BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//ceres.rub.de//events// CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-WR-TIMEZONE:UTC BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Early Translations of the Qur’ān Part II DTSTART:20110408T070000Z DTEND:20110408T150000Z DTSTAMP:20260415T065628Z UID:Koranuebersetzungen-2-en-50@ceres.rub.de CATEGORIES: DESCRIPTION:Flyer  Poster\nOn Friday\, 8th of April 2011\, there was a wo rkshop organized by Concetta Finiello and myself\, on “Early translatio ns of the Qur’ān\, Part II”. The first part took place one year ago\ , on 19th of March 2010. Both parts had the purpose to review and to inten sify research on translations of the Qur’ān for the following reasons: An important requirement for the expansion of religions in an intellectu al sense (were are not concerned here with military or political expansio n\, but with its sequels) is the production of translations of the holy texts into the languages of the newly acquired territories. To translate these texts seems not only useful but rather inevitable even in case of a n untranslatebility of the original text due to its uniqueness that is as sumed not only regarding the aspect of revelation but also of language. W e all know of the Koranic concept of Idjāz\, the unimitability and untra nslatebility of the Qur’ān. Nevertheless\, the Qur’ān has actually been translated into foreign languages since the expansion of Muslim empi re. On the other hand\, also non-Muslim people often have a great interes t in translations of the enemies’ scripture in order to take up the int ellectual struggle against Islam.\nIn the workshops\, we were interested e specially in translations into – so to speak – non-Islamic languages\ , that means languages that belong to countries which are not ore not ent irely Islamic. To make it concrete\, we were concerned firstly with the t hree holy languages of Judaism and Christianity\, namely Hebrew\, Greek a nd Latin\; secondly with European vernacular languages\; and thirdly with East or Southeast Asian languages. Our interest lies on the earliest att empts to translate the Qur’ān into these languages\, and subsequently in the later history of translation\, too.\nIn the first part of the work shop\, after an overview to the problem of ‘untranslatebility’ (idjā z al-qur’ān) given by Hartmut Bobzin\, the languages we were concerned with were Byzantine Greek\, medieval Latin\, 17th century German\, and ( perhaps most surprisingly) modern\, i.e. 20th century Japanese (for detail s\, see IKGF Workshop I Report). In the second part of the workshop\, we concentrated on further vernacular European languages both Western and Ea stern ones\, namely Aljamiado (i.e. Spanish written in the Arabic alphabe t) and French in the West\, Polish and Russian in the East. Furthermore\, we discussed a different Latin translation and\, to be not too christian ocentristic\, translations into Hebrew. It was planned to have also a tal k by our former fellow Svevo d’Onofrio on translations into Sanskrit\, but unfortunately it was not possible to find any existing copy of a Sans krit Qur’ān neither in Europe nor in India. Perhaps some of us remembe r Svevo’s last talk here in our consortium when he showed that the famo us Indian Om sign is a distortion of the word Allah written in Arabic let ters – just to make the relationship evident.\nNotwithstanding this bli nd spot on our map\, we had a wide range of space as well as of time: Fro m Southwestern to Northeastern Europe and to the Near East\, from the be ginning of the 13th up to the 20th centuries. And we had also a wide range of cultural transfer phenomena: One the one hand\, there are translation s that resulted from direct encounters between Muslims and Christians or Jews\, respectively\, in a at least partly Islamic environment\; one the other hand\, the French and Slavonic translations were made in a complete ly different cultural context far from the genuine Muslim countries.\nThe first paper was given by Dr. Ulisse Cecini from Erlangen\, who is with us as an Assitant Researches since the 1st of April now. Cecini was concerne d with the Latin translation of the Qur’ān by Marc of Toledo\, finishe d about 1209 or 1210. His translation was far less known and far less inf luential than the famous translation by Robert of Ketton from 1143\, but Cecini convincingly showed that Marc’s translation is much more oriente d at the Arabic original that Robert’s was. By means of comparison of s everal surahs\, one could easily recognize the differences. The purpose o f that very close translation that sometimes is not easy to understand ob viously was to present a scholarly instrument for a bilingual reading of the Qur’ān to learned Christians who were not familiar enough with Ara bic to read it only in the original language. Consequently\, Marc’s tra nslation was used by later missionaries like Riccoldo da Monte di Croce.