The influence of Greek sources on the Arab philosophers is both obvious and
important. What is less clear is how the quality of the translations from
which the philosophers worked affected their understanding of the points
that the Greek writers were making. This article investigates one small but
self-contained topic from within the field of translation literature, covering
the translations of poetic quotations in the Rhetoric of Aristotle in its Arabic
translation, together with an analysis of the types of mistakes to be found
there. In itself this is of no more than curiosity value, but an application of
the lessons to be learnt here to a linguistic study of Arabic philosophical
commentaries, and, by extension, to philosophical theory, will be of clear
importance.