{"id":288782,"date":"2021-02-16T19:15:45","date_gmt":"2021-02-16T22:15:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/?p=288782"},"modified":"2021-02-18T18:01:08","modified_gmt":"2021-02-18T21:01:08","slug":"project-translates-arab-literature-classic-into-portuguese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/project-translates-arab-literature-classic-into-portuguese\/","title":{"rendered":"Project translates Arab literature classic into Portuguese"},"content":{"rendered":"

S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 Literary works from around the world are being translated into Brazilian Portuguese and made available online free of charge. This month saw the Literatura Livre<\/em> (Free Literature) project release \u2018The Book of Misers\u2019 by Al-J\u00e2hiz. Originally written in Arabic, the book was translated by Safa Jubran, a professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the Department of Oriental Languages of the Faculty of Philosophy, Language and Human Sciences (FFLCH) at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP). The project is an initiative of the S\u00e3o Paulo chapter of the Social Service for Commerce (Sesc-SP) and Instituto Mojo de Comunica\u00e7\u00e3o Intercultural. Pictured above is one of the book\u2019s illustrations<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The works are available online for free download from the project\u2019s website<\/a>. \u00a0Already available are eleven public domain texts from peoples the project managers believe have helped inform Brazilian culture. Some titles had never been released before, and all are available in translated form and in the original version.<\/p>\n

All translations were made by USP professors. Two other recent releases are \u2018The Chronicles of Japan,\u2019 by Prince Toneri and \u014c-no-Yassumaro, and \u2018The Leviathan\u2019 by Joseph Roth.<\/p>\n

The Book of Misers<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018The Book of Misers\u2019 (from the Arabic, Kit\u00e2b Al-Bukhal\u00e2) is a collection of stories about greedy, avaricious people. Some of the anecdotes were witnessed by Al J\u00e2hiz himself, and others he heard from other people. Considered one of the seminal works in the Arab cultural canon, the text was written in the year 868.<\/p>\n

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The book is available for free download<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The book\u2019s Iraqi author, Abu-Uthm\u00e2n Amr bin-Bahr Alkin\u00e2ni, is better known for the nickname Al J\u00e2hiz, a reference to his wide eyes. He also wrote \u2018The Book of Animals\u2019 (Kit\u00e2b Al-Hayaw\u00e2n), the first piece on zoology in Arabic, and \u201cThe Book of Eloquence and Oratory\u201d (Kit\u00e2b Al-Bay\u00e2n Wat-taby\u00een), which laid the foundation of Arabic rhetoric and language philosophy.<\/p>\n

In translating \u2018The Book of Misers\u2019 into Portuguese, Jubran selected and adapted some of the accounts featured in this medieval Arabic classic. \u201cEach of the anecdotes or stories were translated from a text \u2018resultant\u2019 from a comparison of multiple existing Arabic versions of the text, including the one featured in this edition, which is itself a \u2018simplified\u2019 version of the original,\u2019 Jubran told newspaper Jornal da USP about the Arabic text available alongside the translation.<\/p>\n

In a bid to make the language and content more accessible, the adaptations strive to maintain the historical settings in the 9th<\/sup>-century original. Jubran notes that some of the anecdotes have been featured in translated works before, albeit in simplified manner, a case in point being \u2018As Mais Belas P\u00e1ginas da Literatura \u00c1rabe,\u2019 by Mansour Challita. Four of the stories were also translated by FFLCH professor Mamede Jarouche in \u2018Hist\u00f3rias para Ler sem Pressa.\u2019<\/p>\n