"Arabic is my center. I am very sensitive to the words, and up until now I cannot find the right words to capture this story, this wound. I feel I need to rewrite this book in some new Arabic, after taking a distance."
Sunday Submissions: A Special Request from the American Literary Translators Association
All deadlines April 16.
Celebrating Neil Hewison: An Excerpt from His Translation of ‘City of Love and Ashes’
"By God, we’ll turn them out of Egypt dancing and singing all the way . . ."
Arabic Literature, Greek Readers: Translations Have to Grow, ‘Because People Are Interested’
"Greek readers come to various presentations and it’s then you realize Arabic literature translations have to grow in Greece, because people are interested. They just need to get familiar with it."
Finnegan’s List 2016: Anton Shammas and Sinan Antoon on What We Should Translate Now
"In this regard, and even though five of his novels have been translated into French, he is probably one of the most difficult writers to translate, especially into English. Yet, I can hardly think of any Arab novelist who’s worth the effort and the challenge more than this astonishing writer."
Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp Shortlisted for £10,000 Arts Foundation Award for Translating Modern Arabic Fiction
The judges...noted in a prepared statement that each finalist had "strategically selected their language of translation and was to some extent self-taught."
On Why I Translated Zakaria Tamer’s Stories from Arabic into Sardinian
"In 2011, upon my return from Syria with a bag full of books by Tamer and others, I began translating some of the stories for fun, to keep up my Arabic, and to ‘test’ my mother tongue and its potential. Can Arabic be translated into an uncodified language like ours?"
How Do You Translate Insha’allah? Foreignizing vs. Exoticizing the Text
The other day, I was rather ham-handedly interviewing Dr. Samia Mehrez when she started to talk about an interesting dilemma: How do you translate إنشالله? I would say, by informal survey, that most literary translators (and reporters, who seem to delight in the phrase), present it in transliterated Arabic: insha'allah. After all, English-language readers "know" … Continue reading How Do You Translate Insha’allah? Foreignizing vs. Exoticizing the Text
Judge for Foreign Fiction Prize: English-Language Readers Becoming More Open to Translation
Daniel Hahn---literary translator, judge for The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2010 and chairman of the Translators Association--- spoke with The National on the topic of "foreign fiction," which he says is becoming more and more popular in the English-speaking world. He enthused about non-literary translations like Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, which helps bring translation out … Continue reading Judge for Foreign Fiction Prize: English-Language Readers Becoming More Open to Translation
Is It Possible to Translate a Book a Day?
I'm not quite sure about how to link to or feature "tweet reporting," but post-grad translation student Saqer A was at the American University in Sharjah yesterday for the First Symposium on Translation & Interpreting: Translation in the UAE. He tweeted interesting snippets throughout the event; I wanted to reproduce a few of them here. … Continue reading Is It Possible to Translate a Book a Day?
Ahdaf Soueif on ‘Truer’ Translation
The award-winning author Ahdaf Soueif was the last to appear at this year's series of talks by translators at the American University in Cairo. And Soueif, unlike her predecessors in the series---Denys Johnson-Davies, Humphrey Davies, Jonathan Wright---seemed to studiously avoid discussing translation. In the past, Soueif has been a vocal critic of much Arabic-English translation. … Continue reading Ahdaf Soueif on ‘Truer’ Translation
