Metanarratives in Translation: A Case of Richard Burton’s A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36394/jhss/20/4/8Keywords:
The Arabian Nights, Richard Burton, Narrativity, Framing, Orientalism, TranslationAbstract
This paper investigates how Richard Burton reframed the original narrative of The Thousand and One Nights in alignment with the traditional Orientalist stance while translating the Nights through the translated text and its paratexts. The analysis was done by studying the translation and the footnotes of three tales in the Nights, in addition to the major paratextual material in the translation: The Terminal Essay. The researchers find that Burton has injected the Victorian Islamophobic metanarrative into the translation through his excessive annotations to accentuate the Orientalist public narrative on the East that was formulated by 19th-Century Victorian England. This is inferred from his ideas on imperialism, which were later incorporated into the translation and its paratexts. Burton represents the tales with ends that encourage imperialism, although he criticizes and condemns the Victorian moral mandate in some areas of his translation.
References
Baker, M. (2006). Translation and conflict: A narrative account. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203099919
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203099919Baker, M. (2007). Reframing conflict in translation. Social Semiotics, 17(2), 151-169. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330701311454
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330701311454Bassnett, S. (1980). Translation studies. Methuen.
Bassnett, S., & Lefevere, A. (1990). Translation, history, and culture. Pinter Publishers.
Batchelor, K. (2018). Translation and paratexts. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351110112
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351110112Bennett. J. (1991) What Is Policy Convergence and What Causes It?. British Journal of Political Science, 21(2), 215-233. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123400006116
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123400006116Bennett, W. L., & Edelman, M. (1985). Toward a new political narrative. Journal of Communication, 35(4), 156–171. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1985.tb02979.x
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1985.tb02979.xBriggs, C. L. (1996). Disorderly discourse: Narrative, conflict, & inequality. Oxford University Press.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195087765.001.0001Burton, R. F. (1857) Personal narrative of a pilgrimage to el Medinah and Meccah. London, Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts. [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/49031226/.
Burton, R. F. (1885) A plain and literal translation of the Arabian nights’ entertainments, now entitled the book of the thousand nights and a night, with introduction, explanatory notes on the manners and customs of moslem men, and a terminal essay upon the history of the nights (Vols. 1-10). The Kama Shastra Society.
Burton, R. F. (1863). Wanderings in West Africa: Two volumes bound as one. Tinsley Bros.
Burton, R. F. & Wilkins, W. H. (1897). The Jew, the Gypsy, and El Islam. Hutchinson & Co.
Butler, J. (2010) Frames of war: When is life grievable?. Verso.
Dimambro, A. (December 18, 2020). Translation as storytelling: A lecture by Associate Professor Susan Bernofsky. Columbia University School of the Arts. Retrieved from https://arts.columbia.edu/news/translation-storytelling-lecture-associate-professor-susan-bernofsky
Elimam, A. (2019). Media, translation and the construction of the Muslim image: A narrative perspective. International Journal of Comparative Literature & Translation Studies, 7(2), 24-32. https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.7n.2p.24
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.7n.2p.24Forster, C. (1829). Mahometanism unveiled. J. Duncan.
Galtung, J. (1971). A structural theory of Imperialism. Journal of Peace Research, 8(2), 81–117. https://doi.org/10.1177/002234337100800201
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/002234337100800201Genette, G. (1997). Paratexts: Thresholds of interpretation. Cambridge University Press.
Hijjo, N., & Kaur, S. (2017) The paratextual analysis of English translations of Arabic media narratives on Daesh. The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 23(3), 21-36. https://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2017-2303-02
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2017-2303-02Kennedy, V. (2017). Orientalism in the Victorian era. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature (pp. 1-89). Retrieved from https://oxfordre.com/literature/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-226. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.226
Khattak, S. (1999). Images of Islam: A study of the differences between Islamic and Victorian conceptions of certain Muslim practices and beliefs [Doctoral dissertation, King’s College, University of London]. Retrieved from https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/
Kung, S. W. (2013). Paratext, an alternative in boundary crossing: A complementary approach to translation analysis. In Valerie Pellatt (ed.), Text, extratext, metatext and paratext in translation (pp. 49-68). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Labov, W. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. U. Pennsylvania Press.
Lane, E. W. (1838). Arabian Society in the Middle Ages: Studies from the Thousand and One Nights. Chatto & Windus.
Lefevere, A. (1992). Translation, rewriting, and the manipulation of literary fame. Routledge.
McDonough, J. (2009). Framed! Translation, paratexts and narratives of Nationalism, Independence movements and the 1980/1995 Referenda in Canada, 1968-2000 with special focus on Mordecai Richler’s Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! and Pierre Vallières’ Nègres blancs d’Amerique [Master’s thesis, University of Ottawa]. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10393/29843
Mey, J. (2000). When Voices Clash: A Study in Literary Pragmatics. De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110801415
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110801415Muir, W. (1897). The Mohammedan controversy. T. & T.Clark.
Munday, J. (2009). The Routledge companion to translation studies. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203879450
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203879450Myllylä, T. (2016). “Police procrastinated” ideological reframing in Finnish online news on terrorism [Master’s thesis, University of Vaasa]. Retrieved from https://osuva.uwasa.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/3240/osuva_7020.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Ockley, S. (1847). The history of the Saracens. Henry G. Bohn.
Parmouzeh, A. (2014). Translation as renarration: Critical analysis of Iran’s cultural and political news in English western media and press from 2000 to 2012. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences MCSER Publishing, 5(9), 608-619.
Plummer, P. (2009). “The free treatment of topics usually taboo’d” Glimpses of the harem in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature and the fine arts. In M. Meyer (ed.), Word & image in colonial and postcolonial literatures and cultures (pp. 47-68). New York. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789042027442_004
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789042027442_004Riessman, C. K. (1993). Narrative analysis. SAGE Publishings, Inc.
Sabouri, H., & Karimzadeh, A. (2011). The Orientalist readings of the Arabian Nights. Ferdowsi Review, 1(4), 123-132.
Said, E. W. (1979). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.
Said, E. W. (1983). The world, the text, and the critic. Harvard University Press.
Said, E. W. (1994). Culture and imperialism. Knopf.
Somers, M., & Gibson, G. (1994). Reclaiming the epistemological “Other”: Narrative and the social constitution of identity. In C. Calhoun (ed.), Social theory and the politics of identity (pp. 37-99). Blackwell.
Tisdall, St. C. (1895). The religion of the Crescent or Islam. its strength, its weakness, its origin, its influence. Young.
Vatsyayana, & Kama Shastra Society of London and Benares. (1883). The Kama sutra of Vatsyayana. Printed for the Society of the Friends of India.
White, H. (1987). The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Youngs, T. (1994). Travellers in Africa: British travellogues, 1850-1900. Manchester University Press.Bottom of Form
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
