Interviews

On the Field of Arabic Studies

On the Field of Arabic Studies
Translator-scholar Jonas Elbousty talks with Roger Allen about his journey in the field of Arabic Studies ...

Translation and Solidarity in Times of Imperial Mass Violence

Translation and Solidarity in Times of Imperial Mass Violence
In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Elliott Colla look into two dimensions of translation, which Colla calls the solidaristic and the hegemonic, and the particular role translation has played in the US military ...

Samar Yazbek on Redefining Collective Memory

Samar Yazbek on Redefining Collective Memory
"Sometimes, I believe that silence itself could carry meaning in the face of this barbarity. Sometimes, I tell myself that I’ll stop documenting atrocities and only write literature. But all of this only makes sense in the context of our desire for justice, our desire to preserve the true essence of humanity." ...

In Conversation: Songs as Memory, as Solidarity, as Resistance

In Conversation: Songs as Memory, as Solidarity, as Resistance
Iman Humaydan, Michelle Hartman, and Emma Hardy discuss the new translation of Iman’s book "Songs for Darkness" and songs as a tool for the transmission of memory, of solidarity, and as a method of resistance ...

Translating Noir: On ‘The End of Sahara’

Translating Noir: On 'The End of Sahara'
In this conversation with ArabLit’s Tugrul Mende, translator Alex Elinson talks about how literary prizes affect the translation landscape, the draw of detective novels, and how he hones voice in a novel with many starring characters ...

Said Khatibi and the Algerian Crime Novel

Said Khatibi and the Algerian Crime Novel
Algerian novelist Said Khatibi talks with us about his latest novel, and the conversation turns to organ theft, the global shifts in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and what he hopes to illuminate with crime novels: not the whodunit, but the why ...

On Translating Jabra Ibrahim Jabra

On Translating Jabra Ibrahim Jabra
Will Tamplin has devoted much of his work in translation to sharing the literary world of the exceptionally complex Jabra Ibrahim Jabra. In this interview, Tamplin explores his motivation behind this continuous dedication to Jabra’s work, as he dives into his experience translating The Other Rooms ...

Omani Literature and the Translator as Intruder 

Omani Literature and the Translator as Intruder 
In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Zia Ahmed discuss approaching Arabic translation via English and Urdu, the layers of "outsider-ness" in translation, and the boom of narrative fiction in Oman ...

Sinan Antoon’s ‘Of Loss and Lavender’

Sinan Antoon's 'Of Loss and Lavender'
In this conversation over e-mail, Sinan Antoon talks about the novel, the fraught nature of collective memory, the process of self-translation, and the sort of “security checkpoints” a book must pass through in the process of translation ...

Translating Arabic Polyglossia

Translating Arabic Polyglossia
In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Jonathan Wright discuss Wright's start in literary translation, its divergence from the sort of translation he practiced as a journalist, and his ideas about what he calls Arabic polyglossia ...