THE REALITY OF THE LANGUAGE OF TALES
Oral literature is as old as man. Being the foundation
of all literature, it had existed in the
Arabic language many centuries before the
advent of the Arabic language standard,
whose exact time and protagonists are still
beyond our ken. During later centuries of
deterioration of Arab culture, up to the
19th century, this literature had been almost
the only torch in the dark. Even today,
despite the spread of literacy and the penetration
of electronic media even into Bedouin camps,
it has not yet gone out.1
Among the innumerable genres of oral literature a special
position belongs to the prose form called
folktale. Folktales, especially fairy-tales
(Märchen), are the greatest of globetrotters, as they offer
a vision of life we like to imagine, shifted
beyond the boundary at which reality stumbles.2 The role they have
played from time immemorial furnished the
noun story in all languages with
the meanings of life and adventure.
Folktales (and folk oral literature
en général) touch the heart of our collective being.
Telling a tale is essentially a work of myth. The
simple spoken language of a folktale flies
on invisible wings into the unknown, rediscovering
the ancientness of language and of our self
inside it. This rediscovery is a prerequisite
for the feeling of returning to the state
of mythical consciousness. The listener
unreservedly, with his whole being, surrenders
to a tale. Topnotch literature in a language
which has been adapted by intellectual production
to fit the high norms of the written word
can never possess that something which
is narrational per se and which has
been kept alive in colloquial parlance.
This ancient expressiveness is preserved in Arabic-speaking
territories in numerous regional spoken
idioms commonly known as al-3arabiyya
al-3aammiyya or al-lugha ad-daarija.
Admittedly, the differences between one
spoken idiom and another sometimes surpass
those between genetically and typologically
related but separate languages, e.g. the
Slavic languages.3 But they are the only
authentic vehicle of Arab oral literature
and each differs drastically from the written,
“pure”
or “eloquent” Arab language (al-3arabiyya al-fuSHa).
Not only does no-one tell folktales
in literary Arabic, but it is also certain
that they could not possibly have been created
in it. Rendering folktales into what is
today called modern standard Arabic (MSA)
is burdened with a surplus of syntactic
details, as the character of MSA is superdialectal.
The lively tales, so full of bright humor,
are transformed into wooden dummies. Re-telling
folktales in the standard languages of the
nations that have adopted a living spoken
dialect as their literary language does
not suffer from the rigidity to the same
extent.
Even between pairs of almost identical sentences, colloquial
and non-colloquial, we always feel the former
as “natural” and
the latter as “unnatural” for oral
narration. An important role here belongs
to sentence perspectives, especially
the presentative and narrative ones.4
Regarding such differences in presentation as well as the
importance of preserving the invaluable
treasures of oral literature, we might think
that these aspects have been observed by
the Arabs, who showed a great affinity for
philology in the Middle Ages. Regrettably,
modern Arab science had not, until recently,
mustered enough strength to cope with the
subject. Foreigners have done much more.
Genuine Arab folktales have remained terra
incognita to this day.5
PARADISE LOST
Throughout the centuries the attempts to write in the spoken
language have been condemned by the Arabs
as blasphemy. Any form of literature in
spoken idioms has been despised and unrecognized
by the intellectual elite.
Like a genie from a magic lamp, folktale
spends its days sleeping, only to wake up
and come out after the stars and the Moon
show in the sky, when fires in Bedouin tents
are lit and city children prepare to go
to sleep.6
Collections of dialectal tales cannot be found in Arab
bookshops and Arab schoolchildren miss them
as much as would any other children in their
place. The grown-ups long at least to read
them – if they cannot
listen to them any more. Like Wells’s
door
in the wall,
these tales can neither be found nor
may souls even hope for it.7
Many a hero of Arab folktales is offered treasures and
fortunes just to tell his story; every
Arab dimly remembers dozens of tales, solely
dialectal, yet people will say with conviction that
they are forbidden. But the reputable
author of a book on Baghdad past days,
offering the reader a handful of genuine
tales, warns: “Once the women of the past (Irq.
