For our most recent Translation Challenge, hosted by Adam Talib, participants tried their hand at translating an 1882 text on taxation by ʿAbd Allāh an-Nadīm, and the results were “cruel and barbarous, blood-curdling and gut-wrenching.” For this month’s translation challenge, we hope the results will be sweeter. Join in theContinue Reading
“An-Nadīm is so firmly rooted in a tragic historical narrative—he belongs so richly and consequentially to that moment in the 1880s—that his vivid, entertaining, and stirring language becomes inert, maudlin, and hackneyed.”Continue Reading
“Nothing could be more befitting than Kushājim’s epigrammatic riddles.”Continue Reading
“Lion’s fangs glimmer / You smile in return, but / Here comes the ripper”Continue Reading
إذا رَأيْتَ نُيُوبَ اللّيْثِ بارِزَةً * فَلا تَظُنّنّ أنّ اللّيْثَ يَبْتَسِمُContinue Reading
“I see people / getting beautiful / day after day / but just not you.
Like a kitten / you only mean anything / when you’re young /you know that’s true.”Continue Reading
“I saw everyone getting lovelier, day by day, / and you, becoming less so! / Like a cat that fetches a high price in its youth, / and which, when it ages, goes for cheap.”
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“It’s heart-warming to see Sargon’s voice transmogrify in so many ways and across four languages.”Continue Reading
“The beginning, we choose. / But the end chooses us. / And there is no road but the road.”Continue Reading
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