Translation and Transliteration of Plant names in Ḥunayn b. Iḥsāq´s and Iṣṭifān b. Bāsil´s Arabic version of Dioscorides, De materia medica

Abstract

This paper deals with the Arabic translation of De materia medica by the Greek author Dioscorides (1^st century A.D.), particularly the rendering of plant names, which were sometimes properly translated and sometimes transliterated from the Greek. According to a traditional interpretation, the transliteration strategy was used by the translators when they did not know the exact Arabic equivalent of the plant names. I re-examine this interpretation here taking into account the role of plant names in the Greek text and the Andalusian works of botanical lexicography. As a result, I propose to interpret transliterations as a mean used by translators to keep visible the structure of the work, in which plant names played a certain role.