ABSTRACT

The article explores five Maulid Syaraf al-Anām (‘The birth of the best of mankind’) manuscripts produced in the Indonesian-Malay world. The five manuscripts all include the Arabic text of this well known and highly popular panegyric recited on the anniversary of the Prophet’s birthday as well as on other auspicious occasions, with the Arabic translation into either Malay or Javanese written between the lines. Each manuscript was inscribed at a different site between the late 18th and late 19th centuries: one is from Aceh, another from the so-called ‘Malay’ diaspora in colonial Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), a third from Patani, in today’s southern Thailand, while a fourth was copied in Mecca. These four include interlinear translations of the Arabic into Malay. The fifth manuscript, from Java, has a Javanese translation. Through a close reading of one narrative section of the Arabic Maulid and its translations, and their comparison with a vernacular telling, the article engages in a preliminary manner with questions of standardisation, creativity and cultural particularity within the wide, yet little-studied realm of interlinear translations from the region.

摘要

本文探讨了五个Maulid Syaaf al-Anām（《人类最优秀的诞生》）印度尼西亚-马来世界创作的手稿。这五份手稿均包含在先知生日周年纪念日以及其他吉祥场合朗诵的这篇著名且广受欢迎的颂词的阿拉伯文文本，字里行间还写有阿拉伯语翻译成马来语或爪哇语。每份手稿均刻于 18 世纪末至 19 世纪末的不同地点：一份来自亚齐，另一份来自殖民地锡兰（今斯里兰卡）的所谓“马来”侨民，三分之一来自北大年，在今天的泰国南部，第四个是在麦加复制的。这四个包括阿拉伯语到马来语的行间翻译。第五份手稿来自爪哇，有爪哇语翻译。通过仔细阅读阿拉伯语的一个叙述部分《Maulid》及其翻译，以及它们与白话讲述的比较，本文初步探讨了该地区行间翻译广泛但研究较少的领域内的标准化、创造力和文化特殊性问题。