On Impostures

 

I realized after reading the imposter that this week’s readings are my very first exposure to Arabic literature. After reading Michael Cooperson’s imposter, I am left with an overflowing sense of respect for him as a translator. As told in the introduction, notes on translation, and the long lists of a glossary, we know that Arabic is an extremely dense language. When I learned some Arabic from my suitemate when I lived in global house sophomore year who happened to have been the Arabic cluster leader, I was amazed at the complexity of the language and felt a vague sense of resemblance shared between Arabic and Chinese–that texts written in these languages are so dense that it’s almost impossible to explicate in English, preserving the original literal beauty of the source language. 

In my own translation, I am often faced with that stylish vs. faithful translation conundrum. And as professor and some of my peers know, I am obsessed with rhymes and I love poetry more than prose. Nascent a translator I am, this conundrum was solved skillfully by Professor Cooperson in his translation of the imposter. Just like Kroll has argued in the essay, translation needs to be fluid and adapt to the original text’s objective and need. When the imposter being such an enchanting work that largely attributes to its wordplay, a successful translation of such work needs to preserve the wordplay in its original.

I truly enjoyed reading Cooperson’s translation and also have a great impression of Arabic literature now, and I can’t wait to ask some of the rhyme questions I have to our Arabic representative in class. 

 

Jiayi