Lecture by Kareem Abu-Zeid

Public talk: Translating Arabic Poetry, Pre-Islamic to Modern: Creative Challenges and Opportunities. 

Kareem Abu Zeid’s talk will look at the issue of “faithfulness” vs. “betrayal” in the translation of Arabic poetry. He takes a holistic view, arguing that translating musicality and “poeticness” are just as important as translating meaning, and that adhering too closely to the word order and certain formal and semantic aspects of the source text in fact constitutes one of the worst possible “betrayals” of the source text. The talk will engage several concrete examples from both pre-Islamic and modern Arabic poetry. While the examples for this talk will all come from Arabic literature, it will appeal to anyone interested in translation, from any language.