Arabic literature in translation is a cloudy, complex mirror

Translating great literature is not simply a case of choosing the right words, says Tarek Ghanem – in fact, it's more like restoring an ancient treasure

The Nobel Prize Exhibition at the Annex Burj Khalifa. A banner depicts Naguib Mahfouz, who was the first native Arab speaker to win the Nobel Price for Literature. Antonie Robertson / The National

Let’s assume that you are completely and equally fluent in two languages. Someone gives you two books as a gift – one is a book you are genuinely interested in reading, while the second is an excellent translation of the same book in the other language in which you are equally fluent. Which one would you read, and why?

This hypothetical question serves as a good introduction to the rather thorny subject of translation.

A cursory look at translation studies’ books and general debates on the subject demonstrates that, first, the profession of translation has undergone several transformations and, second, these debates are anything but settled.

In relation to the foregoing question, personally, throughout the years I’ve been translating between Arabic and English, I have done all conceivable combinations – reading both original and high-quality translations of the same book in both Arabic and English.

But first, are conversations about translation even still relevant? Of course they are. As an industry, translation is expected to grow by 42 per cent between 2010 and 2020, according to the United States Bureau of Statistics.

In the UK’s substantial fiction market, translated books amounted to 5 per cent last year, marking a 96 per cent increase since the beginning of the second millennium.

The Arab world, particularly GCC countries, have witnessed the introduction of many awards for translation, including the Sheikh Zayed Book Award and Sharjah Book Authority awards.

So what is the formula for producing a decent translation? Is it literary skills and the language expertise of the translator in the target language?

The answer to these questions is related to what makes translated books so much in demand – and it is hiding in plain sight. The answer is analogous to why someone who is fluent in any pair of languages would almost always choose the original work over a perfect translation. It is attending to an innate quest to acquire meaning, which translates into a need to actually learn about an unfamiliar culture.

People will reach for the original because it is foreign and unknown, or because the original work has linguistic or cultural particularities. Usually a translation is valued because the language is easier. (And it is only a studious and erudite translator who will have the patience to study both books side-by-side.)

Of course translation is a creative craft in and of itself, but its main objective is to “try to reflect the original text as closely as possible – to make the reader hear a voice that is distinctive”, as Humphrey Davies, the renowned British translator of Arabic texts, once wrote.

In the same way that metaphors involving mirrors and optical illusions permeate philosophy, so Davies applies the metaphor of mirrors and reflection to translation, arguing that a translation is like a vision in the mirror: not identical, subtly changed, but recognisable vis-à-vis the original.

But since any text is a product of linguistic, psychological, and socio-economic backdrops, which are never identical in any two given places, what does this mean for us – both as readers and translators?

A savvy translator is someone who is capable of being masterfully invisible and delivering the author’s voice as is, with all its energy, puns, uniqueness, and even awkward moments.

Commenting on the occasional strangeness of the English translation of Edwar Al Kharrat’s Rama and the Dragon, the book’s translators wrote that the intricate sentence structure and lyrical indulgence are “equally strange and innovative in [the original] Arabic fiction”.

Thus, as a craft, translation requires linguistic muscles, clever idiomatic substitution, cultural diplomacy and the tricky business of contextualisation.

A professor of translation studying at the Sorbonne recently told me about the dissimilar reader experience she had between the French and English translations of Alaa Al Aswani’s The Yacoubian Building.

In the French version, the translator volunteered to provide many footnotes with commentary, including a 10-line footnote with his take on hijab in Muslim culture and its history. Regardless of what the translator has to say and the quality of his translation, why not trust the reader and allow him to consider, ignore, overlook or deeply and autonomously engage with any aspect of the work, and with the context in which it takes place?

This belittles the reader’s intelligence – and is a good example of how to obstruct, if not ruin, the reader’s experience.

There is an interesting parallel between translation and monument conservation.

Earlier approaches to treating antiquities used to intervene using modern materials to restore a monument to how it was thought to look.

Of course, that method erased much historical and archaeological data. As time advanced, the perspective changed to safeguarding the character-defining elements of the monuments and preserving them “as is”.

Approaches to translation have also changed in an analogous fashion. Previously, it was not uncommon to tamper with texts for the sake of political correctness or because of theological or moral concerns.

Today, tastes have changed. The job of a good translator is now to stay in the background, which requires an indispensable need for fluency in the target language. The more invisible the translator, the better the translation.

Although there is now widespread agreement that translators should be invisible, there is still much discussion about translation and its methods, its objectives and its approaches. Indeed, with recent developments in technology and the internet, such discussions are more pervasive and important than ever.

In many ways, Arab civilisation and intellectual history is the fruit of a critical engagement with the “other”, taking place between two translation-based intellectual projects.

The first was the Translational Movement in the 12th century during the golden age of Islam, which rediscovered and engaged with the Greek classics.

The second took place in Spain, which translated Arabic intellectual and scientific texts into European languages, thereby allowing Europe to discover them.

As for modern translations into Arabic, there is evidence that the gloomy picture that the Arab Human Development report of 2002 portrayed is getting brighter, albeit slightly. Translations into and from Arabic are surging.

In literature, there has been growing interest in Arab literature since Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel prize in literature in 1988, and it is currently venturing beyond fiction into various progressive and contemporary writings.

Political events that have exacerbated East-West tensions have also amplified interest in Arabic academic and media productions. At the same time, political tensions colour how books are received and read. It is not only in translation that meanings can be lost.

Tarek Ghanem is the commissioning editor of AUC Press and director of Meta-Lingual, an Arabic-English translation company