( تحديات الترجمة العربية لمذكرة العلامة إقبال الشخصية: ''Stray Reflections'' نموذجاً)ترجمة النصوص أو ترجمة العقول الكبيرة؟

Translation of Texts or Translation of Giant intellect? Challenges of Arabic Translation of Iqbal’s Note-Book: “Stray Reflections” as a Case Study

Abstract

Allama Iqbal (1877-1938) is one of the poets and thinkers par excellence in the Muslim world who have made tremendous contribution in the development of viable and dynamic narrative to face the challenges posed by the modern civilization and culture. Although, Iqbal is famous for his Urdu and Persian poetry, he has also penned a number of works in prose genre in English, Urdu, and Persian. His poetic works have been extensively translated into many international languages including Arabic, followed by intellectual and critical deliberations. However, his prose works have not been translated with the same zeal and hence little attention has been given to their analysis and criticism. One of his less known, yet very important, prose works is his personal Notebook: “Stray Reflections”. The writer of these lines has translated it into Arabic and faced a bunch of challenges and difficulties that are not only related to ST, TT, and their stylistic peculiarities, but he also encountered a giant mind loaded with abstract ideas and bringing these ideas into the world of tangibles with a writing style that is distinguished with characteristics which demand extraordinary thought process on the part of the translator. The proposed study attempts to analyse the challenges, difficulties and adopted strategies thereof. It is expected that the results of the study will shed light on the general difficulties of literary translation from English into Arabic and the challenges of translating great minds from one language into another.