What’s the difference between the reception of Arabic literature in French vs. in English, in Spanish, in Polish, in Malayalam? ArabLit has been asking leading translators in different languages.
In 2011 and 2012, ArabLit ran a series of “rules” for literary translators. More than 20 celebrated and award-winning literary translators participated.
The Jerusalem International Writers Fest was held mid-May, just two weeks before the Palestine Festival of Literature was staged all across historic Palestine. At the Jerusalem festival, there was no apparent recognition of Arabic literature, despite the city’s large (~34%) Arab population.
When Arabic-literature scholar Elias Muhanna — otherwise known as @qifanabki — published a piece on The New Yorker about the fos7a dubbing of Disney’s Frozen (“Translating ‘Frozen’ into Arabic”), a roar went up around the Internet. Even Jezebel felt the need to weigh in.
Chad Post has been updating the year’s translation database at Three Percent. It’s not just 2014 that sees Arabic high the list of languages from which literature is translated. Yet: Is this an entirely good thing?
“For the poetic parts I couldn’t forget Eliot of course, who sometimes hovers there. I even cheated and slipped some Eliot in, with Amjad’s permission.”
Translator Barbara Romaine was unable to make the March 22-23 conference on Radwa Ashour and her writing. She presents her tribute to a novelist of “exceptional humanity” here.
On April 21, Yehouda Shenhav, the Hebrew translator of White Masks, will speak on “Elias Khoury’s Language of Violence: Representing/Intervening/Translating.”
Hala Salah Eldin Hussein — the editor of Albawtaka Review — says she will be issuing the “very first literary audio book in the Arab World,” 10,000 copies of a short-story collection that has been translated from English to Arabic. The stories will be voiced by prominent women authors and distributed free.
