{"id":298746,"date":"2014-07-21T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2014\/07\/21\/translation-a-reciprocal-process-interview-with-kareem-james-abu-zeid-on-nothing-more-to-lose-by-najwan-darwish\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T15:12:35","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T15:12:35","slug":"translation-a-reciprocal-process-interview-with-kareem-james-abu-zeid-on-nothing-more-to-lose-by-najwan-darwish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2014\/07\/21\/translation-a-reciprocal-process-interview-with-kareem-james-abu-zeid-on-nothing-more-to-lose-by-najwan-darwish\/","title":{"rendered":"Translation, A Reciprocal Process [Interview with Kareem James Abu-Zeid on "Nothing More to Lose" by Najwan Darwish]"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s always interesting to read a translator’s commentary on his or her translation process. For me personally, hearing how other translators think and work only adds to my personal work and experience, alternately showing me approaches or tactics that don’t work for me and showing me approaches and tactics that I’m not alone in using or obsessing over. The below interview between Liz Kelley and translator Kareem James Abu-Zeid came to us in lieu of a review, as Liz and Kareem are friends as well as colleagues in the world of Arabic literature. I won’t write too much more so as not to steal any thunder from Liz’s own intro to the interview, but one of my favorite parts is Kareem’s thoughts regarding “faithfulness to a text“\u2014which, I might add, are backed up by the thoughts and reactions of the author, Najwan Darwish, himself.<\/em><\/p>\n

The interview also includes a few poems from the collection\u2014all translated by Abu-Zeid\u2014for your reading intrigue. And if you like what you see, make sure to pick up the entire collection<\/a> here.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Translation, A Reciprocal Process<\/strong><\/p>\n

Earlier this month I spoke to Kareem James Abu-Zeid, the translator of Nothing More to Lose<\/em>, a collection of poems by Najwan Darwish published in the New York Review Books poetry series. Darwish is a celebrated and well-renowned poet whose poems have been translated into at least fifteen languages. Trained as a lawyer, Darwish has also worked as an editor, cultural critic, and has been active in arts organizations in Palestine and the Arab world. In addition to translating this book of poetry by Darwish, Abu-Zeid has translated several novels from Arabic, by authors such as Rabee Jaber and Tayel Eltayeb, as well as a poetry collection by Dunya Mikhail.<\/p>\n

During our conversation, Kareem shared with me his translation process, which was quite collaborative with the poet. He discussed his implicit rule for translating (\u201cIf it sounds translated, I\u2019ve done it wrong\u201d), the way that the back-and-forth of the translation process was productive and beneficial not only for the English poems but even, in some cases, for the Arabic, and why he finds translating poetry more fun than translating prose. We discussed the mechanics of selecting poems and the puzzle of organizing them into a cohesive collection. The book takes its name from its first poem, which is not only beautifully translated here, but also encapsulates the nuance and complexity of the collection as a whole. <\/p>\n

\n

Nothing More to Lose<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Lay your head on my chest and listen
\nto the layers of ruins
\nbehind the madrasah of Saladin
\nhear the houses sliced open
\nin the village of Lifta
\nhear the wrecked mill, the lessons and reading
\non the mosque\u2019s ground floor
\nhear the balcony lights
\ngo out for the very last time
\non the heights of Wadi Salib
\nhear the crowds drag their feet
\nand hear them returning
\nhear the bodies as they\u2019re thrown, listen
\nto their breathing on the bed
\nof the Sea of Galilee
\nlisten like a fish
\nin a lake guarded by an angel
\nhear the tales of the villagers, embroidered
\nlike kaffiyehs in the poems
\nhear the singers growing old
\nhear their ageless voices
\nhear the women of Nazareth
\nas they cross the meadow
\nhear the camel driver
\nwho never stops tormenting me
\nHear it
\nand let us, together, remember
\nthen let us, together forget
\nall that we have heard<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Lay your head on my chest:
\nI\u2019m listening to the dirt
\nI\u2019m listening to the grass
\nas it splits through my skin . . . <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

