The following are Fatima's notes on the challenges in translating an English poem into Arabic:

For this cross cultural poetry project I have asked my dear friend and poet Fred Holland for permission to translate his poem ‘Unsuited’ included in his poetry collection ‘In Guarded Conversation’. Here are some of the difficulties/challenges I was faced with:

Meaning of words and expressions:
I had to double check meaning of words to make sure I understood the correctly especially in the context in which they were used.
Expressions such as “Alas!” (first line of the poem) are not available in the formal Arabic language, however, this differs according to the various informal dialects found in each Arabic country.
“but I would hate you make you cry” the word but in the beginning of the sentences can not be translated literally as it will not give the same meaning which the poet had intended and thus was replaced with the equivalent of “without”.
“make you cry” also was not easy to express in Arabic; as I had to use a very different verb than “make”, I used “push you to cry”
The expression “say” (the end of the fourth line) has no equivalent in the Arabic language there is a letter that can be linked to words to indicate the giving of examples which I have used to translate this sentence.
2. Literal translation led to loss of meaning:

When I tried translating some words literally I felt the meaning, the music and the feeling of the poem was lost, e.g. the word 'unsuited' (the title) if I had written the exact equivalent in Arabic it would sound like objects not being suitable such as clothing, the term when used for a couple will not give the meaning which the poet intended and thus was replaced with 'incompatible'.
3. The forming of a sentence:

All English phrases/sentences read to an Arab upside down! The Arabic sentence always starts with a verb and not the noun, e.g. “Not a day would pass” (second/third line) cannot be translated without changing the place of the verb “pass” and having it in the beginning in order to make sense of the sentence.
4. Genderising:

Every word (noun/verb/adjective) has a gender in Arabic and thus words were changed in order to indicate gender.
5. Cultural ambiguity:

Even though I have translated the phrase “no friends would come” (seventh line) an Arab reader will wonder why it was put there, and would question whether a line such as this one would serve the poem at all, mainly because relationship in the Arab world are very personal and private, looking beyond the relationship on to how friends would feel almost never happens.
In many instances in the poem the sentences were short, summarised, as if the less the poet had to explain the better the quality of the poem. I find in Arabic poetry there’s almost a need to explain, to extend description (as describing and the beauty of description is highly appreciated in Arabic poetry) to give the reader a clearer picture of what the poet intends to say rather than the minimalist approach often used in English poetry.


Fatima AL Matar http://www.writeoutloud.net/poets/fatimaalmatar