The Graeco-Arab translation movement
secondly, the translator must be able to know what’s hidden between words, and the interpretation of the specific words used (Kilito, 2008).
Al-Jahiz goes further to propose that, even though a translator can ‘ know ’ two languages, there always remains a question about the accuracy of the translation (Goodin, 2014). He believed that the languages would erode each other (which itself increased with the number of languages involved), and the more vexatious the area of study the more difficult the task of translating with complete accuracy (Isa & Qadiri, 2017). Whilst al-Jahiz set out principles of translation, Hunayn was a practical translator. Hunayn created the al- Risālah (Epistle) that detailed the translation history of 129 of Galen’s (a renowned Greek physician) works into Syriac and Arabic (Khalidi, H & Dajana, 2015). The al- Risālah mentions that he had a consistent translation method but does not specifically mention the method. If the translation attempted to convey every textual detail of the source text into the TL, it would be ‘text - oriented’. However, Hunayn seems to have always had the monolingual reader in the TL as his primary concern, and uses intertextual commentary, definitions, or exposition of the cultural context in the TL, to convey the meaning of the source text and to render it as useful as possible; this translation is ‘reade r- oriented’ (Cooper, 2019). Hunayn translated with a commitment to conveying the meaning of a text over a word- for-word translation (Goodin, 2014, p. 5). Encountering many terms that had no equivalent in Arabic, Hunayn could Arabize a Greek word through transliteration into the Arabic alphabet and fit standard Arabic pronunciation, or he could create a word from Arabic roots with a similar meaning – this is the method used by current-day academics (Goodin, 2019). This approach appears to be in line with al-Jahiz, as Hunayn was a very learned physician too (Basalamah, 2019). The creation of Hunayn’s new Arabic lexis (Ahmad, 2016) was ‘instrumental in developing Arabic into a formidable international language of science’ (Dr Hallum, 2014). For his medical lexis, Hunayn often chose to translate medical terms. For example, when trying to find an Arabic equivalent for alopecia , Hunayn followed the same logic as the Greeks who used the root word alopex ‘fox’; he came up with the Arabic wo rd da’althelb ‘disease of the fox’ (Bragg, 2008). On occasion, Hunayn deliberatelymistranslated texts for themeaning from the SL to translate well into the scope of the TL. In On Critical Days , Ḥ unayn renders the god Zeus as Asklepios. Al-Jahiz would be less eager with the distortion of the source text as the change implies that Hunayn knew more than Galen, which al-Jahiz would believe to be highly improbable. However, what appears on the surface to have been a mistake, on closer inspection is a choice made with Ḥ unayn ’ s readers in mind as Asklepios was a lesser pagan deity which was less threatening to Muslim readers. Furthermore, Hunayn understood that Galen knew Asklepios well as he referred to the deity often in his writings, including reports of divine dreams sent by the god instructing Galen how to heal himself (Cooper, 2019, p. 189). This shows translation to be as much a cultural as a linguistic act and the importance of adhering to cultural sensibilities for a successful translation.
As an erudite physician, Hunayn understood the importance of detail and sometimes transliterated to preserve accuracy. This helped to not lose any of the meaning from the source text, which agrees with al- Jahiz’s principles. In a passage from the On Crises where Galen discusses phrenitis, lethargy,
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