Review
07.08.2013

SAMKO TÁLE CONQUERS THE ARAB WORLD

Samko Tále: Kniha o cintoríne

Samko Tále Conquers the Arab World

Samko Tále

Kitaab an al-Maqbara / Kniha o cintoríne

Translated and published by MUDr. Ghias Moussli, Homs, Syria

 

Daniela Kapitáňová’s aka Samko Tale’s A Book about a Cemetery was translated into Arabic by Dr. Ghias Moussli and published in Syria in 2008.

The tale revolves around the life of the main character, Samko Tale, whose narrative tells the stories of people living in a small town in Slovakia. D. Kapitáňová uses the perspective of a mentally handicapped person to describe life in Slovakia both prior to 1989 and afterwards. Samko’s often naïve yet revealing insights into the problems and ambitions of the protagonists help to create the appropriate atmosphere for setting a rather loose plot. His sometimes distorted perception allows readers to see the world of “pre-velvet revolution” and “post-velvet revolution” Slovakia through very particular lenses.

Perceptive readers will readily recognize some deep-rooted features of the Slovak mentality. Consequently, translating this book into Arabic poses several problems for the translator. The first is embedded in the very structure of Arabic, which resists the absorption of a great number of neologisms. The second is a linguistic situation that has perplexed the Arab/Islamic world for centuries – the infamous diglossia, i.e. using two variants of the same language within one linguistic community. This creates large discrepancies for writers, who are confronted with the inevitable choice of which variant to choose. Dr. Ghias Moussli has chosen the path of the majority of Arab writers/translators. He has opted for a highly codified standard medium, which is used throughout the book, thus making it accessible to all readers from the Arab world. However, this approach also has its shortcomings. First and foremost is an unrealistic rendering of characters, since almost no uneducated individual across the whole Arab world uses standard Arabic in normal everyday discourse. This causes the characters to appear somewhat unrealistic, which is further exacerbated by the fact that Samko Tale is rather “simple” and suffers from mental retardation and a strange disease the author refers to as "Elypsia". No matter how strange it may seem to follow his thoughts in standard Arabic, the translator skilfully uses different linguistic and syntactical methods to render Samko’s oral performance as close to the original as possible. His character and manner of speech are clearly different from the rest of the characters, thus creating the necessary distinction. Also, as for names that are quite numerous, all were rendered close to the original and meaningfully. It is also worth noting that the translator has succeeded in translating some culturally specific items pertaining to Slovakia into Arabic very well, managing to retain the semantic charge.. On the other hand, some terms that have their equivalent in Arabic  have remained untranslated.  

As mentioned earlier, choosing such a specific literary work poses numerous challenges for a translator. Nevertheless, the text in Arabic is both lucid and fluid and easy to read. The introduction of Daniela Kapitáňová to the Arab cultural and intellectual milieu is an intercultural project that might stir further interest in modern Slovak literature.