Cover not available
Article published In:
FORUM
Vol. 22:1 (2024) ► pp.26–48

The ghostliness of translation

Jabra’s and Mutran’s translations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet

| An-Najah National University
| An-Najah National University
Drawing on Venuti’s foreignization and domestication and Derrida’s concepts of iteration, supplementarity, différance and ghostliness, this article suggests that Khalil Mutran’s and Jabra Jabra’s translations are not duplications of Shakespeare’s Hamlet but they appear as apparitions of an apparition. This study adopts a descriptive analytical approach that presents the collected data from Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1992), Jabra’s translation (1979) and Mutran’s (2012), respectively. Through the analysis of the chosen examples, we contend that intertextuality, translation and ghosts are deconstructive of temporality, ontology and meaning as they entail ‘repetition’ and ‘différance’.
Keywords: Shakespeare’s Hamlet , translation, hauntology, ghosts, intertextuality
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Mutran’s and Jabra’s translations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet
    • 1.2The ghost in Jabra’s Christian-oriented translation and Mutran’s Islamic-pagan-oriented translation
    • 1.3Intertextuality and translation
  • 2.Theoretical framework
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Data analysis
    • Jabra’s and Mutran’s ghostly translations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet
    • 4.1Visibility
    • 4.2Movement
    • 4.3Designations
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 25 April 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/forum.00034.ham
References (44)
References
Abū Dawud, Sulayman. 1984. Sunan Abu Dawud. Translated by Ahmad Hasan. Lahore: Sh. M. Ashraf.Google Scholar
Alawi, Nabil. 2010. “Intertextuality and Literary Translation between Arabic and English.” An-Najah Univ. J. of Res. (Humanities) 24 (8): 2437–2456. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Al-Tabrizi, Al-Khatib. 1970. Mishkat al-Masabih [orig. مشكاة المصابيح]. Translated by James Robson. Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf.Google Scholar
Assi, Ameer. 2018. Religious culture in Mutran’s and Jabra’s translation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Master’s thesis. An-Najah National University. Retrieved from: [URL]
Baker, Mona. 2009. Critical Readings in Translation Studies. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. 1968. “The Death of the Author.” In Modern Literary Theory A Reader, ed. by Patricia Waugh and Philip Rice, 1992, 114–118. New York, London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
. 1971. “From Work to Text.” In Art after modernism: Rethinking representation, ed. by Brian Wallis. 1984, 169–174. New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art.Google Scholar
. 1973. “Theory of the Text.” In Untying the Text: A Post- Structuralist Reader, ed. by R. Young, 1981, 31–47. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Blanco, María, and Esther Peeren. 2013. “Introduction: Conceptualizing Spectralities.” In: The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory, ed. by María Blanco and Esther Peeren. 1–27. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Buse, Peter, and Andrew Stott. 1999. Ghosts: Deconstruction, psychoanalysis, history. New York: St. Martin’s Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davis, Colin. 2005. “Hauntology, Spectres and Phantoms.” French Studies, 59 (3): 373–379. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Denisova, GV. 2003. In the World of Intertext: Language, Memory, Translation. Moscow: Azbukovnik Publ.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1976. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Spivak. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
. 1982. Margins of philosophy. Translated by Alan Bass. Brighton: The Harvester Press.Google Scholar
. 1985. “Des tours de Babel.” Translated by Joseph F. Graham. In Difference in translation, ed. by Joseph F. Graham. 209–248. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
. 1994. Specters of Marx: The state of the debt, the work of mourning, and the New international. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques, and Stiegler, Bernard. (1996) 2002. Echographies of Television: Filmed Interviews. Translated by Jennifer Bajorek. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Ghazoul, Ferial. 1998. “The Arabization of Othello.” Comparative Literature, 50 (1): 1–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Godard, Barbara. 1988. Preface. Lovhers by Nieole Brossard. 501. Montreal: Guernica Editions.Google Scholar
Gordon, Avery. 2004. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen. 2001. Hamlet in Purgatory. Princeton: Princeton UP.Google Scholar
Hanna, Sameh. 2005. “Hamlet Lives Happily Ever After in Arabic. The Genesis of the Field of Drama Translation in Egypt.” The Translator 11 (2): 157–192. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016. Bourdieu in Translation Studies: The Socio-cultural Dynamics of Shakespeare Translation in Egypt. New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Inghilleri, Moira. 2005. Bourdieu and the Sociology of Translation and Interpreting. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ismail, Siti. 2012. “The Modern Interpretation of the Diyat Formula for the Quantum of Damages: The Case of Homicide and Personal Injuries.” Arab Law Quarterly, 26 (3): 361–379. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klimovich, Natalya. 2014. “Phenomenon of Intertextuality in Translation Studies.” Journal of Siberian Federal University 7 (2): 255–264.Google Scholar
Litvin, Margaret. 2011. Hamlet’s Arab Journey: Shakespeare’s Prince and Nasser’s Ghost. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Lorek-Jezińska, Edyta, and Katarzyna Więckowska. 2017. “Hauntology and Cognition: Questions of Knowledge, Pasts and Futures.” Theoria et Historia Scientiarum xiv1: 148–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lukacher, Ned. 1986. Primal Scenes: Literature, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis. New York: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Macherey, Pierre. 2008. “Marx Dematerialized, or the Spirit of Derrida.” In Ghostly demarcations: A symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx, edited by Michael Sprinker. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Mahfodz, Mohamed. 1982. “The Concept of QISĀS in Islamic Law.” Islamic Studies 21 (2): 77–88. [URL]
Miller, Hillis. 1977. “The Critic as Host.” Critical Inquiry, (Spring, 1977) 3 (3): 439–447. [URL]
Scheckter, John. 2011. The Isle of Pines, 1668: Henry Neville’s Uncertain Utopia. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing.Google Scholar
Scofield, Martin. 1980. The Ghosts of Hamlet: The Play and Modern Writers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Shakespeare, William. (1960) 1979. هاملت [orig. The tragedy of Hamlet, prince of Denmark]. Translated by Jabra Jabra. Beirut: Arab Institute for Research & Publishing.Google Scholar
. 1986. مأساة عطيل [orig. The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice]. Translated by Jabra Jabra. Baghdad: Dar al-Ma’mun for Translation and Publishing.Google Scholar
. (1599) 1992. Hamlet, prince of Denmark. Edited by Cedric Watts. Wordsworth.Google Scholar
. (1912) 2011. عطيل [orig. The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice]. Translated by Khalil Mutran. Cairo: Hindawi Foundation for Education and Culture.Google Scholar
. (1918) 2012. هملت [orig. The tragedy of Hamlet, prince of Denmark]. Translated by Khalil Mutran. Cairo: Hindawi Foundation for Education and Culture.Google Scholar
Shaw, Katy. 2018. Hauntology: the presence of the past in twenty -first century english literature. Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simpson, John, and Edmund Weiner. eds. 1989. The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edn, 201 vols). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The translator’s invisibility: A history of translation. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Weller, Philip. n.d. Hamlet Navigator. Shakespeare Navigators. [URL]
Younis, Inas. 2017. Shakespeare images between loss and compensation in Arabic translation: A skopos perspective. Saarbrücken, Germany: Noor Publishing.Google Scholar