\ nThe second paper was a real highlight: Professor López-Morillas from Bl oomington/Indiana (USA) is the leading worldwide expert in Aljamiado\, es pecially Spanish translation of the Qur’ān keeping Arabic letters. So we were very happy that she had come to Bochum to present us the results of her long time research on that topic. The first translation of the Qur ’ān into a European vernacular at all was the translation into Spanish made by the Alfaqui of Segovia\, ‘Isa ibn Djabir\, on behalf of a famo us Christian theologian\, Juan de Segovia\, who made a interlinear Latin translation from the Spanish. Unfortunately\, this trilingual Qur’ān i s lost. Professor López gave an overview over the surviving 26 manuscrip ts containing Spanish Qur’āns\, most of them bilingual in Arabic and A ljamiado (in Castile or Aragonese dialect). Of particularly interest was her presentation of “The Mystery of Ms. Toledo 235”\, the only comple te Spanish translation. It is in Latin characters and transcripted from a bilingual manuscript in Aljamiado\, finished as late as 1606. Professor López’ edition of that text with a detailed study of its paleographica l and linguistic features is under press and will come out in the next fe w weeks.\nThe third paper given by Dr. Aleida Paudice\, former Assistant Researcher at Halle-Wittenberg\, dealt with Hebrew translations and trans literations of the Qur’ān. She gave a report of her so-far studies in that topic\, concentrating mainly on manuscripts with Arabic Qur’āns i n Hebrew characters\, obviously written for and used by people who unders tood spoken Arabic but could only read Hebrew script – just the opposit e to the aforementioned Mudéjars and Moriscos whose spoken language was Spanish\, but who could read only Arabic letters. There were\, as far as we know\, no medieval translations of the Qur’ān into Hebrew. The firs t one was made by Jakob Levi b. Israel in 1636 Venice\, not directly from the Arabic\, but from the Italian translation of Andrea Arrivabene 1547. The first direct translation is from Hermann Reckendorf\, Leipzig 1857.\ nIn the afternoon\, we had two further papers by Bochum scholars\, one by Dr. Annette Gerstenberg from the Romanistic Department\, the other one b y Prof. Mirja Lecke from the Department of Slavic languanges. Dr. Gersten berg talked about French translations\, the first being that of André Du Ryer1647\, followed by that of Claude-Étienne Savary 1783 and Albert Ka simirski 1840. It was highly interesting to see how Dr. Gerstenberg showe d by means of a synopsis of several Qur’ānic passages and the three Fr ench translations that the method and purpose of the translations changed over the centuries: While Du Ryer made a Christianizising translation fo r polemical purposes (to demonstrate the absurdities of the Qur’ān)\, Savary’s intention was to create a literary work of art congenial to th e Qur’ān\; finally\, Kasimirski’s translation is philological one to serve interests of historical scholarship. So the trias may be called in terms of absolutism\, enlightenment\, and historicism.\nThe last\, but n ot the least presentation was by Prof. Lecke on the first Polish and Russ ian translations\, respectively. They are not comparable at all\, because of their completely different origin\, purpose and linguistic features. The first Polish translation called “The Lithuanian Tefsir” was made about 1600 by Muslims for a Muslim minority living in Poland (including p arts of the Balticum at that time). It is preserved in some bilingual Ara bic-Polish manuscripts written entirely in Arabic letters\, a kind of Pol ish Aljamiado\, so to speak. Since the Muslim community was later complet ely Polonized\, that means also Catholizised\, these translations had no future impact and have of course never been printed. In the Russian empir e\, on the other hand\, there are many peoples of Muslim faith until toda y who have their own languages and translations. The first Russian transl ation by Petr Posnikov is a Christian orthodox one and was made for polem ical and missionary purposes. It was published 1716 in St. Petersburg and is a somewhere grotesquely distorted translation from the French of Du R yer. The second Surah\, for example (al-baqara\, revealed at Medina)\, wh ich in Du Ryer is titled “La vache\, à Medina”\, in Posnikov sounds like that: “From Lavache to Medina”.\nIn sum\, the workshop gave fasc inating insights not only into different kinds of philological aspects of the translations\, but also into religious transfer phenomena that are c rucial for Research Field 2. The idea came up to wide and deapen these in sights by holding a third part of this workshop on translations in langua ges not yet concerned\, namely East and Southeast Asian languages like Ch inese and Indonesian\, or at least to include these languages in the fort hcoming publication. And perhaps we’ll discover a Sanskrit Qur’ān\, too. URL:https://khk.ceres.rub.de/en/events/Koranuebersetzungen-2-en/ END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR