Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash
Writing Your Translation Memoir with Sawad Hussain
Wasafiri is excited to announce the first translation workshop tutored by our 2023/2024 Translator-in-Residence Sawad Hussain.
When: Tuesday, 8 October 7-9pm BST
Where: Online via Zoom
Tickets: Full price tickets from £20-30. A limited number of concession and subsidised tickets are available.
Tying in with Wasafiri’s 40th anniversary issue of Futurisms, I see the future as one brimming with the ruminations and reflections by translators on their multiple trajectories. What we have to say matters too.
Writing Your Translation Memoir
Interest in the journey of translation is at an all-time high — with translators featuring on podcasts, in print media interviews, and headlining bookstore and festival events. Translators have always been seen as those who bring existing work into another language. However, there is now a new wave of celebrated translators writing their own novels, including Anton Hur, Jennifer Croft, and Bruna Dantas Lobato.
Tying in with Wasafiri’s 40th Anniversary Issue on Futurisms, Sawad Hussain sees the future as one brimming with the ruminations and reflections by translators on their multiple trajectories. What we have to say matters too, she says. Her essay, a kind of micro-memoir in the anthology Violent Phenomena, is what prompted her to pursue offering this workshop.
This generative-writing workshop serves as the nudge you always needed to write your own translation memoir. Whether you’re playing with doing this at a micro-level, in the form of an extended essay, or need guidance in plotting the chapters of your manuscript — this workshop is for you. Through this workshop, participants will gain a deeper understanding of what kinds of translation memoirs already exist, what makes them work, how to connect with their readership, and defined motivations for telling their story.
Practical takeaways include an outline/mind-map of your memoir-to-be, ideas of structures and styles for you to implement, and a resource list of powerful memoirs for you to dip into afterwards. Workshop activities will include peer feedback, so that you will get a sense of which aspects of your memoir your readership genuinely connects with. The nature of this workshop requires participants to be collaborative and vulnerable enough to share aspects of their translation career, so please be prepared to do so.
The workshop is open to translators and writers at all levels — and particularly to those from under-represented backgrounds.
This workshop is part of the International Translation Day 2024 Nationwide Programme. You can see the full programme on the English PEN website.
Sawad Hussain is a translator from Arabic whose work was shortlisted for The 2023 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, and longlisted for The Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing. She is a judge for the Palestine Book Awards and the Armory Square Prize for Literary Translation. She has run translation workshops under the auspices of Shadow Heroes, Africa Writes, Shubbak Festival, the Yiddish Book Center, the British Library, and the National Centre for Writing. Her latest translations include The Djinn's Apple (by Djamila Morani) and The Book Censor's Library (by Bothayna al-Essa; co-translated with Ranya Abdelrahman). The latter title was recently longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Translated literature. A former Co-Chair of the Translator's Association (in the UK), she is committed to mentoring literary translators and developing the translation industry in general.