A Brief Guide to the Arabic Translations of Humphrey Davies and Further Resources on His Work
David Shasha
A Brief Guide to the Arabic Translations of Humphrey Davies and Further Resources on His Work
I cannot claim to be an expert on Arabic literature, or on the people who translate it.
But in my extensive reading of Arabic literature over many years, I have often noticed the name of Humphrey Davies, who recently passed away:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/books/humphrey-davies-dead.html
The complete New York Times obituary follows this note.
You can get a fuller sense of his oeuvre from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_T._Davies
M. Lynx Qualey has posted a very useful summation of his career with notable book titles and links to his interviews:
https://arablit.org/2021/11/14/celebrating-humphrey-10-translations-11-interviews/
It just so happens that I recently completed the very arduous task of reading his NYU Press edition of the 19th century Arab Modernist classic Leg Over Leg by the polymath Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq:
https://www.amazon.com/Leg-over-Volumes-Library-Literature/dp/1479800724
The massive four-volume opus is a richly variegated work that brings together traditional forms of classical Arabic literature from the Mu’allaqat poetic tradition and its Qasida form, to the rhymed prose genre known as Maqama; all reflected through a personalized Modern prism, in the form of a very sharp social satire of politics and religion.
The Maqama is, of course, amply represented in the Sephardic tradition by writers like Judah Al-Harizi and Isaac ibn Sahula:
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Tahkemoni-Medieval-Littman-Civilization/dp/1874774986
https://www.amazon.com/Meshal-Haqadmoni-Fables-Distant-Past/dp/1874774560
Leg Over Leg masterfully incorporates these traditional genres in a very tricky amalgamation, and Professor Davies’ masterful achievement rests on the manner in which he so expertly integrates the traditional with more contemporary presentations of religion, colonialism, linguistics, philology, and political theory; a panoply of discourses that make the book a dizzying, but exhilarating, read.
The epic work is truly an outstanding compendium of Arabic literary history and its integration into the Modern cultural network, with its many socio-political challenges.
I would certainly contrast Davies’ brilliant translation with the utterly offensive and baffling choices of Michael Cooperson, whose edition of Al-Hariri’s Maqamat, translated and modified into Hebrew by the aforementioned Harizi in the Sephardic Golden Age prior to writing his Tahkemoni, takes each individual chapter and renders it into a different modern colloquial language:
There is already a very good translation of the work by Amina Shah that presents Al-Hariri in a contextual manner that does ample justice to his Arabic cultural situatedness:
https://www.amazon.com/Assemblies-Al-Hariri-Fifty-Encounters-Shayck/dp/0900860863
When I bought the new translation, I honestly thought it would be an actual improvement on the previous edition.
And was I wrong!
Cooperson’s bizarre idea is to remake the Arabic rhymed prose into Mark Twain and African-American vernacular, among other very weird rhetorical choices.
Because of this cognitive dissonance and its sheer disrespect for the original and its cultural context, the book is so unreadable that I gave up on it after a few chapters. It truly makes a mockery of classical Arabic literature.
Do not buy it under any circumstances!
You will regret it.
I make the comparison between the two books, both published in the otherwise-excellent NYU Library of Arabic Literature series, because it shows us the difference between a translator who is sensitive to readers who are encountering a text in a language that is unfamiliar to them and one who really does not care. As I was struggling to grasp Shidyaq’s difficult text, I continued to be thankful for Davies’ steady hand, and his concern for the needs of the non-Arabic speaker.
Cooperson’s hubris is overwhelming, as he is blithely unconcerned with the poor reader who wants to know what the original is like, but must rely on the English rendering to do so. Admittedly, this is never an easy task with such culturally-specific texts. But Cooperson’s avoidance of a literal rendering is extreme.
And while there are always valid reasons to translate in a non-literal manner, Cooperson’s cross-cultural displacement is methodologically absolute, and serves to erase the semiotics of the original, and replace it with a completely alien set of cultural representations that often raise issues of cultural colonialism and Eurocentric displacement of Arab civilization.
It is an insult not only to the reader, but to those of us who want to help disseminate classic works of the Arab literary heritage at a critical time when Americans, especially American Jews, need to know these important books.
