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Translation of Lexical Ambiguities in Selected Couplets of Hafez

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Translation of Lexical Ambiguities in Selected Couplets of Hafez 11809 Mohammad Sadegh Kenevisi et al./ Elixir Ling. & Trans. 53 (2012) 11809-11814 Available online at www.elixirpublishers.com (Elixir International Journal) Linguistics and Translation Elixir Ling. & Trans. 53 (2012) 11809-11814 Translation of Lexical Ambiguities in Selected Couplets of Hafez Mohammad Sadegh Kenevisi 1 and Seyed Alireza Shirinzadeh Bojnourdi 2 1School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia 2School of Languages, Literacies and Translation, Universiti Sains Malaysia. ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history: Hafez was a Persian mystic and poet who is well-regarded and remembered for his lyrical Received: 8 October 2012; poetry written in ‘Ghazals’ , a complex and exclusively Persian verse-form. Like other Sufi Received in revised form: poets, Hafiz merged themes of ambiguity into his poems which has become an inseparable 20 November 2012; feature of his poetry. An important source of ambiguity in natural languages, and Accepted: 3 December 2012; particularly in poetry, is the polysemy of lexical elements. The purpose of this study is the identification of the lexical items which have been ambiguous and consequently seems to Keywords have been problematic for translators in rendering them into English. In addition, the study Hafez’s poems, aims at recognizing the strategies at translators’ hand in dealing with these lexical elements. Ambiguity, In order to extract the data, eight poems of Hafez have been randomly selected. Nine Translation. couplets of the poems that have been found to contain lexical ambiguities are randomly selected. Following the identification of the ambiguities, the translations of them by two to five translators have been analyzed to find out the strategies used by the translators in the translation of ambiguous items. The result of the study shows that while in many cases translators have attempted to use the context as a source of disambiguation and consequently transfer one of the meanings of the ambiguous item, in other cases they have used other strategies such as clarifications in the forms of parenthesis and footnotes. © 2012 Elixir All rights reserved. 1. Introduction ambiguous so that one is able to interpret them in different and Khwajeh Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafez-e Shirazi (also of course in favored ways! Yarshater (2002) points that “Hafez’s spelled Hafiz) was a Persian mystic and poet who is now well- Div ān is widely used in bibliomancy (f āl); stories abound about regarded as one of the most leading Persian poets of all time. his inspired predictions, justified by his popular sobriquet, les ān- Like other Sufi poets, Hafiz merged themes of ambiguity into al-ḡayb, the Tongue of the Unseen”. The significance of his poems. Ambiguity is a speech device in which a user implies ambiguity in Hafez’s lyrics can be also understood, as a word, an expression, or a sentence, and having a connection mentioned by Ross (cited in Bell, 1979), by the nicknames given with other elements and structures of languages it brings into to Hafez, such as “the Tongue of Hidden” and “the Interpreter of mind some meanings. Since Hafez’s ‘Diwan’, the collection of Secrets” by his compatriots. The reason for the application of so his lyrics, is remarkably celebrated around the world, many high degrees of ambiguity in Hafez’s poems can be traced back, translators have translated it into different languages. According and is believed to have been rooted, in the social and to Loli (2002) the first poem by Hafez to emerge in English was particularly political situation of the society in that period of the work of Sir William Jones. Among the other English time (Arberry, 1977). The scholars of the society had been under translators of Hafez are Wilberforce Clarke (1840-1905), pressure not to talk explicitly and freely. This is specially the Edward Byles Cowell (1826-1903), Gertrude Lowthian Bell case during the ruling of Amir Mobarez-al-Din whose hypocrisy (1897), Arthur John Arberry (1977), Walter Leaf (1852-1927), had been leading the whole society to become hypocritical. The John Payne (1842-1916), and Paul Smith (1945) and Persian solution of Hafez to this state had been an artistic insincerity; translators such as Iraj Bashiri, Alaeddin Pazargadi (2004), that is ambiguity. Shahriar Shahriari (2005) and Ordoubadiyan (2005). 