{"id":15753,"date":"2018-01-24T08:01:30","date_gmt":"2018-01-24T12:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=15753"},"modified":"2018-01-24T08:01:30","modified_gmt":"2018-01-24T12:01:30","slug":"court-jesters-and-black-mirrors-translator-alex-elinson-on-bringing-moroccan-literature-into-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/court-jesters-and-black-mirrors-translator-alex-elinson-on-bringing-moroccan-literature-into-english\/","title":{"rendered":"Court Jesters and Black Mirrors: Translator Alex Elinson on Bringing Moroccan Literature into\u00a0English"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Arab Literature (in English) & BY MLYNXQUALEY<\/a><\/span><\/span> on<\/em> 0<\/a> )<\/span><\/p>\n

Episode 6 of the Bulaq podcast<\/em><\/a>\u00a0was\u00a0built \u2014 among other things \u2014 on a talk by Moroccan novelist Youssef Fadel and conversations with translator Alex Elinson:<\/em>In that episode<\/a>, ArabLit\u2019s M. Lynx Qualey & Arabist\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0Ursula Lindsey discuss Moroccan literature about the country\u2019s \u201cyears of lead\u201d and its formidable and ruthless former king Hassan II; and about the relationship between humour, fear and power. Here, a longer discussion with Elinson, who has translated Fadel\u2019s\u00a0A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>and is at work on his\u00a0A Shimmering Red Fish Swims with Me,\u00a0<\/em>as well as Yassin Adnan\u2019s\u00a0Hot Maroc.<\/em><\/p>\n

How did you discover Youssef Fadel?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Youssef Fadel and Alex Elinson, speaking in Rabat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Alex Elinson:\u00a0<\/strong>I first encountered Youssef\u2019s writing through a research project I was working on that dealt with the use of darija, or Moroccan Arabic, in writing. While digging around for information, a name that kept coming up was Youssef Fadel. People said he was very keen on experimenting with darija in writing. So, I started to look at his works through that lens.<\/p>\n

I started with the novel Hashish<\/em>, and after that Metro Muhal<\/em> and Hadiqet al-Haywanat.<\/em> I was told that those works in particular contained large amounts of darija, so I checked them out, and, beyond the language issue, I was really taken by both the creativity and the experimental aspect of them, as well as the writing style. I started to read more and more of his works, including the book that I eventually translated, A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me<\/em>, and the subsequent book, A Rare Blue Bird Flies with Me<\/em>. I fell in love with his style, and I decided\u2014whether consciously or not\u2014to start translating his work.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m now devoting most of my time, when I\u2019m not teaching, to translating.<\/p>\n

What made you want to shift toward translation, and particularly why did you want to bring Youssef Fadel\u2019s books into English?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AE:\u00a0<\/strong>First and foremost, I think Youssef\u2019s a wonderful writer. I could say it\u2019s because he\u2019s one of the most important writers in Morocco today\u2014in the writing community, he\u2019s very well established and respected, described at a recent event by a fellow Moroccan writer as \u2018a national treasure.\u2019 So even before talking about bringing his novels into English, I wish Youssef\u2019s novels were read more in their original Arabic inside Morocco. There is always a lot of complaining among writers and intellectuals about how Moroccans don\u2019t read, especially young ones. Although I do think this can be overstated at times (the complaint sometimes takes on a \u201cyoung people these days\u201d tone), it is true that writers feel like no one\u2019s buying or reading their work, except for other writers, and that non-writers have never heard of them.They<\/span> complain that bookstores don\u2019t work hard enough at promotion, editors aren\u2019t working hard enough with authors and bookstores, etc. Youssef Fadel is a well-established writer in Morocco who, in my opinion, as well as in the opinion of critics and others, is one of the most important writers working in Morocco today. As far as why I want to bring his books into English? I think they\u2019re great novels. It\u2019s great writing. As I\u2019ve said before, while his writing is very \u2018local\u2019 dealing with local places, issues, concerns, and challenges, many of these hyper local concerns are universal \u2013 finding love in a loveless world, trying to make sense of illogical and capricious social, economic, and political systems, trying to laugh in the face of tragedy, the sometimes very difficult task of asserting one\u2019s humanity. Aren\u2019t these all issues and themes we, as people, face? They\u2019re not specific to Morocco.<\/p>\n

As perhaps the closest reader White Cat\u2019<\/em>s had, what do you think is special about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Photo credit: Mustapha Ait Ouadi, The Moroccan- American Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

