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Memories in Translation: A Life Between the Lines of Arabic Literature

Denys Johnson-Davies

3.89 · Rating details · 44 ratings · 8 reviews

Nobody has done more for modern Arabic literature in translation than Denys Johnson-Davies, described by the late Edward Said as "the leading Arabic English translator of our time." With more than twenty-five volumes of translated Arabic novels, short stories, plays, and poetry to his name, and a career spanning some sixty years, he has brought the works of a host of write ...more

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Hardcover, 139 pages

Published March 15th 2006 by American University in Cairo Press (first published February 28th 2005)

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Sep 09, 2016 Radwa rated it liked it · review of another edition

كتاب أشبه بمذكرات أو لمحات خاطفة من حياة أحد المستشرقين ومترجمين الأدب العربي للإنجليزية، وهو البريطاني دنيس جونسون ديفز. استمتعت باللحظات اللي بيتكلم فيها عن حياته وعن المواقف الفارقة اللي كانت حياته ممكن تاخد فيها شكل مختلف تمامًا لو مكنش كرس نفسه للغة العربية بالشكل ده.

الكتاب بيطرح بدايات تعلمه للغة العربية في إنجلترا، وخاصة أنه كان قد قضى معظم سنوات عمره قبل وبعد ذلك في دول عربية، وكيف قاده حرصه على فهم اللغة العربية للتعرف على أهم أدباء العرب في عصره. المثير للإهتمام أن الترجمة - كما شدد كث كتاب أشبه بمذكرات أو لمحات خاطفة من حياة أحد المستشرقين ومترجمين الأدب العربي للإنجليزية، وهو البريطاني دنيس جونسون ديفز. استمتعت باللحظات اللي بيتكلم فيها عن حياته وعن المواقف الفارقة اللي كانت حياته ممكن تاخد فيها شكل مختلف تمامًا لو مكنش كرس نفسه للغة العربية بالشكل ده.

الكتاب بيطرح بدايات تعلمه للغة العربية في إنجلترا، وخاصة أنه كان قد قضى معظم سنوات عمره قبل وبعد ذلك في دول عربية، وكيف قاده حرصه على فهم اللغة العربية للتعرف على أهم أدباء العرب في عصره. المثير للإهتمام أن الترجمة - كما شدد كثيرًا في هذا الكتاب - لم تكن يومًا مصدر أكل عيشه، أو شغله الوحيد، فلطالما كافح وعانى كما يتضح في هذا الكتاب لينشر أي كتاب أو ترجمات لأي روائي عربي، حتى نجيب محفوظ الفائز بجائزة نوبل. وهذا يجعلني اعتقد ان مجال الترجمة في مصر ربما ليس بذلك السوء - ربما!-

أعيب على هذا الكتاب تركيزه على التحدث عن كل رحلاته التي قام بها وكل أديب عربي تعرف عليه وظروف تلك المعرفة، وحتى أنه يقوم في كثير من الأوقات بقص بعض الطرائف عن علاقته بهم، فيما أن حديثه عن الترجمة - وهو الهدف الرئيسي من الكتاب كما اعتقدت - قليل بعض الشئ. استفدت من حديثه عن الترجمة والنشر وبعض نصائحه فيما يتعلق بمعرفة اللغات الأجنبية، واستمتعت بطرائف كونه أجنبيًا يفهم اللغة العربية في بلاد يفترض فيها العرب أنه لا يفهم حديثهم. أحسست بغربته وأشفقت عليه محاولة الضرب بجذوره في بلاد كالبلاد العربية. ...more

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Mar 09, 2020 Caroline rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: memoirs, middle-eastern

What a jumble, but a most useful jumble.

Johnson-Davies couldn't settle down to school, after he was sent back to England at 14. He had grown up in Egypt, Sudan, Uganda and Kenya . Finding Latin and Greek too hard, he asked to study Arabic (!). A rather helter-skelter education, interrupted by the war, which he spent translating for the war effort, ended him up in Egypt, where he lived for much of his life (save for a mid-career stint as a lawyer back in England).

Being a non-conformist, living in What a jumble, but a most useful jumble.

Johnson-Davies couldn't settle down to school, after he was sent back to England at 14. He had grown up in Egypt, Sudan, Uganda and Kenya . Finding Latin and Greek too hard, he asked to study Arabic (!). A rather helter-skelter education, interrupted by the war, which he spent translating for the war effort, ended him up in Egypt, where he lived for much of his life (save for a mid-career stint as a lawyer back in England).

