Translation | Page 9

The Roc Flew Over Shahraban

May 2, 2022 Fiction, Issue 23, Issue 23 Fiction, Translation

Slowly, we raised our heads as hellish cries echoed in our ears, and we looked up in awe and fear. The sky was a summery blue with no trace of a cloud, and the sun had spread out, occupying every corner. We lowered our gazes, licking our bluish lips as we exchanged panicked glances. Our cracked feet were rooted to the furrowed mud, as if our slightest movement might stir up the screeching. We chewed over our terror for a few minutes, our parted lips emitting silence. Our mounts were as terrified as we were, and they scattered around the courtyard at the inn, fear spurring them to shake off the torpor of the midday heat.

Night’s Froth

May 2, 2022 Fiction, Issue 23, Issue 23 Fiction, Translation

By KHALED AL-JEBOUR

Translated by AMIKA FENDI

Drowsiness weighed down my eyelids, so I stretched myself out on the mattress, swimming in the shadows made by the light of the single candle, lonely in the cold, rugged corner where it stood. My friends had been sleeping for an hour or so. I nodded along to their continuous, flutelike noises, a steady chaos.

A Letter to Kofi Annan

May 2, 2022 Fiction, Issue 23, Issue 23 Fiction, Translation

By MAHMOUD SHUKAIR

Translated by NARIMAN YOUSSEF

Abdelghaffar, owner of the tallest building in the quarter—built by the sweat of his brow, as he reportedly doesn’t tire of saying—is pacing up and down his rooftop, stressed about the stray dogs that have been disturbing the neighborhood’s sleep with their nonstop barking every night—Abdelghaffar’s sleep is more affected than anyone’s, his home being the highest in the neighborhood and receiving the noise from all directions at once.

Translation: Victoria’s Secret

April 7, 2022 Fiction, Translation

By ANDREA CHAPELA

Translated from the Spanish by ALLANA C. NOYES

The story appears below in both English and Spanish.

Translation: Slovenian Poet Tomaž Šalamun

March 3, 2022 Poetry, Translation

Poems by TOMAŽ ŠALAMUN

Translated from the Slovenian by BRIAN HENRY

Translator’s Note

Both of the Tomaž Šalamun poems in this feature come from books published in the early 1970s: “On the border” first appeared in Amerika (1972), and “Trieste” first appeared in Arena (1973). “On the border” demonstrates Šalamun’s newfound engagement with the United States (he was a fellow at Iowa’s International Writing Program from 1971 to 1972), while “Trieste” is set in a city that Šalamun knew well since it is about ten miles from his hometown of Koper.

Translation: Ġgantija II

February 3, 2022 Poetry, Translation

Poem by IMMANUEL MIFSUD

Translated from the Maltese by RUTH WARD and IMMANUEL MIFSUD

Poem appears in both Maltese and English below.

Translator’s Note

The Poem

Malta is a country caught in the crosscurrents: between North Africa and continental Europe; between insularity and a constructive role on the world stage; between prehistoric ruins and the blockchain. Mifsud is the voice of Malta, reflecting the archipelago in its richness, complexity, and contradictions. His is the voice through which the margins question the center; myths of progress are challenged; and the ancient interrogates the present, as in “Ġgantija II.”

The Ġgantija (“Giantess”) temples of Gozo were built during the Neolithic and are thought to be more than 5,500 years old, older than the pyramids of Egypt. They were erected by a people who worshipped a mother figure, a goddess. Awareness of intergenerationality and the unbroken cycles of life takes on a peculiar intensity when all that you have ever been surrounds all that you are in the present — and all you might aspire to become. It is comforting; it is confining. “Ġgantija II” was commissioned for an interdisciplinary event and an excerpt from it, in the Maltese, has been incorporated into a public sculpture on the island of Gozo.

Translation: Poems by Elvira Hernández

January 6, 2022 Poetry, Translation

Poems by ELVIRA HERNÁNDEZ

Translated from the Spanish by THOMAS ROTHE

Poems appear in both Spanish and English.

Translator’s Note

When Elvira Hernández began publishing poetry in the 1980s, the few pictures that appeared of her in literary supplements never revealed her entire face. A hand, an arm, a post, a leaf, a slightly out-of-focus photograph would interrupt the frame to conceal her identity. Whereas some of Chile’s most renowned poets—Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Pablo de Rokha—chose unique pseudonyms difficult to forget, Hernández, whose birth name is María Teresa Adriasola, adopted a pen name that could easily get lost among the crowd. Far from an artistic pose or esoteric performance to gain attention, Hernández’s decision to remain unrecognizable speaks of the very real political persecution that swept through Chile and the Southern Cone during the 1970s and 80s. To write or make art in the asphyxiating environment of Pinochet’s 17-year dictatorship, in the midst of disappearances and exile, media complicity and a cultural blackout, implied an act of resistance, a conscious decision, despite the risks involved, to create dangerously, as Albert Camus and, later, Edwidge Danticat would say.

Translation: Poetry by Esther Ramón

December 2, 2021 Poetry, Translation

Poems by ESTHER RAMÓN

Translated from the Spanish by EMMA FERGUSON

Poems appear in both Spanish and English.

Translator’s Note

Esther Ramón, born in 1970, lives in Madrid and taught one of my very first writing workshops at various café tables in Lavapiés more than a decade ago, where she skillfully introduced me and fellow students to what it could mean to truly collaborate, to be interdisciplinary, to do more than look at a painting while writing a poem and instead to enter into the methods and mindsets of different mediums, seeing the world not only in a different language (in my case) but with a more creative intention. She continues to be a collaborator with other artists and it feels meaningful to translate her work, in a sense collaborate too, and become involved in her poetic world so many years later.

November 2021 Poetry Feature

November 26, 2021 Poetry, Translation

New poems by our contributors.

Table of Contents:

POLINA BARSKOVA | Joy (translated by Valzhyna Mort, appears in both Russian and English)

ALDO AMPARÁN | Parable of the Haunted Cloak

TOM SLEIGH | A Dictator Walks into a Bar

MICHAEL DUMANIS | Ordeal

The Eclipse

November 4, 2021 Fiction, Translation

By ANNA LIDIA VEGA SEROVA

Translated by JENNIFER SHYUE

Translator’s Note

Anna Lidia Vega Serova’s stories make my mouth quirk and make me wince, usually not simultaneously. The pitiless sweep of her narrators’ gazes spares no one, not even the characters they’re latched fastest to. When my own eyes are fixed on the task of translating her words, of scooting puzzle pieces around until they snap satisfyingly into place, I forget how unblinking that narratorial gaze is, how its effect sometimes abuts brutality, and sometimes tips straight in. I remember when I watch other people react to my translations, after it is too late to offer content warnings or make excuses for unlikable women. (What can I say? I like unlikable women—or, more accurately: I admire them.) Vega Serova’s stories brim with them, which is one reason I am drawn to them.