3. Types of Ambiguity 2. Ambiguity in Hafez’s Poetry As Empson (1953) defines ambiguity, it is “something very Ambiguity or equivocation is one of the distinctive features pronounced, and as a rule witty or deceitful” (p. 1). Utterances of Hafez’s poetry which has elevated the status of his Diwan which differ semantically but not phonetically are called into a miraculous book. The importance of ambiguity is such ambiguous, i.e. they differ in their interpretation but not in their high in Hafez’s Diwan that Persians, even now in the 21th form. Ambiguity can also be the result of two homonyms century, use it frequently for divination; that is they use Hafez’s occurring in the same structural position. The example can be Diwan as an art or technique of gaining knowledge of future ‘He was on his way to the bank’ in which the word bank can be events or distant states by means of observing and interpreting interpreted as both a financial institute and the river bank. It may signs, through randomly opening the Diwan and reading the also occur when constituents in larger structures have more than opened lyric in the opened page. This divination or as Persians one interpretation according to their internal structure and call “ fal”, is not achieved, unless the verses in the lyric are syntactic position (Haegeman and Gueron, 2004). As Larson Tele: E-mail addresses: [email protected]; [email protected] © 2012 Elixir All rights reserved 11810 Mohammad Sadegh Kenevisi et al./ Elixir Ling. & Trans. 53 (2012) 11809-11814 (1997) points one of the characteristics of all languages is that This is done by going from the form of the first language to the one form will be used to correspond to several alternative form of the second language by way of semantic structure” (p. 3, meanings. He contends that only in the conditions which a form Bolded in original). To do an effective translation the translator is employed in its primary meaning or function there is a one-to- needs to discover the meaning of the source language and bring one correlation between form and meaning. The other meanings the intended meaning in the form of the target language. are “secondary meaning or figurative meaning” (ibid, p. 10). Ambiguity, in the words of Cook (2009), is “the bane of Jan G. Kooij (1971) has also described certain problems translator” (p. 232). The translator is in a dilemma. He has to connected with the linguistic description of ambiguity and has decide between one, two or even more choices. This plight gets discussed it, generally speaking, in terms of ambiguity and worse when the translator is translating poetry in which phonology, ambiguity and grammar, and ambiguity and lexicon. ambiguity is intentional by the author in many cases. Hence one With regard to ambiguity and lexicon, as is related to the present of the responsibilities of the translator would be to make a study, Kooij (1971) made a distinction between polysemous and decision whether the ambiguity is intentional or merely ambiguous as not equivalent notions. Another distinction by unintentional and casual. And if it has been used unintentionally Kooij (1971) is between the content of a sentence and its whether the author has been “careless or lazy or ignorant” (ibid). interpretation. The content of a sentence is defines as “the Before translating a text the translator needs to fully understand inherent semantic structure of a sentence as a type, such as it is and discover the meanings and the possible ambiguities of the the specified in a linguistic description” by him (p. 117). By this source text. This analysis of the text which is called exegesis by he refers to the different ways in which a sentence can be Larson (1997) include resolving ambiguity, identifying implicit perceived “in each unique case of language use” (ibid). To apply information, studying keywords, interpreting figurative senses, this distinction to the level of word, or lexicon, it can be the at recognizing when words are being used in secondary sense, and least two ways that a lexical item can be understood in the same when grammatical structures are being used in secondary case of language use. The question that rises is that whether to function, etc. He gives the example of “it’s too hot to drink” as a regard all lexical items with more than one meaning or sense as lexical combination ambiguity in the source language which an example of ambiguity. The answer to this dilemma is the could have different meanings as “the food it too hot to ear”, the consideration of the fact that in an ambiguous situation, the weather is too hot for us to feel like eating”, “the horse is too hot reader would hesitate between two or more meanings of the after running a race and doesn’t want to eat” (p. 24). He ambiguous lexical item. That is the two or more meanings of the discusses that these ambiguities need to be resolved and only the word have approximately the same values in the interpretation intended meaning must be communicated if the translator is of the whole sentence. A related source of lexical ambiguity is translating idiomatically. He points to the fact that some when the different senses of a lexical element have no relevant ambiguities are due to the information that is left implicit in components in common or what Kooij (1971) refers to as some grammatical construction.
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