unintranslating
August 2, 2009 3:32 PM Subscribe
Persian/Farsi speakers/writers! Help me translate this Rumi line BACK to Farsi!
I love Rumi and one of the lines from his poem Basmillah (translated by Coleman Barks) has special meaning to me. I would love to get a tattoo of the original untranslated form, or at least get someone to translate it back to Farsi for me. I'm going to try and find a Farsi professor to help me, but I thought asking the hive wouldn't hurt.
The line is: Wide as the air.
Can anyone help me out? And would the new Farsi translation lose some meaning/not make sense?
Thanks!
(Also, if anyone knows of some friendly, knowledgeable Farsi-speakers that won't mind a stranger asking for a translation, that would be great!)
I love Rumi and one of the lines from his poem Basmillah (translated by Coleman Barks) has special meaning to me. I would love to get a tattoo of the original untranslated form, or at least get someone to translate it back to Farsi for me. I'm going to try and find a Farsi professor to help me, but I thought asking the hive wouldn't hurt.
The line is: Wide as the air.
Can anyone help me out? And would the new Farsi translation lose some meaning/not make sense?
Thanks!
(Also, if anyone knows of some friendly, knowledgeable Farsi-speakers that won't mind a stranger asking for a translation, that would be great!)
You don't want to translate a translation back into the original language, because you are going to at best get something different from the original line and at worst get gibberish (a la Mark Twain's "retranslation" of the French translation of "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County".
Try it yourself: if you go to Babelfish and put in "wide as the air" and hit "translate English to French" you get "large comme air" and if you retranslate that you get "broad like air." Well, "broad like air" isn't what you want, is it?
So, yes, find the original poem and Rumi's original words--don't have someone back-translate Barks's translation.
posted by Sidhedevil at 8:07 PM on August 2, 2009
Try it yourself: if you go to Babelfish and put in "wide as the air" and hit "translate English to French" you get "large comme air" and if you retranslate that you get "broad like air." Well, "broad like air" isn't what you want, is it?
So, yes, find the original poem and Rumi's original words--don't have someone back-translate Barks's translation.
posted by Sidhedevil at 8:07 PM on August 2, 2009
Also, why not contact Mr. Barks himself? I am sure he has the original right to hand.
posted by Sidhedevil at 8:09 PM on August 2, 2009
posted by Sidhedevil at 8:09 PM on August 2, 2009
I found another translation of this poem, known as Ghazal (Ode) 2894, made by A. J. Arberry. You can see it on this page compared with Barks' version.
I don't know how to find the original Farsi, but I would note how different the translations are: where Barks has "Be wide as the air to learn a secret," Arberry has "Since there is no broadness in the mind, how will you achieve the society of the difficult secret?"
posted by gubo at 8:53 PM on August 2, 2009
I don't know how to find the original Farsi, but I would note how different the translations are: where Barks has "Be wide as the air to learn a secret," Arberry has "Since there is no broadness in the mind, how will you achieve the society of the difficult secret?"
posted by gubo at 8:53 PM on August 2, 2009
Response by poster: I see.
I suppose what I really like is how Coleman Barks worded it.
Hm.
Thank you all for your responses! I guess I really need to see how much translating it to Farsi will hurt it.
posted by lain at 1:25 AM on August 3, 2009
I suppose what I really like is how Coleman Barks worded it.
Hm.
Thank you all for your responses! I guess I really need to see how much translating it to Farsi will hurt it.
posted by lain at 1:25 AM on August 3, 2009
The original text is here. The line you are looking for is:
posted by narge at 2:56 AM on August 3, 2009
چونک اندر سر گشادی نیستتMy Farsi is pretty rudimentary, but my SO is a native speaker; the best she can do for a literal translation is "since in your head there's no opening, how are you going to find the opening (solution) to the problem". So, yeah, "wide as the air" was Mr Barks' invention.
در گشاد سر مشکل کی رسی
posted by narge at 2:56 AM on August 3, 2009
Best answer: Coleman Barks doesn't speak farsi, so emailing him for a translation won't help you. Like narge said, the phrase "wide as the air" doesn't show up in the original.
Here's the problem with trying to find a part of the poem that you could use in your tattoo to be "wide as the air". Rumi uses "سر" for both "head/mind" and "secret." It could also mean "atop," "beginning" "on", etc. "گشاد" means wide, broad, loose, open, etc. So if you take the part of the poem's line that says "اندر سر گشادی نیستت" ("in your mind wideness there isn't," because this part of the poem is pointing out all the crap that is wrong with you), change it to "اندر سر گشاد باشد" so that it's in the imperative case: "be wide in your mind." Or, say we drop the verb/preposition so that the tattoo is 100% from the original poem: سر گشادی. And let's say we fudge and stretch, and say that since سر also means on top, it can refer to the atmosphere/air above us. ( سریدن means skid/glide/coast in Farsi, so maybe there's another meaning for سر that I'm not aware of that John Moyne, the persian linguist Barks worked with, knew).
