TO Saudi Arabia from Manchester via Egypt, Anthony Calderbank not only finds pleasure in translating Arabic literature into English but also satisfaction as well. Merely taking a degree in Classical Arabica at Manchester was not enough. “I liked the Arabic script,” he said. Later he had a chance to study calligraphy in Cairo, and that is what got him hooked on Arabic and the Arabs. The cultural and artistic side overwhelmed him, he explained. Looking back, he admits that the reason for his moving to the Middle East was rather “idealistic, romantic and pretty much exotic.” For him, the journey was one of exploration and discovery.
When he first arrived in Cairo, he lived in a lower-middle class neighborhood known as Shobra. At first he shared an apartment with a friend but when the friend left, he could not afford the rent so he had to move into a cheaper one. He lived in Shobra next to the school he was working in. The school was a private one, mainly for poor Copts, Egypt’s Christian minority though there were Muslims in the school as well. Surrounded in this environment by ordinary Egyptians, his Arabic rapidly became totally fluent; what he learned there stood him in good stead later as a translator as he picked up the Egyptian accent and also an understanding of the Egyptian mentality.
After living in Egypt for a couple of years, he returned to England to teach Arabic at Salford University at Manchester. That, however, lasted only two and a half years before he decided to return to Egypt. This time he got a job at the American University in Cairo (AUC) where he taught writing to freshman in the department of English literature. While there, he met his wife. Also at this time, he was asked by AUC to read several Egyptian novels and say whether he thought they would appeal to western readers. When he answered affirmatively, he was asked if he would like to translate them and thus a new career began.
He worked first on a novel entitled “The Tent” by the Egyptian novelist, Miral Al-Tahawy. The novel deals with a topic that is not often discussed — the patriarchal bedouin system that controls women’s lives and forces them to live in a very restricted world. The topic, however, was not the only obstacle facing Calderbank. The language that Al-Tahawy used was poetic, indirect with many elements from archaic classical Arabic. “With Miral, the desire is to understand the text,” he explained.
He said that he had faced another problem in translating “Blue Aubergine,” another novel by the same author. He said that the heroine, though telling a story that happened almost five decades earlier, uses the future tense instead of the past. “I don’t think this is acceptable,” he commented. There was additional confusion since the heroine was never given a name in the novel. He asked the novelist about this and was told that that was the way the subject had come to her. He felt that that could not be the case in English since with such an involved story, an English reader would get lost. “It’s a constant battle,” Calderbank said aobut the translating process.
He said that in translating it was sometimes impossible to choose between words or feelings to convey those words. He himself chooses constant negotiations with the authors themselves in hopes of getting the essence of what they meant. “I ask them what they meant by using a certain word. Sometimes getting to know the author personally helps a lot.”
Calderbank has translated novels by Sonallah Ibrahim, Miral Al-Tahawy and Nagib Mahfouz as well as a collection of children’s short stories about the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). He has just completed translating a novel, “Traps of the Scents” by the Saudi writer Yousif Al-Mohaimeed; he is now working on another novel by the same writer entitled “The Bottle.”
When he worked on Sonallah Ibrahim’s novels, he found them easy to translate. The books are about the Egyptian middle class which Calderbank has first hand knowledge of from his years in Cairo. “I know exactly where they live and what the streets, the houses and the kitchens look like. I even know why the woman wants to change her bathrooms.” Calderbank likes to think of translation as a process similar to oil painting. Just as painters do not do the whole thing at once, translators undergo levels of constructing, designing and furnishing.
In his latest work translating the Saudi novelist Al-Mohaimeed, Calderbank had also to be aware of the nature of Saudi society. Although he lived two years in Jeddah and now lives in the Eastern province and speaks fluent Arabic, he was unable to enter the Saudi social system as easily as he did the Egyptian one. He finds Saudis more cautious in dealing with foreigners and also less cooperative. He has trouble understanding the dynamics of Saudi relationships and because of that, he is having trouble with Al-Mohaimeed’s “The Bottle.” He cannot understand how an educated heroine does not know the real occupation of her lover who later becomes her husband.
Translating for Calderbank is “really for love.” He said that although it takes a great deal of time and effort, it does not produce much money. He usually does his translating at night when he has finished his day time job.
At present, he works as an assistant director at the British Council in Alkhobar in the Eastern province. He works to build relationships between east and west through cultural and educational channels. He has been working on an exchange student program that sent Saudi students to the UK and vice versa. He believes that, regardless of different beliefs and races, people are in the end human beings who share the same hopes, fears and worries.
