Some vision of “fidelity” to a translated work is surely necessary — otherwise, what would make it a translation? — but the “Temporary Center for Translation,” which opens tomorrow at the New Museum in New York, interregates “what exactly constitutes a likeness.”
A three-day conference on translation, called “The Only Thing Worth Globalizing is Dissent: Translation and the Many Languages of Resistance,” is set to be held in Cairo from March 6-8, 2015.
Arabic has gone from virtual invisibility in English to the “fourth-most-translated” literary language (at least in the US). Part of that is the funding support behind translations from the Arabic; this year, both the “PEN Promotes” and “PEN Translates” grants are supporting Arabic translations.
London’s Poetry Translation Centre is marking its tenth anniversary with a collection — titled My Voice — and a series of readings.
In a lecture at the American University in Cairo last March, Iraqi poet and translator Sinan Antoon wove together poetics and politics, linking an understanding of translation as “extended mourning” with observations from his experience as a translator of Arabic poetry into English. Anny Gaul reflects on the lecture and the politics of translation.
This Monday, the new collection This Room is Waiting: Poems from Iraq and the UK will launch in Edinburgh. The collection features new works produced at the Reel Iraq poetry translation workshops in 2013. The workshops brought together four Iraqi poets, four British poets, and Lauren Pyott working as a bridge.
Gulf Coast magazine just announced that they’re accepting entries for their inaugural “Gulf Coast Translation Prize.”
Professor Marilyn Booth holds the Iraq Chair in Arabic & Islamic Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and is a high-profile translator of Arabic fiction into English. Sarah Irving interviewed her about her thirty-year career in translation in a piece that originally ran in May of 2013.
Young writer — and prospective literary translator — Nada Adel Sobhi sent in 18 pointed questions about the ins and outs of literary translation, ranging from money issues to publishing philosophy. English-Arabic translator and publisher Hala Salah Eldin Hussein (Albawtaka Review) and writer/publisher Hilary Plum (Interlink Publishing) did their best to answer Nada’s questions.
