Special Section: On Self-translation
In this special section on self-translation, authors and author-translators Mona Kareem, Khalid Lyamlahy, Deena Mohamed, Dunya Mikhail, and Ali Shakir reflect on what it means to transport their own writing from one of their languages to another ...
Writing it Twice Is the New Original
This is part of a special section on self-translation. By Dunya Mikhail Writing a poem is exploring a new world, and the first feeling that usually accompanies it is doubt. Writing it the second time in another language helps me understand it more and feel more confident about it. Moreover, it gives me a wider space to diagnose its flaws. Sometimes I find a problem in the original and the second writing (or the second language) opens my eyes to such problems, so it’s closer to editing than to regular translation. I do faithful translation when I translate someone else, but with my own work I feel free to make changes as I see fit. I feel that the relationship ...
Najwan Darwish and the Politics/Poetics of Translating Exhaustion
"Translators of Palestinian poetry, in addition to untangling the poetics of pain (or in our case, exhaustion), carry the additional burden of making people listen." ...
How (and Why) to Subscribe to a Serialized ‘Kafka in Tangier’ Translation, Free
"As much as I adore Aaliya, I still harbor aspirations of being a necessary translator – or, more modestly and accurately, a translator who is read." ...
January Translation Challenge: Kushajim
"Nothing could be more befitting than Kushājim’s epigrammatic riddles." ...
What Distinguished Humphrey Davies: Irreverent and Faithful Acts of Transcreation
"For us readers of Arabic that are thirsty for a more inclusive canon that has room for queers, peers, poors, boors, mamas and other sisters, Humphrey’s translations have been central in planting the idea that such a canon does exist and that our search will yield some exciting results, as his search so far has done." ...
Humphrey Davies and the ‘Tabloid Touch’ Demanded by Translating a 13th-century Charlatan
"He seems to me a truly in-between character – in between autodidact and man of letters, in between conman and upstanding citizen, in between chancer on the streets of Damascus and provincial court hanger-on in the provinces." ...
Alexander Key: On Domesticating Al-Jurjani 110%
"I’m trying to translate al-Jurjani so that he sounds like a literary critic writing in English, writing in his native language. I don’t want the reader of al-Jurjani’s experience with metaphor to think this guy is foreign - because al-Jurjani didn’t think he was foreign." ...
2021 ArabLit Story Prize: Shortlisted Translator Dima El-Mouallem on Authors and Their Ghosts
I find myself asking, “Would you have liked this translation? Would you have done it differently?” I hope the ghosts of my authors approve ...
2021 ArabLit Story Prize: Shortlisted Translator Burnaby Hawkes on the Translingual Experience
"Translation made me understand language much better. ... This translingual experience has changed my perspective, of course. I became aware of the merits and limitations of each language. " ...
