Not All Literary Translators Are Created Equal by Sawad Hussain

In this candid, comprehensive essay drawing on her own career experiences, our outgoing 2024 Translator-in-Residence Sawad Hussain discusses the particularities – both the perks and drawbacks – of translating between Arabic and English, and the larger inequities between language pairs in the translation industry.

Reflections on the Inequities Between Language Pairs

The profession of literary translation is fraught with questions: how do you gain a foothold in the industry? How do you ensure a seat at the table, years later? There has been plenty of conversation – on panels and in essays – about how the literary translation industry is overwhelmingly white. In an attempt to address this imbalance, specific initiatives have been founded to provide Global Majority translators with editor introductions, bespoke training (see ALTA’s Building Our Future Programme), and submission fees waivers at certain times of the year (see The Common) for additional accessibility. While this progress is heartwarming and encouraging to see, what doesn’t get discussed as much is how the experience of a literary translator, say, from Finnish to English, can be drastically different to that of an Arabic-English literary translator navigating the world of publishing. There are obstacles that literary translators face as a whole – including low payment rates and not being acknowledged in reviews of our works – and yet, there are also particular burdens that Arabic-English literary translators shoulder, ones which their counterparts not only working from FIGS (à la Anton Hur: to wit, French, Italian, German, and Spanish) face, but also those working from Swedish, Portuguese, and Japanese, for example, do not have to consider.

Though I'd initially only intended to write about the added obstacles I personally have had to overcome, I realised while writing this that there are privileges (albeit few) to translating from Arabic. In fact, I will delve into what could possibly be viewed as ‘perks’ later on in this essay. My intention here is to vent some of my frustrations as a mid-career translator when comparing my reality to those of my counterparts. Let me clarify: translators from Sesotho, Tamil, Sinhala, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Telugu, and Kiswahili (I have mentored translators working from these languages) are very much in the same boat as me, or even worse, simply treading water. I’m not usually a fan of comparison, and prefer the ‘focus on your own lane’ mindset (cue ‘Chariots of Fire’); however, for the purpose of this essay, laissons-nousⁱ compare away.

During the 2025 London Book Fair week, a German-English translator took to Instagram to share the seven titles they had sample translations for, and how not one, not two, but THREE of those titles came with funding attached for the book-length translation if a publisher went ahead and acquired the English language rights (Thank you, New Books in German!). All rights for each of their titles are represented by agents, meaning said translator doesn’t even need to pitch these titles (we’ll get into why this is relevant later on). Frankly, I had to read the post more than once to make sure I understood it correctly.

How is there such an overwhelming abundance of funding in German literary translation circles that one translator can have three titles fully funded simultaneously? Not over a period of five to seven years, but all in the same week? Funding for even just a sample – blue-sky dreaming to talk about the entirety of a book – is practically unheard of for Arabic. In my fifteen-plus years of being a literary translator, the only funding body I have been able to receive repeated support from is English PEN — GOD BLESS THEM! Actually, let me add that there has been one other body: the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), aka ‘the Arabic Booker’, which underwrote my latest translation, Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table (forthcoming 2026) by Mohammed AlNaas. However, that particular pot of funding is only available to the IPAF winner. To be able to situate (read: wrestle) myself as the translator of an IPAF-winning title has taken me about fifteen years, so I’m not exactly taking the IPAF into account. It’s a once-in-a-green-moon, even-rarer-than-a-blue-moon, funding opportunity for Arabic-English translators.

Funding in the publishing industry, with paper costs rising each year and smaller margins to work with, is really what can make or break the acquisition of a translation. When asked what could be some reasons why a book doesn’t make it through the acquisitions meeting, Dan Bird, an editor at Granta, said: ‘Well, for a work in translation, […] funding is quite a key one.’ ⁱⁱ

During a recent conversation about funding options with a Bulgarian-English translator, we discussed a very generous state programme that they could apply to with a title of their choice. I stress this because some readers of this piece (Ahlan, Arabic translator!) might pipe up that the Sheikh Zayed Book Award provides funding. And yet, the stumbling block is that the work must already be a shortlisted title. And, broadly speaking, the titles that traditionally make the shortlist are more philosophical and/or dense in nature, and not always likely to sell well in an Anglosphere market.