We lost our heads in love
\nand have nothing more to lose<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Liz Kelley: I\u2019ve heard you say that the translation process with Najwan Darwish was collaborative. Could you describe the translation process for these poems? How involved was he?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kareem Abu-Zeid: What I usually start with, and I think a lot of translators do this, is trying to understand everything going on in the poem, to get the bare meaning on the page.
\nThat obviously involves asking Najwan a lot of questions, depending on the poem; sometimes it\u2019s very straightforward. But then, once that first step has been taken, once I feel like I know everything going on in the poem\u2014it doesn\u2019t mean I actually do\u2014but once I have the impression that I do, I will try to create a poem in English out of it. <\/p>\n

In that first stage, I as the translator often go quite free, in order to make it as poetic as possible in English. My main rule in translating, that really, in some ways trumps all other rules, is that if it sounds like it was translated, I\u2019ve done it wrong. <\/p>\n

I think that\u2019s a big problem especially with Arabic, a lot of the stuff sounds translated, and you can tell that the translators are sticking to the word order in the Arabic, the way the expressions are formed in Arabic, even grammatical constructions that don\u2019t work the same way in English. <\/p>\n

So I\u2019d produce a text that was often quite free, then I\u2019d send it back to Najwan, and that would usually begin a bit of a back and forth. Maybe he\u2019d ask me: \u201cWhy did you translate this like this?\u201d or he\u2019d say: \u201cThis is too free\u201d or \u201cActually, this isn\u2019t what I meant to say here, you\u2019ve gotten this wrong.\u201d Through that back and forth, eventually we\u2019d come to something we were both really happy with. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m lucky with Najwan in that he\u2019s done some translating himself, and for him the main thing is not mirroring every word of the Arabic in English. For him, the main concern is for it to be poetry in English. If that means that a little bit of the literal meaning of the Arabic is sacrificed, then that\u2019s what happens.<\/p>\n

Also, I think his poetry allows for a certain freedom within the translation, which is really nice. There\u2019s a lot of room for it. There are some poets who are bit more direct. With Najwan, his poetry lent itself quite well to that type of process.<\/p>\n

LK: Do you have any examples of what that process, the back and forth, looks like? Any particular poems from this collection?<\/strong> <\/p>\n

KAZ<\/span>: This is hard because it gets into the nitty-gritty stuff of language. What tends to happen in the back and forth is that my translation winds up getting closer to the Arabic, usually.<\/p>\n

One other thing, with regard to collaboration: Najwan usually doesn\u2019t publish his poems in books in Arabic. He\u2019s had a couple books come out, but he often publishes in magazines, journals and stuff, and a lot of the poems that made it into this book were fairly recent ones. One of the cool things about translating him is that I feel like his poetry seems to get better over time. Some of his poems from 10 or 15 years ago, when he was just starting to write, were a bit more direct, and even a bit angrier. The newer ones, I find to be much more powerful and more interesting. <\/p>\n

I was translating texts that he hadn\u2019t really published yet in Arabic even. Or if he had it was in journals, not in book form. One tends to think of the poem as fixed when it is in a book. Occasionally, through our work, he would change the Arabic. It didn\u2019t happen all that often, but it happened in a few instances, where the Arabic would be changed slightly after the back and forth about the English translation. So that was kind of neat to see that, too. <\/p>\n

In that respect, there is a lack of editing that happens in the Arabic speaking world. It\u2019s much more pronounced with novels, you get a lot of novels that have this potential to be something amazing, and they turn into something mediocre or good, but not amazing, because no editor in the English sense of the word has been there to say: this part is weak, cut this 40 pages, etc., etc. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s been good in that with some of the poems, the translation process almost worked as an editing process as well. That was with a few of them, not too many. It was satisfying to me because I see, much more with novels than with poetry, I see the great potential that has been wasted. Even with some of the best novelists of the Arabic-speaking world, I think if they had an editor go through this, someone who does this professionally, you could have had something amazing. You could really be at 100% in terms of quality\u2014whatever that means\u2014and instead you\u2019re left with 70%. <\/p>\n