AE:\u00a0<\/strong>What\u2019s special about that work is what I think is special about Youssef\u2019s style in general. He\u2019s a very theatrical writer, and I can\u2019t remember if I had a chance to ask him at our event the other day in Rabat, whether he thinks that he writes novels the way he does because he\u2019s written for cinema, for television, for the theatre. But I feel that, when I\u2019m reading his works, that I\u2019m watching something.<\/p>\n

When the book starts out, it\u2019s as if we\u2019re watching a play. He presents each character one by one, as if each one is walking out onto a stage, spotlight fixed on them. That\u2019s something that really appeals to me. His writing is also very descriptive, very precise. I think those aspects come through in all of his writings.<\/p>\n

What sets A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me<\/em> apart from the other books in the trilogy is how funny it is. And it\u2019s totally logical that this should be a funny novel. There are two narrators: one is a political satirist and the other is a clown, or jester. The other two novels in the series are not funny in the least, and that would make sense too, because one of them is about political prison and forced disappearance, and the other is a doomed love story. Not too much room for laughter there.<\/p>\n

Is there anything different about how you\u2019re translating the third one, Farah (Joy)<\/em>, which is being translated, as you said at the event Monday, as\u00a0A Shimmering Red Fish Swims with Me<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AE:\u00a0<\/strong>I don\u2019t think that I\u2019m translating it any differently\u2014obviously I\u2019m not making much of an effort to be funny in it. But I\u2019m using the same process.<\/p>\n

What I\u2019m noticing, though, now that I\u2019ve already translated a novel, I\u2019m feeling more comfortable and confident. And having read a number of Youssef\u2019s works, but especially having translated one of them, I really feel that I\u2019m getting to know how his style works\u2014and what he does and how he does it structurally, stylistically, and linguistically.<\/p>\n

Now that I\u2019ve closely engaged with his writing, I\u2019ve think I\u2019ve developed a much keener sensitivity to his style and its different uses of voice and tone\u2014sometimes using short, simple, clipped sentences in certain passages where characters are in emotionally challenging situations, where honest or deeply reflective expression is difficult, and other times providing long, luscious, descriptive passages when called for. Having lived with Youssef\u2019s writing now for some years, I\u2019m finding it much easier to recognize those shifts and express them appropriately in English.<\/p>\n

Can we talk about translating humor? Often, humor can be very context-specific and difficult to move from one language to another. Jonathan Wright, for instance, has talked about how he removed a joke from Khaled Khamissi\u2019s Taxi that he just couldn\u2019t replicate in English. How did you work with the humor? Did you try it out on people? How did you know if you were being funny?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Photo credit: Mustapha Ait Ouadi, The Moroccan- American Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

AE:\u00a0<\/strong>The words that I fear more than anything when I\u2019m talking to someone in Arabic is, \u2018I have a joke.\u2019 They\u2019ll tell the joke, I\u2019ll understand all the words, and I won\u2019t react. Then they\u2019ll tell it again. I\u2019ll understand it, but I still won\u2019t laugh. Humor is a minefield! So much is contextual.<\/p>\n

I just find Youssef\u2019s writing funny. It\u2019s inherently funny, and he actually makes me laugh like not many people do, in his writing, and in person. It\u2019s not obscure humor. It\u2019s not very locally contextualized humor, I think. If I had to characterize his type of humor, I\u2019d call it \u2018situational\u2019 (for a lack of a better word; I\u2019m a big fan of comedy, but don\u2019t possess a specialized vocabulary to talk about it). What\u2019s funny are the situations his characters find themselves in and the ways they react to those situations, and to one another. There\u2019s a wit and a sarcasm that I understand, that I think is universal. I did have multiple people read various drafts of the translation, people who don\u2019t know Arabic, and are not too familiar with the Moroccan context, and if there was something that didn\u2019t read well, humorous or otherwise, I\u2019d tweak it. To be honest, most of the time it wasn\u2019t the humor that posed the greatest challenges. Perhaps it\u2019s a combination of Fadel\u2019s innate humor and my appreciation of it, that allowed me to translate it. I wasn\u2019t that worried about that aspect of the translation. I\u2019m glad you found it funny, too!<\/p>\n

And have you read Mahi Binebine\u2019s Le fou de roi<\/em> (2017), which also focuses around the same court-jester figure?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AE:\u00a0<\/strong>I have it in hand, and I would love to read it. It would be wonderful, just for fun, to read it alongside A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me, because they both deal with the king\u2019s jester, the king\u2019s personal comedian. Binebine\u2019s novel is based on a true story, which is his father, who was indeed the king\u2019s jester.<\/p>\n

