In the English speaking world, the author Coleman Barks' translations of Rumi's works are quite famous. He is known as the best translator for Rumi's works.
I know that in any translation, the essence of the work may not be as good as the original. Keeping this in mind, has anyone read Rumi's works in English and Farsi and found that Barks has not done a good job?
I have another book of Ghalib, which prints his Urdu (similar to Farsi) in the Hindi script, without translation, and then expands on the meaning in English. In this translation though, 2 line or 4 line verses have a page or more than a page long explanation. The Rumi poems on the other hand have been written as poems.
So I am just curious, if we are getting out of Rumi in English, all that we should :)
Thanks!
Note that Coleman Barks doesn't speak persian. According to Coleman Barks himself, what he did was a "second translation", that is a translation of translations (by Nicholson and others). Nicholsons translations are literal and close to the original but not nearly as popular as the translations by Coleman Barks. Anotther issue is that is impossible to trace back the "translations" of Coleman Barks to the original persian text. I would say that what Coleman Bark did was to write his own poems inspired by translations of Molaanaa (Rumi) and what he did has been very successful in terms of popularity and sales.
I read this page :https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/what-was-told
I'll Iell you my viewpoints as soon as possible.
Unfortunately I didn't read Rumi's work in Farsi and English, but I think you can give your answers faster if you write here some of the translated text with its original. So we can check it.
Be successful.
