Translating for the Egyptian Stage

Translating for the Egyptian Stage

Between Sarah Enany and Yasmeen Hanoosh

In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Sarah Enany talk about some of the particulars about translating for the stage and, particularly, for song.

Yasmeen Hanoosh: You work with seeming ease from Arabic to English, and English (and other languages?) to Arabic. Introduce us to your craft. How did you become the accomplished bidirectional translator that you are today?

Sarah Enany: You are too, too kind, Yasmeen. No other languages. I was born in England and raised bilingual from about four years old. Like many bilingual folk, I had amusing misunderstandings: my parents tell me we were watching a tennis match and the announcer said, “Third set,” and my three-year-old self asked, “Does that mean ‘third woman’?”

I was always more advanced in English, though: my beloved mother, internationally famous critic Nehad Selaiha, read to me so that, by the time I was three, I was already reading English at a much higher grade level. In contrast, I only learned to read Arabic when I was about five. My father (M. M. Enani, a highly decorated translator) was very passionate that I should build up my Arabic to reach the same level as my English. To that end, he brought us back to live in Egypt and enrolled me in a school where the national curriculum was taught (as opposed to English-only curricula). I resented this deeply, but the ultimate result was that now, after a good thirty years practicing the craft and reading novels in Arabic, my Arabic is up to, let’s say, 90% of my English.

One thing I had in common with my late father was a mutual love of translation. He worked for hours at home and was always reading out difficult sentences and how he had rendered them into Arabic. I vividly remember cooking with him and throwing out “How would you translate ‘sure enough’?” or similar. (If you’re curious, he found a wonderful solution: كما توقّعنا.)

Working into English is definitely still easier for me: the words flow and I don’t have to think about them. Arabic, well, you’ll be familiar with the dichotomy/bilingualism all Arabs live with between ‘ammiyya and fusha. I’m fairly confident now that I can work in both directions adequately. It’s only taken me fifty years!

YH: You yourself are an award-winning translator of Arabic fiction, but you have also translated several operas into Egyptian Arabic, including the sung versions of Les Misérables and Mozart’s The Magic Flute, among other works. What influenced your choice to work with multiple genres?

SE: It’s all about the money, honey! …That said, all the works you talked about I actually did for free, for Neveen Allouba’s Egyptian musical theater organization, Fabrica. Given that I consider myself a hack translator who’ll do anything for a dime, I do a lot of work for free.

The thing is, there have been pioneers who translated European opera and operetta into Arabic, notably Aly Sadek, who did Mozart’s major works into fusha, and Abdel-Rahman el-Khamisi, who did The Merry Widow into ‘ammiyya. Both were roaring successes which remain in the repertoire of the Cairo Opera House (where I was a singer for about ten years), but I couldn’t help feeling I could do it, too. I was drawn to the craft and would often find myself singing Arabic versions of Italian texts in the kitchen, making up the words as I went along. I’ve always made up words to songs. Sometimes words just fall from the sky and slot into place—I’m sure everyone has had that feeling. There’s nothing more satisfying. But anyway, I would probably never have had the opportunity if Neveen had not come along and offered me the chance to do… what was it? The Magic Flute, where I worked from German with her as a linguistic intermediary, as I do not speak German, and Les Mis, and I’m sure there was something else, but I don’t remember what. I think there were a couple of songs from Fiddler on the Roof, but I never did the entire text.

I can’t not mention that—speaking of pioneers—renowned Egyptian poet Sayed Higab produced a freaking brilliant version of Brecht’s in incredible ‘ammiyya. It premiered at the Alexandria Library and was performed again at the Gomhouriya Theater in 2015. I learned a lot from his work, and I’ll remain forever proud that he deigned to congratulate me on Les Mis.

Since then, Fabrica has enlisted two young translators to do their musicals into English—they have done Oliver! and I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change—which is a wonderful continuation of this tradition.

YH: What is it like to translate lyrics from western languages to be sung in Arabic sounds? In what ways is the process different from translating literary texts to be read mostly silently?

SE: Having been a singer helps immeasurably. I’ll set out some main points:

In general, writing words to be sung means that you must be aware of the stress pattern of the music and adapt your words accordingly. Strong syllables must fall on the downbeat of the bar and weaker ones where there are lighter, or faster, notes. This is something that Sayed Higab grasps splendidly, since he was a superlative poet with an exceptional musical ear; it’s a place where some of the other pioneers fell short.

Another point to be aware of is to make the long vowels fall where there are long notes. Arabic allows for /m/ and /n/ to be held as long notes, but English only allows for a e i o u, so make sure to have open vowels on long notes.

As much as possible, avoid sounds such as the qaf or the ‘ain that fall far back in the mouth or even the pharynx unless the notes fall in the middle of the vocal range before the passaggio; that is, where the voice shifts into a higher register. Intelligent singers will not go all the way down into the pharynx for these sounds when singing, but instead will produce approximations that fall further forward.

Also, when there is a high note, the appropriate vowel needs to be used, usually /u/ or /i/ for tenors and /a/ for sopranos. This is where it really helps having been a singer, as these issues are more easily anticipated.

YH: This technical description is impressively specific, reflecting a deep awareness of multiple aspects of language transfer, well beyond the word level. Taking into consideration all those intersecting aspects of language, what would you say are the biggest challenges with translating lyrics for the Egyptian stage?

