Barbara Romaine is the runner-up of the 2011 Saif Ghobash‒Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation for her translation of Specters (AUC Press, 2010), a novel by Radwa Ashour, the highly acclaimed Egyptian scholar and author of more than fifteen books.

Specters tells the story of Egypt since the 1950s through the experiences of two women who are each other’s ghostly doubles. “Fluent and refreshing, Romaine has done a brilliant job,” comments the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature on its official website. “This experimental novel, which is political in the best sense, needs a confident translator, and has found one in Barbara Romaine. Her impressive translation renders the metaphorical power of Ashour’s story with grace and subtlety, skillfully reflecting the shifts in time and the different voices and registers.”

Romaine, who teaches Arabic at the University of Villanova in Pennsylvania, has already translated Bahaa Taher’s novel Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery, and Radwa Ashour’s Siraaj.

In a recent interview after her nomination, the translator said: “The first thing that comes to mind is that awards like this, which clearly recognize work done by translators, lend the field of translation a legitimacy I think we have long striven to attain.”

“I would like for readers of world literature to be aware that there's a lot more to translation than simply being able to convert sets of words in one idiom into sets of words in another,” added Romaine, who is currently at work on another of Ashour’s novels, Farag. “Translation—at its best, anyway—is a very subtle process.”

The Saif Ghobash‒Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, now in its sixth year, is an annual award of £3,000, made to the translator(s) of a published translation in English of a full-length imaginative and creative Arabic work of literary merit published in the thirty-five years prior to submission of the translation and first published in English translation in the year prior to the award.

Commenting on the challenges she faced in the translation of Specters, Romaine noted: “Rendering the passages from al-Mutanabbi with the sensitivity Radwa sought was certainly the most difficult piece of the whole project. In general, I do not presume to be a translator of poetry, so the need to do justice to the poetry in Specters—particularly that of al-Mutanabbi, who is so deeply revered as a poet—pushed me well beyond my usual limits.”

Entries are judged by a panel of four distinguished authors, critics and literary experts, two of whom read and consider both the Arabic original and the English translation.

The four 2011 judges, were novelist, columnist and critic Joan Smith; writer, translator and professor of American literature and public understanding of the humanities at the University of East Anglia Sarah Churchwell; translator and lecturer in Arabic Literature and media at the University of Exeter Christina Phillips; and author and editor of Banipal magazine Samuel Shimon, who is also a trustee of the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature.

The awards will be presented to the winner, runner-up, and commended translation next month at an evening of events at King’s Place, London, which will include readings by the winning translators.

► To read more about Specters and order the book, click here.

► For other books by Radwa Ashour, click here.

► To flip through the current AUC Press Fall 2011 catalog, click here.
► To flip through the forthcoming Spring 2012 catalog, click here.

The AUC Press Tahrir Bookstore on the AUC Tahrir Campus is temporarily closed due to the events in the recent days. 

When open, the Tahrir Bookstore is accessible from the Mohamed Mahmoud Street gate of the campus, with a valid photo ID.

The Bookstore (tel. 2797-6933) is open from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm daily, closed Friday.

It offers a complete selection of AUC Press publications, as well as a wide range of other English-language books.

The AUC Press Zamalek Bookstore is open.

To flip through the new AUC Press Spring 2012 catalog, click here.

To flip through the Fall 2011 catalog, click here.

January 2012