Arabic Translation Arab Literature in English The late Edward Said used to complain of a tacit conspiracy against Arab literature in translation, a complaint supported by much anecdotal evidence. However it has to be considered in a wider context. The Anglo-Saxon world has not been hugely curious about the literatures of other cultures. nthusiasts for Dutch, Finnish, Korean or Chinese literature can make similar complaints about the neglect or marginalisation of those cultures.  | |
One Thousand and
One Nights | Both Arabs and western Arabists have argued that there are particular problems with Arabic literature. Arabic, as the language of revelation for Muslims, has a special prescriptive status among Muslims who comprise over 90% of Arabs. There have been arguments about alien cultural reference points. But an outstanding work of Arabic literature such as One Thousand and One Nights has become part of western culture. It has influenced writers such as Charles Dickens. The wildly derivative story of ‘Aladdin and his Magic Lamp’ is part of every child’s mental and imaginative furniture, and has been the subject of pantomimes in London for nearly 200 years. Moreover the literature of fantasy, science fiction – the writings of Tolkien and Philip Pullman – equally make demands on the imagination. Some writings of contemporary Arabic have been accepted as part of the canon of international literature. The Cairo trilogy of the Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz has sold more copies in English than the whole of Mahfouz’s work in Arabic. The Sudanese Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, first translated by Denys Johnson-Davies 40 years ago, has recently been republished as one of the Penguin Library of Modern Classics. Two other writers – the Lebanese Hanan al-Shaykh and the late Saudi Abdel-Rahman Munif – have been regularly published by mainstream western publishers. But the great majority of contemporary Arab literature in the last 50 years has been published by niche publishers. Such publishers – Quartet Books and Saqi in the United Kingdom, Interlink, the University of Texas at Austin and Three Continents Press in the United States – have produced outstanding work. But their productions have had small print-runs and the publishing houses have lacked the resources of promotion and distribution of the larger mainstream publishers. Today the leading publisher of contemporary Arabic literature in English is the American University in Cairo Press. Their list is excellent. They have now published the whole works of Naguib Mahfouz, covering nearly 70 years of creativity. Although there is an emphasis on Egyptian literature, the AUC Press has not neglected the rest of the Arab world. In the last 15 years, the quality of their productions has vastly improved. The Press distribute 80% of their publications from Cairo, 15% in the United States and only 5% in the United Kingdom and Europe. There are great possibilities for expansion there. If we look at the increase of publications in the last 50 years we note that there was only a trickle of publications in the 50s, 60s and 70s. The award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Naguib Mahfouz in 1988 transformed that. The global literary world became aware that Mahfouz was not the only writer. Each year from the 90s onwards, 20 or more works of contemporary Arab literature are published in English – in the United States, the United Kingdom and Egypt. In the 1970s, a Palestinian poet and critic, Salma Khadra Jayyusi, set up the Project for the Translation of Arabic (PROTA). She cajoled money from various sources and has sponsored 20 or more volumes of Arabic in translation. She has persuaded several publishers to publish and, under PROTA, work has been published by the Palestinians Liana Badr and Yahya Yakhlif, the Libyan Ibrahim al-Koni, the Yemeni Zaid Mutee. Dr Jayyusi has also published several huge anthologies of contemporary literature, the most recent being Modern Arabic Fiction, over 1,000 pages long, published by Columbia University Press in 2005. The other significant development has been the magazine, Banipal, which has appeared three times a year since 1998. Nearly 300 contemporary Arab authors have seen their work in English. The magazine has not been academic, but has included news stories, reviews, photographs, profiles as well as translations. Margaret Obank and Samuel Shimon have built up a unique network of writers and translators in all parts of the world. It has broken out of the restricted niche of Middle Eastern specialists and arranged successful tours around Britain of Arab writers such as Mourid Barghouti and Saadi Youssef. More recently it has been publishing collections of work that has appeared in the magazine. And most recently it has launched the Banipal Prize for Translation, with support from the poet from the United Arab Emirates, Muhammad al-Suwaidi. Last month it won an award for being the seventh (out of over 100) best literary magazine. from
http://www.literarytranslation.com/workshops/arabictranslation/arabliteratureinenglish/
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