In A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me<\/em>, which was written first, and is entirely a work of fiction, we have a father-son team\u2014or rather not a team, they\u2019re estranged. The son is doing his military service, and the father\u2019s in the palace. In Binebine\u2019s book, we have a father-son relationship where the son, in this case, was imprisoned in Tazmamart for eighteen years.
\nIt would be interesting to see how each of these writers did it\u2014one based on personal family experience and the other based on his imagination.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if Youssef Fadel had Binebine\u2019s story in mind as he wrote the novel. I have asked him\u2014and he says, No, not really. He says it\u2019s totally from his imagination. It\u2019s based on things Moroccans have heard, but he didn\u2019t take it directly from the Binebine story. The parallels are interesting nonetheless. Both are about a father and son. Both talk about the father and his role as the king\u2019s jester\/buffoon. Both include a father-son drama and in both, the father and son are estranged \u2013 in Fadel because the father had left the family years before whereas in Binebine because the son had taken part in a failed coup against the king and ended up in Tazmamart prison, father had to cut all ties.<\/p>\n

Did you ever think Youssef Fadel doesn\u2019t have the right to tell this story\u2014this isn\u2019t his story, it\u2019s Binebine\u2019s story?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AE:\u00a0<\/strong>No, that never occurred to me.<\/p>\n

A writer writes what he or she knows and is most familiar with. For many Moroccans of a certain age (over 55?), the story of Hassan the conscript in the Saharan conflict and certain aspects of palace life under King Hassan II would be familiar. As we\u2019ve talked about before, these three latest novels (A Beautiful White Cat, A Rare Blue Bird<\/em>, and Farah<\/em>) focus mainly on Morocco during the 1980s, using different lenses that Moroccans are intimately familiar with to examine Moroccan society during that period (Sahara\/the palace, prison and disappearance, the Hassan II mosque in Casablanca). These are all symbols that belong to all Moroccans.<\/p>\n

In asking the question, I don\u2019t know if you\u2019re thinking about Tahar Ben Jelloun, where there was a lot of criticism about whether or not he should have written This Blinding Absence of Light<\/em> based on Aziz Binebine, a real person\u2019s experience. I\u2019m not going to weigh in on that, but I think that\u2019s different. That debate had its roots, I think, in many other issues including Ben Jelloun\u2019s writing in French, living in French, discussions of a writer\u2019s responsibility to engage in politics, what that engagement should look like, etc.<\/p>\n

In A Rare Blue Bird Flies with Me<\/em>, that\u2019s all about forced disappearance, and I think in that book, he was trying to convey a general Moroccan history through one character in one prison cell\u2014probably drawing on all the things he had read and heard (in memoirs, testimonials, hearings, from friends and colleagues)\u2014and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s improper for a writer to draw from any wells they need to draw from. Not only did Youssef spend some time in prison, but his story drew from what I would consider to be the \u2018public record\u2019 \u2013 his own experience, his memories, countless tales and testimonies that came out during and after the Lead Years.<\/p>\n

Help me understand the censorship context. My understanding is that we\u2019re not meant to talk about the king or the Sahara. Yet White Cat<\/em> does both.<\/strong><\/p>\n

AE:\u00a0<\/strong>I\u2019m not sure one isn\u2019t allowed to talk about them, but there are certain things you don\u2019t really question or criticize. Everyone talks about the king, but you can\u2019t talk about him in a certain context. And the Sahara, I\u2019m not 100 percent clear on where the lines are with that issue, but there\u2019s a lot of leeway, I think. In fact, I\u2019m not sure anyone knows where those lines are, and that\u2019s a deliberate government strategy that encourages much self-censorship.<\/p>\n

I asked Youssef that direct question, Did you face any problems on publication, and his answer was a simple, No.<\/p>\n

He spent some time in prison in the seventies for a play that he wrote, that the regime felt was arrest-worthy, and he said, very clearly, I\u2019ve done my time in prison\u2014what are they going to do with me?<\/p>\n

You were also talking about translating Yassin Adnan\u2019s Hot Maroc<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

AE:\u00a0<\/strong>I\u2019m fully at work translating Hot Maroc.<\/p>\n

I think that this novel, Hot Maroc<\/em>, is one of the few successful works by younger Moroccan novelists. Most well-known novelists in Morocco are over 60 years old and write about a Morocco that might seem quite distant and unfamiliar to younger readers. Yassin Adnan is a younger voice who depicts a Morocco and a generation that we haven\u2019t heard about, or from, too much.<\/p>\n

