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| Sherif Bakr |
For over 40 years, Al-Arabi Publishing
and Distributing has exhibited at the Cairo International Book Fair (CIBF),
with titles mainly in politics and mass media. For the past decade, however, it
is translated titles, mostly fiction, that have attracted readers to this
particular publishing house.
According to Al-Arabi publisher Sherif
Bakr, this was a good year, with book fair visitors showing a true interest in
learning more about the world.
“We did well; our new titles of
translated novels and books in general were very well received with people
being very happy to go through piles of books that bring to them ideas from
Finland, Serbia, Austria, Zimbabwe and many other countries,” Bakr said.
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| The Al Arabi September Suns |
One of this year’s newly translated
titles for Al-Arabi is the Arabic version of Bryony Rheam’s “This September
Sun,” the gratifying novel that came out in late 2009, examining layers of the
lives of the “settlers” of Rhodesia that continue to haunt Zimbabwe’s
grandchildren.
This is the first Africa-centred novel
translation for Al-Arabi that has otherwise, over the past four decades,
brought to its readers a wide range of political readings on Africa, including
the Arabic translation of Wolfgang Bauer’s “Stolen Girls: Survivors of Boko
Haram tell their story,” which came out in 2017.
Meanwhile, Bakr is hoping to bring out a
translation of “Thirteen Cents,” a novel that approaches the shadowy side of
life in Cape Town.
“I am hoping it will come out this year
but it might have to be for the book fair next year, because translation does
take a long time to be done properly,” Bakr said.
Bakr affirmed that he would like to
bring more writers from Africa. “The trouble there is that African writers are
either very well known (and those are usually the writers whose work is published
in European countries that once colonised Africa) or are very difficult to
trace. We are usually looking to get our readers acquainted with the less known
rather than the well-known,” he said.
“I was, for example, very lucky to have
met the Zimbabwean publishers of “This September Sun” at the Frankfurt book fair, so I learned
about the book. I keep looking for African writers or otherwise for books
written about Africa,” Bakr said.
“But yes, when we look at the map we
have in the office, where we pin the countries that we had brought books from,
we do feel that we still have so much to do on Africa,” he said.
Meanwhile, Bakr is happy to have seen
the attention this year's book fair brought to Al-Arabi’s translation of
“Purge,” a Finnish novel by Sofi Oksanen that looks at the political and social
impact of the occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union during World War II.
The novel has been translated into near 40 languages.
“We translated from the English version,
as we have been doing with a considerable number of titles, because usually it
is easier to find literature translators who work from English into Arabic, and
also because usually the English translation is a very good one,” Bakr said.
When he started off his translation
section a little under 10 years ago, Bakr created a small team that was
essentially translating and editing from English. Today, the team has expended
and it is now working on translations from several European languages.
“Translation is usually a very taxing
job, especially translation of literature. But we have a rule at Al-Arabi: we
are making a translation that has to be an easy and enjoyable read, so we are
not held captive to the exact, literal translation. I think this has been
essential to our success in getting our readers acquainted with literature from
all the continents,” he said.
This year, for CIBF, Al-Arabi issued 24
literary translations that they have been working on for over two years.
“Sometimes one thinks it would be easy,
but things become slow. Like this year, we have a translation of an Armenian
novel and we thought it should be an easy going process, given the large
Egyptian Armenian community. But it took quite a bit of time to put the
translation on the right path,” Bakr said.
According to Bakr, “Purge” is one of
this year’s best selling for Al-Arabi. Another very well received book is the
Arabic translation of “The Devil’s Workshop” of Czech novelist Jachym Topol,
that examines the history of concentration camps in Belarus.
“With this book we had to spend over a
year on the translation and editing, and inevitably we needed to invite the
author for the revision of the final version of the book. It sometimes has to
be this way. But it does not matter how long time it takes, so long as we come
up with a good translation,” Bakr said.
Al-Arabi focuses on translating fiction.
“I think of the books we translate, we do roughly 80 percent fiction and 20
percent non-fiction,” Bakr said. “I guess people are more interested in reading
fiction. Actually, our readers are mostly young and are more into fiction
generally,” he added.
Al-Arabi, Bakr said, is continually
seeking titles that would attract younger readers. Currently, he added,
Al-Arabi is working on the Arabic translation of an Australian novel, “Life on
the Refrigerator,” that tells the story of a mother and daughter who end up
communicating through sticky notes put on a fridge.
Bakr expects that this will be one of
the novels to attract the "young adult" constituency of readers,
which he says constitute a big audience for literature.
Al-Arabi is also behind three Arabic
fiction titles for this year: “Tamar” by May Khaled; “Frames of Emptiness”
(Otor min Faragh) by Amr Afiyah and “The Prisoner of Muscat” (Sagine Mascat) by
Al-Sherbiny Ashour.
“One should never underestimate the
impact of literature on people’s lives. It induces them to think of things and
feel things that might be life-changing, literally and not metaphorically,”
Bakr said.
From: http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/325262.aspx
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