Translation and context

       A fascinating piece at Qantara.de by Stefan Weidner considers translations of classical Islamic literature (meaning actual Arabic and Persian literature, not religious-Islamic un-literature) in From the Emotional Orient to the Distortion of Islam.
       He suggests:

The Thousand and One Nights was a kind of Ossian. The tales owed the phenomenal success they enjoyed all over Europe to the time-bound style of the translation. If Galland had presented a translation of The Thousand and One Nights that was as sober, as fidèle, as the one published by Claudia Ott in 2004, we can be sure that The Thousand and One Nights would never have been noticed at all -- just as today the translation practices of Galland and the majority of his successors, about whom Jorge Luis Borges writes so vividly in his essay on 'The Translators of the Thousand and One Nights', are no longer to our taste. However, the question of which translation is better misses the point of what, above all, a translation has to offer.

       As the Ott-reference suggests, this piece was written in German and uses German-language literature/translations as the main reference point -- so too in suggesting:

Hafez is a poet who would also have been ideally suited to the Viennese avant-garde; his wordplay can best be compared in German with that of H.C.Artmann or Reinhard Priessnitz.

       (I'm guessing probably only a quarter of even my well-read readership is familiar with the works of Artmann and Priessnitz .....)
       As Weidner notes:

The compatibility of Oriental poetry in general and that of Hafez in particular with German literature between Sturm und Drang and late Romanticism is down to two factors, neither of which have anything to do with the original. One is the cultural deracination of this poetry. Because its original contexts are barely known, it is inevitably particularly open to interpretation. We can do with it and read into it what we will: it is unable to defend itself.

       A lot of interesting stuff here about translation -- much of which also applies to translation from other languages/cultures.
       I hope others pick up on the piece and comment.