On Textual Violence: Cultural Imperialism and Monolingual ‘Translation’

On Textual Violence:

Cultural Imperialism and Monolingual ‘Translation’

Between Mona Kareem and Yasmeen Hanoosh

In our third “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Mona Kareem discuss translation work as “a ground to stand on,” the process of removing the “veil of innocence” from literary translation, the small-press and translators’ collectives that Mona is excited about, and more.

Yasmeen Hanoosh: I like to begin these interviews by retracing the accomplishments of my interlocutor-translator to a point of inception. In your case, Mona, you became a published poet and translator at an impressively young age. At the same time, you’ve been a witness to, and victim of, multivalent structural violence. Talk about how your earliest accomplishments relate to hardship. Do you think you excelled because of a chronic exposure to structural violence, despite of it, or both?  

Mona Kareem: I often say that literature gave me my life, which may come off as a sentimental statement, but it’s no exaggeration. Literature, books, or the acts of reading and writing, provided me with an escape from the confined worlds of childhood and girlhood; interrupting the ways my life as a child was micromanaged and the gendered expectations of how children should spend and enjoy their time. I always found the world of adults to be exciting and boundless, which of course I later discovered to be untrue! As a teenager, the power of literature became more than an escape. Later, and as I was making sense of what it means to be stateless, or Bidun, literature helped me imagine a different future.

My stateless generation of post-Gulf War Kuwait was often pessimistic, demoralized by systematic exclusion. Many of my peers chose not to complete their high school education because they knew they weren’t allowed to enroll at the public university. Literature fostered a strange optimism in me, to see a world bigger than or beyond the country I was born in. In my exile too, so far 14 years long, writing has become the only thing holding me back from self-pity and despair. I like to think that writing is a sort of revenge! At many pivotal moments in my life, the points of hardship, writing was my means to reclaim my life, and to maintain my humanity.

YH: You publicly identify as Bidun, with all the dispossession and hardship this term denotes. You’ve also said that craft and politics are inseparable. Can you elaborate on how your political identity and status have influenced your craft as a translator and poet? Is there a positive relationship between uprootedness and literary creativity? Uprootedness and the exigency to ground through language? Is there a point at which creativity becomes no longer the luxury of the privileged but the means of survival of the subaltern?

MK: It’s interesting that my realizations about craft and politics, as well as political identity and literary practice, have only taken shape in exile. When I was publishing in the 2000s in Kuwait, there was a sort of consensus that good poetry avoids politics! It is a characteristic of the post-Gulf War era, and I think it was something experienced across the Arab world. It doesn’t mean all poets adhered to this expectation, but there was a shared aspiration to break away from a modern poetic tradition in which poets were public figures, sometimes didactic, masculinist etc.—the pessimism of the post-Gulf War era affected the ambitions of Arabic poetry, and I think this was only interrupted by the US invasion of Iraq and more so after the Arab Spring. Just as the Arab uprisings allowed the Bidun, for the first time, to “come out” as a community, targeted by state violence and having a shared quest for justice, I also found myself as a writer and translator wondering about the relations between what I do and this identity that shaped my life. In writing poetry, I shifted away from abstract aesthetics that intentionally blurred place and time, to a writing that tries to approach this subject of dual exile: statelessness and migration.

In translation, I found myself translating work that becomes a sort of soil, or a ground to stand on. In translating Ra‘ad Abdul Qadir’s Except for this Unseen Thread I wanted to show a different side to Arabic poetry than what’s available in English, an anti-lyrical poetry, one that approaches the grand subject of war (associated with Arabic literature) in an entirely new way. In translating Octavia Butler’s Kindred, نسب, I was wary of the problematic treatments of issues of race and ethnicity in the contemporary Arabic novel, and I found in this powerful novel an aesthetic that truly materializes the political intervention an author can make.

YH: I’m glad you mentioned these two works in particular, because I wanted to ask you about your choice of source and target languages. As a translator, you’ve worked multi-directionally, translating to and from Arabic and English with seeming ease. It is rare for translators to feel comfortable with more than one target language. Do you ascribe this facility to bilingual education at an early age or to something else? 

