Wordwork|play

NOD: The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist

My review of Something About the Blues should be submitted sometime tonight and published within a couple of days.

I am already well into the next, utterly fascinating, book--The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist.

Here's a NOD from its preface (I keep reading, lately, about the crusaders, in The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War; The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In; Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics; and now here):

In April 1204, Christian soldiers on a mission to liberate Jerusalem stopped short of their goal and sacked Constantinople, the richest city in Europe. . . . . The looted city had many more books than people. It was the first time Constantinople had fallen in the 874 years since Constantine the Great, Emperor of Rome founded it in AD 330. . . . [T]he city held the literary treasures of the ancient world as its inheritance. Among the treasures were treatises by the greatest mathematician of the ancient world and one of the greatest thinkers who had ever lived. He approximated the value of pi, he developed the theory of centers of gravity, and he made steps toward the development of the calculus 1,800 years before Newton and Leibniz. His name was Archimedes.

Time, Money & Medieval Literature: A New Translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation

As mentioned in the lead-in to a recent post, "Texts in Translation: Kalima and Translation into Arabic," I have more than a passing interest in, and fascination with, medieval literature, as also with translation. But because I am overburdened with student debt, still, I have neither the time nor money to pursue this interest in earnest. Certainly not by way of another university degree--my three have nearly buried me in debt. But on to the matter of this post.

I came across a review of a new translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the "Sunday Book Review" of the New York Times a few days ago--"A Stranger in Camelot." Though I prefer to read such texts in the original, in this case Middle English, I do understand the need for modern English translations that render the text intelligible to readers who struggle overmuch with older forms of English. Many, perhaps most, high school and university students today struggle even with Shakespearean English, so one cannot really expect them to tackle even earlier stuff.

I haven't read this translation yet, though I hope to do so in the near future. Apparently Armitage presents the Middle English original in a parallel text, much like Seamus Heaney did in Beowulf: A New Verse Translation, a copy of which I have and treasure in my personal library. When a new translation reproduces, as nearly as possible, the spirit and cadence of the original text, it is a joy to read and gives the modern reader a feel for the original. Especially important, as pointed out by Edward Hirsch, is an adequate reproduction of alliteration, the poetic device of choice in early English writing. I, personally, much prefer alliteration and assonance to rhyme as a poetic constraint.

The linguistically adventurous can read the new translation, then work their way through the original. Fun, fun, fun!

Texts in Translation: Kalima and Translation into Arabic

I find translation fascinating. I once considered, but, for reasons I will not delve into here, did not pursue a graduate degree at the Centre for Medieval Studies in the University of Toronto that would likely have led me to translation work. My intended foci were Latin, Old English, and Old Norse, possibly in collaboration with Editing Medieval Texts or Book History & Print Culture. Will I revisit these interests at some point? Maybe. But I'm digressing.

There is, of course, nothing essentially modern about translation. As long as written languages have existed and peoples using distinct languages have interacted and/or ruled one another, there has quite likely been translation. There are some very old examples of bi- or multilingual writings (see the bilingual edict of Ashoka--Greek & Aramaic--located in present-day Afghanistan, erected circa 230 B.C.E., for one example). The spread of religion--esp. Buddhism, Christianity, & Islam--and the rise and fall and shifting boundaries of empires--Greek, Roman, Persian, Arab, and later Spanish, Ottoman and British--also resulted in a flurry of translation. Vast empires are invariably multilingual, at least at first, though some end up imposing one language on all.

Baghdad, during the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258), is said to have had a healthy literary culture and was a vibrant book trade and translation hub. Islam, students of religion and philosophy certainly know, contributed tremendously to the development and flowering of modern Western civilization with philosophical, mathematical, scientific and literary contributions. Today, it would seem, there is little except suspicion, misunderstanding and animosity exchanged between the Arab world and the West. A little of that is hopefully about to change.

I first heard about Kalima and its efforts to translate world literature into Arabic through the Literary Saloon at the complete review. My initial reaction was one of suspicion, ironically. What, I wondered, was the motivation for the translation of literature into Arabic? Why not from Arabic into English and other Western languages? I have since gone to Kalima's web site and read up a bit--about who they are, their objectives, raison d'etre, who supports them and what they have done thus far and plan to do in the coming year--and am impressed.

While I don't see in their list of books already translated and awaiting translation any distinct bias, I do agree with the Literary Saloon's assessment that it's a bit English-heavy. And while translation into Arabic of world literature is a great thing, I really do hope we'll also see more translation of Arabic texts into other languages, especially English, given how dominant it is in world affairs at the moment. There is an obvious need to balance things--there is enough of Western ideas, especially the most frivolous and evanescent ones, making their way around the world via television and, increasingly, internet-driven new media.