Poetry and translation as bridges: exploring Nizar Qabbani’s translation theory

Abstract

“The poem is a bridge extending across time and encompassing all horizons,”1 writes the renowned Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani. It is through this bridge of poetry that he continues to traverse and speak to his Arab audience. As an homage to Qabbani—a master of metaphor in all his writings—this paper will compare Qabbani’s poetry in its original Arabic to that of his English translators, who have and continue to strive to bring his foreign readers from one world and language into his own poetic garden. By using examples of his approved English translations and the Skopos theory, I will argue in this paper that the bridge of translation cannot function in the same way as Qabbani’s bridge and that what prevents this bridge from succeeding is the deficiency of linguistic and cultural substances embedded in the text.