LK: I find that process to be super fascinating, for translation to be a reflective reading process, to provide that growth for the original and translation. Could you say a few more words about that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KAZ<\/span>: Najwan, of all the Arab writers I\u2019ve translated, is the one least in need of an editor, he knows how to do it himself, because he\u2019s an editor himself. With him, much less so than any of the other projects I\u2019ve worked on, he doesn\u2019t actually need it. But, what\u2019s great is that because he\u2019s an editor, he\u2019s open to it if something comes up. He\u2019ll even give me a text, and say, \u201cI\u2019m not sure about this one,\u201d or \u201cI\u2019m not sure this one really works.\u201d Occasionally, you have the texts that work great in Arabic, and I can\u2019t get them to go in English.<\/p>\n

Since this was a selected poems collection, there was an advantage there in that I could let go of those texts. They didn\u2019t have to go in the book if they didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

LK: Could you tell me a bit more about the genesis of this collection? How did you choose the poems?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KAZ<\/span>: I\u2019d been translating Najwan\u2019s stuff for several years: first for a poetry festival in San Francisco, then for a literary festival in Holland, just here and there, then for a couple journals once we had a relationship. Then, I read some of the poems at a literary translator\u2019s residency in Banff where we did a couple of informal reading nights. I wasn\u2019t working on this project there; I was working on a novel by Rabee Jaber. But, we did a few informal reading nights where we were supposed to read whatever we wanted, not necessarily what we were working on there. And I read some poems of Najwan\u2019s that I had translated. One of the editors of NYRB<\/span> (Jeffrey Yang) was there, because he\u2019s also a poet and some of his poetry was being translated into German. So he was there and he said, \u201cWe\u2019ve got this poetry series that we\u2019re doing, I think this would be good for the series.\u201d I was excited about that prospect because I am trying not to translate, or translate less, for specialized presses that work just on Arabic. <\/p>\n

NYRB<\/span> have only had a few books come out with this series, major European poets, an Indian poet, all in translation and very high quality. I think the last one that came out before Najwan\u2019s was by Pierre Riverdy, and it was a big collection of poems by him. So that\u2019s where the idea for a selected poems collection came out. Even though the book is not called \u201cSelected Poems,\u201d that\u2019s what it is. Many books in the series are selected poems and don\u2019t have a title, just the name of the poet. We decided to give this one a title because we thought \u201cNothing more to lose\u201d kind of encapsulated the collection. That was actually a poem that Najwan wrote after much of the book was done, and then that one came and we were like \u201cOh, we have a title for the book now.\u201d<\/p>\n

LK: Tell me a bit more about \u201cNothing More to Lose\u201d? Was it a new poem? How did you choose it as the title?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KAZ<\/span>: It\u2019s funny because I think sometimes Najwan doesn\u2019t even know which of his poems are stronger and weaker. As soon as I read it, I knew it would be very close to the beginning of the book, if not the first poem. And then we wound up making it the title poem! When Najwan and I talked about having a title for the book\u2014did we even want a title for the book?\u2014 \u201cNothing More to Lose\u201d was the only one that really stuck. We threw a couple things out, but there wasn\u2019t really even another candidate. It was either that or there wasn\u2019t going to be a title for the book.<\/p>\n

That was one of my favorites, because with \u201cNothing More to Lose,\u201d you think it\u2019s a collection all about loss, which makes sense in the Palestinian context, and that\u2019s true. But then when you actually read that poem, the end is very different and it\u2019s a little big ambiguous. The end is this, almost a moment of love. So that was another reason I liked that as the title poem, because you think it\u2019s going to be one thing and then when you actually read the poem, it\u2019s more complex than that. . . .<\/p>\n

I have to say, it was fun. I\u2019d never done a selected poems collection before. Getting to order the poems was fun. It was something I\u2019d never done before. How do you order poems in a collection? What makes sense? What doesn\u2019t? <\/p>\n

LK: Was this a conversation you had with Najwan?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KAZ<\/span>: The ordering of them? No, Najwan, chimed in after I had established the order, and then I shifted a few things around. I guess it was a conversation I had with him, but only after I had come up with a preliminary order. Then we did this back and forth thing that was almost like working on a translation. <\/p>\n

