- Sep 2018
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When I tell you how my nine-year-old cousin was martyred his first day fighting on the frontlines, do you think us monstrous to have let him go, or must I add a note to explain how we have come to accept that in war the desire to fight and its attendant risk of death is something that doesn’t respect childhood?
Its just so evident that shes writing this article straight from the heart and integrates the reader quite often with her way of writing, an emotional one I would say. She plays a lot on the emotional side of the reader which is good.
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A barrel will no longer ever be a barrel again; shrapnel will always explode from it. The word mustard will forevermore carry a whiff of gas, rashing your skin, smarting your eyes. When you say Sabra, or Shatila, you are not referring to a place, but to a heap of dead bodies shot indiscriminately and tossed aside like worn rags
Things that we are exposed to in our daily lives change us in some way, and this is a perfect example of how her vocabulary changes, and how her way of thinking changes for words and her vision in general. We are always exposed to such changes that affect us in good ways, that not all the time, we notice.
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Translation is not just about transposing words from one language to another. But transplanting a feeling, a way of seeing the world, from one vocabulary of experience to another. I think of the verb, to transplant. A seedling from soil to soil. But also an organ from body to body. The procedure must be as delicate, as cognizant of the original conditions of creation in order to nurture and ensure a continuation of life.
Here she provides a vital piece of information that makes the reader understand how passionate she is about translation. She beautifully defines, in her own words, what translation is.
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To translate a text is to enter into the most intimate relationship with it possible.
To read such a text too, i got the same feeling.
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In Arabic, the root of the verb, to witness, is sh-h-d. Roots are important in Arabic. They are present, that is, known and recognizable, not obscure etymologies but immediate and close, giving life directly to all the words that bud and branch from them.
Very true piece of info to provide for people that arent familiar with the arabic language.
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All this I have watched from my living room in Beirut. Sitting on a worn gray couch with earplugs in, trying to block out the sounds of sheering metal from the construction site right under my window as I translate stories from Arabic to English for the Damascus Bureau, an under-project of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.
Great twist! She grabbed my attention by how sad it starts with the article and makes me feel in some way upset about her situation and then just tells us that she's just listening and translating this! Amazing!
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