It is Easier To Forget: Sayed Kashua And Haaretz

This morning I read that the Palestinian/Israeli writer Sayed Kashua, who resides now in a small town in the Midwest, told the newspaper Mondoweiss that he “doesn’t want to write in Hebrew for Haaretz anymore.” http://mondoweiss.net/2016/03/sayed-kashua-doesnt-want-to-write-in-hebrew-for-haaretz-anymore/

While other excellent Israeli writers, who write in Hebrew and don't publish in Haaretz remain anonymous, and quite poor, Sayed Kashua got an international fame thanks to that paper.

I don't expect him to remain forever grateful, but I wonder whether Kashua prefers to forget that it was exactly that column in Haaretz, which was translated into English, that gave him his big break in the US.

In 2014 I wrote an essay about the translatability of Sayed Kashua

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Some writers lend themselves to translation much better than others. A short while ago I heard on NPR a story by the Palestinian-Israeli writer Sayed  Kashua. I was impressed how well Kashua’s story came across in English. I read the original in Hebrew and his insights, subtle criticism of both the Israelis and the Palestinians, and his wit shone in English as well as they did in Hebrew. As a Palestinian in Israel, Kashua is constantly translating from Arabic to Hebrew and from Hebrew to Arabic. His biography is the embodiment of translation: he was born in the Arab town of Tira, and in school he learnt both Arabic and Hebrew.  At the age of 15 he was accepted to the prestigious Israeli boarding school in West Jerusalem, the Israel High School of Arts and Science. At that school he may have been one of few (if not the only) Palestinian student in his year, and had to conduct his whole life in Hebrew. Kashua is married to a  Palestinian woman, and until a month ago he and his family lived in a Jewish neighborhood in West Jerusalem.

In Translation and Empire: Postcolonial Approaches Explained, Douglas Robinson argues that translated works from a minor culture into “a hegemonic culture” (in this case English) are often “perceived  and  presented as difficult, mysterious, strange, alien and of interest just to a small group of specialists in the field.” He further argues that “a hegemonic culture will only translate those works by authors in a dominated culture that fit the former’s preconceived notion of the latter.” I see the complex poems by Dahlia Ravikovitch, as an example of Robinson’s former claim. On the other hand, the ease and the translatability of the work of Sayed Kashua and the poet Yehuda Amichai  could illustrate the latter argument. While Ravikovitch is a “sabra”, who sees Israeli society from the inside, both Kashua and Amichai  are outsiders. Kashua exists simultaneously inside two cultures and two languages, and Amichai is  an immigrant whose mother tongue is German and his native culture is Western European. Standing outside  and peering into the window of Israeli society, both Kashua and Amichai see things which are transparent to the sabra. Their conclusions could indeed conform with the “preconceived notion” about Israeli society which Robinson mentions. When Kashua and Amichai imagine their reader, he or she are nothing like them, as most of Kashua‘s native community could not even read his work in Hebrew. Furthermore, as someone who was once an immigrant to the US, it is easy for me to recall a time when in order to be heard I had to choose and count my words carefully, and my message had to be relevant, simple, short and clear.  Reading the work of Kashua and Amichai I feel that they may have had a similar experience. This disadvantage gradually evolved into an advantage, and they learned how to captivate an audience, while at the same time keeping their message simple, precise and intriguing.  I believe that those are the main reasons why Kashua and Amichai are relevant and exciting to readers outside Israel.

Sayed Kashua left Israel over a month ago, he still writes regularly for Ha’aretz. However, now  instead of dealing with his reality as an Palestinian living in Israel he talks about his experience as an immigrant  in the New World.

According to Douglas Robinson “the only way to get read in today’s world is to write in or to be translated into English." It will be interesting to see whether, like Vladimir Nabokov, Sayed Kashua, chooses to start a new career writing in  English. I am not so sure, a mother tongue, like a home is not that easy to replace.

The essay appeared in the Times Of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/it-is-easier-to-forget-sayed-kashua-and-haaretz/

The Fall of a Poet: Naim Araidi

The poet Naim Araidi 1950 - 2015 passed away last Friday, October 2nd. I love his poetry, especially the poems about the land and his home at the Druze village of Maghar in the North of Israel.Those poems are so vivid, that I could see the sights and almost smell the special scent of za'atar in the Galilee air.

In the late 1980s, I translated several of his poems into English and in 1990, two of them appeared in the prestigious journal Translation (volume 23, Spring 1990).

On Friday, when I heard about Araidi's untimely death, I meant to present here, in my blog, some of those translations. For that end, I consulted Google to refresh my memory about his career and to see what has happened since 1990.

