s are often referred to as the “retranslation hypothesis,” suggesting that “if two or more translations of the same text exist in the same target language, the later translation(s) tend to be closer to the original than the earlier ones.” Here, closeness refers to the resemblance between the source text and translation, which is determined by structural changes, inaccuracies, deletion, or additions. The fewer the changes, the closer translation will be to the original. This study, focusing on English translations of Rumi’s poetry, considers the notion of closeness based on the dichotomy of documentary and instrumental translation rather than the traditional categories of literal and free translations, the reasons behind the production of retranslations, as well as the success of retranslation in making the original author known to the target readers and seeks to answer these questions: (1) To what extent are the retranslations of Rūmī’s poetry linguistically and culturally close to the source text (2) What are the motives for retranslating Rūmī’s poetry into English? (3) Is it possible for indirect retranslations to follow the rules of the retranslation hypothesis?