INTERPRETING THE UNTRANSLATABLE: A HERMENEUTIC STUDY OF MEANING IN IQBAL’S CONCEPT OF KHUDI

Abstract

This article discusses Hermeneutic issues, in translating the idea of Khudi of Muhammad Iqbal as presented in Urdu into English. The study employs philosophical approaches of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur in exploring how meaning changes when poetic discourses that are based on Islamic-Sufi metaphysics enter other linguistic and cultural horizons. The study transpires that the untranslatability of Khudi is not due to a limitation of language, but due to its full-fledged philosophical density through a comparative example of English translations done by A. J. Arberry and R. A. Nicholson. Translation is thus an interpretative conversation and not a conveyance of meaning. The results imply that every translator, either knowingly or unknowingly, recreates the Iqbal thought in his or her horizon of comprehension, making translation a hermeneutic experience of reinterpreting.