JAHIZ–S VIEWS ON TRANSLATING IN HIS BOOK OF ANIMALS

Abstract

This paper investigates views on translating that were expressed by the medieval Arabic prose writer Jahiz (776-868) in his famous Book of Animals (ar. KitÄb al-ḥayawÄn) in the second half of 9th century. Although he deals mostly with zoological themes in this work, in its foreword we find very valuable remarks on translating in general, as well as translating Arabic poetry, translating texts of sacral nature and interventions in the text by translators and scribes. Jahiz was a contemporary of the first uplift of the largest translation movement in the Middle Ages, thus being able to read numerous scientific, philosophical and literary works in direct or indirect translation from the languages such as Greek, Persian, Sanskrit, etc. Those very translations introduced Jahiz to Aristotle–s physics or natural philosophy, and that inspired him to write one of his most important works – Book of Animals. Although Jahiz approached the subject from a reader–s perspective, dedicating it only four of more than two thousand pages of his Book of Animals, even a short glimpse at his reflections on translating clearly indicates that he managed to identify and examine some of the principal issues of the modern translation theory. In this paper we produced the translation and performed the analysis of Jahiz–s views on translating in the mentioned work, by comparison with the ideas of modern translation theory and linguistics, as well as dominant attitudes toward the Arabic language in Jahiz–s time and characteristics of the translations that were available to him.