i have a couple teachers from
tunisia
in the past
yeah i met her dad too
nice in the in the 80s nice
i think he spent uh years and years in
north africa
i was in morocco mauritania
morocco algeria i visited tunisia and
libya
and then uh and then i was in the
emirates and i was in uh
in medina and lived both in mecca medina
originally was just church true africa
is
uh was was tunis was tunisia yeah
yeah so we gave the name
uh to the whole continent yeah but even
now in tunisia
the uh idea of identity is
uh subject to heated debate yes
some argue that we are africans
and more africans some argue that we are
more arabs
and some others they will argue
i think the dna is pretty much confirmed
that
you're more african because the
the persians are more arab than most of
the north africans
that's true you know they did the
national geographic did a study
and i think persians on average had
about almost 50 percent arab
air blood whereas in in places like
tunisia it was very
low uh there's a lot of berber
uh uh libya i think was like 17
and you know so i mean
you know everybody mixed and the uh this
idea of purity is a total illusion
true yeah i mean even if you went into
deep arabia today
i think you probably could find some
pretty
um you know just arab
but the arabs are mixed with africa and
with indian
you know the yemenis have a lot of
mixture with indian
yeah so so this is you know this is the
world
but some people are fanatic about their
identity and they have exaggerated pride
which should not be the case because as
you said
there is no pure race uh well also pride
is
pride should be in in your own
accomplishments
true i mean to be proud about what you
are and typical
uh
i mean people are judged by their
actions you know but whereas we
we take this false pride in uh
in things yeah you know i always i
always marvel
like people when they compliment you on
clothes
though that's a really nice sadrilla you
have on and
and then i always feel like you know i
should thank the tailor
[Laughter]
frank why should i say you know nice
to do with it you know the credit has to
do to go to the tailor yes you're right
for his accomplishment so we take credit
for a lot of things we have nothing to
do with
true true excellent so thank you very
much for this
very nice chat this is informal and
perhaps this is the aim of this
encounter
it's to engage in informal
discussion on areas related to
translation language and here in this uh
meeting uh of course to islamic
discourse
so how about if we start the meeting
now i don't like to start it very
officially
but just for the recording
we are going to start from where we
should start
and i am still i still see some people
in the waiting room
coming and it is sometimes very
difficult to strike a balance between
facilitating in the traditional sense
and
dealing with the technology on the other
accepting
and having an eye here and an eye over
there
excellent so assalamu alaikum
good evening and good morning ladies and
gentlemen
dear students dear colleagues dear
scholars
my name is hamuda salhi and i am
the director of the masters program
in translation and interpreting at the
university of tunis
today we are very delighted
to be able to host another online
keynote
lecture a lecture that is falling
and a series of uh talks
and other online events uh entitled
encounters
at the shores of translation oh
encounter translated here as hadith
because the encounter is
but the liquor or the encounter
should have the element of hadith well
hadith and hadith in
in arabic and especially in islamic
tradition
has so many meanings like the hadith
which is a whole discipline
and some of the texts are part of the
hadith
so in
this series of talks and online
uh events we have invited a large number
of
uh prominent scholars and practitioners
in translation and interpreting
uh who have
uh accepted our invitation
and they are being invited to speak
about
language about translation about culture
about interpreting and interpretation
interpreting as the act of interpreting
an interpreter
and interpretation in the sense of wheel
so uh each one
is speaking from his or her own
background his or her own perspective
of translation and i always uh
portray translation as a temple or a
mosque
with various gates and doors
and these doors they do welcome people
with different backgrounds different
perspectives
so it is
my singular honor and great privilege
today to introduce you to this evening's
guest speaker sheikh hamza yusuf
you know him all i assume he is a
prominent
and distinguished scholar of islam
sheikh hamza yousef
is a an american convert to islam
and his full name is hamza yusef hansen
he currently services serves
as president of zaituna college in
berkeley
california perhaps it was named
in honor of the great al zaituna mosque
or al zaituna university in tunis not
far away
from where i'm sitting now zaituna
college
was the first accredited muslim liberal
arts college
in the united states which with both
bachelor's and master's degree programs
he was ranked by the muslim 500
as the 23rd most influential muslim
worldwide a leading proponent of
classical learning
the traditional liberal arts and great
books education
in both the western and muslim
traditions
he has translated authored and
co-authored
numerous publications including
scholarly books
and articles as well as papers on
major current areas of ethical concern
he serves as vice president
of the uae based forum for
promoting peace in muslim societies he
is
co-president of religions for peace
and served on the ethics in action
for sustainable and integral development
development initiative
which is a collaboration between
religious for peace
the vatican the united nations and other
organizations
he is a member of the jordanian royal
academy
for islamic studies and has worked with
prince razi bin mohammed on key
initiatives
promoting peace between muslims and
christians
he works closely with sheikh abdullah
binbaya
the architect of the marak declaration a
ground-breaking document in defense of
the rights of non-muslims
in muslim majority societies or
communities
translating it into english and
promoting it
globally he holds traditional advanced
degrees
in islamic law and theology as well as
a ba in religious studies san jose
state university and a phd
from the university of california at
berkeley graduate
theological union
personally speaking i have been
following the works
talks and even the friday sermons
of shaykh hamza yusuf for a long time
now
together with my mother and sometimes i
translate
some of his talks and sermons into
arabic tunisia arabic
to my mother and my mother is fascinated
with his genius
i have also become fascinated by the
encyclopedic knowledge and his promotion
of an authentically moderate
and contemporary discourse of islam
and when i started looking for
speakers and scholars from translation
related
disciplines my thoughts went immediately
to theology and sheikh hamza yusuf in
particular
why because i have a firm belief that
sheikh hamza
would give an exceptional lecture on any
subject
he is invited to speak on
including translation so i invited him
and i was extremely delighted
when he accepted my invitation to speak
to my students
and colleagues on translation and
interpreting or interpretation
sheikh hamza will be speaking now
about how to best interpret the
discourse of islam
or islam related texts
and discourses to non-arabs
so sheikh this is the format perhaps or
the structure of this
encounter sheikh hamza will first take
the flow
to make some opening remarks
in which perhaps he will be framing the
discussion
um he will be taking some 10 or
15 minutes then i will be
very glad to host a question and answer
session
but i
have to say or i should say that i
should mention that
sheikh hamza has kindly agreed to extend
the time of this
session because i can see that
the participants who
are invited and are in the room are
numerous
and i can expect that the discussion
will be
very rich with that number
uh so uh it will be taking
uh time as much as we agree both uh
or the three of us in a way so
i will hand it over to you hamza thank
you again
for accepting our invitation and i am
really
uh humbled and touched by your modesty
you have the floor shaykh thank you um
um thank you for thinking of me
and inviting me uh tunis's uh country
that
um i grew to love early when
from first
uh traveling and being some of the
dollars that i met
and generally just the people i i was
always struck
by the yeah you know the flowers that
the people would walk around
i i thought as a place you know there's
a kind of gentleness in the soul of the
tunisians that i think comes from their
deeply dyed spirituality
so in terms of what we're talking about
i first of all to really express my
admiration this first time meeting dr
but i just want to express my uh
admiration for
uh your own ability with english
language it's it's like all languages
mastery is very difficult
and uh i'm just very impressed with uh
your introductory remarks and uh the
eloquence with which they were
uh expressed so in terms of translation
uh translation i've done a lot of
translating
i don't consider myself
um a a master translator it's
it's an extraordinarily difficult um
uh thing to do to translate because
you're attempting to take uh the ideas
