“Often being literal — or almost literal — is the best way to do it. So I try to let the Arabic guide me. I’m also a translator who often leaves quite a lot of Arabic in the text, and I have to come up with ways of explaining that but without being heavy about it.”
“We compare ourselves to others who are worse off, but for me the minimum wage would be a dream. At Angoulême [comics festival] comics artists talked a lot about how they lived under the poverty line.”
“We wanted to think about how to change this landscape: in terms of the abysmal working conditions of Egyptian translators and of market-driven production[.]”
Omid Tofighian and ArabLit’s M Lynx Qualey talk about his translation of Behouz Boochani’s multi-award winning book “No Friend but the Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison,” the process of debordering, and ways we can center writers and artists impacted by border violence.
“A broader issue within this is Arabic’s ‘place’ not only within a linguistic-literary globalized marketplace, but also within (mis)understandings and antagonisms generated by international politics and a long history of imperial relations, and the resulting sensitivity of translating or not translating certain terms.”
“Someone can read Darwish with no knowledge of classical Arabic poetry, and of the preceding early Arab modernists, but it isn’t the same reading.”
Successful applicants also must have right-to-work in the UK.
Translator Sawad Hussain recently appeared on the Intralingo booktube channel to talk about her path to translation, Saud Alsanoussi, book-banning in Kuwait, and translating “Mama Hissa’s Mice.”
The Arabic-mentorship winner is freelancer Madeline Edwards, who will be mentored by acclaimed translator Kareem James Abu-Zeid.
