Robin Jones
Al-Jumhuriya
Beirut, Lebanon
As part of my work with al-Jumhuriya, I am responsible for editing several pieces by young Syrian writers based in and out of Syria. These articles were initially written in Arabic and were translated into English. I am not involved in the translation process myself; instead, my role is to improve the style and clarity to prepare the articles for publication.
So far, three such articles that I have edited have been published online. One is reportage on the Syrian-Turkish border by a writer with personal experience traversing it. Another is an author’s reflections on time spent in a refugee camp and the hopes and dreams of other Syrian women displaced there. There is another article on incarceration and a former prisoner’s experience of waiting for amnesty.
I have sought to approach these pieces with care, attention to detail, and humility, aware of the fine line between an edit that improves comprehensibility and clarity for an English audience and one that distorts the author’s original intent. When working with translated content, is it best to stick as closely as possible to the exact wording used by the author, or should one instead try to capture the spirit of the text even if it requires linguistic deviation? I do not have a one-size-fits-all answer; rather, I am learning as I go.
Despite my limited Arabic proficiency, I often find myself comparing the translated version of these articles to the original Arabic text and using several translation applications in an attempt to better grasp how particular terms function in their context. Of course, not all idioms and turns of phrase have a direct equivalent in English. Moreover, many of the articles contain expressive writing that deals with highly personal content.
As such, I am acting as a mediator of sorts when I work with these texts, despite my lack of direct experience with the trauma of war and displacement (or, for that matter, with the hopeful and positive Syrian collective experiences of the 2011 revolution). The implications of my positionality vis-à-vis that of the writers demands deeper analysis, in a way that is productive rather than self-congratulatory or paralyzing.
Overall, the experience has highlighted the need for me to further develop my Arabic language skills so that I may better engage with written work coming out of Syria and the region. It has also spurred an interest in working as a translator myself at some point in the future, when I have attained fluency.