or the concepts or the expressions
of someone or something
from one language to another language
now sometimes
that that process is actually relatively
easy for instance if you go from
french to spanish or spanish to french
or italian to spanish
because these are languages that share
really the same source they're all latin
slang
and because of that it's much easier to
to to translate when you take a language
uh if you go from french to english it
gets a little bit harder but there's
there's many shared words but english is
a germanic
uh language that has influences from
primarily um french
and uh from latin obviously in greek and
then
from french and a little bit from
spanish even even a little bit from
arabic
uh because of the the influence that the
arab civilization had
on western europe in particular so
when you go from a language like chinese
to english
then you're in a completely different
category of translation because these
are two
very very different languages and yet
because they are languages they're very
similar
so that's that's paradoxical but
it's the truth when when you have a
language like arabic
you're you're going to
because it's a language and because
human beings um
are our thinking creatures and we think
with the same
apparatus which is the the intellect and
and
and because of that we we are going to
have
the same concepts and and if if you get
into uh
metaphysical understanding in
traditional metaphysics this is not
true anymore in modern philosophy but in
traditional metaphysics
concepts precede language so thought
actually precedes language language
becomes a vehicle for
thought and and this is adam alayhi
salam was given
so he was he was taught how to name
but the concepts he had to have
understood they preceded the naming
so when he saw a camel he could he could
see
the universal in the particular and so
language is a is a a profoundly
spiritual
um it is the single most
spiritual expression of our of our
nature
because we are as the arabs say
you know they didn't say aka like they
say in greek
they actually chose to say not that we
are
the speaking animal as opposed to the
rational animal i mean they obviously
met rational but the fact that they
chose
speaking to express the rationality
is quite extraordinary and so
if you take a word like um too far
if i say to you too far
uh the concept comes to your mind my
just my
mere saying tufa evokes uh the concept
of a tufa
in your mind and now it might be a red
apple it might be a green apple it might
be
um a pink pearl apple from italy
if you if you know what that is so but
but apple will come to your mind the
particular is not important it's the
universal concept into fact
now if i say uh poem
uh if i say uh for instance
uh uh uh apple
in english or ringo in japanese for a
japanese person they hear
ringo and their the apple will come to
mind
it's the same apple but if i said to
and they didn't know arabic nothing
would come to mind so the concept
precedes the actual vehicle
by which the concept is expressed so
translation is an attempt to
take the concept embedded in that
vehicle
and translate it in a in other words you
your ability means to to translate
so it's taking it's it's it's the other
you know there's a there's a bara
there's a
there's a and this is why arabic
they're the people of iran
and so the translator is translating
concepts so if i'm if we're speaking
arabic
but if i take that and those same
ideas now i speak to you in the english
language and you can understand it
because i'm speaking english
and you're english speakers so i can say
the same things
in these different languages or
esposible siablo and espanol
so any language you can
you can the the mere fact
that that it's the concepts that are
being
expressed through the vehicle of
language
we can communicate we can even
communicate
uh despite the differences of our
tongues
and and the quran in surah rome makes it
clear
that that in our our complexions
you know in you know
these are signs of god and and the fact
that he uses
ayats because language is a
it's a sign that's exactly what it is
and
color is a sign because a sign indicates
something else so if i see you
as a darker person then that's a sign
that you're from a southern hemisphere
generally
if i see you as a light-skinned person
it's a sign that you're from
a a northern hemisphere at least
originally
and maybe if you're in that middle area
although you have very light-skinned
berbers
that you're from that middle area so
language is also a sign
so it it it tells us it indicates
something and we're signifiers so
so to get to translation
in a really deep sense is very difficult
and
and i can tell you as somebody who's
been at the united nations
and and actually uh did translations
that i gave to the translators to use
i know for a fact that even at the u.n
the translations are
often atrocious i don't know they're
probably better in french and english
but when the arabs speak
s does not speak political
arabic he doesn't speak you know
which is what those translators are
trying to translate
he speaks in a so when i was there he
was talking about
uh so
they translated madahim as
differing sex s-e-c-t-s
that's not the appropriate translation
in that context he was talking about
schools of thought not a sectarianism
and so but that person didn't have a the
type of education that was necessary so
language is very difficult and when you
get into nuance
is your name hadir like
with a soft hat hadir
dr hadir it's hadir
hadir
yeah so if you look at hadir okay
hadir can mean the cooing of a pigeon
but i don't think that's what your
parents intended
hadir is a louder voice than the pigeons
here is the sound of the waves my my
parents are from alexandria that's why
they were fascinated with the sound of
the waves so
so so so but you can have
you can have hadira
uh i don't know about that yeah
well you can look in a dictionary you'll
find yeah i
i i i know that uh at least what they
meant is the
sound of the waves this is this is yes
so so those
so hadiya that was their intention so
when you have a language like arabic
arabic
is a very interesting language in that
sometimes
it's extraordinarily precise
and so you can't have an alternate
explanation
and other times it's extraordinarily
ambiguous
and so for instance if you take a word
like
uh jaur jaur
is is uh is it's only mentioned once in
the quran
in the ishtap it's
but if you take the word jawar jawar
is a voom from somebody in a position of
power so so in
in in english it would be closer to
tyranny than oppression
and so you talk about jorah sultan so if
you look for instance
in in in
in the uh in the baha'i which i
translated
he says
[Applause]
he didn't say wim valamuna
because he was being very precise about
the use of joe
he's talking about political oppression
and not just
which can happen a husband can have a
volume of the wife or vice versa
right so so you
so finding these in in
to be a really really good translator
uh and i'm not talking about translating
um
you know just oral translation when
you're doing spontaneous translation for
instance
which can be quite taxing and difficult
and i've done it and i don't like to do
it because it's it's very exhausting
especially when when you're having to to
uh
to keep up with the speaker if they're
speaking fast it becomes really
difficult
but sheikh i saw you uh interpreting for
shaykh many times
many times yes yeah yes but it's very
exhausting please
i would much rather translate his talk
and i do this very often if
if he has a talk i'll translate it
before because
he's very eloquent as a speaker and you
do a grave disservice to a speaker who's
extremely eloquent when you're not
translating in a type of language that
that somehow mirrors or at least
reflects
in some way the beauty of the language
that the person is speaking
and and so eloquence um you know
is much easier to do when you can sit
down and really think and you have a a
thesaurus and you have uh
a dictionary and and you can think about
it so
you know just in conclusion uh in
in in the concluding remarks before we
get into a conversation
i would say that you know arabic
what you need to know to be a good
translator
from arabic not into arabic because it's
always easier to
interpret to translate into your native
tongue it's it's actually
very few people that learn a language as
a second language are good at
translating into that language
there are those that really do learn it
but it's
it's much easier to go into your native
tongue than
from your native tongue into the
language that you've learned
so if you take um you know if you take
the english language
the the the english language is
uh an amalgam of several different
languages
it's private primarily dramatic germanic
it's arabic is a much purer language
um the the amount of loanwords in the
arabic language is
actually surprisingly small it's it's
probably increased
in the last 100 years more than in in
the last 2000 years
and traditionally jewish scholars had to
learn arabic
to get to the semitic roots of hebrew
because it was the arabs
and really the persians but i mean and
farah
is the first it was the arabs
who really created the science of of
of lexicons i mean they the first
truly scientific dictionaries
come out of of the arabic language and
prior to that
you had some dictionaries in china you
