One of the funniest things about the Rubaiyyat was that there was a 20th century translation by Robert Graves and Omar Ali-Shah that was supposed to 'fix' all the errors and purely-made-up poems in the Fitzgerald... and then it turned out that Ali-Shah had also just made up like half the poems in the new one too
I have no idea, though I get the sense (not through any actual substantive knowledge of the Iranian cultural heritage, just vibes) that the Rubaiyat are not actually considered all that good in the original; if you're an ambitious Persian→English translator who wants to tackle classical poetry, you've got so many truly great works to choose from, and perhaps you don't have much interest in rendering a less-than-great one that's well-known mostly for Fitzgerald’s take on it.
One of the funniest things about the Rubaiyyat was that there was a 20th century translation by Robert Graves and Omar Ali-Shah that was supposed to 'fix' all the errors and purely-made-up poems in the Fitzgerald... and then it turned out that Ali-Shah had also just made up like half the poems in the new one too
Are there any translations that aren't largely made up?
I have no idea, though I get the sense (not through any actual substantive knowledge of the Iranian cultural heritage, just vibes) that the Rubaiyat are not actually considered all that good in the original; if you're an ambitious Persian→English translator who wants to tackle classical poetry, you've got so many truly great works to choose from, and perhaps you don't have much interest in rendering a less-than-great one that's well-known mostly for Fitzgerald’s take on it.