Al-Ahram Weekly 12 - 18 August 1999 Issue No. 442
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Monthly supplement Books for a burning month Holiday reading and what the writers read Translating Egypt Hala Halim finds consummate translation skills and less compelling ethnography in Ahdaf Soueif's most recent counter-narrative Extract from The Map of love By Ahdaf Soueif Metropolitan musings A new French translation of a Gamal El-Ghitani novel appeared last month. David Tresilian, in Paris, interviews the translator and meanders through the novel Francophone readers I know what you read this summer All writers and artists intereviewed by Hala Halim An elusive graveyard Ra'ihat Al-Burtuqal (The Smell of Orange), Mahmoud El-Wardani, Cairo: Maktabat Al-Osra (Family Library), GEBO, 1999. pp115 A century of fantasy Awalim Borges Al-Khayaliya (Borges's Universe of Fantasy), translated and introduced by Khalil Kalfat, Cairo: Afaq Al-Tarjama (Translations) Series, Cultural Palaces Organisation, July 1999. pp140 Author and character without disguise Manamat 'Amm Ahmed Al-Sammak (The Dreams of 'Amm Ahmed the Fishmonger), Khairi Shalabi, Cairo: Al-Hilal, 1999. pp285 What the winter said Youssef Rakha discusses Salah Abdel-Sabour's Layla wal-Majnoun, now part of the Kitab fi Garida Series, a joint project of Al-Ahram and UNESCO, translating an extract from the play Thus spoke the Ustaz To see other book supplements go to the ARCHIVES index.    Illustrations courtesy of International Commitee of the Red Cross "Folk drawings and tales", Cairo, 1996

Francophone readers

Intereviewed by David Tersilian

For Khaled Osman, who, in addition to Chath al-Madina, has translated Gamal el-Ghitani's Waqa'i Harat al-Za'farani (as La Mystérieuse Affaire de l'Impasse Zaafarani) and his interviews with Naguib Mahfouz (Mahfouz par Mahfouz, 1991) into French, one of the main problems in raising the profile of Arabic literature in the French-speaking world is how to give it a general circulation, how to remove it from the narrow preserve of 'specialists' and introduce it into the consciousness of the general book-buying public. Until this is done, he says, works will remain uneconomical to publish and their potential readership untapped.

This, he says, is a general problem facing translated work, particularly non-European fiction. There is a potential audience among francophone readers for Arabic literature, something which is shown by the public interest in France for foreign (in general) cinema, books and theatre('...French readers are open'), but, in order for this to be reached, some elementary lessons in marketing have to be followed. In order for a writer, or in broader terms, a literature, to become known, public discussion has to take place through reviews and media coverage, authors have to be promoted and a whole range of secondary activities have to be engaged in in order to reach the interested public. The publicity surrounding Naguib Mahfouz's award of the Nobel Prize immeasurably raised the profile of Arabic literature in the world at large and persuaded readers to experiment who otherwise might not have thought of reading something translated from the Arabic. But there is still a view among publishers in France that, having added one translated work of Arabic literature to their list, they have then published their 'Arabic novel'. And aside from certain, 'branded' authors, who have been promoted to the public at large, and whose work is therefore reasonably well known, it is still difficult either to publish translated works of Arabic literature, or having done so, to keep them on the shelves of bookshops and to make them sell.

According to Osman, the publisher most involved in the publication of Arabic literature in France is Actes Sud, so called because, unusually, it is based outside of the Parisian literary circuit in Arles, in the South of France. Actes Sud publishes the 'Sindbad' series of works translated from the Arabic, and now has an impressive back catalogue of older as well as contemporary works. All are well-produced and attractive volumes, and the publisher is committed both to expanding the list and to promoting the authors in it. Osman comments that as far as el-Ghitani is concerned, a good deal of work has been done to translate a reasonable sample of his work, to keep it in print, and to promote it. El-Ghitani has not, perhaps, achieved the kind of recognition that Mahfouz has among the interested francophone public, he says, but the translation of Zafarani was a notable commercial and critical success. From this base, other works by the same author can be confidently published in the expectation that they will be noticed by the newspapers and publicly discussed. And having done this, newer authors, or ones that are still unknown in France, can slowly be introduced. However the successful promotion of a foreign literature is a long, slow process. The 'Sindbad' list was started in the 1970s, at a time when there was 'little or nothing' available to the francophone reader interested in Arabic literature. That situation has now decisively changed, but recent developments in publishing, such as a general decline in literature sales, and books' shorter and shorter 'shelf-lives', have meant new challenges, especially to minority markets.

Osman chooses the books he wants to translate in consultation with his publisher. Unfortunately not all the books that he would like to translate, or that are of clear importance, can be translated for the reasons given above. For smaller publishers, as for larger ones, commercial considerations are as important as literary ones. Nevertheless local conditions in France have allowed francophone readers greater choice than anglophone, should they wish to read titles translated from the Arabic. Not only is there a greater openness in the public at large, and a greater willingness among publishers to take risks, than there is in anglophone countries, but there are various public funds available specifically for such translation projects. Some of these originate with the European Union, others with various French government agencies.

As for the difficulties of translating Arabic into French, these of course exist and to an extent are well-known. As far as el-Ghitani in particular is concerned, there is the problem of finding equivalents in French for the frequent shifts of historical register, rhetoric and style that mark his work. However the real problem, if it can be put that way, is how to raise the profile not only of selected authors, but also of the literature from which they emerge. Osman thinks that Arabic literature is unlikely to achieve the degree of public recognition in France that Latin-American enjoys, following the campaigns for its translation and promotion by interested publishers in the 1960s and 70s. Nevertheless, the striking successes of the 1980s, the presence in France of a significant, largely francophone population of Maghrebin origin, and French culture's general openness, all augur well for the future.

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