Editions, translations, transformations: refashioning the Arabic Aristotle in Egypt and metropolitan Europe, 1940–1980

Abstract

Like translations, critical editions can play an important role in the languagemediated evolution of political concepts. This paper offers a case-study of a modern edition of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics by the famous twentieth-century Egyptian philosopher and father of 'Arab existentialism' Abd al-Rahman Badawi (d. 2002). It draws on ancient Greek and medieval Arabic corpora developed by the Genealogies of Knowledge project and a modern Arabic corpus accessible through Sketch Engine to examine the lexical patterning of key political items relating to the concept of citizen in the Arabic and Greek versions of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. This corpus-based analysis of lexical patterns is contextualised against discursive and disciplinary parameters that shaped Badawi's edition. Supplementing this collocational analysis of relevant lexical items with a more traditional analysis of Badawi's paratexts, I argue that the editing process produces a hybrid 'third text' that is neither a transcription of the original manuscript nor a reconstruction of the manuscript's archetype. The paper concludes that, like translations, editions transform the texts they are based on.

From text to data mediality in corpus-based translation studies

“…The core objective of this endeavour has been to explore the role of translation and other forms of mediation in negotiating the meanings of key political and scientific concepts as they have travelled across time and space (Baker & Jones, forthcoming). The team is interested, for example, in how translators, commentators and other cultural mediators -including editors, historians, philosophers, citizen journalists and bloggers -have contributed to the ongoing evolution and contestation of concepts such as democracy, citizenship, truth, proof and fact when interpreting and adapting their sources for new audiences (Baker 2020;Jones 2019Jones , 2020Karimullah 2020). To this end, five non-parallel but closely interconnected corpora have been built, of which the largest is the Modern English corpus.…”

From “Within” to “Beyond” in interpreting studies

“…A number of interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary studies bearing traces of this outward turn in translation studies include Brownlie's (2021) article that focuses on the role of languaging, translanguaging and discursive cross-culturing as resources for the empowerment of Congolese women, Marais (2014;'s articles exploring the relationship between translation and development, and Todorova's (2018) study that explores the processes of translation and localization relating to civil society in the Southeast Europe setting, drawing specifically on experiences of civil society development in Macedonia. Similar interdisciplinary studies that broadly fall within this trend in translation studies also include various articles (Baker 2020;Buts 2020;Jones 2019;Karimullah 2020;Pérez-González 2020) that are part of the larger Genealogies of Knowledge project led by the University of Manchester. Well aligned with the trend of digital humanities, these articles have addressed the vital and complex role that translation and other forms of mediation play in guiding our understanding of key aspects of social and political life from various perspectives.…”

The use of corpora and other electronic tools in historical research on translation

“…have been published dealing with political discourse and statesmanship(Jones 2019), community and authority(Buts 2020), migrants and exile) or Aristotle's works(Karimullah 2020), among others. With this kind of research, the project hopes to yield novel insights into how translations and related forms of mediation generate and transform knowledge, as stated in its main aims.…”