MK: My relationship with English started at the college level in Kuwait. Although we were taught English as a second language throughout grade school, my English skills were limited. In college, where I majored in English, I found myself translating a few texts here and there, sometimes publishing them. The first two texts I remember translating into Arabic were Emily Dickinson’s “I’m Nobody” and Margaret Walker’s “For my People.” My approach was simply limited to liking a poem and trying my hand at translating it.

In the United States, translation began to take a bigger part in my life. Not only was I living in translation, as goes the cliché, but it was also the only practice available to a non-anglophone writer. I found the American literary scene to be unwelcoming, very monolingual and US-centric, and in translation circles, the environment was comparatively less so. It was in literary translation that I was able to utilize my bilingualism for something to create something that I could share with others.

YH: That’s fascinating. The exilic experience has the potential to bring out such intense and abrupt shifts in one’s consciousness of language. “Living in translation,” as you put it, is such a profound and rarely articulated subjective experience, one that is mostly invisible to onlookers, chronically alienating and bringing closer (through access to other linguistic communities), enriching and impoverishing at once. In your case, the alienation of the American monolingual sphere brought out the talented translator. You have not only translated across languages, but also across genres. How do you compare your English-Arabic translation process of Butler’s novel Kindred to the process of your NEA-recipient Arabic-English translation of Ra‘ad Abdul Qadir and Ashraf Fayadh’s collections of poetry Instructions Within? Was one project more challenging or more satisfying than the others?

MK: I never thought I’d translate a novel. I was asked by the publisher if there was a novel I’d like to translate, and very casually, I mentioned Kindred. Almost a year later, the publisher told me that he bought the translation rights and that I should get to working. It was a perfect coincidence that the project arrived during the pandemic. I found great solace in spending my weekdays working on it. It was a challenging and enjoyable process through which I came to learn about the difficulties of translating historical context, language registers, dialogue, as well as affect or emotions.

Translating Arabic poetry into English has taught me more about anglophone poetics and taste. Something that seems disregarded in discussions of poetry translation is the centrality of form. For example, many American readers were confused by my reference to Ra‘ad Abdul Qadir as a “prose poet” because prose poetry means something else in English. To that end and perhaps going back to Nazik al-Malaika’s critique of Sh‘ir Magazine’s practice of translating all poetry into “free verse,” the past half a century of English translations of Arabic poetry suffers greatly from a lack of form, which risks reducing poetry into its visual and narrative aspects. In translating Ra‘ad, for example, I learned to lean into line break, punctuation, syntax to amplify his very subtle yet haunting poetics. I’m excited to translate more poetry and to allow myself to play more with anglophone poetic forms in the translation process.

YH: In Violent Phenomena, an anthology on translation to which you contributed recently, you advocate for reimagining and reclaiming translation in order to dismantle power structures inherent in the literary world. Can you share more on how we might reimagine and reclaim translation in the context of Arabic? I imagine that this is especially relevant during times of unprecedented colonial and military violence in Gaza and other parts of the Arab region?

MK: I’d say that I tried to offer a reading of literary translation as a site of cultural imperialism, as Edward Said has taught us to do. I wanted to take the veil of innocence off of literary translation. The colonial nature of translation is widely discussed in translation theory and translation studies, yet it often focuses on colonial archives or dictionaries, to give some examples. Literary translation, however, has been able to maintain its righteousness and innocence, which is really an extension of white innocence.

For a working example, I focused on what is referred to as “bridge translation” whereby a white poet and a native speaker co-produce a translation in which the latter is silenced while used as a bridge. The issues with such phenomenon are many: political, ethical, aesthetic. Yet it goes unquestioned, even encouraged. On the other side of such practice, you’ll also notice how “diasporic translators” are seen as suspicious or questionable in their skills, their nativeness is considered a liability, a sort of ineloquence. To reimagine the potentials of translation, we must first contend with currents practices and challenge them. It also brings us into an inevitable discussion of publishing practices. I think the example you give about translating in the time of genocide is one example of the potentials of translation, though I must also say that writing and translating can never substitute political action.

YH: Speaking of reimagining the potentials of translation, in a recent recorded talk titled “Against Translation. Against Visibility” you say that it would serve us to construe literary translation as a genre of literature rather than something alongside it. What do you mean by that?