had some dictionaries in india
but dictionary was a very primitive
subject before the muslims
and the the the the the the
the jews did not start writing
dictionaries until after they saw what
the muslims were doing
and they didn't analyze their language
until after they saw what the persians
had done with arabic like they didn't
know that language was built on root
stems on
it's it's it's it's pretty amazing what
they learned from the arab
so you to be a good translator from
arabic into english you really
have to learn a lot of different
subjects
um there's there's 12 subjects that you
need to learn to to uh
to be a to be a translator there's at
least four that you have to be
seriously engaged with uh and i would
say now
and i'll include sort of in that now and
so
as a language is very very important you
also have to be
to know you know the uh
etymology uh and derivations um because
it's very important
um to to understand a word
in a deep sense um you also have to know
um what they call diction
which is word choice uh so vocabulary is
extremely important
and there's passive and active
vocabulary so vocabulary
many of us are our active vocabularies
are very limited but
but as an educated person we should have
a very
large passive vocabulary so that we can
understand words
and and and and then you have to know
rhetoric
uh balara is extremely important
uh and and uh at zatuna's students have
to take
balah in both english and arabic and
then finally i would say you you should
you should really read a lot of poetry
and the reason for that
is the best way to penetrate a language
is to study its poetry
because um poetry is
is uh is is it's it's
language charged to the maximum
um great poets are are
they they're working with language
exponentially
everybody else is working with language
arithmetically but poets
are are are working with language
geometrically
so um if you can if you can master
uh translating poems everything else
becomes very easy
and that's why it's good to as an
exercise to do
things like the lapad or um
some of the great and ebby or some of
the great poets
and and in diction i would add also
which is also the same for english
because every if you if you go into a
dictionary
you have one two three four five six
seven so you have
you have uh all these different meanings
like
hadir is a good example so if you look
in the dictionary you're gonna have all
these types
you're going to have all these different
uh and so what is it in the context of
what you're trying to translate
and and when you get like is a good
example
in arabic is a very hard word to
translate because it's
used for so many different um
different meanings especially when you
get into these classical writers
they're using words very specifically
and and and to try to get to what
and that's why the sherwood i mean
muslims created
an entire tradition of glossaries
because it was so important to have
commentaries on things
um the the prophet sam's language is
extremely subtle
uh extremely subtle and and and and his
word choice
is is is very purposeful
why he would choose one word over
another word
um you know and then getting into
finally
the glue words and the glue words are
going to be the most difficult words
that you learn but they're extremely
important
because glue words and and i'm talking
linguistically
about myania roof you know the
the glue words are the most difficult
words for artificial intelligence
so they have real problems with uh
prepositions because if you look like a
preposition like fee
has ten different meanings in arabic if
you look in morning
by ibn hisham fee has 10 different
meanings
min has 12 different meanings is it
minitab
is it is it min
you know these are all different
meanings so so
when the prophet saw i said i'm said you
know
differed on it some said he meant
beginning in chihuahua but you could do
it any time of year that's imamatic's
opinion
imam he said no it's only in chihuahua
because there he said it was
it was a partitive man it wasn't a min
right that's a partitive so these are
these are very difficult words to uh
to uh to penetrate uh in any language
but in particular in the arabic language
so i'll end with that
and and open it up thank you very much
for this insightful presentation
which will of course frame the
discussion and i know that it has
provoked so many things so many
questions
uh with the participants but i would
like to start from one statement
you made you said rightly
that arabic is much more
pure as a language than other languages
like english so this purity makes
it more a language of
the one nation but
quran the quran says
so my question is how would you
interpret
that verse especially with regard to the
dichotomy
between the locality
of the language for one nation
versus the universality of the message
the message
of islam do you
take this verse as an implicit
invitation or endorsement or even
encouragement or obligation
of the exercise of translation into
other languages
and how would you interpret
in this particular context
means in arabic and it is meant to be
for the universe so how the message is
going to be trans
as you mentioned earlier later or
transmitted
sure uh well first of all
um you know arabic is
is is a well-known family of languages
uh from from from the arabian peninsula
um
you you had different you you know
there's as you know there's three
arabs there's
there's the there's the out of the uh
and then there's the arab so the
language of quran is in the language of
the
arab you know these are these are the uh
the latter arabs that learned arabic
from the jarahima
the north when they moved into arabia
ismail being
the father of these people um they
learned arabic so
that that
language has different dialects
and and and and so for instance
in arabic which is uh mentioned in the
quran
uh most of the arabs did not know that
word that was a qurayshi word
uh it meant suff it had to be dyed wool
so in the in the must-have he said
as as a translation for the other arabs
to understand it but it loses the nuance
of being died
by by translating it into suf which was
common to the other arabs
and so the nuances of of the quran
uh can only be understood with a deep
understanding
of the er so for instance cade in arabic
you know if you look at kade in the
kedah kunal theme
you know your cade is vast you know
uh k is different from mecca
mecca and kade are similar but they're
not
synonyms and and cade is a stronger word
than mecca
with the the arabic word mecca needs a
preposition makarabihi
whereas caddo you go you can go straight
to and as you know
a language weakens the meaning weakens
when when you have to when you have uh
it becomes
uh more intransitive when what to make
it transitive with a preposition
diminishes the strength of the verb in
the same way that
um you know the ziyadat
so whenever you add letters to something
it it it like if you go to
it strengthens the meaning of that so
these type things are very important to
understand about the arabic language
and when allah says that he made the he
he
jaana itself there's a huge debate
in in the early history of between the
martesi
and between the the uh the the the
era and the maturity about
to the others meant something very
different that the vehicle
in which
um
and when allah uses it it also can mean
that it's
it's it's uh you know that it's it's
it's
it's going to happen
and then then you get into what is like
because is not intellect in the modern
sense of the word
you know the you know if you look at the
root meaning of
it comes from to to bind a a camel
you know
and so so and if you look at all the
words in arabic
like uh nuha comes from to to pro
to to prevent something you know hijab
is also hajjara to stop something so
words that in arabic deal with intellect
very often deal with with something
that restrains you and so
we reveal we put this into a quranic
arabic that perhaps
you might understand it and thus
enter into the hadood of allah to
restrain yourselves
from from harm why because you know
that perhaps you might protect
yourselves
and so the atoll is for two things it's
for
zhang masala it's to accrue benefit
and to ward off harm that's the essence
of why god's given us an intellect
and so the quran is is is
is is a book that can be understood
at many many levels and arabic is the
vehicle that allah chose to reveal this
book
because it is a deeply nuanced
language that enables extraordinary
possibility
of meaning to emerge uh
that you won't find in in in other
languages i mean i think the languages
of revelation
tend to share some some commonalities
hebrew is a very profound
language also some of the ancient
languages like sanskrit
and probably chinese um you know
heidegger thought greek had that
capacity but
i i don't i don't think that's true
greek is a
it's it's a secondary language it comes
out of uh
of of the ancient indic language
so thank you very much
we are going to take now the questions
of
the participants i can see
do you like we take them in rounds or
in questions one by one i would rather
do one by one if you don't mind
okay please yeah sami please
uh thank you very much
i am uh sami yeah from brussels
uh i feel very uh privileged to uh to
have this opportunity to talk to you
since i've been following you
since uh yes i've read your books
