Predicting the Nakba in an Israeli Novel

A book I would love to translate (are you listening, Alon?) into Arabic. A book that MUST be translated into Arabic, and translated well.

House of Rajani (Harvill Secker - Random House UK), takes place in 1895 Jaffa. It records the diaries of Salah Rajani, a 12-year old Moslem child cursed with prophetical powers who foresees the rising of the Jewish state; and of a 27 year old Jewish colonist, new to the city of Jaffa, who takes both Salah's mother and their house.

Arab Israelis – among them Radio Cairo correspondent Khamis Abulafia and politician Ahmed Tibi – have called the book "riveting" and claim to find an echo of the Palestinian narrative embedded within.

The House of Rajani was awarded the Sapir prize in 2009, but two weeks after the public announcement on Television, the award was withdrawn due to allegations of a conflict of interest.

Alon says that the main catalyst to write the book came from a deja vu feeling: "The initial catalyst for writing it came from a scene I envisioned one day as I sat in a Tel Aviv café: all at once I stripped the present reality of its clothes – the Bauhaus buildings, the uniquely Israeli window blinds, the ugly air-conditioning units, the ficus trees, the asphalt sidewalks, the low stone walls – and I could picture the orchards and groves and prickly pear cactuses of the Palestinians who had lived there in the past. I shuddered, and at that moment I decided to try to pass that feeling along to my readers in a historical novel about Tel Aviv's Palestinian past and about the first wave of Jewish immigration."

An expert from the novel can be read here.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/

Marian Schwartz Interview

Boston Globe interviewed Marian Schwartz, the Austin-based acclaimed translator of Russian fiction, history, biography, and criticism. Her most recent translations include Ivan Goncharov’s 19th-century novel “Oblomov” and Olga Slavnikova’s futuristic novel “2017.” Schwartz is also the principal English translator of the works of Nina Berberova.

Schwartz started by defining a "good" translation as one which "readers like". With my due respect to all readers of various temperaments, IQs and levels of intelligence - the fact that I love fries does not make the fries a health food item. I read Bulgakov's books both in Polish (which is a close relative of Russian) and Arabic, so I knew a bit about the hazards of translations before I landed the Glenny English version - and so I can say that the English boo in question shares a title with Bulgakov, and that's where the story ends.

Schwartz also states that in her opinion a translation cannot be bad when it gives people access to works that they would never otherwise have read. But are they actually reading the book they would have read if they could, say, read French, or Spanish, or Arabic? Or is it a book written by the translator and passed under the pseudonym of some foreign dude with a literary reputation? If I say "I am hungry" and Ms Schwartz translates it as "Sam is experiencing stomach pain and would like a steak" - is that representing faithfully what I said? I know she wouldn't - she is too brilliant a translator for that. It is just a rhetorical question, and I hope Marian was not watering down her IQ because this was a newspaper interview!

***********

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/

An Introduction to Literature in Arabic

L.D. Mitchell (book collector, professional librarian, author, photographer) did everyone a great favour by posting a ten part introduction about the literature in Arabic that any serious reader should have on their shelves.

Given the enormous debt that Western Europe owes to Arab scholarship, it is puzzling why the Arab world's own native literary traditions remain so poorly known and understood in the West.

I have written often about contemporary Arab writers whose works are being translated into English (Humphrey Does It Again, Darwish Celebrated in Film, Arab Literature Breaks Taboos - in Translation, On Translating Arabic Literature, Taha and Adina - Translating the Other, From "Religion Dispatches" - Translating Rumi], but Mitchell takes us on a journey from 1001 Nights to Naguib Mahfouz, touching on folklore, religious texts and science, then stopping long at poetry, moving on to compilations of Jahiz, Maqdisi and the globe-trotter Ibn Battuta, biographies of the Prophet and other greats, Ibn Khaldun's seminal work on sociology and the histories of Tabari.

Mitchell says that his mini-introduction would not improve the general ignorance of the subject much, partly because of the frustrating lack of English translations. rest assured, my dear librarian, that there is a similar frustration among the Arabic-speaking generation Y and Z who no longer use classical Arabic and cannot comfortably link to Tabari, Ibn Battuta or Jahiz. Modern translations from 7th-12th century Arabic to Modern Standard are either non-existent, or very few and far between. Add to that high levels of illiteracy, censorship, and rote-learning. I read my first 1001 Nights in Burton's translation, not in the original Arabic, although the whole set was adorning our bookshelves when I was growing up.

What books in Arabic get to see the light of the English presses also depends on which political buttons are pushed, as Youssef Rakha writes in his article "A literary prize fight: politics and the International Prize for Arabic Fiction".

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/

Reading List for the rest of 2010

The 2010 Best Translated Books:

Ghosts, by César Aira (Argentina)
Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews

The Twin, by Gerbrand Bakker (Netherlands)
Translated from the Dutch by David Colmer

Anonymous Celebrity, by Ignácio de Loyola Brandão (Brazil)
Translated from the Portuguese by Nelson Vieira

Wonder, by Hugo Claus (Belgium)
Translated from the Dutch by Michael Henry Heim

The Weather Fifteen Years Ago, by Wolf Haas (Austria)
Translated from the German by Stephanie Gilardi and Thomas S. Hansen

The Confessions of Noa Weber, by Gail Hareven (Israel)
Translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu

The Discoverer, by Jan Kjærstad (Norway)
Translated from the Norwegian by Barbara Haveland

Memories of the Future, by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (Russia)
Translated from the Russian by Joanne Turnbull

Rex, by José Manuel Prieto (Cuba)
Translated from the Spanish by Esther Allen

The Tanners, by Robert Walser (Switzerland)
Translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky

*******

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/

On translation and belonging

I remember a discussion a few years ago with one of my colleagues from Cairo, a high caliber Arabic<>English translator, about the English version of Naguib Mahfouz trilogy.