MK: There is this unspoken belief that translation is “adjacent” to literature, and not part of it. I like to think of translation as yet another genre of writing. Some may disagree with this thesis that translation is a sort of writing, because the mechanics of the process are very different.

My intention from this analogy is to break away from binaries of author vs. translation, original vs. copy, and to problematize notions of ownership. Thinking of translation as a genre within literature is a proposal for both the translator and the reader, to not see translation as a mere extension and to recognize the creative and cultural and philosophical processes that a translation involves.

YH: You have advocated for “embracing invisibility as a superpower” and for working collectively to change the capitalist-driven status quo of translation. It’s an interesting concept, although I wonder what that would do to the notion of individual authorship that has been in intense cultivation, especially over the course of the past two centuries. Aside from the author’s visibility and autonomy, you’ve traced the translator’s visibility and autonomy to a capitalist logic reflective of western individualistic tendencies. What happens to the placement of a translator’s identity, as laborer vs. artist, as Arab vs. western translator, as white man vs. everyone else if we were to do away with the translator’s visibility? Can we have a healthier translation scene if we were to do away with our knowledge of these demographics, which arguably still have a significant impact on the visibility and reception of the translated Arabic text today? In other words, what do we gain by restoring a mode of spectral translation?

MK: Yes agreed, some things are at risk when the translator is rendered invisible. By discussing the invisibility my hope was to reframe it as a superpower to be embraced. The translator’s position can disrupt our notions of original text, authorship, genre etc… and to know that we exist in this blurry area can be generative.

YH: It’s great to think of the generative impact of reframing the translator’s role, something I have admired in your quest to reclaim and revive jaded concepts and ideologies. You make a striking statement in “Western Poets Kidnap Your Poems and Call Them Translations.”:

Translation has become ‘cool’; in some way its popularity speaks of the failure of a liberal intellectual class wrestling with the rise of Western fascisms. It rejuvenates their monolingual diction and imagery, it fits in the tenure dossier, it rescues the Third-World poet who is always imagined as a singular voice against the savage masses; as if the Cold War has never ended, or God forbid, hasn’t been won by the United States.

There is so much to unpack here. First, can we turn to the question of language imperialism and how English as a host language, and as a monolanguage, has disrupted notions of multiculturalism and the whole idea of translation as a bridge between two cultures and two languages?

MK: In the decolonization era, these were main debates which we’ve learned a great deal from. In the case of the Maghreb, there is more and more writing in Arabic, and one can claim that the national literatures of these countries are mainly in Arabic, while French is a second language mostly reserved for diasporic writers. Many other regions couldn’t break away from that relationship and instead tried to localize or cannibalize these colonial languages. Fast forward seven decades later, we now have writers across the world, who are not necessarily diasporic, and who choose to write in English.

It is a simple economic problem, instead of limiting your job applications to one local job market, you can instead apply to jobs in a global market and increase your chances! I think it is hard for us to imagine literature as this commodity-driven economy, but it really is. For diasporic writers, writing in English is a matter of survival. It becomes apparent that we cannot decolonize, so to speak, or become free or return to our native languages, when our regions are neither free nor independent. Now, to go back to translation, I have been struck by how English has more and more become the bridge language par excellence, or as some say, “Translational language.” This could be useful and facilitating, but when an English translation is fraught and problematic, what happens to the other translations dependent on it? What happens when any conversation within the Global South has to happen through English? What would the interests of English look like in such conversations?

YH: Perhaps the impact of an imperial language begins to wane when the empire begins to show signs of decay. We seem to be headed in the direction of decay—or collapse—when it comes to the Anglo-American empire. In that piece, you focus on the western monolingual poet. What you describe as a privileged sloppiness and deliberate failure to translate Arabic poetry in what concerns style, tone, and content—since they cannot read it in the original language—can also be seen as one reflection of the pervasive problem of the lack of quality control when it comes to publishing literature in translation. As literary translators, we know that funding is scare for the kind of labor-intensive work we do. Literary translation work, let alone the editing and proofreading of those translations, is not compensated adequately. Most of us, translators and their ad hoc proofreaders, engage in this work as a “labor of love” rather than a gainful career. Do you think that the phenomenon of literary translation work in the west as non-remunerated work makes translation susceptible to the whims of the privileged class? Namely, are those who can afford to pose as translators due to favorable intersections of gender, race, and class often not have the technical, cultural, or linguistic qualifications to carry out the work successfully?    