lots of which i think was one of your
old books called the
the purification of the heart
very interesting book very much
uh i i i have two questions
uh the first question
going as a an interpreter of
because i had the privilege to interpret
in berlin in 2017 when he came to uh
to berlin you weren't there with him i
was very disappointed by the way
because i i i wish to meet you on that
occasion
i found it very difficult to interpret
him because
when he was giving his speech from the
restroom it was okay because he was
reading so his arabic was classical
he takes the floor to answer a question
when he improvises we know that he comes
from uh
mauritania he doesn't speak very loudly
and
sometimes it's very difficult for for
interpreter to um to um
to hear what he says so i'd like to hear
your experience about
that specific topic how did you deal
with uh
his dialect yeah and how did you deal
with uh
with the uh the articulation of speech
with
sheikh binvaya um
i just want to preside that i'm uh
arabic and french mother tongues and i
have english
as a passive language so i interpret
from arabic into french
and from french into arabic um
as a you know as my classic uh
combination
of other
which is as well
your first um or the first things he
said about the process of translation
which
you described as
the the past signified from this um that
in order to be a translator we have at
least master
four out of 12 uh disciplines which are
grammar
uh i think seriously engaged you know
that you think that serious engagement
yeah
yeah i very definitely agree with you um
do you um because these four disciplines
um it seems to me that they they relate
only to the vehicle uh don't you think
that for a translator
or for an interpreter because we have to
do that spontaneously as we as you said
we say simultaneously
don't you think that we we have also
to have quite a lot of knowledge in
order to be able to
transfer uh or to extract the signified
from the significance yeah thank you so
okay so the first
question is you know i
spent years with him so i've gotten used
to
him i still every once i'll have a hard
time catching the word
this is what's not yeah so yeah so
he he tends to
sometimes so i didn't
catch it what um
feeling that you he's very good at he
gets sometimes
he'll get a little frustrated with me
but because he's thinking
at such a high he's at warp speed you
know his intellect
and so if if you kind of stumble
on it's going to disrupt his uh chain of
thought
so for him he prefers
that i let him speak and then stop
which i prefer doing it line by line
just to keep up with him because he's
hit the thing about chapel dolphin bay
he doesn't
waste words and he uses words it
i've never met anybody that that has the
level of arabic that he has and i've met
some really great masters of arabic but
i
actually know quite a bit about what he
actually knows in arabic
and so he's a difficult person to
translate
very good um and and he's also
like i used to hear him uh and
and i would think he made a mistake in
morphology you know like his
self because he would he would pronounce
it a way that i
had learned it another way you know like
i'd learned yeah
and so so when i'd go back and look at
the dictionaries
i found he was always right you know it
was just he was using a different
uh pattern
so i stopped looking him up didn't
realize he's he's not making mistakes
there i mean if you look at his
when he speaks arabic it's it's
quite extraordinary because even great
scholars make mistakes
and have lechen you know the more chains
have a proper
body you know that it's just arabic it's
a really hard language it's turned that
way
so that that's what i would say about
that it just and then
she is also working from a lot of
different knowledges and if you don't
know
like he uses logic you want men
out early here
what one of the things i wanted to say
is that that there's essentially two
types
of in terms of ulum that you're going to
be translating
one of the ulum has very transparent
words in the other language
so for instance mantip by and large is
almost
entirely translatable into english
if you study munta in both languages so
for instance
there's a somebody who translated a book
on logic from arabic here
and and and and he translated
as five utterances
and that's because he didn't know that
the actual
in english it's the five predicables
like there's a specific
term for that for that that resides in
both languages
so that's very important for a
translator to know the science he's
translating into
because if you if you don't know biology
you shouldn't be translating
a lecture by a biologist
and you have to so from that point of
view i'm assuming
uh you know cicero said that an orator
should have a vast
uh what they call in rhetoric copia you
know this
copiousness that enables them to
translate
i people if they watch me translate for
sheikh abdullah bin bay and i think you
can learn a lot
from from the translations just i'm
talking to the students not you
but you know that you can learn a lot by
listening
to those um because i know
like the minister of opav told me that
he learned quite a bit of english
from listening to them but and and
they're not perfect far
but because i'm familiar and i've
studied most of the subjects that he's
speaking about i do have a sense of
where they go
it's not always the best choice because
a lot
of these scientists like hadith exactly
that is a specifically muslim science
and so to find like or
or or you know
or these are specific technical terms
that are in some ways best left in the
original with
an explanation in a footnote so
those are the two things i think if i
can just ask
an extra question and indeed when you
talk just one extra question if you
allow me of course
and there is another another side of the
problem
it is when you have to translate a uh
an islamic book or an islamic document
from a foreign language into arabic i
i've been tasked to translate a book
from french into
uh into arabic called the invention of
islam
um and the problem was
and it it it spoke about about
hadith so i had to find again
the right uh
hadith that correspond to the french
solution that
french writer has chosen for fabu's
words
so it was quite acrobatic my my my
my last question if if i may do you
believe as a native
english speaker translating from arabic
classic words
works that a non-native has the
instruments to translate classic
works into a foreign language
i think most uh do not like
in order to translate classical texts
you have to have studied within the
tradition
because you'll miss way too much and we
can see it in the orientalist words
many of the orientalists were really
brilliant scholars and they
and they knew arabic to a very high
degree but because they did not study
in the tradition they make egregious
mistakes
egregious mistakes totally agree and
and also they i've noticed a lot of
mistakes with prepositions
um because they're very nuanced
prepositions that's what i say to my
students all the time
i mean i'll give you an example i'll
give you a really good example
i was reading a really good
uh of uh of uh the
seal of uh even jose and that book
has suffered from bad additions it's a
beautiful tafsir it's one of my favorite
tafsirs
and and so i was reading the
introduction to the tipsier
and there was a uh it was about even
jose when he was martyred
he was with uh the el wazir
du li senen and and he he quotes these
lines of poetry and then and and he he
says
he he uses the term amanda kofa
uh in his thing like that you know that
that
to be martyred at ayman al-khufah
like you're giving them a man like you
should use a better word
and then he says he
says
and then the
so he did not see that i
i i couldn't make hide nor hair of what
he was saying because hokama is one of
the names of hell
you know so is it you know
hell is with the people or what i didn't
know what he was saying
it was actually a joomla
it was
they were in a a so that
man who's who's a professor of islamic
uh sciences in mecca completely misread
that he thought it was even jose that
was saying
what i hooked up with next but that was
a joomla
of you know what we'd call a
non-restrictive clause
you know inside embedded in there it
should have had like hyphens
right on on or m dash on on each side
so even people that are really trained
have a hard time
with um and hence we have this massive
tradition you know they say man
you know like so so going in
to
that you have not studied
uh seriously because huge mistakes and
and we can see
the books i you know i see mistakes all
the time so we all even in
iran we're in the problem i'll give you
one
example the first the first place that i
go to
in any translation of quran is um
uh in chapter uh
42 sure verse
11 because it says
you know the first half of the verse is
about uh
as but the second half it says
what is it
i always go to look how and almost
invariably they translate that wow as a
conjunction
and it's not a conjunction it's wow it
is
and so that indicates they don't know
arabic
well enough to be transl
so you're giving allah a method right
so so when you say and yet
and yet you know or or yet
it there has to be some indication that
there's a break
from these two statements
fight that
[Music]
he was a master uh and a beautiful
stylist
was a persian unless we forget he's a
