ثلاث قصائد

Translation is a bridge connecting different cultures and communities. The translator serves the cultures and communities on both sides of the translation. But that comes with certain difficulties: for example, in the poem, “Holiday,” the poet uses “500” to indicate both kilometers and money—distance and value—without explicitly stating which. How can this be translated for a community that doesn’t interpret “500” in the same way? This is a small example of the practical challenges inherent in translation. In that same poem, “Holiday,” the original title (“Eid”) has strong religious connotations, denoting the celebration that follows Ramadan and Hajj. This layer of meaning is lost in the English translation.
 
Along with these challenges comes the difficulty of communicating with poets who live overseas. Most of our poets do not know English, so we cannot share our translations with them. There is a time difference to negotiate, as well as contrasting lifestyles and priorities. Our means of communication may vary: for example, Americans check their email with a frequent flick of an eye, but an Iraqi may check theirs once a day or even weekly.
 
Like many writers, Iraqi poets are loath to explain the meaning of specific lines, symbols or images. They feel that meaning should be extracted by the reader, whether that reader is a translator or not. This creates an additional responsibility: it is up to us, the translators, to discern and communicate meaning as best we can, on our own! As translators, we try to become one with the poet; at the same time, we become poets ourselves, interpreting the original language as best we can and using our English words to communicate this interpretation to readers who would otherwise be unable to experience a literature written in another culture and a foreign tongue.