Risks of third language in translation discussed

Can great literature survive the journey through a third language? That question anchored a spirited discussion on Thursday at the 44th Sharjah International Book Fair’s (SIBF) Turjuman Award Seminar titled “Challenges of translation through intermediate languages.”

The session brought together four translation scholars and practitioners from different parts of Europe – Professor Isabella Camera d’Afflitto of Italy, France’s professor Sobhi Boustani, professor Luis Miguel Cañada from Spain and Czech Sarka Hakenova - to examine how translating texts indirectly, using one or more languages, can reshape both meaning and memory.

Professor Camera d’Afflitto, who teaches modern Arabic literature at Rome’s La Sapienza University and is regarded as one of Italy’s leading Arabists, noted, “When translation happens through an intermediate language, we often see how geographical names are invented, metaphors are changed, and sometimes even the soul of the story disappears.”

She cited examples from her Italian translations of Palestinian writer Emile Habibi, where a simple phrase like “over the mountains” morphed into an entirely new expression after passing through French.

Sobhi Boustani, a professor of modern Arabic literature at Paris’ INALCO – Institut National de langues de civilisation orientales, highlighted the philosophical and linguistic dilemmas this creates.

“In hundreds of texts I have worked on with my students, I never choose one translated through another language,” he said.

“A literary text must retain its authenticity and brightness. Even if only one percent of meaning is lost, that loss expands – especially in poetry. When Charles Baudelaire (whose works, including Les Fleurs du mal and Le Spleen de Paris), is translated into Arabic through French or English, his poetic essence dissolves layer by layer.”

Meanwhile, Professor Luis Miguel Cañada, a distinguished Arabic professor at Spain’s University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM), added a pragmatic perspective. “Translation through other languages is a known practice – but it is rarely seen in scientific research because of its direct impact on quality,” he said.

“It is not always bad; sometimes it captures general meaning acceptably. But when you translate from Russian to Arabic through English, for example, and then back again into English, you see significant deviation – the organisation, the rhythm, even the spirit changes.”

He warned that such indirect translation can often “consecrate mistakes,” turning errors into permanent features of literary tradition.

Cañada traced the practice back to medieval Europe, when works like Plato and Aristotle’s were translated from Greek into Arabic through Latin.