Abu Dhabi (Etihad)
His Excellency Major General Pilot Faris Khalaf Al Mazrouei, Commander-in-Chief of Abu Dhabi Police and Chairman of the Cultural and Heritage Festivals and Programs Committee, said: Poetry is one of the most important pillars of cultural development and heritage sustainability. On the occasion of the World Poetry Day, which falls on March 21 of each year, His Excellency explained that this day is an occasion to celebrate the linguistic expression of our common humanity, as poetry turns words into a great incentive for dialogue, peace, tolerance and giving, and its importance is evident in the beautiful expression and inspiring manifestations of linguistic and cultural identity. of societies and renews recognition of its pivotal role as one of the most important human treasures, creating new spaces for dialogue, and transferring national and cultural identity to the world.
Emirate of Poetry
His Excellency valued the great attention paid by His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, to programs for preserving Arab heritage, consolidating originality and the values of meanings, creativity and excellence in the march of Arab poetry, and returning it to its most prominent position in the Arab region, stressing that the Emirate of Poetry «Abu Dhabi» has achieved, through its poetic programs, a wide audience and embracing creators in the skies of classical and Nabati Arabic poetry to enhance its presence in the conscience and its uses and methods in its various prose and vertical arts to deepen human values, and enhance interaction and cultural communication to contribute to the delivery of the civilized and humane message of the UAE to various peoples of the world . His Excellency also stressed that the Abu Dhabi Cultural and Heritage Festivals and Programs Management Committee is moving forward through its comprehensive vision aimed at promoting culture and consolidating the Emirati heritage, consolidating its values and transmitting it to successive generations, advancing Nabati and eloquent Arabic poetry, upgrading and promoting it and its poets, and reviving its positive role in the march of Arab culture. and humanity.
reconnaissance
In the poll of the “Million Poet” magazine issued by the Poetry Academy in the Cultural and Heritage Festivals and Programs Committee in Abu Dhabi on the occasion of World Poetry Day, poet Nabil Imad says: “The topic of poetic translation represents the most prominent and most controversial issues related to translation among various parties, translators and poet critics. It has been discussed in the past by Horace and Al-Jahiz, and more recently by Jacobson and Michonique, and around it a group of prejudices has made attitudes towards translation characterized by a twofold character: a group whose comrades tend to reject the translation of poetry, but they see the difficulty of translating it.
deficiencies in translation
As for the poet Hassan Amer, he said: “I think that there is always a shortcoming in translating Arabic poetry in particular into other languages, perhaps due to the nature of Arabic poetry, or perhaps to the nature of poetry in general imposed by the language in which it is written. Associated with the heritage and history of this language, but the “poetic meaning” can be transferred to another language easily, and in his opinion, every translation is certainly a betrayal of the translated text, but every poem is universal poetry even if it is not translated.
overwhelming presence
Meanwhile, the poet Nasser Al-Kalbani said: “On the International Day of Poetry, I can say that eloquent Arabic poetry in all its forms and types has made great strides towards universality, and has even become a dominant presence on cultural and intellectual platforms.”
Al-Kalbani continued, “Arabic poetry has received a lot of global attention, especially the translated one, as we find it in many Asian, European and African universities that do not speak Arabic with great strength, and many students who do not speak Arabic are among their first concerns. Arabic poetry, where they study what is in it in all aspects of speech, rhetoric, meter, stylistics, and others.
That’s not enough
The poet Ahmed Hassan Abdel-Fadil explained: “In my opinion, the movement of translating Arabic poetry into other languages is not sufficient and does not cover all poetic trends. This does not mean that there are no commendable efforts to enrich the movement of translating Arabic poetry. But what is translated from Arabic poetry is much less than the abundance of its great presence from the ocean to the Gulf, and there is an interest in the novel at the expense of poetry.
guillotine translation of the poem
The poet Walid Al-Sarraf confirms that poetry is not translated, as the poem is a fire that goes out on the way between two languages and a guillotine that the text enters alive and leaves it while it is a lifeless corpse similar to the original, but without a soul. Al-Sarraf explained, “However, we find that the world knows Tagore, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jacques Prevert, Shakespeare before them and Homer before them, and does not know a single Arab poet… Yes, the poetry of Abdel-Wahhab Al-Bayati, Adonis and other poets has been translated and the translation has become easy, so that it is confronted – true or false – by a device A computer and half Arab poets are proud that they have been translated into twenty languages, but in fact no intellectual in the world has read Al-Mutanabbi himself, and he is until this moment the feeling of our poets.”