Introduction: Sufi texts in translation

Abstract

This special issue of the Journal of Sufi Studies attempts to make the case that the act of translation is best seen as a recurrent activity necessitated by the various changes that inform the interpretation of Sufi texts on the one hand, and the languages and cultures that receive them on the other. The nine Sufi texts featured in this collection illustrate the diversity of genres and variety of languages in which they have been written, thereby pointing up the distinctive hermeneutic potentials of translation theory and practice when these texts are rendered by experts into modern European languages, particularly English and French.