They cannot be imitated in English: translating the Arabic Impostures of al-Hariri (d. 1122)
In this talk in the "The Middle East in Cambridge Series", Michael Cooperson will discuss his translation of al-Hariri's "Impostures".
In this talk in the "The Middle East in Cambridge Series", Michael Cooperson will discuss his translation of al-Hariri's "Impostures".
Michael Cooperson will give an online lecture on 'Learning Arabic Backwards: Was it Absolutely Terrifying?' at Harvard's CMES, drawing on his experience of translating al-Hariri's "Maqamat."
Al-Hariri’s Impostures is a twelfth-century collection of fifty tales written entirely in rhyme. Because of the rhyme, not to mention the riddles, puns, lipograms, and rare vocabulary, it has routinely been called untranslatable. Yet translators into Hebrew, German, and Russian have succeeded in re-creating it in their languages. A new English translation draws on the […]