I happen to know the translator of that work. I also happen to have read Naguib in Arabic, and then in English.

My friend said one thing that I could not disagree with: although technically very good, there was no Cairo in the English translation. At least not the Cairo both her and me spent such a long time in.

The Cuban-American writer, Gustavo Perez Firmat, says in one of his poems:


The fact that I

am writing to you

in English

already falsifies what I

wanted to tell you.

My subject:

how to explain to you that I

don’t belong to English

though I belong nowhere else.

Translating culture is a very hard task, and the more the source and target cultures differ, the harder it becomes to bridge the gap. Naguib in Turkish, or Farsi, would probably be more Cairene than Naguib in English or Swedish.

The way around it would be to limit literary and cultural translations to bilingual people who either spent their childhood in the source country, or come from bi-cultural families. Then again, being bilingual, or even bi-cultural, does not make you a brilliant translator. So maybe we could employ them as some sort of consultants to the translator?

Just dreaming aloud..


(Thanks to Patty Ball and The Quad)

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au.

Bravo, Grossman!

The typical translator's status can be likened to a ghost writer's — an appendage obscure and underpaid. Like ghost writers, they often receive flat fees and no royalties. Reviewers often overlook them or faintly praise them — and this drives Grossman crazy — for "ably" translating the original text.

"`Ably translated,' compared to what?" asks Grossman, whose "Why Translation Matters," a brief, forceful defense of her profession, is being released by Yale University Press. "The reviewer clearly doesn't read Spanish. How would they know if it is ably translated? They quote long passages to indicate the style of the writer and never credit the translator."

BRAVO, BRAVO!

Grossman would know: she has translated such works as Miguel de Cervantes' 'Don Quixote' and Gabriel Garcia Marquez' 'Love in the Time of Cholera'.

In "Why Translation Matters," Grossman writes of taking on the opening phrase of the first chapter of "Don Quixote," among the most famous words in Spanish literature: "En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme," which in an earlier English-language edition was translated into, "In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind."

Grossman worked on the phrase by reciting the Spanish to herself, "mantralike." She reached for the right mood and rhythm, to recapture how it struck those who read "Quixote" centuries ago. She pondered the word "lugar," which can mean either village or place. The words came to her, like lyrics to a song: "Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember."

Grossman, who turns 74 in March, is curly haired and plainspoken, her voice still flavored by her childhood in a Yiddish-speaking neighborhood in Philadelphia. She had an early interest in languages — although she hardly remembers a word of Yiddish — and by high school was thinking about becoming an interpreter, "which suggested travel, exotic places, important events, world-shaking conferences at the United Nations," she writes in "Why Translation Matters."

Why Translation Matters argues for the cultural importance of translation and for a more encompassing and nuanced appreciation of the translator’s role. As the acclaimed translator Edith Grossman writes in her introduction, “My intention is to stimulate a new consideration of an area of literature that is too often ignored, misunderstood, or misrepresented.”

For Grossman, translation has a transcendent importance: “Translation not only plays its important traditional role as the means that allows us access to literature originally written in one of the countless languages we cannot read, but it also represents a concrete literary presence with the crucial capacity to ease and make more meaningful our relationships to those with whom we may not have had a connection before. Translation always helps us to know, to see from a different angle, to attribute new value to what once may have been unfamiliar. As nations and as individuals, we have a critical need for that kind of understanding and insight. The alternative is unthinkable.”

Throughout the four chapters of this bracing volume, Grossman’s belief in the crucial significance of the translator’s work, as well as her rare ability to explain the intellectual sphere that she inhabits as interpreter of the original text, inspires and provokes the reader to engage with translation in an entirely new way.

The full interview with Grossman can be read online. The book can be purchased directly from the publisher's website.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/

Literature, translation, globalisation

"The Dull New Global Novel" essay by Parks in the NY Review of Books poses the hypothesis of "boredom" and "dullness".

The new "global" novel, written by someone in country X but intended for audiences from all over the world, will be boring by default because, as Parks says, "From the moment an author perceives his ultimate audience as international rather than national, the nature of his writing is bound to change. In particular one notes a tendency to remove obstacles to international comprehension. Writing in the 1960’s, intensely engaged with his own culture and its complex politics, Hugo Claus apparently did not care that his novels would require a special effort on the reader’s and above all the translator’s part if they were to be understood outside his native Belgium. In sharp contrast, contemporary authors like the Norwegian Per Petterson, the Dutch Gerbrand Bakker, or the Italian Alessandro Baricco, offer us works that require no such knowledge or effort, nor offer the rewards that such effort will bring. More importantly the language is kept simple. Kazuo Ishiguro has spoken of the importance of avoiding word play and allusion to make things easy for the translator. Scandinavian writers I know tell me they avoid character names that would be difficult for an English reader."

Mr Parks is making assumptions not born out by facts: that the "international" readership is dumb, and that translators can't translate literature.

The fact that there is a global market for any novel (witness Dan Brown and Rowlings) is in itself fully dependent on the existence and high skills of literary translators. Parks is saying that if it can be translated it isn’t literary — or the truly literary parts of literature are those parts that can’t be translated.

Except that we cannot ever agree on what is and what is not "truly literary". The way things are going, I am finding lots of post-modern novels in general incomprehensible in my native English, and I don't envy any translator the task of having to convey the already opeque language into another. Meaningless mambo-jumbo in English is not truly literary - it is literary mambo-jumbo. I could give a long list of examples, but I would run out of space, and court defamation lawyers.

