Aragon in Arabic translation Comparative study of three Arabic translations of the poem “Elsa’s Eyes”

Section: Research Paper
Published
Jun 24, 2025
Pages
71-91

Abstract

Louis Aragon is considered one of the most prominent French poets of the 20th century, an important member of Surrealism and leader of the French resistance.The article examines the reception of three translations of the poem Les Yeux d'Elsa by Louis Aragon in the Arab world. The importance of this study comes from the importance of Louis Aragon himself, a poet of all circumstances. The two themes that dominate all his writings, love and resistance, are universal. Furthermore, Aragon treated them in a style mixing heritage and modernity: we find in his poetry a medieval fervor as well as an awareness of resistance against the German occupation; a faithful love similar to the courtly love of Tristan and Yseult.In this study, we will examine the transfer of Aragon's poetry into Arabic: how such versification, which contains as much ambiguity as clarity and fluidity, was translated into Arabic.The study indicates the existence of a clear difference between the three translations and a divergence in the levels of translation of the French text into Arabic. This difference between translators seems natural to us since their work depends, first of all, on the level of understanding of the text and the linguistic level of each of them. But what must be highlighted as a conclusion of our study is the existence of certain gaps between the translations and the translated text, gaps which can be considered as a failure distancing the translation from the source text. In other words, the translation did not succeed, in certain places, in producing an Arabic text equivalent to the French text, whether in terms of language or content.

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How to Cite

Kadim Ibrahim, M., مرتضى, Abbas Mathi, K., خضير, Anwar Mohammed, S., & سداد. (2025). Aragon in Arabic translation Comparative study of three Arabic translations of the poem “Elsa’s Eyes”. Adab Al-Rafidayn, 54(98), 71–91. https://doi.org/10.33899/radab.2024.146038.02063