That being said, I would point to Davies’ interview discussing Leg Over Leg that provides further context on his approach:
https://www.mhpbooks.com/an-absquiliferous-interview-with-humphrey-davies-arabic-translator/
Davies is perhaps best known for his translations of more recent Arab novels, like Naguib Mahfouz’s classic realist tale of Cairo slums Midaq Alley, which skillfully presents the oppressive world of the poor workers as they struggle to eke out a dignified existence:
https://www.amazon.com/Midaq-Modern-Arabic-Literature-Hardcover/dp/9774164830
The Davies version is the second translation into English, and I would assume that those who have already read it have done so in the Anchor edition by Trevor Le Gassick:
https://www.amazon.com/Midaq-Alley-Naguib-Mahfouz/dp/0385264763
But if you have never read the book, you can indeed check out the newer version by Davies.
And then, of course, there is one of Mahfouz’s many heirs, the popular writer Alaa Al-Aswany and his classic Yacoubian Building:
https://www.amazon.com/Yacoubian-Building-Alaa-Al-Aswany/dp/0060878134
Back in 2008, I wrote an essay on the book and its excellent movie adaptation:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GmR5u4VyasBa_go6AcKYyuPZ4xGERRR4hwmxaGDXuiQ/edit
Among literary snobs, Davies is perhaps best known for his translations of Elias Khoury, especially his Gate of the Sun:
https://www.amazon.com/Gate-Sun-Elias-Khoury/dp/0312426704
I must be perfectly honest and admit that, although I have read a number of his works, Khoury – very much like Toni Morrison and her very elliptical novel Beloved – eludes me.
Davies has also translated Pyramid Texts by the great Gamal Al-Ghitani, a book that I have sitting in my to-read pile, but have not yet gotten to:
https://www.amazon.com/Pyramid-Texts-Modern-Literature-Hardcover/dp/9774160517
For those not familiar with Ghitani, his most important work is Zayni Barakat, which was translated by Farouk Abdel Wahab:
https://www.amazon.com/Zayni-Barakat-Gamal-al-Ghitani/dp/9774248724
Like Shidyaq, Ghitani delves deeply into the Arabic literary tradition; the difference being that the latter does Post-Modern historical fiction where the former is forging a fusion of the literary genres in a way that speaks to his theory of the Modern as a living, breathing thing, as it relates in a dialectical manner to the past.
Finally, I would like to mention Davies’ translating peer Denys Johnson-Davies – no relation – who has also amassed a large catalog of important books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denys_Johnson-Davies
Here is his obituary from The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/18/denys-johnson-davies-obituary
The two men sat down and discussed their work in the following interview:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/359091770260356373/
http://quarterlyconversation.com/the-humphrey-davies-interview
So, as we continue to withstand the bullying of those Zionists who would have it that Sephardim have no relation to the Arabic cultural heritage, it is important for us to make note of important works of Arabic literature such as those translated by Humphrey Davies and other experts who have allowed us to appreciate this heritage and mark our place in its tradition, as our progenitors did.
David Shasha
Humphrey Davies, Noted Translator of Arabic Literature, Dies at 74
By: Nana Asfour
Humphrey Davies, an award-winning translator into English of some of the most important and renowned works of contemporary Arabic literature, including novels by the Egyptian Nobelist Naguib Mahfouz and the prominent Lebanese writer Elias Khoury, died on Nov. 12 at a hospital in London. He was 74.
The cause was complications of pancreatic cancer, his daughter, Clare Davies, said.
Mr. Davies was a key figure in introducing contemporary Middle Eastern writers to an English language audience, rendering their prose into English with crisp and precise translations rich in nuance and sensitivity to the original. He displayed remarkable breadth, translating nonfiction and medieval works as well.
Mr. Davies translated more than 30 books from Arabic, among them novels by Mr. Khoury, including “Gate of the Sun” (1998; translated in 2005) and “Yalo” (2002; translated in 2009), each of which won him the prestigious Banipal Arabic Literary Translation award. His 2018 translation of Mr. Khoury’s “My Name is Adam” (2016) brought him the English PEN Translates award.
He also translated works by the Egyptian novelists Alaa Al Aswany and Mohamed Mustagab, along with “Thebes at War” (1944, translated in 2003) a classic of contemporary Arabic literature by Mr. Mahfouz, who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature.
In 2008, the British Society of Authors honored Mr. Davies’ 2004 translation of Mr. Al Aswany’s “The Yacoubian Building” as one of the 50 most outstanding translations of the previous 50 years.
