Coming: Launch of Translation-series Collection ‘In the Shoes of the Other’

In Cairo next month, a group of translators and translator-scholars — including Humphrey Davies, Ferial Ghazoul, and Mona Baker — will launch the collection In the Shoes of the Other: Interdisciplinary Essays in Translation Studies from Cairo, ed. Samia Mehrez:

The launch — set to take place on December 10, 2019 — marks a decade in the life of the Center for Translation (CTS) at the American University in Cairo.

To celebrate, the CTS is launching an anthology of essays built around lectures delivered at the center over the past ten years, titled In the Shoes of the Other: Interdisciplinary Essays in Translation Studies from Cairo, edited by Samia Mehrez and published by Kotob Khan Books. Eleanor Ellis also worked on the collection as an assistant editor.

The launch is set to begin at 6 p.m. in Oriental Hall, Tahrir Campus.

The anthology brings together research and testimonies by scholars, practitioners, activists, and artists who focus on Arabic and translation. The anthology is divided into six parts: the first, “The Translator: Memories, Testimonies, and Reflections,” includes testimonies and reflections by translators working between Arabic, English, French, and Italian. Part II, “Translation, Migration, and Identity,” includes essays that focus on the relationship between translation, power, and identity. Part III, “Literary Translation: Challenges and Opportunities,” focuses on the shifting pressures on Arabic literature. Part IV, “On Carrying Across: Languages, Cultures, and Registers,” engages strategies and challenges of carrying particular linguistic idioms, registers, and metaphors from one language to another, and particularly how they travel within different contexts of power. Part V, “Translation Across Disciplines,” has essays that explore translation in and through different academic disciplines. The last section, Part VI, “The Stage, the Screen, and the Languages In-between,” includes essays by scholars and practitioners who work in theatre and cinema, and in both dubbing and subtitling.

The collection — with a number of essays translated from Arabic to English — also gives fresh access to lectures that took place in Arabic.

Those interested in ordering a copy can pick one up at Kotob Khan in Cairo, or else can email the publisher, Kotob Khan, at karam@kotobkhan.com or info@kotobkhan.com.

The complete table of contents:

Preface

Mona Baker

Introduction

Samia Mehrez

Note on Contributors  

1. The Translator: Memories, Testimonies, and Reflections

Memories in Translation: An Excerpt

Denys Johnson-Davies

Translation Inside Out

Humphrey Davies

Self-Translation: Faithful Rendition or Rewriting

Mohamed M. Tawfik

Translation and Passion

Adel El Siwi, translated from Arabic by Jennifer Pineo-Dunn

Islamistan: Visages du radicalisme: Problems of Translation and Back-translation

Abdel Megid El Mehelmy, translated from Arabic by David Kanbergs

Translations of Nasser between the Public and the Private

Tahia Abdel Nasser  

Together: Collaborative Translation of the Untranslatable

Ferial Ghazoul (with John Verlenden)

2. Translation, Migration, and Identity

Identity, Power, and a Prayer to Our Lady of Repatriation: On Translating and Writing Poetry

Khaled Mattawa

Fiction as Translation

Leila Aboulela

A Translator in the Crossfire: Bassem Youssef and the International Emmys Opening Speech

Mai Serhan

Ahmed de Bourgogne: Between Migration and Translation

Margaret Clare Gilligan

No Friend but the Mountains: Literary Experimentation and Shared Philosophical Activity

Behrouz Boochani and Omid Tofighian

Empathy in Translation and the Translation of Empathy: Perspectives on Euro–Arab Dialogue

Heba El-Kholy

3. Literary Translation: Challenges and Opportunities

Translation and Its Afterlives

Khaled Al Khamissi, translated from Arabic by Eleanor Ellis

Embargo to Trade War: The Shifting Pressures on Arabic Literature in Translation

Marcia Lynx Qualey

Translating Poetry in the Age of Prose

Randa Aboubakr

Genealogies and Kinships: Biblia Arabicaand Translation in the Nahda

Rana Issa

Whatever Happened to Harry Potter in Arabic?

Rehab Saad ElDomiati

Translating the Fantastic: A Wizard of Earthsea as an Example

Mona ElNamoury

A Contemporary Odyssey: Dialectics of Love and Torture in Twentieth-century Egypt

Ahmad Ali Badawi

Translated from Arabic by Samuel Dinger 

4. On Carrying Across: Languages, Cultures, and Registers

Du Sang de Mon Coeur à la Peau des Fesses: Parts of the Body in Translation in Egyptian Colloquial, French, and English

Claude Audebert

“Take it easy, Hasan Şaş,” Or Why Not to Rush Translations from Arabic into Turkish

Hakan Özkan

“In th’Armor of a Pagan Knight: Romance and Anachronism East of England in Book V of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queeneand Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine

Justin Kolb

Gestures, Images, Words, Numbers: How We Speak Truth to Power

Lisa Anderson  

“Cultural Semantics”—A Missing Link in Machine Translation

Fernand Cohen, Zheng Zhong, and Chenxi Li

Are We Even Translating? Reflections on Working Between Arabic and a Standard Average European Language

Elliott Colla

5. Translation Across the Disciplines

Edward Said in Translation: The Personal and the Academic

Fawwaz Traboulsi

Islamic Art and Its Intra-disciplinary Translations

Ellen Kenney

Translating the Orientalists: A Personal Account

Basheer El Sibai, translated from Arabic by David Kanbergs

Translation and Philosophy

Anwar Moghith, translated from Arabic by Samuel Dinger

Sculpting Egypt: Moukhtar between Revolution and the Visual Arts

Emad Abou Ghazi, translated from Arabic by Eleanor Ellis

6. The Stage, the Screen, and the Languages In-Between

Translating for the Stage: Opportunities and Limitations

Mahmoud El Lozy

Dramaturgy and Performance as Translation: Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People on the Egyptian Revolutionary Stage

Nora Amin

When Shakespeare Speaks Egyptian Arabic: The Case of Da’a bi da’a(Measure for Measure)

Waleed Hammad

Translating Gender and Class in Egyptian Cinema

Dina Heshmat

In Other Words: Challenges of Dubbing and Subtitling

Zeinab Mobarak

Complete Center for Translation Studies Lectures List (2009–19)