niswaan
gabuL) are gone, this folk treasure of ours
will be gone too.”8
The western world underwent its series of language revolutions
a long time ago. Being familiar with Plato's glossological writings, Rabelais jests when he announces,
in Chapter 34 of Gargantua and Pantagruel,
“fine evangelical texts in the French
language”; he mocks the sterile rigidity
and imposed obligatoriness of Latin, whose
phonetic, lexical and grammatical norms
are almost as far from the French ones as
the structure of the language standard set
in the Koran is from any Arab spoken dialect.
Littmann’s narrator, Ja’nina, an inhabitant of Jerusalem
at the end of the 19th century, knows nothing
about scholarly philological disputes and
uses no irony; he just gives in to emotions
when he stops in his third tale to utter
an innocent but serious thought: “My God,
how the reader relishes this tale now, how
greatly he enjoys this simple speech, for he knows common Arabic,
which is far more beautiful for narration
than fuSHa!”9 In this sentence we recognize a cry
of admiration amidst a dream of a liberated
language.
To no avail! A collective dream of a nation’s unity also
affects controllable processes in language
development and thence the attitude towards
folktales. The political and intellectual
elites in today’s Arab countries believe
that mass publishing of collections of folktales
in the dialects of individual states would
mean dispensing with the idea of Arab unity
and jeopardize Islamic traditions.
I have held in my hands a good number of Arab academic
publications whose titles would make one
believe they contained genuine Arab folktales.
At best, only the titles of the tales and,
sometimes, dialogues were dialectal.10
This is not the sort of written record I am interested
in. I do not wish to belittle their significance
for ethnological investigations and classification
of motifs, but they offer nothing to those
who take delight in folk speech and unaffected,
straightforward narration.
There are few scholarly records of such linguistic fidelity
as Littmann’s. Fewer still are accurate
phonetic records such as the ones done on
the basis of Iraqi “obscene” anecdotes,
published by Bruno Meissner.11
THE WORKSHOP PROCEDURE
A translator’s job is to follow the intertwining of hidden
signals of the language of the original
and those of the target language in order
to achieve the desired adequacy of translation.
Good solutions are found only in corresponding
narrative and language registers of the
target language, its spirit and, sometimes,
in mannerism. Equivalence is rarely reached
by reciprocal monosemic matching, which
is but one of the methods. The expression
literal translation implies
a text that is impossible to understand.
Translations of such verbatim accuracy,
however, are sometimes necessary for strict
scientific purposes.12 Even faithful translation
is a mere metaphor. For a high-quality literary
translation much more is needed. When
translating tales for a wide readership,
a translator must think of the tales he/she
listened to in his/her childhood, but must
not succumb to challenges of cultural assimilation.
A translation needs to be fluent, yet not
at the cost of forcing the source text into
the substantive patterns of the target language.
In oral communication as well as narration rendered in
a spoken idiom, the receptive capacity of
the listener reveals its full significance.
Whilst the reception of a text in a strictly
ordered written language depends on rational
reactions to qualitative language signals
(partition of statements with blanks between
words, a complex system of syntactic and
rhetorical rules, punctuation, etc), the
semiotic information of live telling lies
in prosodic elements and, generally, in
frequent quantitative changes such
as sentence intonation (interrogation, emphasis,
final cadenza). A reader of a dialectal
written record achieves a satisfactory level
of reception by his/her inner simulation
of sound, supplying that which is apparently
missing.
There is a great deal of what is “missing”; the older Arabic
sentence does not care much for punctuation,
even less for assigning a new paragraph
to introduce a new thought. Narration is
bare. A listener to such a narration journeys through the alluring
spheres of our intuitive linguistic and
mythical self, experiencing authenticity
and a sense of freedom, intimacy and ethereality.
The important question of choosing a particular style in
the target language is solved in the translator’s
subconscious during the reception of the
original. I believe it is a natural process.
Raising the question to a rational level
before the very act of translation would
be unnecessary – were it at all possible.
The dialectal wording of the source should all by itself
project into a literary hybrid, colored
by a somewhat archaized lexis and a “fraudulent”
use of other typical instruments of popular
narration. These are hidden in the expressiveness
of the target language and its grammar and
syntax. If this humbug does not succeed,
the translation is poor and should be destroyed.
A translation is either on a par with the
original on all comparable levels or it
is not a translation.
Poetry is scarce in genuine Arab folktales. The abundance
of verses in The Thousand and One Nights
is another piece of evidence that, contrary
to a widespread misconception, the tales
from the glorious collection are not closely
related to folk literature. On the other
hand, some folktales contain whole passages
in rhymed prose, which is an ancient but
still living tradition among the Arabs.
Here the foundation of the rhythmic pattern
is made up of both the concord of vocal
arrays, repetitions of sounds and words
(assonance, alliteration and epiphoras),
and of various patterns of morphophonetic
parallelism, which produce tonal and syntactic
wholes composed of interlinked and hierarchically
co-ordinated elements.13
Such a synergy of words should be carefully recast, trying
to retain the intended meaning. There is
no way to evade this responsibility, or
the tales would suffer great losses.
FAITHFULNESS AND SOUND
Translation is as old as the contacts between the neighboring
groups of human beings. Translators readily
say that it is the second oldest trade in
the world. Arab folktales, like all others,
developed by travelling among peoples and
cultures. Every time they were converted
from one language into another. Had it not
been the case and had not so many peoples
taken part in their preservation,
they would have vanished. Today, when they
are definitely vanishing, they must be systematically
collected and translated so that we may
pay homage to the continuity of culture.
To this day folktales have remained an unsurpassed
model for storytelling.
Translation of folktales written in spoken Arabic idioms
is an exceptional challenge: there are few
good examples, few dictionaries – everything
is like in an uncanny chess game in which
you invent your combinations of moves from
scratch.14 You must observe the rules,
but only the remembered sound of true folktales
in your soul can solve the equations of
their new wording, which is but a peculiar
sound projection.
Epic tradition of the Balkan peoples is remarkably rich
and the epic style of expression is part
and parcel of every individual’s language
from early childhood. All of the Arab folktales that I translated into Serbian were finely tuned by
being read aloud, in a slightly modernized epic manner. This technique
is not a mere cosmetic procedure. The fact
that a text is a translation cannot be an
excuse for anything to someone reading the
tales. In literature, form is the essence
of things. The final touch I am talking
about is aimed at this essence: what we
have before us are folktales. When
being read, they should be plucking at the
epic strings inside us, provoking in our
inner being authentic and secret chords
of the language of a living tale.
SUMMARY
When translating genuine folktales for the general public,
a translator must think of the tales he/she
listened to in his/her childhood, but must
not succumb to challenges of cultural assimilation.
The dialectal wording of the source should
all by itself project into a literary
hybrid, colored by a somewhat archaic lexis
and a “fraudulent” use of other typical
instruments of popular narration. When being
read, they should be plucking at the epic
strings inside us, provoking in our inner
being authentic and secret chords of the
language of a living tale.
A SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Srpko Lestaric (1949) studied political science and Arabic
language and literature in which he earned
bachelor's degree at the University of Belgrade
in 1975. He spent almost fifteen years in
the Middle East and is making his living
as a technical translator and certified
court interpreter for Arabic with the District
Court in Belgrade. Beside translating works
of contemporary Arab writers (Yusuf Idris,
Zakariya Tamir, Tayyib Salih, Abdel Sattar
Nassir, Salwa Bakr, Fakhri Qaawar, Hadiyya
Hussein, etc.), he pioneered in former Yugoslavia
the translation of Arab folktales into Serbian
(four collections so far, from Palestine,
Iraq and Gulf) and the study of eastern
Arab dialects.
