How would you approach the translation of old Arabic literature?

Thanks for the invite to contribute to the answers;

My comment will be: to approach translation of any literature work, you need to have a full understanding of the language, culture and environment of that literature work. Without such a deep understanding, it will be difficult to accomplish the work accurately and might get lost in a dilemma!

Translation of a literature work is not a mere replacing of language equivalents from a source language into a target one; but it is a convey of a message in the text with all culture and other features to a target language.

You will need to know the meaning of the words and the context. Also, use words in the target language that have the same heaviness and strength of the words in the source language. And don't forget the style as well.

That's all, I believe.

Thank you

some would approach old Arabic literature with medieval English, as to keep the rhetoric tinge in the target text. 

The best way of approaching an old translated version of Arabic literature, or any other literature is through developing a good background of the contexts of that particular text. That is done through knowing the age, era, social, historical and cultural backgrounds prevailed during the time of writing that particular text.

You might first of all have to familiarize with old Arabic common words, the problem is that we need a dictionary (Arabic - Arabic) to understand some of the ancient Arabic word. Read (Almoa'algat ) to know how far are we 'as Arab' from the ancient Arabic meanings' if you get there and enjoy chanting 'Almoa'algat' you will thereby find it easy to translate into another language.

Regards

please read this:

http://www.adab.com/modules.php?name=Sh3er&doWhat=shqas&qid=70077&r=&rc=8