ABSTRACT
Inspired by the dialectical tension between the principles of source- and target-oriented translation, Chapter 7 offers a sketch of a translation ethics and offers certain philosophical reflections on the deontology of Rumi’s reception in the West. Some of the most influential texts in this field, such as Antoine Berman’s analytics based on German idealist approach to translation, Henri Meschonnic’s poetics of translation, Ezra Pound’s translation-recreation, and Lawrence Venuti’s hermeneutic model inspire the discussions in this chapter. It discusses, for instance, how a translator’s subjectivity and the dominating ideological trends that weigh upon the interpretation of the text generate a pernicious type of distortion, called second-degree deformation. This question is the nexus of the ethics and hermeneutics of the translation of Rumi. Also, we will try to present a synthesis for the source- versus target-oriented translation dialectic in the context of an ethics of translating Rumi.