That which can be translated is the essence of literature. Every translation is a witness to the unidentifiable beauty of Language.


For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at www.arabic.com.au.

Humphrey Does It Again

From the Egyptian Al Ahram, no. 985, 11 - 17 February 2010

Injy El-Kashef

"Piles of publications by the American University in Cairo (AUC) Press were displayed outside the Oriental Hall on Monday 8 February, proudly bearing the name of Banipal Award winner Humphrey Davies, whose translations include Naguib Mahfouz' Thebes at War, Alaa El-Aswani's The Yacoubian Building, Ahmed El-Aidi's Being Abbas El-Abd, Mohamed Mustagab's Tales From Dayrut, Gamal Al-Ghitany's Pyramid Texts, Khaled Al-Berry's Life Is More Beautiful Than Paradise, Ahlam Mosteghanemi's Chaos of the Senses and Hamdy El-Gazzar's Black Magic. Inaugurating the second in AUC's In Translation series of lectures, professor of Arabic Studies and director of the Centre for Translation Studies, Samia Mehrez explained that the Centre's ambition is to go past "inter-lingual" into "inter-semiotic" translation in order to generate the greatest possible exchange for the benefit of an ever-growing community of intercultural readers.

The second distinguished guest at the series, Humphrey Davies was introduced not only as the prominent translator who has delivered some 15 outstanding works of Arabic literature to English speakers, but also as the "audacious" man who gave up promising careers that his doctoral degree from the University of California and his employment at Non-Governmental Organisations operating in Egypt, Palestine, Sudan and Tunisia would have facilitated. "I love words for their own sake," commented Davies with charming self-awareness, asserting that his ultimate choice of a career in translation has, despite possible odds, allowed him to "pay the bills, put bread on the table and go on vacations. I definitely encourage a career in translation for those who have the same passion for words."

His first published translation, in 2000, appeared in Banipal -- it was Sayed Ragab's short story Rat, in Egyptian Arabic -- affording Davies the first "bread" from his burgeoning career as a translator. The hook, however, had presented itself three years before, in the form of an extremely ambitious project that both "confront[ed] me with many tough translational issues, and [became] addictive, and encouraged me to try my hand at making a living from translation and allied skills," he is quoted in Banipal. The work in question was the "preparation of a critical edition, translation and lexicon of an Egyptian work of the Ottoman period, Yusuf al-Shirbini's Hazz al-Quhuf bi-Sharh Qasid Abi Shaduf (Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abu Shaduf Expounded)". He became "manic" about words, and so "confident" in the certitude of his ardour that he did not "feel the risk" inherent in turning translation into a career, especially as the post-9/ 11 world and increasingly globalized international community made translations from Arabic a commodity in much higher demand than it was 20 years ago.

Davies' allure as a person, in fact, partly lies in his loyalty to his inner beliefs -- which seem to have repaid him, in time, for his keen self- perception and devotion. It all began with a "mid-adolescence crisis" which erupted when he realised that he "hated" both English literature and his presence among the throngs who were enrolled in its study. He needed a subject with a "more intimate atmosphere [and so] took a leap into the dark" -- a student of English literature among hundreds, he became one of the four enrolled in the study of Arabic language at Cambridge. From then on, the need to engage with the Arab world became increasingly pressing -- the driving force being "putting oneself in others' shoes," especially as further study of the language yielded an awareness of its unfathomable complexity and richness.

Although he initially envisioned the option of translation in short-term goals, stumbling upon the English translation of Marcel Proust's A La Recherche du Temps Perdu irreversibly internalised Davies' notion that a translation can be a great work of literature in its own right. Although he had "never taken a creative writing course in my life [and] never written a primary work of literature in English," Davies, consolidated in his profound mastery of both colloquial and classical Arabic, began translating the works that he personally esteemed to be of artistic value, as a reader. When asked to define what he viewed as "artistic value", this man of "instinct", seemingly lost for words to explain what he perceived as obvious, shrugged while attempting to clarify: "artistic value is... it's what turns you on". As for the reader he has in mind while translating, Davies' answer was witty, truthful and simple: "Someone well educated, highly cultured... someone like me." On numerous occasions Davies managed, effortlessly, to extract laughter from the audience -- his modest, yet secure, demeanour so engaging that the evening was as fluffy on the soul as it was dense on the mind.

The role of the translator vis-à-vis both the text and the author were extensively addressed, breaking with the image of the translator as someone cloaked in invisibility, living in the shadow of the author. Although Davies took this opportunity to congratulate AUC Press on their respect and appreciation of the role of the translator, evidenced in their placing the latter's name on the cover of the book, he still asserted, "invisibility is a relief for me," clarifying that he has "a preference for what I might call 'deep meaning' and 'function' over surface and form." What continues to test this particular translator is the increasing tendency of modern Arabic literature for "free and direct speech, in which the text flows in and out of tense without any particularly referential context. Tenses are slippery in Arabic," he says, adding, "punctuation conventions in [a state of] flux". The often weak state of copy editing adds to the mix of challenges he struggles with. "When you call the author to ask him if he meant 'put his feet on the bath' or 'put his feet on the path', you really feel like an idiot," he chuckles.

Is his relationship with the text one of submission or control? "Submission," he replies. "The sort of question that goes through my head while translating is, what does the author really mean here and how would I say it if I were using English?" The historic debate on "domesticating versus foreignizing translation" is, according to Davis, one the "most fascinating, complex and important issues in translation theory... I give it no thought." Other considerations that have no bearing on Davies are issues of gender and politics -- I've Had Enough by Effat Yehia being one of only two works by women translated by him. "In don't think in these terms," he explains. "My only consideration is finding the book artistically compelling." Nor does he feel he should be shouldering the responsibility for canon formation; "it would be presumptuous of me to believe that I would have an impact on forming the canon. The canon will form itself."