beautiful stylist
some of the greatest scholars of islam
who wrote in arabic
were not native arab speakers uh avasena
who
is not the greatest of
writers uh his style is is not a high
style
um but but he's i mean he he he's one of
the most brilliant human beings and his
his works are very important still
so you know i would i but the cinequa
non for me
is that they have to have studied to a
high level
the subject that they want to translate
uh
into another language and they should
know the other language well enough to
do that because
you know mediocrity the world is filled
with mediocrity but
but to do something really of weight or
worth is not that easy
thank you yes thank you very much
thank you sami for the questions
muhammad zarud please
like um great talk about
um many issues that um we translate
through
with um who was
just um completed his uh questions
uh i have only one comment uh
i hear that um sheikh hamza mentioned
before that um
most translators are supposed to
translate
um into their meta tank and
as far as i know and from a translation
theory perspective uh i would like to
comment on this
issue by saying that um this
issue is um still controversial and
debatable
america i agree i don't have any problem
with that
yeah i'm i've been translating i'm i'm
i'm talking from my own experience and
from what i've seen so it's more
anecdotal than scientific
well yes um i totally agree and um
the the the perspective of those who are
saying that um
translators are supposed to translate
from their mother tank into the um
foreign language is that the most
important step
in translation process is to fully
comprehend
and understand the source text
and their argument is um
it's much easier to understand and
comprehend a text
that's written in your own language and
therefore
once you understood and comprehended the
text
you can um transfer it into the foreign
language
sorry yeah i myself for example i have
two
recently two published uh uh
translations
uh one of them is um available on amazon
it's um entitled um i die
every day 10 lapia short stories or 10
libyan tales
it was translated with a friend of mine
from britain
and we translated this from arabic into
english
and the first draft of the translation
was mine uh
my colleague was only um like revising
the translation
and doing some um like um
proof reading uh
if this is okay so the the argument is
still debatable i wanted
more comments from your site um
i'm glad you brought this up so let me
unpack that a little bit
one i would argue that in in spontaneous
translation
uh when you're doing like uh un type
translation
it's a disaster for somebody
who has a heavy accent to be translating
into a native
tongue another tongue that's not their
native tongue
so for instance uh one of the reasons
sheikh abdullah likes me to translate
into english
is because it's my native tongue and and
and people can understand it we know
social science indicates that 25
of people have a difficult time with
foreign
accents so you're losing one quarter
of of the people in a room when you have
a strong
uh foreign accent and and and this is
palpable like people
people experience this it can also
distract a person
from actually listening to what's being
said
having said that i would say in terms of
classical arabic
it's purely a matter of how well they've
studied and how well
they know the language they're they're
translating into or from
in terms of nobody could
really translate that except a native
egyptian speaker
and i would argue if your books from if
your stories from libya
are are involve dialectical libyan
you know i mean as as i might know what
schminchowick means or something like
that
and or say bahi you know if somebody
asked me from libya
but that that's the extent of my libyan
dialect you know
so i'm not going to attempt to translate
a a a a book of libyan stories
if they're in the libyan dialect if if
if
i can translate al-kharubi and i've done
that
who was a great libyan scholar or al bob
who was a great libyan scholar
i'd feel very comfortable translating
their works
so i think you know i made i made a
blanket statement but that statement
uh has to be unpacked you know and and i
would
i would argue that that it just depends
on
what you're translating and what the
qualifications of the translator
are thank you just to
uh i'm tunisian and libya is next door
and i had to service an assignment
uh so many years ago in libya
uh in a company uh that is working in
public constructions
and i know from the hotel restaurants
that a spoon is called kashyyyk
in libyan dialect and then it was called
by the manager of that company branch
manager
to interpret a conversation between him
and a local libyan engineer
and then the engineer said
we then used the kashyyyk
to do something in the jetty
and really that was a turning point in
my
career in translation because i assume
that i know the libyan dialect quite
well because we were receiving
the transmission of tv
especially during summer time before
satellite
and then luckily i was translating
consecutively means sentence by sentence
like you
prefer and i had the chance to ask the
engineer what do you mean by kashyyyk
and it turned out to be the bulldozer
uh which is another uh meaning of
kashyyyk so with that i give this
a spoon it's like a spoon exactly yeah
that's lifting
the dirt true uh
so this is the culture that we need to
know also to translate but another
question to you
sheikh don't you think that you
um your privilege of you translating
for sheikh bin bayer is that you know
him quite well you travel with him
and so you know your offer
uh not only because you are a native
speaker of
english that the message
is clearly laid down
in english but also you understand you
understand quite well because this is
the first phase
in translation you have to understand
the message what is being said the
nuances
the discourse i mean yeah i studied i've
studied with him for years i've read
books with him
you know i i've had many conversations
with him
i i understand hassaniyah relatively
well so when he slips into hasani
[Music]
thank you yes uh muhammad
asi please
uh you are muted muhammad can you please
okay and with your mic yes can you hear
me
thank you very much thank you dr hamoda
it is a privilege really as sami said
it's a privilege and honor
to take part in this lecture my name is
mohammed asi
i'm an interpreter staff interpreter at
the united nations
i've had a long career in interpreting
and translation before i became staff
interpreter
my question is about synonyms we all
know that
synonyms is uh
is not something that we can rely on
for uh the uh definition of a synonym
is a word or a phrase that means uh
exactly or
nearly the same as another word
or phrase it's not the same
i uh exist
and i think uh that is uh uh an
erroneous concept that was the base
uh the basis of so many false
interpretation of the quran
i will give examples for ex for example
the word
those are which are very which are
almost identical
but they are different
yeah we have a problem in particular
when
interpreting religious texts so i i
don't think they would use the same word
in english
it may seem that these two words are the
same
for those who have adopted no yes
what is your comment on that i believe
that it is the same thing in english or
french
well i think i may add something else
because
you comment within the same idea uh
a previous uh talk there was a question
raised about
the the difference between nasara and
messi
and how to translate them to english
yes thank you okay so first of all
um i i agree generally with
with that concept that synonyms there's
a reason
why words are different um it is freedom
and liberty are they the same words uh
you know freedom is from the german frey
and and and liberty is from the latin
liberty libertas
so some people make distinctions is work
and labor
different you know some people say labor
is the body and work is
like a manager works but the the factory
worker
is is actually a laborer you know doing
labor these are distinctions
that you get into flipkart a lot of
shepard
is has been lost um and and
as modern people we are far less
specific
in our language
than ancient peoples ancient peoples uh
used words very precisely one of the
things you'll note with children
is they really like to use words
precisely and they actually get upset
when you miss words
use words so for instance i mean i'll
just give an example of my five-year-old
i once told him put on your shoes and he
looked at me said those aren't shoes
they're boots you're right yeah all
right
and because a boot is not a shoe and a
shoe is not a sandal
and yet footwear is footwear so the
concept
is very similar and in that way
language we lose these distinctions
because
of the similarities of the concept so an
example
i mean you're right anzala is to come
down at one time
nesella is tanzeelan it's over a period
of time
those those are nuances of the language
so how do we translate that
you can translate it with a phrase or a
clause
or you could try to find if there is a
word in english and this takes
real work to do to do this well
people ask me oh why don't you translate
the quran and i'm just like
first of all you can't
translate the quran but you cannot
translate the quran and i and i really
and arberry is one of the few scholars
