Rhyming prose and archaizing

Abstract

The present paper discusses the translation of the maqāmāt (i.e., assemblies) from Arabic into English. The focus is on two main issues: the translation of rhyming prose into English and the problem of archaizing the language when translating old literary texts, especially Arabic ones. The discussion of these two topics draws on different views, especially Catford’s, Newmark’s, and Pym’s, and examples translated by the author and compared to Prendergast’s translation ([1915] 2015), the only rendition available. This discussion also touches upon the dichotomy of foreignization versus domestication, as explicated by Venuti (1997). The paper concludes that translating expressive texts is quite an undertaking, particularly if they are contingent on rhyming prose and archaisms as their basic features. Another important conclusion is that the translator should keep an eye on the temporal distance between the two texts (i.e., the source text and the target text). Archaisms are therefore proposed to sprinkle the translated text with that perceived aspect of time. However, this does not mean that the target text will appear incomprehensible, for archaizing should be confined to the lexical level and some syntactic constructions which characterize literary prose.