A Critical Study of the Translation of Thirty Lyrical Couplets of Hafiz by Ibrahim Amin Al-Shawarebi: A Linguistic Approach

As a literary-mystical figure, Hafiz Shirazi has been the focus of attention among many poets and literary figures in the Arab world. The employment of such mystical terms as celestial love, cloak, wine, etc. by the Arab poets in their poetry shows the influence of Hafiz’s thought on the Arab literature. Ibrahim Amin Al-Shawarebi, as an Arabic translator, paved the ground for the familiarization of the Arabs with the Hafiz’s Divan. The Translation of Hafiz’s lyrical poems into Arabic language by Ibrahim Amin Shawarebi is an example of a felicitous and beautiful one in the poetic translation. In this respect, Al-Shawarebi based his work on the translation of Hafiz’s sonnets into prose. In this study, the researcher aims to analyze and criticize his (Ibrahim Amin Shawarebi) translations in the light of linguistic criticism, perception, and understanding through the descriptive and analytical methods. The results showed that there are some misunderstandings in Al-Shawarebi’s translations, although he did his best to provide a careful and meticulous work. Many of these problems originate from the translator’s negligence of the extra linguistic factors, his little attention to the cultural elements of the source language, basing his translation of Persian vocabularies on the linguistic structure of Arabic language, and his ignorance of hidden puns behind the Hafiz’s word.