I tried to vary it up. It was actually kind of fun: the whole book was printed out, and I laid them out on the floor of my house. I could see all the poems together, and kept shuffling them around. It was kind of like a puzzle. I tried to keep it varied. And I wanted to frontload, at least the first 15-20 pages to be what I considered the strongest in the collection. And then of course you want to end with a very strong poem, and that sort of stuff. There are certain themes and motifs that recur. I almost categorized the poems according to those themes, and then for the most part made sure I didn\u2019t have five poems right after another all dealing with, for instance, the Christ image. Or some of his earlier poems are more about resistance in a literal, military sense, and I didn\u2019t want all of those to be together, either. It didn\u2019t really make sense doing it chronologically, because I thought most of his stronger poems were more recent ones, from 2007\/2008 on. I didn\u2019t want all the prose poems together either. There\u2019re a few prose poems in that book, and some of them are quite long. It was just kind of keeping the variety in there.<\/p>\n

LK: You mentioned that in some cases, the back and forth resulted in a change to the Arabic? Can you give an example of that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KAZ<\/span>: In the first poem, there was something that we changed in the second to last stanza, \u201cLay your head on my chest\u201d was the same \u201cI\u2019m listening to the dirt \/ I\u2019m listening to the grass \/ as it splits through my skin\u201d I don\u2019t remember exactly what it was in the Arabic, but I know those two lines changed. All the changes were minor. It wasn\u2019t like rewriting the whole poem; but that image was slightly better or slightly more powerful this way. There was grass involved, but it wasn\u2019t splitting through the skin, it was doing something else. But it was interesting because when I translated, that was the image I saw, grass coming up through this corpse, so I put it there. It was an unintentional effect of the Arabic, and then Najwan decided to make the unintentional effect slightly more intentional. I kind of saw the potential in the Arabic and brought it out in the English, and he said \u201cOh, ok, that wasn\u2019t quite what I meant, but let\u2019s keep that\u201d and then he made some slight modification to bring out that part of the image a bit more clearly. So in a way it might have been a misreading of the Arabic.<\/p>\n

LK: But a rich and rewarding misreading! . . . Are there poems that you\u2019re particularly proud of? That you think were particularly strong, or particularly clever, fun to translate?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KAZ<\/span>: I front-loaded the ones that were my favorites, for the most parts, some are scattered around the rest of the book. The first 15 or 20 were my favorites. I really love \u201cJerusalem II,\u201d it begins: \u201cWhen I leave you I turn to stone, \/and when I come back to you I turn to stone.\u201d I really liked that a lot. I\u2019m proud of that one because it stayed fairly close to the Arabic, and more than many of my other translations, there was a very clear rhythm in the Arabic and I captured a very close equivalent to that rhythm in the English. And that doesn\u2019t often happen in English. The Arabic was almost iambic at times, and I was able to keep that. The lines in that one\u2014usually I\u2019ll gravitate toward shorter lines\u2014but in that one I kept the longer lines.<\/p>\n

It kind of went against many of the things I usually do when translating, such as shorten lines. But Arabic is a very compact language, in many ways, and English will most of the time need more words. This means that the English translations very often have more lines than the Arabic. With Najwan, that\u2019s not always the case, but it is often the case. With other poets even more so. . . .<\/p>\n

I have to say I was also really happy with the first one, \u201cNothing More to Lose,\u201d partly because you don\u2019t really need the notes. Obviously there are notes in the back that explain specific references, so in that one there\u2019s Wadi Salib, there\u2019s madrasah of Saladin, there\u2019s the village of Lifta, which are all very specific references. The village of Lifta is a weird case where a whole village was, for whatever reason, left standing. They didn\u2019t raze it. And yet nobody can live there. It\u2019s a very, very specific reference that for a Palestinian has a very clear resonance, it might be the only example of something like that happening in the Arab world. And then you have Wadi Salib, where you have a similar thing; it\u2019s a neighborhood in Haifa, where again the Israelis for whatever reason didn\u2019t destroy these houses, they cemented them shut. So you have these weird cement boxes just standing there, almost as a memorial. <\/p>\n

