A Study of the reasons for the success of Coleman Barks' translations of Rumi's poems in the United States and the spiritual connection of those translations with
Subject Areas : شعر
ali mohammadi
1
(Department of Language and Literature, Boali Sinai University, Hamedan)
negin saeedi
2
(Ph.D. student of Persian Language and Literature Department, Bu Ali Sina University)
Keywords: Coleman Barks, Translation, Mathnawi, Ghazaliyat-e Shams.,
Abstract :
The recent acquaintance of Western societies, especially America, with Rumi and his poems, must have been due to Coleman Barks' translations; A translator who get acquainted with Rumi in 1976 by his friend Robert Bly for the first time. Coleman Barks translated Rumi's poems, while he had no acquaintance with Persian language and literature. He re-translated those poems using previous translations by Arbery and Nicholson. In response to the main question of this research, which seeks the reasons for the success of Coleman Bark's translations, we having studied on a number of Bark's translations which are selected among Barks' various books and comparing those with the original text. Eventually with the help of Andre Lefevre's theory we analyzed those translations, and finally, the reasons are as follow: 1. The need of modern American society and readers for the human, universal, and boundless concepts that have manifested themselves in Rumi's poetry as mysticism. 2. Barks' clever choice of Rumi, among other Eastern poets, because in Rumi's poetry, themes and ideas is deep and astonishing, and has the potential to be reduced to today's paradigms. 3. The style he uses in translating these poems, which is the free style of American poetry, is based on the translation pattern of Andre Lefrvere.