SE: Censorship and political taboos. The climate now is vastly more repressive than it was fifteen years ago, and, for instance, Les Miserables—dealing as it does with the French Revolution—was in very precarious territory when it was first presented, especially as we translated it in 2012, flush with the success (ultimately short-lived, but still) of the Egyptian Revolution. “Can You Hear The People Sing” in Arabic brought us to tears. When it came to performance, the team had a gigantic French flag made to order and waved it about on the stage so no one would get any Ideas!

YH: Has your educational background in drama influenced your translation choices? Inversely, has your translation of opera and drama influenced your educational choices?

SE: Um. What? Yes. No. Er… I’ve never thought about it, as I’m sure you can tell. I do believe that teaching, unless your classroom is completely student-centered (which I’ve tried to do over the years but failed dismally), is a sort of performance, so “drama” is sort of a thing that permeates teaching. I wouldn’t say that my background in drama has influenced my selection of what texts to accept (see: money, honey) but it does influence my attitude to dialogue in prose texts.

One thing I have noticed, as a purely personal observation, is that numerous English-language novels are dialogue heavy, while it is rarer to find prolonged sections of dialogue in Arabic novels. I may of course be quite wrong, but I am always delighted to find dialogue in working with Arabic-English and translate it with a great deal of gusto. Most recently, I’ve done three contemporary American plays into Arabic, commissioned by Studio Emad Eddin, an arts organization in Cairo, and that was the most fun I’ve ever had in my life, as I was able to use street slang, profanity, and generally go to town in a way I haven’t been able to before (and doubt I will again).

YH: Can you situate your translations within the theatrical context of Egypt? What is the state of theater and opera in contemporary Egypt? Who is the main audience for these productions?

SE: Oh, God. The country’s artistic life is going to the dogs, same as its economy. Still, there are those who “rage against the dying of the light,” and it is in these pockets of independent theater and what remains of those who can still get foreign grants that such performances thrive. There are independent companies who try to produce musicals, which are rather hit-and-miss, but again, the fact that we still have any musical theater in the current climate is an achievement.

Audiences. Mostly the people who go to these performances are either artists or those who can cough up the money for a ticket—even the government-subsidized Cairo Opera House tickets run into the hundreds of pounds now. The Biblioteca Alexandrina still puts on musical performances, although less than it used to. There are independent companies that perform outreach to the countryside and underprivileged communities, but there is no large-scale support for these, and they are mostly self-funded. We have an Egyptian proverb, “The smart girl can spin using a donkey’s leg,” and this is very much where we’re at currently.

YH: Why did you choose to translate operas into Egyptian Arabic rather than Fusha? Has this limited their adaptation for the theater in other Arab countries?

Even worse, its spelling and written orthography have fallen into disuse and disrepair due to a lack of standardized spelling that would have fallen into place naturally if more arts were written in ‘ammiyya. You have only to look at Salah Jaheen, Bairam Tonsi, and other pioneers to find a perfectly legible and standardized orthography for Egyptian ‘ammiyya. These pioneers came quite late in the day. In the 19th century, there were newspapers and magazines written in ‘ammiyya for public consumption. Drama pioneer Yacoub Sannu‘ was a famous author and journalist who wrote exclusively in ‘ammiyya in the 1880s under the pen name Abu Naddara. Drama for the stage was written in ‘ammiyya as far back as 1834 with the pioneer Mohamed Othman Galal and published in magazines; this happened to take place at a time when a new class of educated young men, dubbed the effendiyya, was rising in Mohammed Ali’s time. They took pride in speaking fusha, which was gaining popularity at the time because it conferred privilege upon the learned class and separated them from the riff-raff. Still, in the late 19th century, there were publications in ‘ammiyya.

One of my pet projects has been retranslating Jaheen’s Rubaiyat into English (they were done in the ‘60s by translation pioneer Nehad Salem); I’ve done them once as four-line poems and am now playing with doing them as limericks.

Second, regarding not being understood: Thanks to our rich cinematic and television history, Egypt used to be—and to a great extent still is—a beacon for artistic life in the region, although it’s anyone’s guess how long this will last given current circumstances. I have found that Arab audiences understand Egyptian Arabic wherever I go. I will confess to being chauvinistic and grieving the heyday of Egyptian culture, pre-1952 and the couple of decades that followed it. That’s as it may be, but I see no barriers to understanding ‘ammiyya throughout the Arab world.

YH: Sarah, you’ve painted such a rich cultural scene in Egypt of then and now that many of us non-Egyptians have little access to. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and experiences with translation for the Egyptian stage.

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 Mona Kareem, On Textual Violence: Cultural Imperialism and Monolingual ‘Translation’

Yasmeen Hanoosh with maia tabet, Translation and the Diasporic Subjectivity

Yasmeen Hanoosh with Samah Selim: Translation as Knowledge Production

Yasmeen Hanoosh with Margaret Litvin: Transnationalism and Translation

Yasmeen Hanoosh with Mahmoud Hosny: Wilding Language: Salim Barakat Between a Kurdish Heart and an Arabic Voice

Yasmeen Hanoosh with Michelle Hartman: Translation, Politics, and Solidarity

Yasmeen Hanoosh with Jonathan Wright: Translating Arabic Polyglossia

Yasmeen Hanoosh with Zia Ahmed: Omani Literature and the Translator as Intruder

Yasmeen Hanoosh with Elliott Colla: Translation and Solidarity in Times of Imperial Mass Violence

Yasmeen Hanoosh with Huda Fakhreddine: Translating Gaza/Gaza Translating Us