Hidden meanings – Imagery and paratexts in German translations of “The Rose Garden” (Golestān) by Saʿdi

This dissertation is an investigation of three German translations and retranslations (Graf 1846; Bellmann 1982/1998; Göpel 1997) of one of the most important books in Persian literature, Golestān – The Rose Garden, completed in 1258 by Mosharref-al-Din Mosleh, known as Sheikh Saʿdi of Shiraz (c. 1200–1290). The study takes a mainly product-oriented perspective on Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) within literary translation, in order to shed light on aspects of intercultural encounters, and how and to what degree the translator’s background and the general socio-political context influence the translation processes. These topics are interesting from the point of view of Translation Studies, because we learn more about how translation has been carried out in diverse sociocultural and historic contexts. The translator’s critical role as a mediator between different linguistic and cultural worlds is underlined. Furthermore, knowledge about the source culture, history and literature is essential in order to give readers in the target culture an understanding of the source text and culture, through the translation and paratexts. Accordingly, the following research questions are asked in the four articles: What was the social and literary context of the translators and to what degree can we say that the context influenced their translations and habitus? What has been explained in the paratexts of the German translations, and why? How have the images connected to ʿadab (i.e. good behaviour, politeness, proper demeanour) been translated into German? How have references to Qurʿanic figures, who also appear in the Bible, been translated into German, compared to Danish and Norwegian, showing tendencies within the translators’ own time? The results of article 1 show how the study of the socio-historical context can be linked to the analysis of translation strategies at micro-level, showing the intersections of personal history, source culture and target culture. We see how ideas and values in the Persian text change when traveling across (German) linguistic and cultural borders, according to the translator’s habitus in different social and literary contexts. Article 2 shows how the translators reveal their knowledge through their paratexts and adjust the texts to the assumed level of knowledge of their intended readers. In that way, the paratexts do not necessarily tell us what the readers do not know, but what the translators assume they don’t know, or would like to know. The results of the study in article 3 show that although various translation strategies have been applied when rendering the images in the advice in the couplets (i.e. keeping images, keeping and clarifying, changing, omitting or adding images, adding paratext, and omitting the text), a majority of the images have been kept in the German translations. Article 4 shows that in the German translation (Bellmann 1982), both Biblical legends and narrations in the Qurʿan are referred to in paratexts and thus provide intertextual references for comprehending the text in an Islamic context. The project is part of the interdisciplinary thematic research area Traveling Texts at the University of Oslo.