Актуальные вопросы тюркологических исследований

Актуальные вопросы тюркологических исследований 356 Institute of Manuscripts of Turkmenistan in 2014 and dedicated to the 290th birthday of Magtymguly inMay 2014. The following adventure and experience of translating Magtymguly`s poems is based on our mutuel efforts and experiences of Alejandro and myself during many years visiting several times the Turkmen country and motherland of the poet. In the course of researching the life and creativity of the great national Turkmen poet and philosopher Magtymguly Pyr- agy we must coincide with many scholars of different countries, that, unfortu- nately, there is still very little known in Western nations about the great national Turkmen poet. Even having studied world literature at several European Univer- sities like Hamburg, Paris, Madrid and Granada, in Germany, France and Spain, we never found any documentation about the great Turkmen poet in our West- ern University libraries. The first time, that we heard the name of Magtymguly was during our first visit to Ashgabat more than 10 years ago. While coordinating a Joint European Project TEMPUS TACIS “JEP” with the financial support from the European Union, where we represented the Spanish University of Granada as coordinatorsof the project and developed a programme concerning the subject area “Translation and Interpreting Studies in the Modern European Languages: Spanish, German, English and French”, called “Eurolinguae Turkmenistan”, at the Azadi Institute of World Languages in Ashgabat. During this period we also con- tacted scholars of the Turkmen-Turkish University in Ashgabad and the National Institute of Manuscripts of Turkmenistan. Pursuing our academic activities in fulfilling the aim of the project, we worked together with Turkmen teachers and students in Ashgabat and we soon realized that our European society of necessity had to become acquainted with Turkmen heritage, history and culture as a basis of mutual understanding and a common working platform. It is in this context that we immediately recognized the great importance of the poet and philoso- pher Magtymguly Pyragy even in modern Turkmen society, a fact which even foreigners use to notice without understanding Turkmen language, as they keep hearing his name everywhere. During our various stays in Ashgabat we therefore tried to get in touch with Turkmen literature and history, becoming especially interested in the works and creativity of Magtymguly. We therefore bought all ancient and new publications of his works which we could find in the bookshops of Ashgabat, appreciating the beautiful artistic language, sound, rhyme and versi- fication of his poetry. However, in order to understand the metaphors, messages and ideas of the poet we needed translations into our intermediary languages like German, Russian, English and French. The problem of these translations is, that the poetic language of Magtymguly involved ancient Arabic and Persian vocabu- lary, which is even often not fully understandable for modern Turkmen readers, that means, that the translation of his poetry into foreign languages is an enor- mous challenge for any translator. The first translation we found in Ashgabat was