Lack of funding leads to a precarious existence for Arabic translators, and to fewer titles being midwifed into English. German, as explained earlier, is just one example — and other languages too have funding bodies that translators and publishers can regularly petition to for funding:

French: Albertine Translation

Korean: LTI Korea

Swedish: Kulturrådet

Polish: Polish Book Institute

Catalan: Institut Ramon Llull

And the list goes on …

Bowlingⁱⁱⁱ

As a mid-career translator, the more I hear about the origin stories of other literary translators’ projects (from Portuguese, Catalan, Finnish), the more it seems that a book being brought to the translator, at a similar point in their career trajectory to my own, is the norm. Again, this is not a train that I am likely to get a ticket for. To really break it down for you, dear reader, I’ve put together two tables of titles I have under contract (published, currently under edits, or freshly signed — no NDAs) and how many of the titles I’ve had to bowl myself^iv.

The first table below catalogues the projects that I’ve bowled successfully, not taking into account all the other projects that were not picked up, and left to waste away^v.

The second table below shows projects that were brought to me, and how.

And, so what does this mean?

The bowling packs that I put together for each title are inevitably the fruits of unpaid labour. I don’t get paid for samples, reports, or other marketing collateral. I’ve shared with some of my mentees and workshop attendees how I get around not being paid for samples: I pitch the ideas of the excerpts – see endnotes below for some current ones – to online literary outlets and then use these excerpts in my bowling packs^vi. This occasionally works, but is not predictable a pattern enough to keep one humming along. As such, how much longer can I feasibly keep bowling? Even the famed Rawalpindi Express, Shoaib Akthar, lost steam after forcing himself to keep bowling on an injured knee. I’m now a mother who juggles my day job, translation, motherhood, and marriage. It’s barely sustainable and incredibly taxing. Translators I know who are even earlier in their journey have, say, French commercial work brought to them by editors, which allows them to be paid so that they can take on the unpaid labour of preparing bowling packs for more literary titles. Or, they’re paid by an agent who brings titles their way, and can concentrate solely on the art of translation. Juxtaposing this with my story is enough to make one consider taking a hiatus from translating to focus on how to change this state of affairs for the better –– once and for all.

Chupan Chupai^vii: Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are

There are two things that need to happen for mid-career translators from Arabic in order to have titles brought to them, even if it’s only a handful, from time to time. Firstly, we need a more robust infrastructure. Alf shukr to 10/11, Raya Agency, and Rola Banna for all the work they are doing on this front, in trying to turn the tide. Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp has graciously launched Azulejos – ‘a boutique literary agency specializing in translation rights for authors writing in languages other than English’ – to bring more Arabic titles to light in the kidlit space. The combination of agents showcasing titles along with translated samples, summaries, marketing plans, and funding is what is needed to hit a chakka (that is, a six).

Rather than me having to broker relationships of trust with dozens of editors, it would be a dream for agents to present the title on my behalf, so I could just focus on the … actual … craft … of … translation. Author after author of mine has said that I should become an agent. But really, I just want to translate. I cannot even begin to try to account for the amount of time I’ve spent trying to get an author to trust an agent who can’t speak Arabic, all so that their work will have a better chance of making it into English.

The LEILA project’s website is the closest we have to a New Books in Arabic (following the New Books in German model), but one of the major impediments is that there is no funding to go along with the titles. Additionally, a number of the curated titles have already been published in English, so it may well be more beneficial for languages other than English in Europe, which makes sense as it is described as a ‘European cooperative project which aims to promote the translation and dissemination in Europe of contemporary Arabic literature’.