There\u2019re notes in the back about all this, but what I liked about \u201cNothing More to Lose,\u201d is that I think it still works in English even without those references. The context of the poem tells you about those even if you don\u2019t see the notes. And that\u2019s rare where you don\u2019t need the references. You don\u2019t trip over it in English. So I was really happy with that one because that\u2019s one of the really hard things about Najwan\u2019s book in particular is that there\u2019s a lot of very specific references, and that\u2019s why we put the notes in the back. And yet I think even the references that are specific to Arab culture, those poems still work without the reader necessarily knowing what that reference is. All of those cases made me happy, but I think it worked particularly well with the title poem. <\/p>\n

LK: Its interesting to hear you talk about \u201cJerusalem II,\u201d that one of the things that\u2019s strong and successful about it is that it sticks close to the Arabic and recaptures the rhythm of the Arabic and the number of lines is at parity with the English. But your earlier comments were about a \u201cfreer\u201d or looser translation style about sounding poetic in English.<\/strong><\/p>\n

KAZ<\/span>: I don\u2019t want to go free, but usually, literal translation sounds really, really bad. The last two months, in my work as I freelance editor, I\u2019ve done two projects where I\u2019ve edited a translation that someone has done from the Arabic, but the whole thing, I\u2019m not even really looking at the Arabic, it\u2019s just turning a very literal translation into something that reads a bit better in English. It\u2019s very rare that you can stick that close and keep it sounding poetic and fluid and not sound like a translated text, where you don\u2019t get the sense that \u201coh, this doesn\u2019t sound quite right.\u201d There\u2019s a lot of that, in my opinion, in Arabic novels translated into English, and a lot of the poetry. The few big anthologies that have come out, they\u2019re great for academics, they mirror the Arabic lines, but they don\u2019t read poetically. But they\u2019re at university presses. In my opinion, most of them are not poetry in English. The academic project is wonderful and great, but if that\u2019s how we translate Arabic into English, then the only people who are going to read these translations are people who are already interested in the Arabic-speaking world, or are academics. I\u2019m trying to break that mold a little bit as a translator, in whatever way I can. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a disservice to the original poetry. People are trying to stay close and be faithful, but I think you end up with these unreadable, or very flat translations that aren\u2019t poetic, where the Arabic was poetic. Poetry is a set of effects, in addition to meaning. It irks me a lot when I see these amazing poets who just get flattened out in English, and it\u2019s usually by accident. It comes from a good place, that\u2019s the thing. The desire is to be faithful to the text, to keep the line breaks the same. But the conventions are totally different in Arabic poetry and English, even in the modern era, so you can\u2019t do that. I don\u2019t think it is possible to keep it the same and have it be an accurate translation.<\/p>\n

LK: How do you deal with rhythm and meter?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KAZ<\/span>: As close as I can keep it to the Arabic, I do. But the problem is you often can\u2019t. This [Jerusalem II] was a very rhythmic poem by Najwan. Not all of his poems have that rhythm. In terms of rhythm, there\u2019s almost a set meter in this one, which he usually doesn\u2019t do. . . . In general in translation, rhythm is one of the hardest things to carry over. When you do carry it over, it\u2019s usually not the same rhythm that was in the original. It usually can\u2019t be because meter works very differently in Arabic than in English. <\/p>\n

But \u201cJerusalem II,\u201d reading it out loud, that one in particular works. It was lucky because it was one of the earlier poems I translated by him, and I had a chance to read it at a few different places in English and Arabic. That process helped me tweak the translation for the book. Reading it out loud in Arabic and then in English and really helped. That\u2019s not all that often the case, when I think about some of the other poems. That\u2019s a poem that, more than others, is meant to be read out loud, rather than a text to be read. Maybe that\u2019s why the cadence was so important there. All poetry is written to be read out loud, but there\u2019s a difference between \u201cJerusalem II,\u201d and then say, there\u2019s a short poem called \u201cIn praise of the Family.\u201d You don\u2019t need to read that one aloud. Whereas some of them, you do. I think also, that one has a lot of repetition, and the repetition, the sonority is very powerful when it\u2019s read out loud. <\/p>\n

