” One day, I read Lorca’s wonderful poem “Elegy to a Bullfighter,” translated into Arabic by a great Arab poet. I was agitated by the translation, not because I knew Spanish — I don’t know Spanish — but because I memorized the poem from another translation, which had been done by a man who was neither a poet nor a translator. “
Read moreLit & Found: Sawad Hussain on Resources for Editing Translations
For the last post of her residency at the British Centre for Literary Translation, Arabic-English translator Sawad Hussain shares some of the resources she uses when editing translations.
Read moreMona Kareem on Translation: ‘Embrace Your Invisibility As a Superpower’
“Embrace your invisibility as a superpower.”
Read moreComing in June: Historical Fiction & Animal Stories
Coming in June, three new books in translation by Egyptian authors.
Read moreApril Translation Challenge: Konafa v. Qatayef
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 […]
Read moreFebruary Translation Challenge Results: ‘Cruel and Barbarous, Blood-curdling and Gut-wrenching’
“Literary translators cannot also be experts in the history of taxation so we often have to consult with academic experts when we work on texts like this. You know it already, but I’ll reiterate: collaboration is fundamental.”
Read moreNajwan 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.”
Read moreLit & Found: ‘Western Poets Kidnap Your Poems and Call Them Translations’
“What makes translations a must? Where does this blind faith in translation come from? Doesn’t translation act also as unconditional access, as surveillance, as an expanding force of the global capitalist market of literature?”
Read morePublished in 2021: Arabic Literature in Catalan, English, Euskera, French, German, Greek, Italian, Malayalam, Portuguese, Spanish, & Turkish Translation
For those who are interested in comparing covers and presentations across language, follow our “six languages, six covers” series over at Instagram.
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