that made that distinction because his
his
quran says an interpretation
because translators ultimately are
interpreting in terms of synonyms
some synonyms are close enough that it's
not a problem it's not going to create
any confusion like freedom and liberty
some people argue that liberty is a
political concept and freedom is just
the general concept of freedom you can
make those distinctions but they tend to
work
um as as give me liberty or give me
death give me freedom or give me death i
mean those guys that works
both of those work liberty sounds a
little nicer maybe it's a higher
grander style so but i agree with you
you know there's in
in fajrads you know in the quran when
allah says in fajr
ethnic you know and then in vegas
is to come out flowing in vegeta is to
begin flowing and then diminish
and if you get into the commentaries
they say that
before their sinfulness there was an
empty job but after their sinfulness
there was an
indigest so these are these are very
subtle distinctions
in in arabic for instance om the word
in arabic is is not shout and it's not
uh you know kabila om
is specifically the patrilineal
uh aspect of of of somebody's lineage
so your home are your fathers and and
and the arabs are patrilineal in that
way there are
there are some matriarchal or
matrilineal societies but not many
so so so the arabs
and those are his home so in the hadith
the prophet saws
as hellfina and they said fulan
like he wasn't from the poem and the
prophet said
ibn an ukt minal om so he was indicating
that
there's still a wallah even though the
the word
home is not appropriate there's a wala
so he's saying men of little bayan
i know we can trust him and and so
in the quran in surat when allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala says
isa all the prophets said ya tommy but
when isa
speaks to bani israel he says
because they're not his phone because
he's not in the patrilineal
line and that's why in surat al hujarat
in 49 when allah says
he says
because the nisa are not the on so allah
distinguishes between
om and nisa those are difficult things
to translate
it's properly translated by our berry as
table
spread
like it is another thing it's a
table spread which is table it is food
with
a table with food on it no if it doesn't
have food it's called a huan
because it's anybody
also if you look at the which are very
interesting
like in in when allah says
so asa is biru
it it's from the so it means both
that i how do you translate that because
i think it's indicating that is always
bad and
[Music]
foreign
you know how would you translate rahim
here you know
it's womb is not correct because
it's actually the matrix which if you
look in the latin
meaning of matrix it's womb from the
other so
mute
yeah so those you know these are
subtleties i mean language is very
subtle
for for those of you who um
who are working with english i would
highly recommend
two books one of them is the scribner
bantam
english dictionary and i'll tell you why
if you go into this dictionary um they
will give you
all the the ficolora so for instance
feeling
adjective possessing or showing great
sensibility
easily affected sympathetic noun
any of the cutaneous senses commonly
called touch
by which contact pressure temperature
and pain are perceived
four act of perceiving or state of one
who perceives
by touch five sensation received
otherwise than through sight hearing
taste or smell
six emotion seven
power to experience sympathy tenderness
or the like
eight belief or conviction nine
animating spirit
as in a work of art which calls forth an
emotional response
10 feelings plural sensitiveness or
susceptibility
feelingly adverb synonyms now look at
the synonyms
sense sensation sensitiveness
sensibility success susceptibility
emotion sentiment passion
now discrimination so they go into
discrimination
feeling is a general term for the
experience of senses
and may include aspects of perception
other than those derived from sight
hearing smell or taste
the means of awareness through bodily
perceptions are called the senses
the power of these senses regarded
singly
as distinguished from the intellect our
will is called sense
sensation is the physical feeling
resulting from the operation of the
senses
we have sensations of chill creepiness
deafness dizziness and the light
sensibility popularly is the quick and
acute capacity
for feeling of any kind sensibility
so it when you look at jane austen's
sense and sensibility
she sensibility is marianne because it's
the quick and acute capacity for feeling
eleanor is the sense
right which which is is is is is uh is
the power
of perception
so anyway he goes on my point is
absolutely incredible
work into these really fun stations that
have been long
on modern people
so this book is a wonderful resource
unfortunately it's out of print but you
can still get used copies
on online it's called funk and wagnall's
standard handbook of synonyms
antonyms and prepositions so if you look
at
you know that it's a very nice it has
this book you know i love this book so
it'll have like um
a word like disease and then it'll give
you
all of the words that are similar
affection ailment complaint disorder
distemper illness and disposition
infirmity malady but then it goes into
the differences
so this is really fit aloha and and
and unfortunately these things are lost
but for those of us who love
language and want to keep these
distinctions alive and recognize the
incredible importance
of these distinctions and i really feel
like a translator that's committed
to their craft is in a lifelong process
of mastering
these distinctions thank you sheikh
thank you
mohamed asi for the questions now i give
the floor to
el bernalli where is please
i have comment regarding the words you
gave maker and
cade actually you are completely right
when you said that
they are similar but not synonyms you
said also that
the word cade can't stand by itself and
naked
while the world maker needs a
preposition
the word macro does not necessarily need
a preposition it can also stand by
itself
you know that's true that's true but
generally the quran uses it with
preposition
yes it has it has been said in the quran
the as you can see the word
but there it's intransitive
you see you know it it's intransitive
there
so as a transitive verb in order for it
to take an object it needs a
opposition so there's a big difference
thank you okay
i think the point is clear well thank
you neder
please
thank you very much it's such an honor
to take
part in this picture uh my intervention
is just
a small tactic let's say on your
statement that
quran cannot be true translated
so the dichotomy of trans translability
and translability
uh because in arabic words
not only words provide for ambiguity and
a multiplicity of meaning
or interpretations but also the same
word
or the same sentence can be problematic
like in the verse
so the haraka as well as
clear matter uh
and any change can
extremely flip the meaning
also in the verse
uh there are uh four
acts of speech in this very sentence
so uh if we translate it
maybe we can not only distort the
meaning
but maybe we cannot deliver the message
in the same
eloquent style right thank you
thank you very much yeah no good i i
talking about uh
very problematic uh as all of you know
in reading arabic
you you start a sentence and and you
think it's active but then you get to
something you realize the verb was
passive um that happens a lot in arabic
um and so and then you have uh
you know you have things like um you
know
both of them are in arabic
and and they are nuanced in in that
meaning um
for instance
they're both actually part of the quran
so which one do you use and which one do
you translate or do you translate both
uh if you look at for instance uh that
the prophet saws
says that he wasn't uh he he his heart
in
the beginning so in wash
his heart tim with a kasra in
helps his heart with a father
khatam means a seal it's a ism in
arabic means the last if you look at the
the padilla in pakistan that whole
movement
is based on not knowing the quran
because they
argued that the prophet was khatam and
not the last
because didn't know the
despite the fact that he was a scholar
you know he memorized the quran
and then also like yeah is only with
knowledge you can't say al-qaeda
the only ones that truly have this
hashia
are the ulama because you can't have
kasha without the ill
thank you hola
please yes thank you uh
doctors both doctors for this fruitful
denoting the idea of the the uh
the idea of jose regarding the sign the
signifier and the signified
being the sign the actual object and the
signifier the letters or the sounds
and that comes into my mind or the
reader's mind
and the signified which is the in the
image that came
into the mind so you ended up saying
that the sign is
is the meaning and the signifier is the
language
and uh the signified it's which is which
is going to be the interpreting
am i right this the signified
is is the the the actual concept in your
mind
not the sign yes yes you're right yes
yes the sign is the vehicle by which
you're
conveying it yes
right so we are on the field of the
signifier which is the language
yeah so and then you uh
you started to to um to
to tell us the process while we are
translating not
interpreting translating uh um a kind of
a verse
