Library of Arabic Literature Board on ‘Translating the Untranslatable’

The Library of Arabic Literature (LAL) board staged a panel in May 2013. For those who couldn’t make it, the video is now available in three parts on the LAL site:

LAL Managing Editor Chip Rossetti writes:

Better late than never, we are finally posting the full video(s) of the panel hosted by the Library of Arabic Literature Editorial Board back in May, 2013, at the New York launch of the series.  Titled “Translating the Untranslatable,” this panel was a collective effort by the Board, outlining some of the challenges board members have faced with their own edition-translations—either works in progress or (in the case of Joseph Lowry and Tahera Qutbuddin) recent publications.  All the board members took turns speaking, so there’s lots to see here, including Michael Cooperson on why Ibn al-Jawzi’s text  is akin to reading 19th-century Russian novels; Devin Stewart on the surprising similarity between poems in medieval Arabic texts and Broadway musical numbers; and James Montgomery on why taking a scalpel to a poem can be liberating as an academic and engaging as a reader.

The videos: