Talk:Hushang Ebtehaj

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article must adhere to the policy on biographies of living persons. Controversial material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted or if there are other concerns relative to this policy, report it on the living persons biographies noticeboard.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]
	This article is supported by the Arts and Entertainment work group.

[edit] book titles in English

The English translation to Sayeh's works are mostly ad-hoc. Some are from Mahmoud Kianush's "Modern Persian Poetry" and any other English source I could find. Alas, Black Fortune (سیاه مشق) is my creation, and I'm not sure it's the best choice. Open to other suggestions. Amirak 00:33, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Regarding the above question, the following (admittedly belatedly) may be relevant: firstly, to make a correct translation of Siah Mashgh one should know the work, and unfortunately and ashamedly I do not; secondly, mashgh is related to the composite phrase a-māle shagh-ghe (difficult tasks or exercises, hard labour --- I dimly remember that in the past some people/criminals were given prison sentences which included a-māle shagh-ghe, i.e. hard labour; that in the colloquial Persian mashgh is the word used for homework, is a misnomer; at worst, it reflects a very negative view, on the part of those who chose to call homework mashgh, on practices that may lead to learning: an overly anti-intellectual way of naming things) so that it certainly does not mean "Fortune" as you seem to have translated it. Rather, "mashgh" seems to me to be here the equivalent of "Exercise" in the sense of action or actions involving "exertion" (vigorous action --- you may know that in the old days the military exercises of soldiers in their army baracks, i.e. drill, used to be referred to as mashgh); thirdly and lastly, in spite of my declared ignorance of the work, I venture to translate "Siah Mashgh" as "Stygian Exercise". For completenss, "Stygian" has its root in the Classical Mythology and refers to "Styx": A dark gloomy river in Hades, over which Charon ferried the souls of the dead; figuratively, an evil gloomy place. Stygian therefore means: Characteristic of or resembling the region of Styx, specifically, (a) black [whence my choice of "Stygian" for "Siah"], gloomy, indistinct, (b) infernal, hellish (source: Oxford English Dictionary). I emphasise that your translation "Black Fortune" cannot be correct; this I am absolutely certain of. Kind regards, --BF 06:24, 22 June 2007 (UTC)