Актуальные вопросы тюркологических исследований

357 Actual Problems of Turkic Studies a copy of a translation of thirty one verses and ten poetic fragments from the Divan of Magtymguly translated into German by the Hungarian scholar Arme- nius Vambery (1832–1913) and published in the German “Zeitschrift der deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft” (Journal of the German Oriental As- sociation)in Leipzig in 1879. Even if the German translation of Vambery today is not completely acceptable for contemporary German readers, we must appreciate his true transmission and message into his target language based on his ample knowledge of the Turkmen source language and Persian and Arabic influence on the original poetry, as Vambery was an important orientalist and expert of orien- tal culture, literature, tribes and societies, based on personal contacts and visits to Central Asian countries. Reading the above mentioned publication and transla- tion by Vambery we could appreciate something of the magnitude of the creativ- ity of Magtymguly, and, therefore, in the beginning we started to translate some of these translations of Vambery into German first into our Spanish target lan- guage out of our own interest. Continuing our translation, the idea came, that our reproduction might be of interest to other Spanish readers, as the great Turkmen poet and philosopher Magtymguly Pyragy is completely unknown in Spain even on an academic level. We were conscious of the great challenge of our endeavour, as literary translators need a lot of historical and linguistic background knowl- edge if they want to translate authors who lived in different countries and civiliza- tions of former times, even more so, if they need intermediary translations, as in our case. Having acquired all publications of Magtymguly’s poetry, which we could find in Ashgabat’s bookshops, we also needed documentation and second- ary literature for our research and studies about the epoch, works and life of Mag- tymguly. As it was impossible to find these publications inWestern libraries, dur- ing our various academic stays in Moscow we visited the Russian State Library (former Lenin Library) which is hosting nearly almost all secondary literature about Magtymguly, of which we could obtain photocopies for our research. Fur- thermore, we also found relevant documentation in the Estonian University Li- brary of Tartu during our academic activities and stay at the Tartu University. With the assistance of an Estonian librarian, who had worked for long time in this library, we copied several literary publications mainly in Russian about he Turk- men poet, which had been deposited in thedepartment for ancient books in the basement of the library. To tell the truth: translating the poetry of Magtymguly into Spanish and delving into his historical environment has not only been an important challenge for us, but at the same time a kind of adventure; an experi- ence which would not have been possible by staying in Spain only. Having trans- lated a small selection from the German translations by Vambery into Spanish, we soon realized, that it would be necessary to consult also other intermediary versions for our target translation. It is well known that most of these versions,

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