Sholeh Wolpé on Translation as Re-Creation

Theodore McCombs talks to Iranian-American poet and translator Sholeh Wolpé about translating The Conference of the Birds (W. W. Norton, 2017), a major work from the 12th-century Sufi poet and theoretician Farīd Ud-Dīn Atta (Attar of Nishapur). "The Conference of the Birds has fascinated writers from Rumi to Borges, and Wolpé’s translation strives to make Attar’s unorthodox and mystical vision accessible to contemporary Western readers," writes McCombs. "In her Los Angeles home, she took me through a shaded courtyard to her study, where stacks of musty scholarship on Attar still crowded the desk, and showed me the original poem: an unbroken block of calligraphic Persian." 

Guernica has the full conversation. An excerpt:

Guernica: There have been other English translations of Conference; the last one was the 1984 co-translation by Dick Davis and Afkham Darbandi. But you’re the first Iranian-born poet and woman to translate Conference alone. How do you think your perspective has influenced your translation choices? You talked about the lack of gendered pronouns in Persian, for example. What were other choices you made differently from previous translations?

Sholeh Wolpé: Because the word “Allah” is not there, I did away with the word “God.” I used different words like “the Almighty,” “the Great.” Another choice I made differently was the use of the word “Ego.” Attar uses words like taab, kheesh, khod, nafs. They are different words, and they all mean the essence of self. A Persian reader knows exactly what he means. But it would have been confusing for the English reader. So, I had to make a choice. And I knew that “ego” was the right word, but I was a little wary of it because of Freud. But ego is Latin—”I”—and I figured, My God, in the twenty-first century, I think people would really understand what the ego is.

I think it makes a difference that I’m a woman translating, and I’m a woman who doesn’t feel attached to any one religion. I think extremism is dangerous, and the message of this book resonated with me. So, I brought a lot of my own sensibility and sensitivity to the text.

As I have said, translation is a re-creation. The poet I am translating is borrowing my poetic voice. When I translated Whitman into Persian with Mohsen Emadi, it was a combination of our poetic voices; Attar’s voice in English is my poetic voice. I took content, I took my connection to the poem, and I was faithful to the spirit of the poem—to that spirit that came to Attar—but filtered through me.

More on this project right here.