uh from the quran following it into
according to the lexical level uh and
then we are going to
further more to the morphological level
syntactic 11 at the semantical level
and so on so uh and also i would like to
uh
uh jani i would like to to also add the
idea of
uh karate
i'm translating an a or a verse it's
gonna be half
an alpha or uh any other one or
uh i have to stick to the people uh
could i add that they are uh uh
following
not just hafsa and awesome and i also
would like to ask
about the um how did you manage
to interpret uh not to translate in your
own uh
uh conference uh confronting uh that
before how did you handle that
translating verses of quran interpreting
it i'm sorry not translating it
because you know interpretation uh it
doesn't have
much time to to to make it in
calculation and tracing the actual
meaning of the lexical
uh items and morphological items and so
on
right and also i would like to add
something regarding the words of anzella
and nozzle i have surgery uh
while we were together and i found that
anzala means
uh according to that um am i resorting
to
relative clauses uh to to to
to differentiate between these slight
differences between these
synonyms or let us say different
meanings and words
uh am i doing kind of long sentences
yes am i going to resort to that there
was a lot
in there um thank you thank you
yeah i mean i would say just on a few
things because uh
the the um personally translating the
quran is very
problematic for me uh i you know may
allah forgive
us it's it's his book and and when when
you're
when you're in a lecture or and you're
translating for somebody who's quoting
eyes of quran
you know i think just to convey the
meaning
is the best that you can do um and
and uh you know like i said uh
you know may allah forgive us uh for any
mistakes that we make
on that uh in terms of you know
uh the the are very important
um and and and there are
you know that for instance uh uh allah
says
in the 22nd surah in hajj
allah
so one puts it in the active and the
other puts it in the passive
um and both meanings are sound
you know permission is granted to those
who are fighting in other words minute
muslim means
those who have been aggressed upon that
they they're they have a license to
defend themselves so
though those you know i mean i i i think
people who translate the quran have to
be aware of the
and that's a place for footnotes um
uh but in terms of in tunis you
recite
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was in his dialect so it's in the it's
in the quraishi dialect
and and imam malik preferred it over all
the other he preferred nephi
so did um he actually malik considered
sunnah and ahmed muhammad was
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you know and it's it's uh it's it became
popular
because um the abbasids adopted it you
know the
and was of awesome
so it became very popular but is a
beautiful
it's it's more difficult it's the one i
use um
it's more difficult to learn the medus
are are longer also because the
the uh you know the you have the six
harder cuts
um so if you're reciting it it's
it it takes longer to recite it than it
does uh
house you know so i i would just say
that um
iran is just something you you with fear
and trouble
nation you should have a humility with
the quran
and one of the things that the people of
hadith
say is that you always when you quote a
hadith and i forget to do this but you
really
should do it uh you end it by saying oh
come
on you
is factual it's as solid as any ayah in
the quran
so you know and i heard one of them
was a great scholar from mauritania felt
that
that anybody who has land in
transmitting these might fall in uh
because uh you're the prophet never
had lan so it's like and
kind of in arabic is very interesting
because
when the muhammad it doesn't necessarily
mean that he was intentionally a liar
what it meant is that he just
transmitted everything he heard
without ascertaining because of the
hadith that it's enough to call a man a
liar who transmits everything he hears
so if you're not if there's no tether
and
and to help on what's being said then
you can end up being a liar
yes thank you sheikh for these very
insightful explanations
on language and synonyms and so on
but i'm going to ask a question about uh
the context
not the verbal and the strict context of
words synonymy
exactly the broader context
and the importance of contextualization
and this is one tool in the hands of
translators they cannot transmit a
message
or convey something without
contextualizing it
in the first place and here
i'm not speaking about the sacred text
or the hadith but even
any classical text like
the text or the book by imam al-ghazali
and
i think in one of your books i think it
is the
vision of islam something like that you
said that it is very dangerous
to read a book by imam al-ghazali and
not understand that
imam al-ghazali was working in sixth
sixth century eastern islam
you are fortunate to know
sheikh binbaya to know you know him and
and you can
engage in a discussion with him to infer
the right
meaning from his uh what he has
said and the interpretation but
you cannot engage in a dialogue with uh
imam al-ghazali
because he lived in a different era
so and you cannot invoke the elements of
context
properly what to do in this case to be
faithful
to the philosophy of
a great writer like
okay well first of all i'd say you're
you're talking about context in two
different ways
and so in in the first sense everything
is embedded uh you know words are
embedded
in a context like for instance the
context of this discussion
is about me
speaking with a group of translators
about my own experiences in translating
and maybe helping
these students uh navigate something
that at my age now i've been navigating
for a long time and i can pass
so that's the context of this discussion
and and
and and that's why the subjects that
we're talking about
are contextualized in the context of
this
subject but now you're also talking
about historical context
so so language is embedded in the
context with which
it it emerges so for instance
uh in surat which comes after al-anfal
and some of the unum collapsed the two
together so there's no basmata
but others said no the basmallah is
absent because of the context
of the surah that it wasn't appropriate
because in belarus they say
that
it should correspond to the the context
that's literally what it means
and so so it's not appropriate in the
context
of the opening of toba to have bismillah
because it's talking about basically
warfare so
uh that that's an example of
context embedded uh language in context
historical context is a completely other
problem
and that is and and where we have to
differentiate
and and as philosophically as an
essentialist
i would argue that ghazali
is a man for all times in many things
and in some things he's a man for his
time
so women that read sometimes find
ouches in ghazali's writings because
sometimes he's he's really seems like
he's a man of his time
and in the way he talks about women
um but does that mean we throw him out
because he has some statements that in
today's
sensibilities would be considered sexist
you know i would argue that so sorry can
you give us an example on
on ghazali's view to to women
well if you read babanyika if you read
for instance
you know that uh you know things like um
you know making the remark that uh
you know a baron a sejada
in the corner of your house is better
than sleeping with a barren wife
i mean that's a pretty
it you know that's a that's a harsh
statement um
even though it's attributed to uh to uh
one of the sahaba i won't mention the
name but the point
the point of that statement is is that
abandon you know is is
that a lot of the olia saw
sexuality as as uh as procreation that
like the catholics that you went with
the nia of
procreation even audrey for instance
saw it as a very highly spiritual thing
and so
he would say with the right intention
sleeping with your spouse is actually an
act of ibadah
so you know i'm just using that as an
you asked for an example so
excuse me for the the explicit nature of
the example but
um you know and other things i mean you
just find things that
that are just i think uh
you know they're they're just a little
difficult but overall
he's he's universal far more than he is
particular to his time and place and in
that way
i think his words can be communicated
over time and this is why
you can take a work like uh like the the
20th chapter
of the on the prophet's fallation that
work is
is for all time and we can translate it
and
and we know what those words mean or or
we can
we can take kitab and
and that's speaking to us today or
kasura
or steven mode the 40th book i mean
i think that historical context is
important to understand
but we also have to recognize much of
what our islamic tradition
uh is grappling with our universals that
are true for every time and place
and so in some ways you know there if
you look at him even tamiya
even tamiya was living at a time when
the muslim world was under
siege so he has a siege mentality
his his mentality is very different from
somebody who
is living at a time when the muslims
were uh
in the full height of their power um
if you look for instance a lot of the
things about christians and jews in our
books
were said at a time when the christians