An uncompromising portrait of life in Cairo, that novel dissects the psychological and sexual adventures of the residents in a single building. Mr. Davies, who lived in Cairo several times throughout his life, including the last 27 years, drew upon his intimate knowledge of the city in writing the introduction.
He noted that the Yacoubian Building actually exists but that its literary description did not exactly match the real thing. “Rather than being in ‘the high European style’ and boasting ‘balconies decorated with Greek faces carved from stone,’” he wrote, “it is a restrained yet albeit elegant exercise in Art Deco, innocent of balconies.”
Few Arabic novels were available in English until the mid-1950s. Mr. Mahfouz’s Nobel victory raised their profile, and the terrorists’ attacks of 9/11 spurred further interest in Arabic texts.
That day was a turning point, Mr. Davies said in a video interview in 2011 with the literary figure André Naffis-Sahely, when “the West as a whole — whatever that means — sort of woke up to the fact that they wanted to know, understand better, what happens in the Arab world and that literature is a route to doing that.”
The burden of introducing Arabic works to English readers “falls mainly on devoted translators, and on the small and heroic presses that have performed this service from the start,” Claudia Roth Pierpont wrote in The New Yorker in 2010.
One of those publishing houses, Archipelago Books, published Mr. Davies’ translations of four Khoury novels. “We have lost not only a remarkable translator but also a passionate advocate for Arabic literature,” Jill Schoolman, Archipelago’s founder and publisher, said in an email.
When the Banipal prize committee named his 2011 translation of “I Was Born There, I Was Born Here” (2009), by Mourid Barghouti, as a runner-up for the award, it said of Mr. Davies: “He manages a rare thing — to make you feel you are reading the book in the language in which it was written.”
Humphrey Taman Davies was born on April 6, 1947, in London. His father, John Howard Davies, was a music librarian for the BBC, and his mother, Phyllis Theresa Mabel (Corbett) Davies, was a local librarian. He graduated from the University College School, London, in 1964 and received a degree in Arabic Studies from Jesus College, Cambridge University, in 1968.
Mr. Davies spent the next year at the American University in Cairo’s Center for Arabic Studies Abroad. He worked in publishing in the Middle East for several years after that, including a stint helping to prepare a dictionary of Egyptian Arabic. He married Kristina Nelson, an ethnomusicologist who worked alongside him on the dictionary, in 1975, and they had two children. (The couple divorced in 2002.)
The family eventually headed to the United States, where Mr. Davies received a Ph.D. from the department of Near Eastern studies at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1981.
He spent 1983 to 1997 working with humanitarian foundations in the Middle East, including Save the Children in Tunisia and the Ford Foundation in Khartoum, Sudan, and in Egypt, to which the family relocated in 1994.
Mr. Davies was inspired to take up translation of modern Arabic literature in the early 2000s by the works of a friend, the Egyptian actor and storyteller Sayed Ragab. His first published translation was of Ragab’s short story “Rat,” which appeared in 2002 in Banipal, a United Kingdom-based magazine of modern Arabic literature; its parent company hands out the Banipal awards.
Soon after, the American University in Cairo Press hired him to translate the first of two novels by Mr. Mahfouz. After the success of his work on Mr. Al Aswany’s “The Yacoubian Building,” requests for his services began pouring in. “I’m never at a loss for people wanting to translate books,” he said in the 2011 interview.
In addition to his daughter Clare, Mr. Davies is also survived by his son, James Taman Davies; a brother, Hugh; and his longtime partner, Gassim Hassan.
Mr. Davies remained devoted to his beloved Cairo even when many foreigners were leaving Egypt amid the unrest surrounding the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Having lived in Egypt for so long, he said in the video interview, it would have been impossible to pull himself away.
Mr. Davies offered his own rules for translating. No. 1 was “only translate what you like,” he told the online publication ArabLit.org. He said translators should “make three drafts, wait a month, and make a fourth.”
Above all, he placed great importance on arriving at the author’s intent. For “Gate of the Sun,” he once subjected Mr. Khoury to a nine-hour interrogation, he said in a talk after winning the Banipal award in 2010.
“To date, I have been fortunate enough to be able to consult almost all the living authors whose works I have translated,” he said, adding, “I have questions for the dead, too, when I meet them.”
From The New York Times, December 13, 2021