Every single author, ultimately, will present the translator with challenges, be they "intense lyricism, helter-skelter rushes in streams of consciousness or unfamiliar slang that may be unknown even to the readers of the original language." Can any work of literature be untranslatable? "I philosophically don't want to believe that. There is no such thing as a book that cannot be translated. There are only texts that haven't found their translators yet."

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

"Québécois" TinTin causes offence

Since the publisher of Tintin first introduced "regional-language" editions of the popular comic book 30 years ago, readers in places from Alsace to Tahiti have been charmed to discover the boy reporter using their local dialect.

Not in Quebec.

Graeme Hamilton, from the National Post, reports that far from being flattered by the Québécois "translation", some are offended by the fact that it is written in a dialect. Which means it isn't pure. It isn't pure means it isn't French..

"In Quebec, we may speak strangely, but we write in French, and little Quebecers can read Tintin in the original, even learning a few new words along the way," Odile Tremblay wrote in Le Devoir. "So, a translation.... We have a bit of pride left. Don't go taking that from us. Seriously!"

Seriously! I agree. I should send the article to every time an agency asks me to give the a translation in "Sudanese Arabic" or some other such anomaly. Spoken dialects are one thing - but "they write/read in Arabic"...like all civilised Arabic-speakers. It is a mark of being educated and cultivated. If you can't read it, then you won't be able to read it in some weird dialect either.

"We have a bit of pride left. Don't go taking that from us. Seriously!"

What if We Only Had One Language?

Catherine Porter, MLA President, has a wonderful entry on the Asian Languages blog. Here is an excerpt:

Lately, as a thought experiment, I’ve tried to imagine living in a world without translators. A preposterous notion, to be sure, although perhaps no more so than others we accept as premises for entertainment, for example, the notion that a certain Benjamin Button is born old and proceeds to grow younger. In any event, to anchor the exercise in a bit of science fiction, I’m positing that the human brain has evolved to permit the learning of just a single language; translation is thus out of the question. The resulting world, as I picture it, is radically and starkly diminished. Pursuing the experiment through the prism of my own tradition, which members of my generation typically encountered in curricular form as “ancient history” followed by “Western civilization,” I see that the Arabs, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Hebrews, and the Romans learned nothing from one another. There has been no New Testament, no Renaissance, no Reformation, no Enlightenment, no scientific or industrial revolution. There is no American Constitution, no United Nations Charter, no European Union. Works of literature, philosophy, scholarship, and science that may have been produced in other linguistic contexts are forever inaccessible to speakers of English—and of course the English language itself has not developed in anything like its present form.

Fortunately for us, the human brain in its plasticity took a more propitious evolutionary path. Human beings can and do learn multiple languages; translators and interpreters have always been with us, and we need them as much as ever.

Porter then gives reasons for the need:

(1) Despite the advances in Machine Translation, it is not clear when these software programs will be able to handle the syntactic, stylistic, and cultural complexities of literary, philosophical, or scholarly texts, if ever.

(2) English is not always an option, and multilingual people have a demonstrated advantage over only-English monolinguists.

(3) Globalization + knowledge explosion facilitated by digital media = increasingly diverse sources of new knowledge, and translators will be in increasing demand.

(4) Apparently, there is a great unmet demand for educated translators and interpreters, and translation is an ideal context for developing translingual and transcultural abilities as an organizing principle of the language curriculum.. (so why aren't they paid as much as brain surgeons??)

Now the painful truth:

"[in] the history of the Anglo-American tradition [a]good translations must be fluid and transparent and good translators must stay out of sight. The invisibility of the translator has become a cliché, but it is by no means a myth. Presses don’t want to advertise books as translations. Newspapers sometimes publish translated texts without acknowledging the fact. Academics have been known to remove translations from their curriculum vitae to avoid jeopardizing their chances for promotion or tenure. And until recently, few universities in the English-speaking world have acknowledged translation as a legitimate area of study."

Arrrrgh.. This is, of course, Venuti, trying to make a translator visible by using words such as 'swell"..

And Porter is right: no where else in the world would a sane academic remove the fact that they have translated serious work from their CVs. So when migrating to places such as UK, USA or Australia, translators from non-English speaking backgrounds quickly feel the frustration of becoming nobodies.

The Chronicle also published a recent article about literary translator visibility in recent years.

"Translation is having a moment, or a series of moments. But its champions say the fight is far from over to have translation—not the theory of it but the hands-on, roll-up-your-sleeves, get-out-your-lexicons variety—recognized as a legitimate scholarly activity. In the United States, it's nearly impossible to make a living as an independent literary translator. It's almost as hard to get an academic job as one." Scary! In Egypt, you wouldn't even dream of getting a publishing house to approach you with a book translation of you do not have a PhD in the discipline you are translating about.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Swell Venuti

An article from Temple University talks about Lawrence Venuti's translation from Catalan of Ernest Farrés’s Edward Hopper , a work that has won Venuti the second annual Robert Fagles Translation Prize, sponsored by the National Poetry Series.

A leading theorist in his field, Venuti is at the forefront of what might be called a translation renaissance. Once invisible in their behind-the-scenes roles, translators are increasingly recognized in academic and publishing arenas for their contributions to the literary process.

