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The Manuscript Center 4th Annual Conference
Translated Manuscripts
Bibliotheca Alexandrina
(29 May – 1 June 2007)
The successive international
conferences held by the Manuscript Center exhibit discernible continuity in
exploring untrodden, neglected areas in Arabic/Islamic heritage. The Center’s
fourth annual conference Translated Manuscripts will follow the pattern of its
predecessors shedding light on one of the significant facets of Arabic heritage,
namely, its contact with preceding and succeeding legacies of knowledge.
Interaction among human civilizations takes place in manifold forms.
Translation, perhaps one of the most important of these forms, was the main
passage to inspiring and forging future knowledge from past intellectual
experience and to triggering cross fertilization among contemporaneous and/or
successive cultures. It was through translation that Muslims were introduced to
the cultural stock of former civilizations. They particularly drew upon
Classical heritage, which in its turn had absorbed a great deal of the learning
of the Ancient Egyptian and Oriental civilizations.
Translation, however, was not the only medium for cultural interaction. There
were other influential factors: trade routes as the case of the Silk Road and
its historical significance; the spread of religious disciplines and spiritual
doctrines and their quite astonishing evolution; as well as battles and wars
waged in quest of illusive glory and wealth. From a closer perspective, a
pattern of inner complementarily and interaction among the abovementioned
factors is revealed. In fact, global trade, religious trends, sanguine wars and
translation activities are all shaping elements of civilization.
Translation remains one of the factors that has enriched and influenced human
history to its core. Thanks to translators Judaism and Christianity survived to
the present. Translation is also credited for the transmission of Classical
heritage to the Syrians then to the Arabs, to be eventually adapted by the Latin
world and finally into modern European languages. On the other hand, absence of
translation activities had its negative impact resulting in the loss of an
enormous patrimony written in languages that fell into oblivion along with their
users: Ancient Egyptian, Abyssinian (Ge‘ez), Pahlavi, Armenian and many other
languages whose peoples vanished during the course of time or clung as a fading
memory on the margins of human civilization.
Translation has always been and will remain an indicator of culture survival and
indelibility. Therefore, the translated manuscript as an embodiment of an
ancient text subsisting in two languages or more is the main focus of the
present conference. It will also attempt to investigate carefully both the
generalities and particularities of the translation process through elaborating
on certain themes mentioned hereinafter.
Although translation is the main topic of the conference, we also aspire to shed
light on the hidden links among the driving forces that led to the flourishing
of the translation movement in certain periods. This may furnish some answers to
many speculations: why did translation exist exclusively from/into certain
languages and not others? Why did translation reach its zenith in certain
episodes of human history and decline in others? Was the translation process
dominated by a set of techniques of leading schools, or carried out according to
individual disposition, or did it adopt a middle course between both? What was
the impact of translated manuscripts on the target language culture and what was
the nature of those manuscripts to begin with? What was the relation between the
translation activities and the governing powers and how far did they affect each
other?
Conference Themes
Given the ample possibilities of topics related to translated manuscripts, it
seems only fitting to limit the fields of discussions to the following themes:
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First, the factors that led to the
flowering of translation activities.
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Second, translations of
living versus bygone heritage and their selection criteria. Investigating,
moreover, their influence on the shaping of human history and the nature of
contemporaneous and successive civilizations. Major translation movements aiming
at transmitting the variegated legacies of mankind sometimes took place between
a rising culture and a bygone heritage. In this context, we may mention the
Arabic translations of the old Indian and Persian heritage, e.g. the
translations of Kitāb al-Sumūm (Book of Poisons) by Šanāq, Kalīla wa Dimna,
astronomical almanacs (Azyāj) and calendars (Hisāb al-Sinīn). In other times,
translation activities occurred among contemporaneous or chronologically
overlapping languages. This is seen in the Babylonian and Assyrian
interpretations of Sumerian writings as well as the Arabic translations from
Greek and Syriac. Strangely enough, the Arabs did not translate Egyptian
Hieroglyphics (which they labeled lughat al-Tayr [language of the birds]),
although some Arab scholars were aware at an early stage of its significance and
distinctive nature as seen in the works of Ibn Wahšiyya al-Nabatī. Why, then,
does a community embark on the translation of a certain culture and neglect
another?
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Third, translations carried
out by academic institutions or commissioned by patrons. This is highly
significant in order to understand the selection criteria governed by ideology,
power and the perimeters of the acceptable, and to know when religious texts or
secular ones marked the preference of translators. This entails, consequently,
the study of the nature and background of those who were occupied with the
translation process. For instance, the institutional translation represented in
the endeavors of Bayt al-Hikma (the academy) in Baghdad with its set techniques
and methods on the one hand, and on the other hand the translations commissioned
by Khālid bin Yazīd and Banū Mūsā bin Šāqir. This patronage-based translation
was carried out under certain circumstances and with different techniques from
the institutional translation represented by Bayt al-Hikma and the European
academies during the Renaissance.
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Fourth, the impact of
translation on reconstructing our awareness of preceding heritage and,
subsequently, influencing the development of world knowledge, i.e., the
authority of translation. This is seen in the influence exerted by the Arabic
translation of the Alexandrian heritage on the scientific progress of the
Arabic/Islamic civilization. The impact of the European translations of Arabic
heritage on shaping Western consciousness during Medieval Europe and the
Renaissance is another evident example.
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Fifth, tracing the journey of a
translated masterpiece, or rather two journeys. The first in its original
culture and the other in the target culture. The translations of The Thousand
and One Nights into various European languages and Avicenna’s Canon into Latin
(the first edition appeared in Italy in 1575), as well as the translations of
al-Birūnī are all clear instances of this theme.
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Six, the languages from/into which
the translated manuscripts were transmitted. In particular, the languages that
played a significant intermediary role bringing different cultures together,
such as Syriac, which was elevated and degraded respectively by translation.
Syriac reached its climax with the culmination of translation from classical
Greek into it and finally into Arabic. However, it was eventually put aside to
promote Arabic as the dominant language of religion and governance in al-Šām
during the first centuries after the Hijra.
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Seventh, translation studies.
Tracing the works in Arabic heritage that dealt directly with the process of
translation whether independently or integrated in other writings. This can be
seen in the case of al-‘Āmilī’s Kaškūl, in which he draws a comparison between
the methods of translation and interpretation according to both Yūhanā bin al-Batrīq
and Hunayn bin Īshāq. Moreover, some papers may consider the examining of issues
related to translation such as technical terminology and re-translation of a
given work employing different techniques from the original translator, and
other topics related to what is known today as translation theory and its
applications.
Further Information
Further information about the
conference participants, accepted abstracts, accessible facilities, and other
organizational matters are available on the conference official website:
www.manuscriptcenter.org/translated
Those who are willing to participate in the conference are kindly requested to
complete the registration form, attached herewith, and submit it via:
Email: youssef.ziedan@bibalex.org
Ziedan@ziedan.com
Mail: Manuscript Center,
Bibliotheca Alexandrina,
Shatby , P.O Box 138,
Alexandria 21526 – Egypt.
Fax: +203 4820461
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