PODCAST

Cambridge Conversations in Translation - 11 November 2015 - Translation and the Sacred Text (Panel)

Theodor Dunkelgrün (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, CRASSH, Cambridge)Simone Kotva (Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge)Tony Street (Assistant Director of Research in Islamic Studies, Divinity, Cambridge)Moderator: Shady Hekmat Nasser (AMES, Cambridge) The beginning of Western theorising of translation is often said to arrive with St Jerome’s Letter to Pammachius, in which the translator defends his Latin rendering of the Bible. This seminal text is largely referred to in support of ‘sense-for-sense’ translation, ignoring what might well be considered the more interesting exception to the rule made by St Jerome, namely that sacred scripture, ‘where even the order of the words is God’s doing’, must be translated word-for-word. Many would argue that even this is a claim too far, that sacred texts simply cannot be translated, and that translations from the original language in which the divine message was delivered are mere approximations (A. L. Tibawi, ‘Is the Qur’an translatable?’, in