Please keep reading in the Times Of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-fall-of-a-poet-naim-araidi/

The Only Way To Get Read In Today's World: Sayed Kashua

Some writers lend themselves to translation much better than others. A short while ago I heard on the radio program This American Life (501: The View From In Here, JUL 26, 2013) a story by the Arab-Israeli writer Sayed  Kashua. I was impressed, but not surprised, at how well Kashua’s story came across in English. I read the original in Hebrew and his insights, subtle criticism of both the Israelis and the Palestinians, and his wit shone in English as well as they did in Hebrew. As an Arab in Israel, Kashua is constantly translating from Arabic to Hebrew and from Hebrew to Arabic. His biography is the embodiment of translation: he was born in the Arab village of Tira, and in school he learnt both Arabic and Hebrew. 
Read more

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-only-way-to-get-read-in-todays-world-sayed-kashua/

God’s Language – Translated Literature And Subtitled Films

 JAN.09.2013 

Growing up in Israel, I was used, from an early age,  to read translated literature and to watch movies with subtitles.  As children we read stories translated from many different languages: English, Russian, Polish, German, French, Swedish and Italian. Some of the books were even translated through a third language into Hebrew. For example, in the early part of the 20th century one of the famous Israeli poet translated Shakespeare from Russian into Hebrew.

I remember watching my childhood idol, the actress Hayley Mills starring in Disney Movies  which were based on some of my favorite books. For example  The Parent Trap was based upon the German book Lottie and Lisa Das Doppelte Lottchen by Erich Kästner), Pollyanna, based on the book by the same name by Eleanor H. Porter and in In Search of the Castaways, an adaptation of the French novel by  Jules Verne Captain Grant's Children.

Whenever I go into the children section of a typical American public library I am surprised by the meager collection of translated books. It is rare to find books by “foreign authors” like Erich Kastner,  Jules Verne, Selma Lagerlöf,  Kristina Nestlinger to name a few.

I am sure that there are many explanations for this absence. However, it is sad that young American readers grow up reading only about children like them and about reality which is familiar and comfortable to them.  Learning about the world from books develops the imagination and teaches the young reader about the world. The huge success of Harry Potter shows that children are ready and willing to broaden their horizons.

Often when I meet Americans, of all ages,  who tell me that they don’t go to foreign films because they are heavy and  besides they don’t like to read subtitles, I feel sorry for them as I am quite certain that as children they believed that books were only written in God’s language --English

P.S. In response to my post a friend sent me this link with the following comment

 http://publishingperspectives.com/2010/01/the-translation-gap-why-more-foreign-writers-arent-published-in-america/

And apart from Stieg Larsson I cannot think of anything that is recent.

Thinking about Stieg Larsson and what you had written I realized that the original Girl With The Dragon Tattoo movie was in Swedish and released with English sub-titles in 2009. The English language remake, just two years later, used about 95% of the scenes and locations of the original. I had wondered why they bothered but you are right, people will not read sub-titles

Studying A Talmudic Text Together: The Poet Admiel Kosman

AUG.28.2013 

In graduate school at the University of Iowa I was an assistant editor for Modern Poetry in Translation, a magazine edited by the poet and translator Daniel Weissbort. One of my responsibilities was to find appropriate Hebrew poems which Daniel and I could translate together. Daniel didn't know Hebrew, so I chose the poems, did the literal translation and then we worked on the final version together. When he came back from the Second International Poets Festival in Jerusalem, Daniel told me that he had met a young religious Jewish poet who, according to him, was “quite eccentric.” Apparently the young poet suggested that they would study a Talmudic text together. Although Daniel loved working together on translation, he was baffled by this suggestion. He did not understand that it was an offer of friendship and a way of  exchanging ideas.

Daniel showed  me the books which the young poet had given him as a gift.  I have never heard of Admiel Kosman before, but the moment I read his poems we knew that we found a treasure.

Today Admiel Kosman is a professor of Religious and Jewish Studies at Potsdam University in Germany and the academic director of Abraham Geiger Reform Rabbinical Seminary.

Here are two poems by Admiel  Kosman  from Modern Poetry in Translation which Daniel and I translated together.

 Out!

For my son Abraham, one year old

Out!

From here into the light, without gripping the doorframe and

  looking

back at the moonlike pallor of your father, making music

alone inside the curtained darkness.

  

Out, into the light, my son!

Be strong. Be modest. May the kingdom of evil

dry and flake off like plaster in your days.  

Wanted

Wanted a quiet place where the soul may rest

just for a few minutes.

Wanted a place to plant my feet

just for a few minutes.

 Wanted flowers, a leaf, a stalk, a bush that will not strike camp

and move off when she comes. Just for a few minutes.

  

Wanted just one word, clean, pleasant, warm, a bench

a shelter, for someone, for kin, a dovelike child, my soul

that left the ark for a few minutes at dawn

and since then has found no footing anywhere.

(Basic training camp 1989)