The most prevalent translation strategy has been to adhere to the current standard dialect of the translating language, which is the most familiar and least noticeable to the reader. This kind of translation, according to Venuti, effaces the translator’s presence and erases cultural distinctions.

“Translation rewrites a foreign text in terms that are intelligible and interesting to readers in the receiving culture. Doing so is akin to committing an act of ethnocentric violence by uprooting the text from the language and culture that gave it life. Translating into current, standard English at once conceals that violence and homogenizes foreign cultures,” he said.

Ah! The white man's guilt complex...

Today, Venuti’s impressive collection of translations includes everything from Gothic tales to scandalous contemporary best-sellers. The stylistic innovations he undertakes in his translations are called “elegant” and “brilliant” by reviewers.

I assume his reviewers are bilingual translators.. Otherwise, they would have no clue what they are talking about anyway..

“When I devise a translation project, my aim is to write a translation that will make a linguistic and cultural difference in English,” he said.

You can't. You would have to destroy English as a language of power first. English sucks in differences, linguistic and cultural, like a sponge, making them its own without necessary having to acknowledge the debt.



The best part is the explanation of "swell" used by Venuti in this translated poem:

Face stern, hair
more or less blonde, eyes
with an inward-looking glint,
skin in the pink, wearing
a stare-till-you’re-bored attitude
in a black dress that hugged her breasts
and a pair of long legs, in good working order,
she looked real swell, sure enough,
and “independent,” as the saying goes.

The explanation of this AMAZING term states that..

Venuti’s translations purposely use non-standard English colloquialisms, slang and dialect, requiring the reader to read the translation as a translation. In the above poem, swell—not Standard English, not even contemporary slang—was commonly spoken by American painter Edward Hopper, so Venuti selected it when bringing this poem, which describes Hopper’s 1938 painting, from Catalan into English.

DUH? I am only half a century old, and "swell" was used this way in my teenage years, and is still used by some of my friends today.. Maybe the person who wrote the review should mingle a little with different classes of people in different places before she writes such stuff?

Translating The Book of Shapur

Julie Schwietert tells of how Leigh Shulman translated a novella written by one of her friends, an Iranian writer in exile, from Farsi into English - without knowing Farsi. Well, ok, the Iranian writer knew a fair bit of English..

Leigh Shulman is a traveler, writer, and translator currently living in Salta, Argentina, where she is developing an educational project to teach English through photography and technology. She is also editor of Matador Life. You can read more about Leigh and her travels on her blog, The Future Is Red.

An excerpt of their joint effort can be found here.

"First rule of translation, though, is the translator does not need the same level of fluency in the original language as the target language. We take the language, culture, ideology and thought process and pour it into the mold of the language we know best (...) The first step was to create a very raw and literal word-for-word translation of the piece. I sat in front of the computer typing out exactly what Ali told me. The product of that first step was completely incomprehensible, impossible to read.

Then step two. We smoothed the rough English into a real working English. Again, Ali and I sat side by side in his apartment in New York City. As we went through the sentences, I used my western United States view of the world to ask for specifics and clarification.

Language takes its culture along with it, so where ever possible we remain faithful to the original. Punctuation and sentence structure – which you’ll notice are often incorrect and misleading — follow the exact pattern of the Farsi. Alimorad designed the text this way intentionally to confuse and distract you as a reader, mimicking the way an exile feels while navigating a new land. (oh, postmodern deconstruction of our mental comfort zones).

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

The Tough Condition of Literary Translation in the USA

Why is it so hard for foreign authors to get published in the US? It’s clear to anyone working in international rights that the sophisticated marketplace involving scouts, rights sellers and foreign publishers that exists to get American books out into the world does not exist to the same degree in the other direction.

There are a number of explanations for this phenomenon, very few of which have to do with stereotypes of American readers as being culturally insulated or lacking curiosity about the outside world.

(a) First, there are the unforgiving economic calculations that publishers face in taking a translation to market.

(b) Apart from economics, the often cited reason for the difficult of placing translations with American publishers is the limited number of US editors who speak a foreign language. It costs a lot to have something translated and get it gussied up and ready for the American market. They have to decide, is it really a book that’s likely to find a US publisher anyway?

(c) There is no mature translation market for any one language in the English speaking world, and the fact that books coming into the American market come from many different countries and languages makes it harder for editors here to develop the expertise in what any market has to offer, and which books from that country have the best shot of appealing to American readers. The books that are sold for translation here are more likely to come through the handful of US agents with close ties to one region or another, who are themselves usually working through professional relationships with particular agents or publishers abroad. What books by foreign authors that end up crossing an American editor’s desk, then, depends in no small part on chance and good connections.

(d) The "commercial mindset" versus "cultural mission mindset" that is progressively seeing the later outbeat the first. This difficulty restricts the number of translations Weil is able to take on, while he struggles with the fact that this leaves American readers without access to some excellent writers.

To read this article in full go here.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Japanese SF in Translation - Interview

Nick Mamatas is the editor of the new Haikasoru line of Japanese SF in English translation. Here's what he has to say on the process of selecting which SF novels get the honour to be translated into English:

"Haikasoru’s editor-in-chief Masumi Washington reads Japanese SF (both magazines and books) widely and keeps an eye out for good titles. Then we commission quick translations of chapters and get synopses of, say, eight or ten books, and from there we’ll have some formal or informal discussions and pick three or four. We like to try a mix, so we try to be sure that we have a variety with each month of release."

And on the role of translators and editors?