MK: Absolutely. I think your assessment brings it all together. First, we have an industry where people of color are increasingly winning literary awards, yet the percentages of books published by POC authors, translators, or editors is so marginal. Second, unlike any other literary works published, translations are not guaranteed an editing process led by someone who is bilingual. Translation editing is something that barely exists and the people who are capable of doing it are often called upon to evaluate rather than develop a translation. Third, there is the culture of “labor of love” because, sadly, translation is rarely a job on its own. It requires a lot of time and work, yet it does not generate as much profit. This is why translation is more of a second or third vocation, afforded to rich people as well as academics. We can observe this across literature really: the twentieth century was about democratizing literature, but we have regressed greatly in this mission and on all fronts. I don’t know if those privileged necessarily lack the skills. Some of them do a great job, like Peter Theroux or Robert Bly, but it also means translation becomes prey to the privileged as a sort of charitable time and feel-good activity!

YH: Indeed, and in addition to the charity and feel-good of capable translators, you also point out the presence of the monolingual English translator, who, through the phenomenon of “bridge translation” can now posture as “savior” and “easer” of Arabic texts from a projected Third-World oblivion into visibility via incorporation into a western canon. As a corollary, you speak of the “ghettoization of Arabic literature”—as literature translated mainly for the western academic classroom. How and when did this subjugation happen to Arabic literature and what is the way out of those limiting translation and reception contexts (not to mention out of the condescending and homogenizing bookstore shelf of “ethnic literature”)? What can we do as readers, writers, and translators of Arabic literature—with shrinking financial resources for translation (at least in the west)—to salvage Arabic literature out of this chronic ghettoization?

MK: If we focus on modern Arabic literature, we will see that the relationship of this literature to the English language is very colonial. This relationship was initiated by the British and the Americans, across administrative and cultural branches, as a means of studying “the Arab.” The articles we periodically encountered about the “Arab mind” or “what goes on in the minds of Arab youth?” are hilarious examples of the same two-centuries old legacy.

We already know that the field of “Middle East Studies” was a legacy of the Cold War era, and Arabic literature was taken captive by that field. Meaning, modern Arabic literature could only exist in English if it was selected by the experts, deemed relevant to the American classroom, and therefore consumed within specific spaces. I’d like to believe that things are changing: two decades ago, we couldn’t imagine this many Arabs translating Arabic literature (a positive outcome of our mass displacement!); Black critiques of the publishing industry benefited all other minorities and created a legible space to critique publishing practices; and small publishing is more vibrant and relevant. As individuals, we can’t do much but of course if we were organized collectives, things would be different. Some small presses and translators’ collectives are doing good work to break away from the status quo: see the work of Seagull in Kolkata, or more recently Trace Press in Toronto, or the collective translations that Ammiel Alcalay co-produces.

YH: That’s an important point. The power of literary solidarity! To those presses we can perhaps add Archipelago Books and Interlink Publishing? Finally, if you were to interview one translator whose craft, politics, and general work ethics you admire, who would that person be and what question(s) would you ask them?

MK: There are many to be honest. Hosam Aboul-Ela, Samah Selim, Sinan Antoon, and Ammiel Alcalay come to mind. They are the type of critic-translators I was speaking of earlier, and they see the texts they translate with two pairs of eyes.

YH: These are excellent translators, among other things. Thank you for bringing attention to their magnificent work, and thank you for this conversation!

For other conversations in this series, see: 

Yasmeen Hanoosh with Marilyn Booth – Toward a Gender-conscious Translation

Yasmeen Hanoosh with Mohammad Salama – Translating Islam: The Qur’an between Arabicity and Euro-American Centrism

Yasmeen Hanoosh with Huda Fakhreddine

Yasmeen Hanoosh with maia tabet