A new study, revealed at the Frankfurt Book Fair, claims that the number of Arabic books being translated into the English language is increasing at an astonishing pace.
The study, which was conducted in the decade between 2010 and 2020, by the European non-profit ‘Literature Across Frontiers’ discovered 596 Arabic-to-English literary translations, in contrast to just over 300 works translated over the previous 2 decades from 1990 to 2010.
The Arabic literary works translated include fiction, poetry, drama, and non-fiction titles.
According to the report, literary works translated from Arabic to English have more than doubled in the last ten years offering “Anglophone readers an opportunity to read Arab writers and works to which they may not have otherwise had access”.
The report also suggests that due to the Covid pandemic, some works, which were due for release in 2020 but weren’t released until 2021 (so should’ve been included in the findings) would actually bring the total translations to 659.
It also includes a breakdown of the translated works as follows:
Fiction/novels/novellas = 301
Poetry = 169
Classics = 57
Short Stories = 53
Plays = 25
Miscellaneous = 21
Young Adult Fiction/Children’s = 19
Memoir = 14
The authors of the report suggest the increase in Arabic to English literary translations is due to numerous factors including, the Arab Spring, which “sparked a new surge of interest in the Arab world and its literature” in a bid to understand motives and the uprisings.
They believe that news and current affairs often encourage a spike in translation and readership which has the added bonus of helping promote the professionalisation of translators and improve business practices by Arabic publishers.
They suggest that “there has also been an increase in the number of initiatives and events introducing Arabic literature—and Arab arts and culture more broadly—to the Anglophone audience”.
This includes “positive developments” and “initiatives that have contributed to the growth of the general literary translation infrastructure such as the establishment of the Literary Translation Centre at the London Book Fair and the annual International Translation Day”.
Similarly, they state that “conferences in the Arabic-speaking region, particularly in Qatar and the UAE, but also elsewhere, and the emergence of new prizes highlighting original and translated titles” have helped to promote the quality of translations and addressed translator training between the Arabic and English languages.
Writers whose works have been translated from Arabic to English include major award winners such as, the Egyptian Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian novelist Nawal El Saadawi, Sudanese novelist Amir Tag Elsir, Iraqi poet Adnan Al-Sayegh, Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury and Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish.
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