The lady would begin the story, and I would listen, first apprehensively, knowing from experience that she would improvise, depending on how early or late the hour.”
The Arabian Nights, trans. by Haddawy based on ed. by Mahdi, New York: W.W. Norton, 2008. (p. 7).
- I listened to the lady’s stories cautiously at first, aware that she had a habit of improvisation depending on the time.
- She would start the tale and I’d listen anxiously, well aquainted with her tendency to improvise based on how late the hour was.
- The lady would launch into the story as I listened worriedly, knowing her penchant for improvisation if time permitted so.
Yet both the usual incidents and the extraordinary coincidences are nothing but the web and weft of Divine Providence, in a world in which people often suffer but come out all right at the end.”
The Arabian Nights, trans. by Haddawy based on ed. by Mahdi, New York: W.W. Norton, 2008. (p. 9).
- Still, both the common and the uncommon are woven by Divine Providence, in a world where the outcome is good even after the suffering endured.
- Yet the ordinary experiences and extraordinary happenings are but the Divine Providence’s intentions for the people, who agonize but end up okay after all.
- Despite this, both the occurences we are accustomed to and those that seem fantastical to us are written already by Divine Providence, set in a world made up of people that endure pain and come out alright.
While doing this exercise, I found myself analysing each word and then the overall sentence. I thought deeply about my interpretation of the text and my intentions with the paraphrasing in a way that would relay those interpretations to the readers.
I was admittedly not expecting to have as much difficulty with the assignment as I did, but I am grateful that it taught me to re-examine what I was reading and writing. I noticed my tendency to search up synonyms for words, pick one very carefully based on context and then word it appropriately so it fit well with the rest of the sentence. It was definitely an interesting exercise.
I was not solely the reader or writer, but rather somewhere in between as a kind of translator. It gave me an insight into translation and paraphrasing, and how the translators of the text might have worked. It also gave me fresh perspectives at times, in the sense of how certain words can be used in certain ways in order to enable me to put forth my paraphrasing.