Being a non-conformist, living in poor digs rather than amongst the ex-pats, and probably quite charming, he came to know everybody writing in Arabic for fifty years or more. He drank countless cup of coffee in street cafes, discussing literature with men who were already, or would become famous across the Middle East. He translated Naguib Mafouz, Tayeb Salih, Mahmud Darwish and dozens of others.

Johnson-Davies was a tireless promoter of Arabic literature, especially in translation. He started the Arabic Authors series at Heinemann. (This was similar to the Heinemann African writers series, but unfortunately the Arabic series didn't last and now I can't even find a list of the series titles on line.) He started and edited at least one journal devoted to Arabic literature, and was always looking for venues for the stories he translated. He also published several anthologies of translated Arabic short stories.

But as I said, the book is a jumble. It very much sounds like transcripts of conversations he had with someone eliciting his memories, because his mind jumps from one topic and era to another. Then it circles back thirty pages later, and forty and fifty pages later.

But as a source of authors to pursue, it is absolutely worth the price of admission. So many names and anecdotes from 1940 through 2000 that don't get mentioned in the usual lists that focus on Mahfouz, Salih, and Darwish (such as Tawfiq al-Hakim, Haha Hussein, Yahya Hakki, Yusuf Idris, Tawfic Sayigh, Ghassan Kanafani). The focus is on Egypt, but Johnson-Davies knew authors from Lebanon, Tunisia, Sudan, the gulf, etc etc. There are years of reading here. I have it on order for reference. (borrowed an ebook from the library to read it.) ...more

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Oct 25, 2010 Marieke rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: students of Arabic

Shelves: arab-world, history, language, memoir, non-fiction, united-kingdom, 2011

I started off my new year by reading a book from cover to cover. Today is Saturday and so I have decided to set this insane behavior as my 2011 personal theme: each Saturday morning I'll read a short book in its entirety. Just for kicks.

This particular book is one i've meant to have read for quite some time. It is the short memoir of one of the foremost translators of modern Arabic literature into English and for that reason, this is not a book for everyone, but definitely a book for me. :D

I en I started off my new year by reading a book from cover to cover. Today is Saturday and so I have decided to set this insane behavior as my 2011 personal theme: each Saturday morning I'll read a short book in its entirety. Just for kicks.

This particular book is one i've meant to have read for quite some time. It is the short memoir of one of the foremost translators of modern Arabic literature into English and for that reason, this is not a book for everyone, but definitely a book for me. :D

I enjoyed reading it, almost entirely for selfish reasons: reading about his fits and starts trying to learn Arabic in the first place assuaged my nagging guilt that I don't spend enough time devoted to Arabic though I'd very much like to. So I was delighted to read that despite finishing his Cambridge degree having "passed adequately in Arabic and did well in Persian..." no one bothered to see if Johnson-Davies had understood anything in a news bulletin he had listened to during an interview for a position with the nascent Arabic section of the BBC in the late-1930s. In fact, he confessed that he "had scarcely understood a word."

No one checked his comprehension, because none of the British folk running the show themselves spoke or understood Arabic. This is one of the main themes running through this slim volume--translation is necessary because so few English-speakers learn Arabic, yet at the same time, that very situation renders the whole project of translating modern Arabic literature extraordinarily difficult. He noted ruefully that "apart from some twenty Arabs, not a soul in the Arabic section of the BBC could be said to have more than a superficial command of the language" and asked how could it be that Britain had "acquired this great empire, which included a large number of people whose native language was Arabic, yet appeared to boast virtually no one who knew the language?" Today's Americans will surely recognize themselves in this.

So it seems obvious that with so few speakers of Arabic among native English-speakers, a few good and capable translators would make all the difference in bridging the gap. But it's not easy, since translation is not just about language, but it's also about culture. Johnson-Davies makes an interesting observation that in the mid- to late-twentieth century, most Arabic writers, with a few exceptions, did not know any foreigners, had never traveled outside their places of origin, and had not been exposed to any foreign language--this made their writing very insular and exceptionally difficult to translate into something people in a Western culture with little to no experience with the Arab world could understand, relate to, or find interesting, literary merits notwithstanding.

Then of course there is the problem of the various versions of colloquial Arabic that exist across the Arab world and the question of whether colloquial should be used in literature. Johnson-Davies tended to disagree with some Arab writers who thought colloquial was not appropriate for use in literary writing, because he was of the mind that classical Arabic is ill-suited for conveying humor, which happens to exist in spades in the Arab world.