"[Collaboration between the translator and the editor is] Certainly as integral as the editorial process is in a book published in an original language. A translation though, is a bit different because languages are conceptually different—English has much stricter rules as to what comprises a sentence for example—and tone can be a challenge. Natsuhiko Kyogoku, for example, uses a large number of very short sentences and sentence fragments in his work, creating haiku-like tonal effects over the course of hundreds of pages. In Japan, he even has a hand in the production of his own books, and tries to make sure that every page ends with a complete sentence, so that readers can stop if they wish to. Capturing all that in an utterly different language for readers with very different expectations as to pacing, characterization, the sorts and amount of information a narrator should give, etc. is very tricky. And the translator, unlike the author, cannot simply do wholesale rewrites to make something work. We’re playing a hand that has already been dealt. Then there’s the issue of translator skill; few have the ear of a novelist. That’s when I come in. I’ve managed to find some excellent creative translators, but can also nudge and pull and yank and tug at the work. So far I haven’t had to put in any footnotes to explain this or that untranslatable term or cultural reference, though part of my luck there has been the immense cultural exchange between Japan and the English-speaking world over the past two decades thanks to video games, manga, and anime."

(He endorses glossing and intervening in the text, I see.. I assume that is motivated by the fact that a brainier translation would not sell to no-brainers, and thus limit the market niche.)

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Two Years Later, Kalima Delivers Words in German

Good to see the project has not folded and is spreading into languages other than English. Here is an update from ME Online:

A workshop on the translation of poetry was held in the German city of Germersheim by Kalima, the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage translation project. The event was organized jointly with Department of German Language and Literature of the School of Translation, Languages and Cultures, Johannes Gutenberg University and the German Academy for Language and Literature.

The first day of the workshop, attended by the Director of Kalima, Dr Ali bin Tamim, witnessed heated discussions between elite group of Arab and German poets, critics, and translators. The issue was the translation of poetry in general, and German Poetry in particular.

A book exhibition was also held for the works translated jointly by Kalima and Johannes Gutenberg University.

"This workshop is only the beginning of a series of collaborative work conducted under the supervision of Mustapha Al Sulaiman, Professor of Interpretation at the Johannes Gutenberg University," said bin Tamim.

"The School of Translation, Languages and Cultures and Kalima are continuing their joint efforts to translate prose, poetry, children and youth literature, and books of thoughts from German in to Arabic," he added.

The scholars discussed various theoretical and practical subjects during the workshop, especially the important role played by translation as a bridge between cultures, the integration and differences in human creativity, and the relations between social values, culture and translation.

They highlighted the association of translation with the cultural needs, human creativity, and mutual recognition. They affirmed that translation is a cultural project by its own merits, a tool for cultures to complement each others, and an aim to form a humanity culture with creativity and mutual respect as its bases.

The workshop was attended by many poetesses and poets: Emiratis Nujoom Al Ghanem and Ahmed Rashed Thani; German Daniela Danz, Alreka Dresna, Ilma Rakuza, the German Academy for Language and Literature Chairman Klaus Reichert, Berlin Festival Director Joachim Sartorius, Kathryn Schmidt, Jan and Wagner; Syrian-German poet Adel Qarshuli; Moroccan poet Mohammed Benis, and Dr Faisal Darraj.

Writers, critics and translators participating in the workshop discussed the translation of poetry to be published by Kalima within its Modern German Poetry Anthology. The workshop concluded with a 'poetry night' with Arab and German poets reading verses of their poems on Arabic and German background music.

Meanwhile, the Mayor of Germersheim Dieter Hänlein received Kalima Director Dr Ali bin Tamim and the Cultural Attache of the UAE Embassy in Berlin along with the Dean of the School of Translation and the Chairman of the German Academy for Language and Literature. Hänlein emphasized the importance of the role played by Kalima in support of the translation movement in the Arab World, while he Chairman of the German Academy for Language and Literature highlighted the gains the German authors received by having their works translated and presented to the Arab-speaking audience.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Translation Prizes Go to Titles, Not Translators

The British Times article on the 10th talks about the August Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck prizes for Translation, presented by the Times Literary Supplement’s Translation Prizes:

"The translators of seven books published in English last year, each out of a different language, will be honoured. The paradox of their work is that successful translators pass unnoticed. A good English translation will read as if the book were written in English in the first place. A translation that is clumsy or stilted will scream its presence."

"Among this year’s award-winners, The Accordionist’s Son by Bernardo Atxaga, translated from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa, dramatises the Basque country after the Spanish Civil War. The novella Burning Secret by Stefan Zweig, translated from the German by Anthea Bell, is one in a series of recent translations of the work of an outstanding 20th-century writer. An Austrian Jew who committed suicide in exile in 1942, his library in Salzburg having been razed by the Nazis, Zweig is revered in France as well as Germany and Austria. Yet he is unjustly barely known among English readers."

Well, well.. Many excellent writers are unjustly barely known in the English world, because the English world is not interested of poking its nose into the realms of others, whereas it pushes its own literary and not so literary works (Why is Stephen King translated??) into any other language where the populace is silly enough to want to fork money for it.

This weekend, Brisbane is hosting yet another Bookfest - the world's largest fundraising second-hand book sale. It has been my habit to attend each and every and look for books translated into English from other languages. They open a more interesting world to me than reading the local same-thing, same-thing porridge. The reason why it is quite easy to find them is that local libraries get rid of them very quickly on the basis that they are not being borrowed by the public. Suits me!

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Other Languages in Translation - Why Not?

In his article in The National, Indian novelist and literary critic Chandrahas Choudhury speaks of the need to translate the various Indian languages into English to make the country's extremely rich literature available to the world. It is an informative article, and I strongly encourage people to read it before it disappears.

