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
th