Sunday, December 12, 2010

I took too many liberties that's why I stopped ...

translating my own work, explained the author Waciny Laredj recently in an interview with Katja Ghosn in L'Orient n°54, 12/2010. Laredj was born in Algeria in 1954, he went to exile to Paris in 1994, where he teaches literature at the Sorbonne. He started self-translating one of his book Sayyidat al-maqâm/Les ailes de la reine from Arabic to French, because he could not find a publisher for his book. For that reason he wrote the next novel Hârisat al-dhilâl /La gardienne des ombres directly in French but translated it also to Arabic. So Laredj self-translated in both directions, from Arabic to French and vice versa.
Today he has stopped self-translating his work because he noticed that the two versions did not resemble anymore. For Laredj self-translation became rewriting and unlike other authors he was not satisfied with this development.

To read the full interview (in French) please click here

To learn more about the reasons for his literary language choice, please read his interview with Jeune Afrique.

To learn about how he collaborated with Marcel Bois and Catherine Charruau on some of his translations, please read the interview with Yelles.

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