As a translator of Arabic works myself, one paragraph in the whole article struck me as the problem of translating not just Indian, but any non-English literature into that "global language". And the further the language is from England and the US (followed by Europe) the harder it is to get it done:

"When these tantalising benefits are in everyone’s sights, why hasn’t translation from India’s many vernacular languages into English flourished? Several reasons might be advanced. First, although most Indians are bilingual or trilingual, they are usually so in an instrumental and not a literary way, and lack the acute cross-linguistic sensitivity to registers and cadences on which translation depends. Distressingly, even Indian writers who read literature in two languages typically work only in one. Second, until very recently, publishers generally reasoned that since the market for literary fiction written in English was not particularly large, the audience for translations into English would be even smaller and less profitable. Finally, the heterogeneity of India’s linguistic landscape is itself inimical to the development of a nationwide culture of translation: it is difficult for a translator from language X, however talented, to say anything meaningful about a peer’s translation from language Y. Only in the last few years have there been concerted efforts to bring translators from different languages together to exchange ideas about their craft. All this had led to the flawed understanding (perpetrated most prominently by Salman Rushdie in his influential 1997 anthology of Indian literature, Mirrorwork) that Indian writing in English is the richest and most vigorous of Indian literatures, and that works in translation are to be read only out of duty, as a democratic concession to less competent spirits."

How true. Where are Polish masterpieces by Prus, Sienkiewicz, Slowacki, Reymont, etc. in English? Where are the complete works of Karl May? What about Bulgarian, Macedonian, Albanian or Romanian writers? Should I even bother mentioning languages such as Khmer or Thai? What about the myth that Arabs don't write, promulgated by the absolute disinclination of US and UK publishers to print anything that is not related to the breaking of "social taboos", while tons of literary heritage materials are waiting for a scholar to bring them to light? Oh, but who is going to read it??

A few weirdos like me. And since they are of no financial value to anyone, maybe weirdos like me should be allowed to translate them and put them online as a part of some literary world heritage website, maybe funded by UNESCO - but minus the dirty politics of what is fit to print? We would all end up understanding each other better?

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Arab Literature Breaks Taboos - in Translation

By Rayyan Al-Shawaf
From the Canadian The Globe and Mail - 02/-1/2010

A few weeks ago, Canada saw the English-language publication of Egyptian novelist Bahaa Taher's Sunset Oasis, which won the inaugural International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2008. This year's winner was Azazeel, by Egyptian scholar and novelist Youssef Ziedan. Both books deal with Egyptian history. Taher sets his story at the very end of the 19th century, shortly after his country was occupied by the British, while Ziedan turns to the 5th century AD for his tale of internecine Christian conflict in Roman Egypt.

While both books were published in Arabic to wide acclaim, such is not the case with many novels and short stories written in Arabic, Farsi, Turkish and other languages of the Middle East, which end up being censored or banned outright (the Coptic Orthodox church lobbied the Egyptian government unsuccessfully to have Ziedan's book banned).

As a result, the ability to write in a Western language, or the availability of translation services, becomes imperative for many authors. With the freedom so afforded, writers from across the region are incorporating all manner of taboo subjects into their fiction, and often simultaneously revealing the rich and varied cross-cultural influences that have shaped them. An overview of six recent novels exploring Middle Eastern topics highlights this phenomenon.

"I'm trying to come to terms with the Holocaust, something that would try the patience of God himself, and behind it all is the figure of my father." So wrote "Rachel" (Rachid Helmut Schiller) in his diary a few months after discovering that his late father, a German who settled in Algeria following the Second World War, helped produce the Zyklon B gas used by the Nazis to murder millions of Jews and others. Rachel has since committed suicide - having apparently subjected himself to the sentence he feels his father deserved - and alongside his diary we have that of his brother "Malrich" (Malek Ulrich Schiller), a former Islamic extremist who now sees Islamism and Nazism as two sides of the same coin. Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal's novel The German Mujahid, translated from the French by Frank Wynne, consists of both diaries.

(...)

Unlike Sansal, who lives in Algiers and writes in French, Salwa Al Neimi lives in Paris and writes in Arabic. The Syrian Al Neimi has penned a short but sizzling novel about a liberated Syrian woman's steamy sex life in France. The narrator of The Proof of the Honey unabashedly proclaims: "I have a physical need for water, semen, and words. The three things I need in life. I cannot exist without them." Throughout, she details her torrid sexual encounters with vigour, though her apparent lack of faith in love resurrects a tired and simplistic dichotomy.

The narrator's frustration with contemporary Arab culture's suppression of desire and her ambitious mission to re-sexualize the Arabic language can be traced to her sexual awakening, which began with the discovery of surprisingly explicit commentaries on the joys of sex composed by Arab writers centuries ago.

This aspect of the book proves fascinating, though sometimes in an unintended manner; that so many Arab intellectuals and artists feel compelled to justify their controversial works by depicting them as continuing an illustrious Arab tradition - as Al Neimi has done - points up the burdensome weight of history and heritage in Arab societies.

*****

Ironically, the punishments for lovers in Saudi Arabia, a country in good international standing, are just as severe, if not more so, than those in increasingly isolated Iran. The Consequences of Love, Eritrean Sulaiman Addonia's debut novel, is set in Jeddah. "I had been in this country for ten years," muses narrator Naser, a 20-year-old Eritrean refugee, "yet I had never talked to a girl or held a woman's hand."

All of that changes when a woman, her face and body concealed by the mandatory black abaya, begins passing notes to Naser, in which she writes forthrightly of her attraction to him. Naser dubs the girl "Fiore," Italian for flower (Italian colonialism in the Horn of Africa having left a lingering linguistic mark), and the two eventually progress beyond epistolary professions of love to an actual physical relationship.