This memoir is barely linear--he talks a little bit about his early childhood and how his interest in Arabic began, and then he tells us about going to university, and of his problems as a young adult finding work while avoiding the trap of a career, but other than that, he moves around quite a bit in his memories, almost as if he is interviewing himself. We don't see the questions, but we can guess what they are, for example: Who are the greatest modern writers and did you translate their work, why or why not? How did you get to know these writers and did you become friends? Which publishers have had success publishing translated Arabic literature and what was your role in that? How did you get into writing children's stories in English for children of Arab descent?

Johnson-Davies had a quite interesting life, but i'm not sure that his memoirs would be terribly engaging for people with no interest in Arabic literature. I think also that this book would be a little difficult for people with no background in the modern history of the Arab world. He occasionally alludes to historical events, but it's really up to the reader to already be aware of political conditions in the various countries where he lived and traveled. So basically, this book is not universal. A very specific audience, of which i consider myself to be part, will enjoy this book and take something away from reading it.

He has a nice message for would-be translators at the very end. Translating is a thankless (he provides plenty of anecdotes about that), underpaid (he makes it very clear he does not do it for the money) profession, but absolutely necessary, making it perhaps one of the noblest out there. He asks us to consider,

Where would the cultural world be without its translators? How is it that we have all had access to HOmer and the writings of the ancient Greeks, to books such as "The Epic of Gilgamesh," to the Russians, Cervantes, Proust, Pessoa, and so on.

And then he reminds us that translators of Arabic today definitely live in the wrong era because,

The early Arabs, it seems, showed greater appreciation for their translators; it is recorded that in early Abbasid times the famous Honein ibn Ishaq was paid a handsome monthly salary and that the caliph Ma'mun rewarded him with the weight of gold of the books he had translated. ...more

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Jan 14, 2017 Mohammed Asiri rated it it was amazing

"Translation is an art that requires considerably more than simply having a knowledge of two different languages"

This little inspiring expression tells you how I was joyful while I was reading this book.

How do you think reading book that is written by one who spends most of his life traveling around Arab world?! What do you think about reading a book that tells you real stories with Najeeb Mahfouz, Yousef Idris, Tyeb Saleh, and other great writers in the Arab world?! Do you want to read how Nob ...more

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Jul 05, 2020 Maroi rated it liked it

I've translated few chapters of this book into Arabic.
As a translator myself, I have but respect to such a man. This respect is not based upon his traductorial skills (I in fact didn't have the chance to read any of translations yet) but the fact that he made a name for himself when it is a rare luxury for any translator to have.
Anyway this book was an enjoyable read, not particularly inspiring however. It's a human experience of a man that was lucky to meet great men and contribute in making ...more

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Mar 06, 2014 Karl Galle rated it really liked it

Shelves: essays-commentary, egypt

A brief tour through the world of Arabic literature in translation, as seen through the eyes and career of one of its most prolific English translators. Johnson-Davies does not try to provide a deep analysis of different literary themes or traditions in the Arab-speaking lands, and this is also not a detailed autobiography. Nevertheless, the arc of his career and his interactions with some of the region's most distinguished writers offer insights into how difficult it has been to attract readers ...more

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Aug 15, 2018 Badrul Aini Sha'ari rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Jaguh Utama Terjemahan Bahasa Arab-Inggeris Zaman Ini.

Membaca memoir beliau, saya sangat bersetuju dengan pujian Edward Said kepada beliau: “The leading Arabic-English translator of our time.”

Mana tidaknya, beliau adalah orang yang berjasa besar memperkenalkan karya-karya sasterawan, karyawan, penulis dan penyair Arab kepada dunia.

Beliau juga pakar yang dirujuk oleh penganjur Hadiah Nobel untuk kategori sastera pada tahun 1988.

Ada cerita di sebalik cerita bagaimana Naguib Mahfouz yang menang me ...more

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Aug 02, 2008 Jld rated it liked it

I am a huge admirer of Mr. Johnson-Davies (in fact I am attempting to collect each of the titles he has translated) and was thrilled to see he wrote about his unconventional personal life. The book was a fascinating account of his encounters with Arab authors over the years and how he became such a prolific translator but I would have loved to have read more about his personal life and reflections.

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About Denys Johnson-Davies

Denys Johnson-Davies

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Denys Johnson-Davies (Arabic: دنيس جونسون ديڤيز) (1922-2017) was an eminent Arabic-to-English literary translator who has translated, inter alia, several works by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, Sudanese author Tayeb Salih, Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish and Syrian author Zakaria Tamer.

Davies, referred to as “the leading Arabic-English translator of our time” by the late Edwa ...more