LK: I really enjoyed reading the collection, and it has been wonderful hearing about the process of translating and putting together this collection. Any last thoughts?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KAZ<\/span>: I think it\u2019s the best thing I\u2019ve ever done, so far. When I started translating Arabic literature, it was with poetry. I switched to prose and this reminded me how fun it is to do poetry. Especially since I have no real professional reason to translate. Doing novels isn\u2019t paying the bills; it\u2019s something I just do for the joy of it. But this, I think I\u2019ll do more poetry now. This was a fun one to translate, where I really loved to translate it. It\u2019s more fun to translate poetry than prose. <\/p>\n

LK: Why is that? Why is it more fun to translate poetry?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KAZ<\/span>: You can be a bit freer\u2014no, why is it more fun to translate? I feel like with poetry you can . . . I spend longer on each word. I spend a lot more time per word on poetry than in a novel. You can\u2019t pore over a novel in quite the same way you can with a book of poetry. And I do feel that translating poetry, there\u2019s a little bit more room for \u201cfreedom\u201d in the translation process. The emphasis is at least as much on sound and rhythm as it is on meaning. It\u2019s not that that isn\u2019t there in novels, but the balance of power is a little bit more on meaning in a novel. Very concrete and specific things are happening and those things need to be conveyed, relatively accurately, so that the reader isn\u2019t confused, or else the novel is no longer effective. It\u2019s more just about that balance of where the energy is going. <\/p>\n

\n

Jerusalem (II)<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

When I leave you I turn to stone
\nand when I come back I turn to stone<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

I name you Medusa
\nI name you the older sister of Sodom and Gomorrah
\nyou the baptismal basin that burned Rome<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

The murdered hum their poems on the hills
\nand the rebels reproach the tellers of their stories
\nwhile I leave the sea behind and come back
\nto you, come back
\nby this small river that flows in your despair<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

I hear the reciters of the Quran and the shrouders of corpses
\nI hear the dust of the condolers
\nI am not yet thirty, but you buried me, time and again
\nand each time, for your sake
\nI emerge from the earth
\nSo let those who sing your praises go to hell
\nthose who sell souvenirs of your pain
\nall those who are standing with me, now, in the picture<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

I name you Medusa
\nI name you the older sister of Sodom and Gomorrah
\nyou the baptismal basin that still burns<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

When I leave you I turn to stone
\nWhen I come back I turn to stone<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Sleeping in Gaza<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Fado, I\u2019ll sleep like people do
\nwhen shells are falling
\nand the sky is torn like living flesh
\nI\u2019ll dream, then, like people do
\nwhen shells are falling:
\nI\u2019ll dream of betrayals<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

I\u2019ll wake at noon and ask the radio
\nthe questions people ask of it:
\nIs the shelling over?
\nHow many were killed? <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

But my tragedy, Fado,
\nis that there are two types of people:
\nthose who cast their suffering and sins into the streets so they can sleep
\nand those who collect the people\u2019s suffering and sins
\nmold them into crosses, and parade them
\nthrough the streets of Babylon and Gaza and Beirut
\nall the while crying
\nAre there any more to come?
\nAre there any more to come?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Two years ago I walked through the streets
\nof Dahieh, in southern Beirut
\nand dragged a cross
\nas large as the wrecked buildings
\nBut who today will lift a cross
\nfrom the back of a weary man in Jerusalem?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

The earth is three nails
\nand mercy a hammer:
\nStrike, Lord
\nStrike with the planes<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Are there any more to come? <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

December 2008<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

——<\/p>\n

Liz Kelley has a PhD in Anthropology from the University of California Berkeley, with a concentration in linguistic anthropology and translation studies. Her interest and studies specialize in Arabic literatures.<\/em><\/p>\n

——<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s always interesting to read a translator’s commentary on his or her translation process. For me personally, hearing how other translators think and work only adds to my personal work and experience, alternately showing me approaches or tactics that don’t work for me and showing me approaches and tactics that I’m not alone in using […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[1646],"class_list":["post-298746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317316,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298746\/revisions\/317316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}