Translating Sufi Symbols of Ibn Al Fārid̲’s Nad̲h̲m As Sulūk: A Comparative Semiotic Approach to Reynold Nicholson’s “The Mystic’s Progress” (1921) and A. J. Arberry’s The Poem of the Way (1952)

Abstract

This thesis provides a comparative semiotic analysis of the the translation of Sufi symbols from Arabic into English in Ibn Al Fārid̲’s Nad̠h̠m As Sulūk, written in the early 7th Hijri century, and its translations; namely, a prose translation by Reynold Alleyne Nicholson (1921) titled “The Mystic’s Progress” in Studies in Islamic Mysticism and a blank-verse translation by Arthur John Arberry (1952) titled The Poem of the Way. The tools of analysis are the sign model of Peirce (1931) and the model of Osimo (2004). It is primarily concerned with examining the translation of Sufi symbols in the two translations of the selected poem. It aims at highlighting the most frequent Sufi symbols, tracing the strategies employed for their translation based on the adopted model, assessing these strategies, examining how far the translator’s culture affects the choice of strategies and evaluating how far the translators have succeeded in conveying the meanings of these symbols. It also highlights the unique nature of Sufi symbols and the concepts they convey. The researcher adopts a comparative descriptive methodology in conducting the analysis. First, the researcher attempts to understand the Sufi meaning of the symbol in Sufi context through two steps. The first step is by looking for the Arabic Sufi explanation of the line that has the symbol, and, in some cases, the explanation of the previous or subsequent lines is used as the meaning of the symbol is understood based on said lines. If the meaning of the symbol is unclear and needs further clarification, then the second step is looking up the symbol in Arabic-Arabic Sufi dictionaries. Second, in cases of perplexing symbols, the researcher looks up the meaning of the source symbol in an Arabic-Arabic lexicon and the meaning of the English translation of the Arabic symbol in an Arabic-English dictionary. Finally, the researcher looks up English words used in the translations of the symbols in an online English-English dictionary to compare and contrast the English meaning of the translated symbol in English context to the Arabic intended meaning in the Sufi context.