Arabic-L:LIT:Salih's Season revisited

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Thu 15 Dec 2005
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1) Subject:Salih's Season revisited

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1)
Date: 15 Dec 2005
From:srpkole at EUnet.yu
Subject:Salih's Season revisited

A revised Serbian translation of Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to  
the
North was out the last month by Clio, Belgrade 2005 (ISBN 86-7102-196-3,
hardcover, 154+17 pg's, see http://www.knjizara.co.yu). After  
comparing no
less than six different original editions in order to attune the  
translation
to the most accurate of them, the one printed by Dar al-Jeel, Beirut  
1997
has been picked, for it contains all those little slices of the text  
missing
in the host of other Arabic issues (some of them being probably  
pirate). The
new translation has eventually been compared sentence by sentence with
Johnson-Davies' English translation authorized by Salih himself, and the
previous version (published by Clio, Belgrade 2000) was improved in many
details.

Like the 1st edition, which was sold out in less than a year (a little
miracle for today's Serbia, and much more so as it was the very first
presentation of an "obscure" Arab author, not a one freshly decorated  
with a
Nobel, or Booker's), the new edition is also equipped with an extended
afterword entitled "Velika reka tece na sever" (The Great River Runs  
to the
North). Between the other additions it explains the origin of the  
proverb
"waafaqa shann Tabaqa", giving the necessary support to a more faithful
translation of that somewhat opaque piece of the original text. This  
proverb
appears twice in Chapter 2, in a changed form (shana [instead of  
shann, with an alif
maqSuura, quite likely a typo, but repeated in every edition] ya3rif  
mata
yulaaqii Tabaqa), which puzzles even the native Arab reader. This  
obviously
was one reason that it was both times simply neglected in the  
otherwise most
scrupulous English translation. However, I don't know whether anybody  
had
ever pointed out to this omission. (In my 1st translation I attempted
"replacing" it by a Serbian proverb of akin meaning, without any  
comments.)
The afterword also contains an extended comment on the Russian  
translation
made in more than a free manner, to say the least, by professor Vladimir
Shagal' (Sezon palomnichestva na Sever, Moskva 1977), arguing what  
Shagal'
himself declared about his own translation in a superb, or, better,
exaggaratedly embellished classical Arabic style (cf. his article "al- 
Tayyib
SaaliH wa riwaayatuhu mawsim al-hijra 'ila al-shimaal", in shu'uun  
'adabiyya
11/1990, pg's 74--80).

Best regards,
Srpko Lestaric

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End of Arabic-L:  15 Dec 2005


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