A translator approaches a generation

An interest still taking shape

In the Translator’s Notebook series, Ahmad Heidari discusses recent translations and the work he is approaching. He names Rabihavi while describing an effort to understand the achievement of a generation shaped by war and censorship. He is speaking about an intellectual and literary engagement; the passage does not name a completed Arabic Rabihavi edition. Source 1

Heidari connects Rabihavi’s border-region experience with the unsettling quality he finds in the writing. The evaluation is the translator’s: it tells us how a reader working between Persian and Arabic approaches the work, rather than supplying a new biographical chronology. Source 1

The work beyond a manuscript

The wider conversation concerns the difficulties of translators living between national publishing systems and the importance of attentive editing. Heidari describes an editor’s role as entering deeply into a text, beyond correcting grammar. These remarks place his interest in Rabihavi within the practical relationships through which literature reaches another language. Source 1

Sources & credits

1. Al-Araby Al-Jadeed · Ahmad Heidari’s translator notebook

   Arabic interview, 1 March 2023. Heidari discusses his interest in Rabihavi; the passage gives no completed Rabihavi translation title or imprint.