MLA Translation Award Will Go to Haydar, Beard for Translation of Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said)
The MLA apparently will present a major translation award to Dr. Michael Beard (University of North Dakota) and Adnan Haydar (University of Arkansas) for their transation of Adonis's Mihyar of Damascas: His Songs, which was published last year by BOA. Adonis is the pen name of Syrian poet Ali Ahmad Said, an internationally lauded poet who is regularly on the Nobel shortlist. You can read three poems from the collection online. A small snippet: "Here he comes from under the ruins in the climate of new words, offering his poems to grieving winds unpolished but bewitching like brass. He is a language glistening between the masts, the knight of strange words." You'll find another poem of his on Wikipedia, and ...
Arab Lit in English: A Little or a Lot?
In a forthcoming interview, translator Humphrey Davies disagrees with assertions that Arab literature is under-translated. He says he wishes that someone would make a list, because "there's a lot more out there than people think." Indeed, while I was looking up information about the fuzzy-haired Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim, I came across the very credible assertion (it's Banipal, for goodness sakes) that he has four books in English: Zaat, The Committee, Cairo from Edge to Edge, and (soon) Stealth. I have all these books. I can go to the bookstore and see them hanging around. I don't know of any others. However, at GoodReads, I find that Heinemann apparently published Ibrahim's Smell of It in 1971. So, well, yes, there ...
Protected: Robin Moger on Translation: ‘Everything Can and Should Be Attempted’
"I wish I had some baroque process of preparation and execution, like a superstitious athlete always stepping out of the changing room onto their left foot, or only eating orange foods the day before the contest, but really it is just that I read the book then start writing." ...
