This book studies and evaluates the different translations of the Mu‘allaqat, seven canonical pre-Islamic odes, from Arabic into English and French. First, it introduces the Mu‘allaqat and the chief controversies related to their study in both Eastern and Western scholarship. It then presents the translators of the Mu‘allaqat and their translations and closes with two typologies of the translations and translators presented. A number of criteria for the evaluation of translations of poetry are developed.
The book provides a comparative study of the English and French translations of the Mu‘allaqat with a focus on a number of communicative priorities in the source text, based on stylistic devices that require a sound awareness of the culture of pre-Islamic Arabia, the main setting of the Mu‘allaqat.
The author assesses the reliability of the criteria of evaluation and the translatability of the Mu‘allaqat as a text that is remote from its translators in time, in place, and with respect to literary tradition.