For many years, the field of Arabic-English translation was dominated by a very few. Denys Johnson-Davies, who Edward Said called “the leading Arabic-English translator of our times,” was the first professional Arabic-English translator. For several decades, he was virtually the only literary-minded author who turned Arabic books into English.
There are two very promising Arabic books coming out from Clockroot Books this fall (in English).
I incorrectly wrote yesterday that Nathalie Handal had nominated a non-Arab for the prestigious Neustadt prize, Chilean writer Diamela Eltit.
The June issue of Words Without Borders is now up (Queer II), and it features the writing of Beirut39 laureate Abdallah Taia. His “The Algerian and the Moroccan” was translated […]
Humphrey Davies’ translation of Eliash Khoury’s 2007 كأنها نائمة, As Though She Were Sleeping, is now available in the UK. I wish the Marilyn Booth translation (Archipelago, 2012) were out at the same time, so we could compare their strategies. This book is a particularly complex beast: Khoury’s novels have long been interested in what language can’t (and can) do, but كأنها نائمة is perhaps his most language-obsessed work.
It wasn’t a tremendously wide field—just 28 books were submitted to Arab American Book Award (AABA) judges—but the AABA’s four winners and three honorable mentions are certainly worth a look.
Have not revolutions and historical rebellions always passed through these two stages?
