CAIRO: The Director of the Egyptian National Center for Translation Gaber Asfour announced last month during the opening of the Translation and the Challenges of the Times conference that the center will issue English translations of the poems of the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. The move is being welcomed by writers across the board who see Darwish as a revolutionary in Arabic writing.

Asfour said “the translation has been accomplished by the Jordanian critic Mohammad Shahin, who was closely related to the late poet as part of a new plan for the center that includes working on the translation of intellectual and creative works from Arabic into foreign languages in coordination with international publishing houses.”

There was no announcement as to which publisher would take on the project.

“The decision to translate the work of Darwish into English came in the light of what has been done of work and in the light of our decision that it was time to play a role in the informing the world of the achievements of Arabic culture and creative diversity,” said Asfour.

He pointed out that “the center will collaborate with the Writers Union in Egypt a for the selection high-level Arab novels to represent the Arab culture.”

Continuing in his statement, he explained that the translation center will use “specialist editors working with publishing houses worldwide.”

In related news, Asfour stressed that the center will not back down on plans announced last year “to issue translations of some Israeli textbooks, but from another language, and not directly from Hebrew.”

He stressed in this context that “he is personally against cooperation with any Israeli party and against the normalization of cultural normalization in all its forms and will not give any money to an Israeli publisher of the funds of the Egyptian people.”

Despite a formal peace treaty between governments, Egyptian artists, writers and journalists remain at odds with their Jewish state’s counterparts. Culturally normalization is forbidden in Egypt and can lead to being booted from any of the syndicates in the country.

BM

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