The dangers are tremendous and ubiquitous; even when merely exchanging notes, Naser realizes that "just one careless moment could have me arrested by the religious police and that could lead to Punishment Square where lovers are lashed and sometimes even killed."

The fact that Fiore turns out to be beautiful reveals a lack of courage on Addonia's part, a quality that otherwise can be found in abundance throughout his novel. Indeed, not only does Addonia write frankly and movingly about forbidden love all the way through to the story's heart-wrenching and unflinchingly realistic ending, but he does so within the context of a scathing exposé of Saudi Arabia's myriad social ills: religious extremism, oppression of women, circumstantial homosexuality and exploitation of foreign labourers. The Consequences of Love is the real deal - passionate and potent.

*****

Kuwait isn't nearly as repressive as neighbouring Saudi Arabia - which is a good thing for headstrong Palestinian-Egyptian Nidali, the protagonist of A Map of Home, as she spends her childhood in Kuwait City. Randa Jarrar has crafted a warm, ribald and insightful evocation of life in Kuwait, Egypt and the US.

Much of the first half of the novel, however, is exasperatingly quaint, as precocious Nidali endures her parents' quarrels, hangs out with her diverse group of friends, and stuffs herself with za'tar burgers.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 infuses the heretofore languid tale with some much-needed drama, and the family's subsequent move to Egypt and later Texas allows Jarrar to explore cultural and linguistic acclimatization with a great deal of poignancy. Made aware in the US that she speaks a formal and somewhat stilted English, Nidali ruefully recalls "how in Egyptian my language was full of songs and lilts and catchy turns of phrase. I wished, then and for many months later, that I could translate the way I was, my old way of being, speaking, and gesturing, to English: to translate myself."

*******

Though one cannot speak of a unifying theme binding these very different novels together, all underscore the importance of Western languages, especially English, for authors writing from or about the Middle East. Written in French, The German Mujahid was banned in Boualem Sansal's native Algeria, but won the RTL-Lire prize in France. Though available in Lebanon - where it was published - Al Neimi's The Proof of the Honey was banned in several Arab countries (...) If Eritrean Addonia had not written his debut novel in English - his third language - from the safety of London, he might have met the same fate as several of the unfortunates in his novel, who suffer whippings and worse. And although it straddles cultures and, in a sense, languages, Jarrar's A Map of Home, with its frequently colloquial English and many Americanisms, to say nothing of its graphic descriptions of masturbation, would have had a hard time finding a home in the Arab world. In all instances, the publication of these books in English signifies the importance of this language for writers delving into controversial Middle Eastern subjects, and English-language readers are that much richer for it.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Translation and Its Artist

Surfing through blogs gets you to discover some fascinating people. Such as, for example, the Finnish Kersti Juva.

She is an Artist Professor. Artist Professors are appointed by the Central Arts Council, from among the candidates proposed by the National Councils of Arts, either until further notice or for a maximum of five years. It is required that the appointed person be considered a particularly competent artist on the basis of his or her earlier activities. Artist Professors have to practice creative, artistic work in their field. They can also lecture in universities and guide other artists.

Her art? Translation.

The list of books Kersti translated from English into Finnish is massive: 85. Among the names Tolkien features prominently, but other gems include AA Milne, L. Frank Baum, Laurie Lee, Alice Walker, Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde. She has won the Finnish Government Annual Award for Translation 1976 (Lord of The Rings and Watership Down) and 1986 (The Hobbit and Papermen) , Werner Söderstöm Publisher’s award 1997 (No One to Accompany Me), Suomi Award (Finnish Government Annual Award) 1998 (Tristram Shandy) , Agricola Prize for the best translation 1999 (Tristram Shandy) , Finnish nomination for the European Union Aristeion award 1999 (Tristram Shandy) , and the Finnish Cultural Fund Prize for Life's Work 2006.

"Translating can be described more or less like this: I dress myself in the original text and start to imitate the author’s gestures and movements . . . If one sets out from the premise that the translation must be the equivalent of the original text in another language, translating is impossible. A translation cannot empty the original into a new language. The true goal of a translation is not to resemble the original text, but to fill its place, or, perhaps better, to create a similar place within the target culture.”

You can read her ideas about translating literature here.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Translating Erotica

From the Concordia University Journal:

"On April 24, the Département d'études françaises hosted the Translating Erotica conference, bringing together academics and the public to consider the intricacies of converting the erotic text from one language to another.

"There are specificities of text that travel successfully across language and some that don't," said Études françaises professor and conference organizer Pier-Pascale Boulanger. "You could ask the same questions about humour; it's a cultural, historical and generational thing. We wanted to explore how erotic literature works in translation."

For example, she explains the word for 'hairy' in English may often have off-putting connotations, but the German term behaart merely means 'the presence of follicles on a man’s skin' – in directly translating the word, the effect on the reader may be counterproductive.
"The point of erotica is to, well, turn on the reader or at least catch their attention. If there's any text that isn't clear and slows the reader down, it needs to be taken out," Boulanger said. "It's like the instructions for Ikea furniture; you read them, build, and you have a result at the end."

For Montreal-native Boulanger, who has been at Concordia since 2005, the idea for the conference stemmed from teaching literary translation here at Concordia – a class she's taught for four sessions.

"Generally, students translate the classics, such as Shakespeare, but we don't really get to work on anything that's not considered literary." In an attempt to shake things up, she began her students translating dialogue from authors such as Dan Brown or Nick Hornby to gain practical experience. "But it got me thinking, how would you translate erotica? What would be the problems? Especially regarding with the masculine-feminine designation of objects in French."

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.