Not All Doom and Gloom

One of the privileges I have had as an Arabic-English translator, which doesn’t seem to be standard practice with other language pairs, is having an instrumental say in what the cover art will look like. For Edo’s Souls (2023) by Stella Gaitano, I recommended that the publisher approach Sudanese visual artist Yasmeen Abdullah for her haunting, ethereal paintings, and they readily agreed. She submitted two options, and we collectively discussed what would work best for the story. For a Gazan YA novel I’m currently translating (Asad’s Secret by Najlaa Atallah), I guided the publisher towards commissioning a Palestinian artist and it appears we are going ahead with her! It’s early days so I can’t share names yet, but I’m all too happy to move away from hijabs, deserts, and palm tree imagery. I feel a rush of pleasure when I play such a key part in deciding the visual paratext for one of my translations.

Another plus for emerging translators in the field of Arabic translation is that it’s easier to stand apart from the pack. While the French and Spanish fields are saturated, an Arabic translator can still gain traction at a quicker speed — even if they don’t get a book deal, then at least by building up portfolios by doing shorter pieces for magazines, for example.

Finally, a plus – which is very specific to my translation practice – is that, due to all the bowling I’ve had to do, I now run workshops where I train translators on how best to present their work to editors. I’ve done different iterations of this with cohorts of Yiddish, Kiswahili, and Portuguese translators, as well as cohorts composed of multiple language pairs. ‘Rejection and resilience is the name of the game’ has become my motto when relaying to translators how to package their work and hopefully secure a publishing deal.

Where Do We Go from Here? Why is The Path Unclear?

On the days where I’m really struggling to make sense of why I’m still making a go at being an Arabic-English literary translator^viii, I remember the authors whose work I’m bringing into English, and how important it is to stretch the horizons of Anglosphere readers. As I consider how fortunate I am to play a role in bringing powerful stories into new spaces, I feel spurred to hold out hope that the shoots of progress poking through the gloom will one day collectively become a supportive ecosystem — an ecosystem that empowers Arabic translators to dedicate themselves fully to curating and translating books that will resonate for generations to come. Let the dark days of unpaid labour come to an end!

Endnotes

ⁱ The French is a just a throwback to my Violent Phenomena piece, sort of an inside joke. If you get it, great; if not, let’s swiftly and surely move on.

ⁱⁱ Watch Publishers Panel, BCLT Summer School 2023, a panel I moderated. He makes this comment at around the forty-minute mark.

ⁱⁱⁱ I’m going with this cricket reference instead of pitching as I’m tired of using American sports lingo; let’s instead view the world through the lens of Pakistan’s national obsession. And yes, you may think of ten or twelve pins but look up wickets instead and you’ll get the picture — hopefully!(?)

^iv Still getting tripped up? Read this easy-to-learn guide on cricket.

^v Digression: Two projects – one, an Iraqi novel (a rollicking, rollercoaster of a journalist’s life story through Iraqi’s politics) from five years ago, and the second, a Saudi Arabian novel from eleven years ago, exploring a tender and fierce love story against the backdrop of an increasingly inward-looking society, have both been resuscitated and I’m pitching – I mean bowling – them again. The first project was recently translated into French and published by Gallimard (stamp of approval for UK publishers), while the second was adapted into a wildly popular Ramadan serial, which has prompted readers to email and ask me when it will be available in English, as they’ve seen I did a sample a while back. It’s the first time where projects I’d stopped bowling have made their way back onto the pitch. I will most likely write another essay on this if either of them is acquired, and talk about what it takes to bring a title back to life, to make it relevant enough to warrant a second look by editors.

^vi See some examples here of books I’m currently bowling:

https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2025-03/1973-1978-the-green-march-bin-shatwan-hussain/;

https://www.thedial.world/articles/literature/issue-7/fiction-shahad-al-rawi-short-story;

and

https://www.thecommononline.org/the-day-azrael-committed-suicide/.

^{vii ‘}Hide and seek’ in Urdu.

^viii I have actually been asked to do a few French YA samples by an agent, which were brought to me and I got PAID for them. Felt like HEAVEN!

Image via Wikimedia Commons