Arwa Salih. The Stillborn: Notebooks of a Woman from the Student Movement Generation in Egypt. Trans. Samah Selim. London, New York, Calcutta: Seagull Books, Forthcoming 2017. Translator’s Introduction[1] Arwa Salih was an Egyptian communist who came of political age in the early 1970s; in the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, the end of the Nasser era, and the beginning of Anwar Al-Sadat’s transitional regime. She belonged to the transformative political moment instigated by the radical student movement of that decade and the political generation known as ‘the generation of the seventies’.
Plenary 1 النص والسياق: الترجمة في ظل حالة الطوارئ
سماح سليم
Abstract This presentation will explore the problems associated with activist translating in revolutionary historical moments like the one that began in Egypt in 2011. Using my experience working as a subtitler with the radical video collective Mosireen in 2012/13, I want to reflect on how the process and experience of translating in a state of emergency – when the state mobilizes its arsenal of violence on the streets – profoundly shapes how we think about terms like profession and objectivity, and about the roles of both translator and audience in building effective cross-border virtual solidarity networks in real time.
An interview with Samah Selim, 'Translation, Testimony, Activism', has appeared in the dossier on Translating Testimony in the October 2016 issue of the international journal of the Auschwitz Foundation, Testimony between History and Memory (issue No. 123), pages 143-150. The interview was conducted by Tom Toremans of KU Leuven and can be downloaded by clicking on the link below. Selim_interview History and Testimony The dossier also features a reprint of Omar Robert Hamilton’s article in Translating Dissent, ‘Moments of Clarity’, as well as a French version of the article (‘Des moments de lucidité’), translated by Carine Chauran.
Samah Selim This essay explores some of the problems associated with activist translating in revolutionary historical moments like the one that began in Egypt in 2011. Using my experience of working as a subtitler with the radical video collective Mosireen in 2012/13, I reflect on how the process and experience of translating in a state of emergency – when the state mobilizes its arsenal of violence on the streets – profoundly shapes how we think about terms like ‘profession’ and ‘objectivity’, and about the roles of both translator and audience in building effective cross-border virtual solidarity networks in real time.
Middle Eastern Literatures Volume 13, Issue 2, 2010, pages 191-210 Special Issue: Arabic Literature in Egypt at the Beginning of the 20th Century in Search of New Aesthetics: Al-Muwaylihi and Contemporaries DOI: 10.1080/1475262X.2010.487317Samah Selim Along with Ponson du Terrail's Rocambole and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin is one of the most famous popular fiction figures in the 20th century Egyptian literary imaginary. The first Arabic translation of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Cambrioleur (1907) by essayist and translator ‘Abd al-Qādir Hamza was published in the Egyptian fiction serial The People's Entertainments (Musāmarāt al-sha‘b, 1904-1911) in 1910.
Middle Eastern Literatures Volume 13, Issue 2, 2010, pages 191-210 Special Issue: Arabic Literature in Egypt at the Beginning of the 20th Century in Search of New Aesthetics: Al-Muwaylihi and Contemporaries DOI: 10.1080/1475262X.2010.487317Samah Selim Along with Ponson du Terrail's Rocambole and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin is one of the most famous popular fiction figures in the 20th century Egyptian literary imaginary. The first Arabic translation of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Cambrioleur (1907) by essayist and translator ‘Abd al-Qādir Hamza was published in the Egyptian fiction serial The People's Entertainments (Musāmarāt al-sha‘b, 1904-1911) in 1910.