and jews
were completely uh in a state of
subjugation to to the muslims and so
they didn't feel any need to uh hide
their feelings
about this that or the other we're
living in a time which is
is the absolute opposite and so it's
important
that you know that we follow closer to
the earlier
tradition of just the prophet sam was
very conciliatory
um he did not offend people he did not
want to offend people but when people
are in power they tend to forget those
things
and so there's a lot of things in our
tradition that are very
ugly and um and they need to be
contextualized in their historical truth
i'll give you one example
if you look at the hadith in sahih
bukhari that
a the prophet stood for the jew uh
who was being taken to his field and
they said that it's a yahood
he said nafsa isn't it a soul
in the country and you can see this
a great scholar in the commentary some
of the ulama said
he was standing because of the foulness
of the stench
like how do you get that interpretation
out of that
you get it because of the
particularities of the time
you know they really had a low opinion
of other religions and of other peoples
that i don't think is the spirit of
islam allah says
let us
we have made every ummah think what that
what they're doing is good
like allah says he did that so
just like don't curse the idols of other
like hindu we're not supposed to curse
their idols
because we want to reach people and
share and
if you don't show respect for other
people why should they show respect for
you
yeah thank you sheikh uh i'm aware of
time now it is
almost five uh to uh
nine hour time and five to one pm your
time
i'm not uh sure if we can
add some a few minutes ten minutes
perhaps because i can see
so many requests on the floor so
uh would you accommodate ten or more
you very much uh
professor mohammed masoor you have the
floor please
i think you are muted professor muhammad
uh yes can you hear me now we can yes
can you hear me now
we can hear you quite well yes okay fine
okay
thanks for this uh opportunity dr salvi
and good evening to our speaker
and to the attendees i'd like also to
thank the speaker for highlighting the
the fact that poetry is a language
charged to the maximum
and also thanks for insisting on nuances
as related to prepositions i know
someone who wrote a
full phd dissertation on the meaning of
woe
uh why would uh
in in the language and
about synonymy also this is a this is an
important issue
maybe in in in the
you have synonymy but i don't think you
have synonymy
in three verse in free verse a poet
would
not sacrifice the meaning
for just a word that rhymes
and i have you know read this poetry and
i have discussed it
and i don't see in free verse
uh you know that pursuit of the
musical word or the word that rhymes at
the cost of
of the precise meaning
so maybe poetry is the place to start
to really know more about nuances of
meaning
as you said somebody called this in a
previous presentation as
full now to my query
i once started a project in which i was
uh
trying to you know show
the favor that
uh speakers of the language owe
to translated works that is
there are verses of the quran
i i you know i went to a quranic school
and i
really got trained uh fully trained i
believe
in in a quranic school but still there
are passages in the text
which i can grasp better in translation
that is in the english language not only
because those people
mastered the language but also because
they read
different exigencies of the of the text
and and and and kind of add different
kind of ethics
now my query is
in relation to
instances in the text where we have
sahib
and other instances where we have imra
and then instances where we find nissa
as a generic term any any any thoughts
on this
professor so yeah i
i think um the the great just on the
poetry
i think that the truly great masters of
poetry
would never arabic is so vast in its
vocabulary
that they would never have to
lose the meaning in search of uh of a
rhyming
word or so i mean there's that what
they're working with the the the corpus
the body
of of uh of language that they're
working with
is it's amazing i mean arabic has more
vocabulary than any other
language in the world so
and and as you know the great poets use
words that
we've never heard of we have to look
them up and one of the things i love
about the humility
of arab texts is that they will often um
explain the words at the bottom i wish i
wish english texts did that because
when you read really difficult writers
they often use words that you have to
look up
whereas the arabs put them down at the
bottom because they know
that this is a fast language and not
everybody has that vocabulary
in terms of of uh the only woman
mentioned in the quran is maryam
all of the other there's no other woman
mentioned by name in the quran
you know the imra you know
uh so luke's wife we don't know the
names we don't know imato aziz
which is uh some say it's you know
in in in the top seers uh the reason
that mufasa don't give
is that um they say that
for the arab it was bad adam to mention
a woman by name who was not your
sahiba or your own and because of
maryam's special
with allah she is law
and one of the very intriguing aspects
of in arabic
is that and
is an incredible subject
but isa is is
and if you look it ha it it doesn't drop
the alif
in the rasam so that it's actually
so isa is it's it's really a bit
a battle right it's not an a
it's like isa even um like
jesus the son of maryam as like a
it's like he's not just isa
he's the son of maryam and so
she has that special makaam that she's
the only one mentioned
in terms of the the other words i mean
nissa is
is is a is a generic uh plural you know
and arabic i mean there's a debate is
there in santa
in santa tune fatanitum you know they
they are
talk about that insane is more like
mensch in uh in german you know it's the
human being
um and and and arabs tend to
arabic when it when there's no ambiguity
it uses
the masculine form for the feminine so
for instance
a woman who's pregnant she's the only
one that can get pregnant she's
not called hamilton she's hammond and
which proves to you
that is arabic is not a sexist language
in that way
that it's it's it it's only using
uh you know the the the the the
masculine to
include both but when it when there's no
ambiguity it uses the masculine for the
feminine
even though it's a effect and sometimes
it uses the feminine for the masculine
you know like chimps or or uh
and on and on so so um i think
uh those nuances are are are
very often brought out in some of the
great commentators
uh of the quran um one if you're
interested in a really
interesting modern uh rhetorical i mean
kashaf is the is the great source for a
lot of this
but a samurai is who's an iraqi scholar
who wrote
a tapsir albayani um is a
really interesting four volumes but he
really gets into
the nuances of the of the different
words
uh in arabic yeah thank you chef we are
going to take a last
question and yeah
you are uh the luckiest to be the
last to ask question to so
um i i'm seeing the names are there is
this a multinational because
it seems like egyptian names yes yes
my name is in this context i'm
and it's not a question in fact i'm very
i'm very excited
and it's an honor really to to be able
to listen to you
uh virtually thank you hamuda thank you
sheikh
jazakallahu in fact
i'll give you a very brief background
i'm born in saudi arabia
i used to offer the quran uh
i'm graduate of al-azhar university and
i have it foreign
and regardless of that my first job
opportunity was
islamic it was the highest
highest institute and and i was like no
way
i'm scared i can't i cannot
it's not me guys i'm running away of
this civil
service and you know i need to we have
to have a civil serve
to be civil servants as a kind of
let's say security and i rejected that i
escaped it after
almost 15 years i was invited to
interpret
in a conference of adien
it was a terrifying experience
and i'm i was like no way this is one of
the most difficult fields i've ever
can deal with and that's why i decided
guys you are heroes
and i will never be able to do what you
do the more you talk like i said
that i'm ignorant guys i'm ignorant
alhamdulillah
that i'm just an interpreter
alhamdulillah
thank you so much
perhaps i will be ending this talk in
arabic
by way of summarizing in a couple of
minutes
what has been discussed in this very
insightful
and memorable uh discussion with the
prominent
scholar sheikh
you are really you've taken us
into a journey
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um
um
uh
[Music]
[Music]
um
the thing i'm most proud of in terms of
translation
is uh the prayer of the oppressed
and this took me a really long time
because
i i took a poem that was in the regis
meter
and i put it in a
hexameter which is very similar
to the regis meter so
if you look at it they're both metered
so if you say yeah
o you whose mercy is a refuge for all
those
in dire need who flee to you
[Music]
whose pardon is so near you answer all
in need they know that you do here
we beg for your relief redeemer of the
week
you are enough for us both humble then
so meek
so uh that's that's what i'm most proud
of in my
translation work is
intercultural communications
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foreign
[Music]
you