from The Desert Laughs Alone

In order to give Al-Saray's poetry a voice in English, I need to provide the Anglophone target audience not only with a literal understanding of his poetry, but also with a pleasurable experience in hearing and reading the translations. This is why I align my methods with Hans Vermeer's translation theory "skopos," which posits that a text's translation should be understood more than literally by the target culture.

Because I am working with a living author, I can discuss his poetry's intentions so that it comes through in the translation. For instance, in Al-Saray's poem "An Opening With No Balcony," I made two decisions that slightly stray from a literal translation: how its line breaks are presented on the page to give unity and the adding of information about the statue Kahramana to provide the audience with the necessary background to understand the historical context. As I could have directly transported into English the way the poem rests on the page in Arabic, I realize that putting the translation into couplets depicts a more unified semblance for an English readership—a clearer and, thus, more pleasurable reading experience. Also, by adding the lines, "a statue of freedom, / in the ancient district Al-Rusafa," an English readership will better see the significance of Kahramana, a symbol that Al-Saray expects every Iraqi citizen to recognize immediately. If I exclude this background information, then my translation will alienate an Anglophone audience. In another poem, "Moment," I translate the Arabic word "khashab" as "drum" instead of its direct translation "wood," because I want to convey the poem's unity in sound that it carries in the Arabic ("drum" rhymes with "thumb"). The verb "beat" ("strike" or "hit") allows me to do this, since the action intersects a metaphor that relates to a drum.