Al-Munqidh mina al-Ḍalāl in English
with special focus on retranslation

Haj Yasin, AH

Abstract

Al-Munqidh mina al-Ḍalāl (Munqidh) is a well-known autobiography that was written by Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d.505/1111), one of the most influential theologians and philosophers in medieval Islamic thought. This text has received much attention in the West since its re-discovering in the 19th century, but the conditions that have occasioned and influenced the translation and retranslation of it in English have not been explored in depth yet. This study aims to study five English translations of Munqidh in order to 1) locate them into the socio-cultural, political and historical conditions that have occasioned and shaped their production and reception in English; 2) to determine the reasons behind choosing Munqidh to be translated for the first time in English and the reasons why other translators later retranslated it into the same language; 3) to determine the different strategies each translator develops to establish his translation in the receiving system field; 4) to identify and discuss the representations the producers of this text created about al-Ghazālī and Munqidh in the receiving culture, and 5) to assess to what extent the Retranslation Hypothesis, which states that retranslations emerge to restore previous translations and bring them closer to the source text and culture, can be confirmed by the data of Munqidh and its five English translations.

Citation

with special focus on retranslation. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Dec 7, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 7, 2016
• Award Date: Sep 14, 2016