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The Egyptian writer and poet Iman Mersal
Egyptian writer and poet Iman Mersal said that the work of the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish is still the most translated from Arabic into European languages, followed by Syrian Adonis and Nizar Qabbani, and finally the Iraqi Saadi Yusuf.
This occurred at a lecture given Tuesday by the Egyptian poet at the American University in Cairo entitled "Translating Modern Arabic Poetry into English: Issues of the Political and Aesthetic Context".
She stressed that Palestine was at the forefront of translated English poetry from the 70s to the 70s, where she had fallen for Iraq, especially in 2002 and Lebanon, and that after 2011, Arab countries that had experienced revolutions in the Arab Spring held the lion's share of works translated from poets have not published works since. More than ten years and considered their poems translated to describe the events of the Arab Spring.
Mersal asserted that the translation experiences of modern Arabic poetry in English were related to what she called the concept of "kitsch", a definition called translation of a literary or artistic work for reasons related to political circumstances and not to aesthetic considerations.
The author of the book "How to heal: about motherhood and ghosts" that the oldest Arabic translates into English is the book "Arabian Nights", which reflects the image of sex and instincts and instincts of the Orientals, emphasizing that the goal of translation is to defend the English novel in its audacity against the conservatives Great Britain.
She added that the translation of literary works in the context of kitsch links the book and its owner to a certain identity, which is not limited to Arabs but also to foreign writers whose work has been put in these molds, namely the opposition, as the writer of East Europe, opponent or opponent of communism.
Mersal asked several questions during his lectures on English translations of Arabic poetry: Who translates? Who publishes? What is the target group of the translation?
The answer to these questions raises several paradoxes: the first is that the number of translators of Arabic poetry for foreign languages is higher than the number of foreign translators transferred in their mother tongue. Institutions that translate in Arab countries are more than houses of foreign edition.
Mersal pointed out that translated Arabic poetry was dominated by some timings, notably the theme of the war, adding that the most prominent publishers were translating into the Arab world Iraqi Dar Mamoun and Egypt's General Book Authority.
She explained that only 10% of translated Arabic poetry books were published in an publishing house interesting to poetry or specialized in it.
Mersal answered the question: "Is the concept of kitsch necessary and moral?" To say that kitsch was necessary and ethical, although at first it diverged with the way Arabic works were chosen for translation, became aware of its importance. , particularly with regard to humanitarian issues.
Iman Mersal is an Egyptian writer and poet. His poems have been published since the early 90s in independent magazines such as Locusts and Other Books.
She left Egypt to settle in Boston in 1998 after working as a writer in Cairo's literary and critical magazine, after a master's degree in Arabic literature entitled "Sufi Sufism in Adonis Poetry", and then Boston, Alberta, Canada, where she is Assistant Professor in Arabic Literature. Middle East at the University of Alberta.
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