During his talk “Are We Even Translating?: Reflections on Working Between Arabic and a Standard Average European Language” at AUC in April, Elliott Colla spoke about his translation of Ibrahim Aslan’s novel The Heron (AUC Press, paperback edition 2009). “Aslan was a stylist,” notes Colla, as he explains here how he interpreted the word “said,” which appears repeatedly in the original Arabic text. Watch an extract.
Colla, currently associate professor of Arabic literature at Georgetown University, is the translator of several novels, including Idris Ali’s Poor (AUC Press, new edition, 2013), and Ibrahim al-Koni’s Gold Dust (AUC Press, new edition, 2015).
You can follow him on his website http://www.elliottcolla.com/translation
