"For instance, the Palestinian society is more familiar with references to Christianity than the Turkish society. ... So while translating Darwish's works, I brought the references to verses from the Bible or the Torah to the attention of Turkish readers."
‘Inventing a Night Language’: On Translating the 1001
"I wanted to see if I could create a night-language, or find some form to reflect the fact that this is a night work...and the fact that these stories take place where dreams should be."
New Brazilian Publisher Editora Tabla To Focus on Arabic Titles
“There were no publishers targeting that region alone," di Pietro told ANBA, "so we thought it would be really cool if we could represent a culture that’s so important, including for the Portuguese language.”
Summer of Lock-in Lit: Cartooning with Popeye & Curly
"Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with an idea in my head. Other times I ravage entire books looking for the spark of a joke. I have read more widely on the subject of medieval Baghdad this spring and summer than I have since grad school, and this has been time very well spent."
Arabic Literature, Norwegian Readers: Oda Winsnes on Translating Into a Small Language
"There are quite enough experts, prophets, and talking heads analyzing the Middle East, but I think our job as translators is to not get in the way of authors expressing themselves by editing, interpreting, and adapting their work."
Stella Gaitano’s ‘Eddo’s Souls,’ ‘Book of Ramallah’ Win PEN Translates Awards
For the first time, one of the "PEN Translates" awards will go to a South Sudanese novel.
‘Avarice and Fury’
spotted lion, tense/ tired of lockdown/ take the cheetah hunting?/ wait and pine/
Marilyn Booth: ‘I Try To Let the Arabic Guide Me’
"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."
Stéphanie Dujols: ‘The More I Translate the More Nervous I Get’
"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."
Friday Finds: Samah Selim on Translation into and out of Arabic
"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[.]"
‘Heal Me with Disease’
"I'm wrong? Please. / I'm ill? Heal me with disease."
Arabic Translation Challenge #2: ‘Do Not Scold Me!’
"Cure me rather with the cause of my ill…"
