{"id":27416,"date":"2013-03-27T16:58:27","date_gmt":"2013-03-27T12:58:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=27416"},"modified":"2013-03-27T21:11:38","modified_gmt":"2013-03-27T17:11:38","slug":"emirati-sci-fi-author-in-no-hurry-to-translate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/emirati-sci-fi-author-in-no-hurry-to-translate\/","title":{"rendered":"Emirati Sci-Fi Author ‘In No Hurry’ To Translate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"science_fiction_8\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There is vivid interest in the growth of Arabic science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels \u2014 among Arab readers, scholars, and readers abroad. Among the emerging SF novelists is Emirati writer Noura Noman:<\/em><\/p>\n

This Monday, I saw on the \u201cWorld SF Blog<\/a>\u201d an\u00a0interview with Noura Noman<\/a>\u00a0about her debut novel,\u00a0Ajwan.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

In it, Noura said she\u2019s been holding off on an English translation, which is already complete but unpublished. She said:<\/p>\n

“And while all my friends are urging me to publish it in English, I cannot do so too soon. The problem we have in this part of the region is that our teens are reading English and almost no Arabic. The whole idea behind\u00a0Ajwan<\/b>\u00a0was to provide Arabic content for teens. My 17-year-old daughter read it in Arabic and liked it. Three young ladies of close age tweeted to me saying it was the first Arabic novel they had ever read. This means that the subject matter (sci-fi) made Arabic seem more approachable to them. In short, I am going to wait a bit before I publish it in English.”<\/p>\n

I strongly sympathize. I can imagine the statement makes some English-language readers uncomfortable \u2014 the idea that something is being held back \u2014 but loads of things are being held back, elided, ignored. This is perhaps the best of all reasons to wait on a translation.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, I was reading from the Lebanese writer Dominique\u00a0Edd\u00e9\u2019s beautiful novel,\u00a0Kite,\u00a0<\/em>and this passage charmed me:<\/p>\n

“Mali burst out laughing and said, \u2018What a pity the charm of the Egyptian language is untranslatable!\u2019 \u2018Why do you always want to translate everything?\u2019 relied Fuad, still pleased with his story, \u2018The main thing is that we enjoy it,\u2019 he added, banging his fist on the table as he said \u2018we\u2019.”<\/p>\n

Certainly, I would never turn up my nose at translation. But fostering and enriching Arabic writing and reading communities (and creating books that charm and engage them) is yet more important.<\/p>\n

But also on the subject of SF, fantasy, horror:<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>Ashraf Fagih, author of\u00a0The Impaler,\u00a0<\/em>has an interview in the\u00a0Courrier International\u00a0<\/em>(French)<\/a>. He is not averse to the idea of translation.<\/p>\n

And another Q&A with Fagih<\/a>\u00a0(Arabic), in which he notes that he did not avoid being influenced by Orhan Pamuk\u2019s style.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M. LYNX-QUALEY: Noura Noman is delighted that her sci-fi novel in Arabic is appealing to primarily teenage audience starved of popular literature in their language <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":27420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,173,80,482,5,187],"tags":[353,16911,16910,18284,16909,16914,16912,16913],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27416"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27416"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27426,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27416\/revisions\/27426"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}