Alright, so you decide to get "سر گشادی" straight from the original poem to reflect the Barks' phrase "wide as the air." If a farsi speaker read your tattoo, if they were being generous, they would say you had the phrase "broad mind" on your arm. More likely, they would look at you and ask "why do you have 'fat head' tattooed in farsi on you?"
I guess I really need to see how much translating it to Farsi will hurt it.
Poetic language in farsi is different than in english, obviously. Even without knowing farsi, if you look at the original, you can see that every full line (go from right to left) ends in "کی رسی" . Each line is rhythmic and ends with the same phrase; when I was a kid, I always kind of thought persian poetry read aloud sounded almost like slowed down rap. Barks' poems is all free verse, as opposed to metered like the original. And like with any translation, word choices that had more meaning in the original language get lost.
I think that Barks' versions of the poems are beautiful, and I prefer them to the more literal translations. It was Barks' version that spoke to you. "Wide as the air" is a lovely phrase; the broadness of the vowels/sounds mimic the meaning of the line. "goshad dar nateejeyeh hava bashad" (be wide as the air, translated) probably doesn't evoke the same feeling when you sound it out, nor does it have the meaning you're hoping for, nor is it in the original poem. It doesn't evoke the poetry of the english phrase, whether you know farsi or not. Take a lesson from all those non-asian people who tried to get meaningful ideas tattooed in kanji on themselves; if there's an english phrase that's loaded with meaning for you, translating it will inevitably lose and skew some of that meaning.
Rumi and Barks are both great poets. I'd either get Rumi's words (maybe in calligraphy) or Barks' words (in a nice english font). I'd avoid messing with any other translations or versions on a tattoo.
posted by neda at 9:50 AM on August 3, 2009 [8 favorites]
Here's the problem with trying to find a part of the poem that you could use in your tattoo to be "wide as the air". Rumi uses "سر" for both "head/mind" and "secret." It could also mean "atop," "beginning" "on", etc. "گشاد" means wide, broad, loose, open, etc. So if you take the part of the poem's line that says "اندر سر گشادی نیستت" ("in your mind wideness there isn't," because this part of the poem is pointing out all the crap that is wrong with you), change it to "اندر سر گشاد باشد" so that it's in the imperative case: "be wide in your mind." Or, say we drop the verb/preposition so that the tattoo is 100% from the original poem: سر گشادی. And let's say we fudge and stretch, and say that since سر also means on top, it can refer to the atmosphere/air above us. ( سریدن means skid/glide/coast in Farsi, so maybe there's another meaning for سر that I'm not aware of that John Moyne, the persian linguist Barks worked with, knew).
Alright, so you decide to get "سر گشادی" straight from the original poem to reflect the Barks' phrase "wide as the air." If a farsi speaker read your tattoo, if they were being generous, they would say you had the phrase "broad mind" on your arm. More likely, they would look at you and ask "why do you have 'fat head' tattooed in farsi on you?"
I guess I really need to see how much translating it to Farsi will hurt it.
Poetic language in farsi is different than in english, obviously. Even without knowing farsi, if you look at the original, you can see that every full line (go from right to left) ends in "کی رسی" . Each line is rhythmic and ends with the same phrase; when I was a kid, I always kind of thought persian poetry read aloud sounded almost like slowed down rap. Barks' poems is all free verse, as opposed to metered like the original. And like with any translation, word choices that had more meaning in the original language get lost.
I think that Barks' versions of the poems are beautiful, and I prefer them to the more literal translations. It was Barks' version that spoke to you. "Wide as the air" is a lovely phrase; the broadness of the vowels/sounds mimic the meaning of the line. "goshad dar nateejeyeh hava bashad" (be wide as the air, translated) probably doesn't evoke the same feeling when you sound it out, nor does it have the meaning you're hoping for, nor is it in the original poem. It doesn't evoke the poetry of the english phrase, whether you know farsi or not. Take a lesson from all those non-asian people who tried to get meaningful ideas tattooed in kanji on themselves; if there's an english phrase that's loaded with meaning for you, translating it will inevitably lose and skew some of that meaning.
Rumi and Barks are both great poets. I'd either get Rumi's words (maybe in calligraphy) or Barks' words (in a nice english font). I'd avoid messing with any other translations or versions on a tattoo.
posted by neda at 9:50 AM on August 3, 2009 [8 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
I'm not familiar with the poem, but I'm familiar with translations-- don't expect the transliterated version of this phrase to be identical to Coleman Barks's translation.
posted by oinopaponton at 5:49 PM on August 2, 2009