Traduire la révolution égyptienne. Traduction, témoignage et activisme : entretien avec Samah Selim

Abstract

As an academic, translator and activist, Samah Selim has produced a body of work that is of particular relevance to this special issue on the relation between translation and testimony. More specifically, it is the turn from academic research on Arabic literature and translation to a more directly activist engagement with translation in the wake of the revolution in Egypt in 2011 that is of specific interest to this issue. Currently Associate Professor at the Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures at Rutgers University, Selim previously taught at Columbia University, Princeton University and the University of Aix-en-Provence. She is also co-director of the literature module of the Berlin-based postdoctoral research program, Europe in the Middle East; the Middle East in Europe. Her published research mainly concerns modern Arabic literature in Egypt and the Levant, and the politics of translation in (post)colonial contexts. In 2004 she published a monograph on The Novel and the Rural Imaginary in Egypt 1880-1995, which explored the relationship between the rise of the novel genre, the politics of nationalist representation and the peasant question in 20th century Egypt. In addition, Selim produced translations of works by Yahya Taher Abdullah, Khaled Ziadeh, Mohamed Makhzangi and Jurji Zaydan. She was the first translator winning both the Banipal Prize and the Arkansas Prize for Arabic literary translation. In 2012, Selim’s engagement with translation took an activist turn when she became a member of the video subtitling unit of the non-profit collective Mosireen. Inspired by this multifaceted, academic-activist engagement with translation and testimony, we interviewed Samah via e-mail in July of this year.