What do you like about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AE:\u00a0<\/strong>Maybe I\u2019m drawn to books that are funny, but it\u2019s humorous throughout. What I\u2019m very impressed with is how much is in that novel. It takes place in Marrakesh\u2014and he infuses it with a lot of Marrakshi cultural and political history, nods to folklore, current popular culture, political commentary, discussions of the social pressures that young people today face. It\u2019s laugh out loud funny and heart-wrenching at the same time.<\/p>\n

I think what makes it so unique is that it is a young, fresh voice, and it\u2019s talking about the dawning of the internet age, and the way that the internet comes into people\u2019s lives and changes their lives.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost like a historical document of very recent history, of how the internet is affecting human society and interactions. It literally changed the way I was clicking, day to day. Quite frankly, I\u2019ve not read a book like it in Arabic or otherwise. There are certain aspects of it that made me think of Dave Eggers\u2019 The Circle, but it really is quite unique.<\/p>\n

Who do you think the novel will appeal to in an English readership? A Black Mirror<\/em>audience?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AE:\u00a0<\/strong>I do hope this reaches beyond the \u201cArabic literature in translation\u201d crowd\u2014people who are interested not just in what\u2019s happening in Morocco, but what\u2019s happening everywhere around the world. Yes, the Black Mirror<\/em> crowd.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just about Morocco, or Marrakech, or Moroccan politics, or Arab cultural and literary history. It\u2019s about the disconnect between political discourse and life on the ground; how young people interact in a world where spaces to interact are limited; where participation in democratic processes is both encouraged and controlled by political parties.<\/p>\n

What stage are you at?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AE:\u00a0<\/strong>I\u2019ve got a chunk of it done. I\u2019m working on it very differently than I did A Beautiful White Cat<\/em>, or that I did Farah<\/em> or Joy<\/em>\u2014<\/p>\n

\u2014The Shimmering Red Fish.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

AE:\u00a0<\/strong>Yes, The Shimmering Red Fish Swims with Me<\/em>. Yassin Adnan\u2019s English is very good, and it\u2019s more his initiative than my own, to really be involved in the translation. It\u2019s a different process. What I\u2019ve been doing with Youssef\u2019s books is\u2014I read the novel, I like the novel, and then I go back to the beginning and I start translating.<\/p>\n

With Yassin\u2019s book, I read the novel, I liked the novel, then started to translate it in parts. I will translate something as accurately and cleanly as I can, and then I\u2019ll send him a chunk, he\u2019ll look through it, and he\u2019ll make comments and criticisms and suggestions.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t find that more difficult? With the author involved?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AE:\u00a0<\/strong>I wouldn\u2019t say we\u2019ve had arguments, but we\u2019ve had discussions about certain things. Generally, I trust him. Working with Youssef Fadel has been a wonderful experience, and I\u2019m lucky that he is always available to answer questions of context or meaning when necessary. Working with Yassin has been a very different wonderful experience, and I\u2019m learning a great deal from it. There are things he knows much better than I do linguistically and contextually (for example words or phrases that relate to the classical literary or religious tradition, very local references to places and history), and there are things in English, and in an English-language reading context that I know much better. We hash these things out as we go along, always keeping in mind and respecting where the other is more of the expert.<\/p>\n

I have mostly found it enriching, rather than difficult.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard from several authors that Hot Maroc<\/em> was a book they enjoyed last year.<\/strong><\/p>\n

AE:\u00a0<\/strong>It may be difficult to impossible to get sales figures in Morocco, but, according to Yassin it\u2019s done quite well. It went through an unprecedented two printings in its first six months in Morocco with Dar Fennec, and two printings in Egypt in a year with Dar El Ain. Yes, it\u2019s caused some buzz, obviously outside of Morocco as well, and for that reason I\u2019m hopeful that it will find similar success in English. If it can reach beyond the borders of Morocco in Arabic, and it is such a localized novel in many ways, then I don\u2019t see why it can\u2019t also be successful with a wider audience in English.<\/p>\n

Alexander Elinson is a literary translator and an associate professor of Arabic at Hunter College of the City University of New York.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Via Arab Literature (in English) & BY MLYNXQUALEY on JANUARY 24, 2018 \u2022 ( 0 ) Episode 6 of the Bulaq podcast\u00a0was\u00a0built \u2014 among other things \u2014 on a talk by Moroccan novelist Youssef...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,64,498,103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arab-culture","category-literature","category-maghreb","category-translation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15753"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15755,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15753\/revisions\/15755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}