The following is a list of translators primarily translating literary works in the Arabic language into English editions that have been published in print.
The leading prizes in this field of translation are the
Banipal Prize
The Banipal Prize, whose full name is the Saif Ghobash–Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, is an annual prize awarded to a translator (or translators) for the published English translation of a full-length literary work in the Arab ...
and the Arkansas Arabic Translation Award.
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Farouk Abdel Wahab
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Leila Abouzeid
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Kareem James Abu-Zeid
Kareem James Abu-Zeid (born 1981) is an Egyptian-American translator, editor, and writer. He was born in Kuwait and grew up in the Middle East. He studied French and German language and literature at Princeton University, taking translation worksho ...
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Sinan Antoon
Sinan Antoon ( ar, سنان أنطون), is an Iraqi poet, novelist, scholar, and literary translator. He has been described as "one of the most acclaimed authors of the Arab world." He is an associate professor at the Gallatin School of Individ ...
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A. J. Arberry
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Albakry Mohammed
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Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot
Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot (21 May 1833 – 25 May 1901) was a notable British Orientalist and translator.
Biography
Arbuthnot's early career was spent as a civil servant in India; his last post was as Collector for the Bombay government. ...
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Adil Babikir
Adil Babikir () is a Sudanese literary critic and translator into and out of English and Arabic. He has translated several novels, short stories and poems by renowned Sudanese writers and edited the anthology ''Modern Sudanese Poetry''. He lives an ...
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Aida Bamia
Aida Adib Bamia is Emeritus, professor emeritus of Arabic language and literature at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, Gainesville. She is a specialist in North African literature. Her work on Arabic literature has helped to bring ...
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Joseph Bell
Joseph Bell FRCSE (2 December 1837 – 4 October 1911) was a Scottish surgeon and lecturer at the medical school of the University of Edinburgh in the 19th century. He is best known as an inspiration for the literary character Sherlock Holm ...
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Marilyn Booth
Marilyn Louise Booth (born 24 February 1955) is an author, scholar and translator of Arabic literature. Since 2015, she has been the Khalid bin Abdullah Al Saud Professor for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at the University of Oxford and ...
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Keith Bosley
Keith Anthony Bosley (16 September 1937 – 24 June 2018) was a British poet and translator.
Bosley was born in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, and grew up in Maidenhead, Berkshire. He was educated at Sir William Borlase's Grammar School in Marlow ...
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Angele Botros Samaan
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Issa J. Boullata
Issa J. Boullata (; February 25, 1929 – May 1, 2019) was a Palestinian scholar, writer, and translator of Arabic literature.
Biography
He was born in Jerusalem on February 25, 1929 during the British Mandate of Palestine. He obtained ...
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Sargon Boulus
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Paul Bowles
Paul Frederic Bowles (; December 30, 1910November 18, 1999) was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator. He became associated with the Moroccan city of Tangier, where he settled in 1947 and lived for 52 years to the end of his ...
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Leon Carl Brown
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Richard Francis Burton
Sir Richard Francis Burton (; 19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was a British explorer, writer, orientalist scholar,and soldier. He was famed for his travels and explorations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as his extraordinary kn ...
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Yigal Carmon
Yigal Carmon (Hebrew יגאל כרמון) (born 1946) is the president and cofounder of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), an organization which monitors and translates Arabic and Persian publications; radio and TV broadcasts; and re ...
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Catherine Cobham
Catherine Cobham is a scholar and translator of Arabic literature.
Biography
She obtained a BA from Leeds University and an MA from Manchester University and presently teaches at the University of St Andrews.
She has translated numerous literary ...
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Thomas Cleary
Thomas Cleary (24 April 1949 – 20 June 2021) was an American translator and writer of more than 80 books related to Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, and Muslim classics, and of ''The Art of War'', a treatise on management, military strategy, and ...
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Elliot Colla
Elliott Colla is an American scholar of the Middle East, specializing in Arabic literature and culture. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University.
Career
Colla received a B.A. ...
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Miriam Cooke
Miriam Cooke (she spells her name in lowercase) is an American academic in Middle Eastern and Arab world studies. She focuses on modern Arabic literature and critical reassessment of women's roles in the public sphere. She was educated in the Unit ...
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Michael Cooperson Michael Cooperson is an American scholar and translator of Arabic literature. He is professor of Arabic at UCLA. He has written two books: ''Classical Arabic Biography: The Heirs of the Prophets in the Age of al-Ma'mun'' and ''Al-Mamun (Makers Of Th ...
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Robyn Creswell
Robyn Creswell is an American critic, scholar and translator.
Life
He graduated from Brown University in 1999 and gained a doctorate in comparative literature from New York University in 2011. In addition to teaching comparative literature at ...
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Humphrey T. Davies
Humphrey T. Davies (6 April 1947 – 12 November 2021) was a British translator of Arabic fiction, historical and classical texts. Born in Great Britain, he studied Arabic in college and graduate school. He has worked for decades in the Arab wor ...
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N. J. Dawood Nessim Joseph Dawood (27 August 1927 – 20 November 2014) was an Iraqi Jewish translator, who is best known for his translation of the Quran.
Life
Nessim Joseph Dawood was born in Baghdad to a Jewish family. His family name was Yehuda, but in the ...
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Abba Eban
Abba Solomon Meir Eban (; he, אבא אבן ; born Aubrey Solomon Meir Eban; 2 February 1915 – 17 November 2002) was an Israeli diplomat and politician, and a scholar of the Arabic and Hebrew languages.
During his career, he served as Fo ...
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Nicole Fares
Nicole Fares is a Lebanese academic and translator. She obtained a bachelor's degree in translation and interpretation from AUST in Beirut. She then obtained an M.F.A in literary translation and a Ph.D. in comparative literature and cultural s ...
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Ahmed Fathy
Ahmed Fathi Abdelmonem Ahmed Ibrahim ( ar, أحمد فتحي; born 10 November 1984) is an Egyptian professional Association football, footballer who plays for Pyramids FC, Pyramids.
Born in Banha, he usually plays in the right back role for cl ...
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Elizabeth Fernea
Elizabeth Warnock Fernea (October 21, 1927 – December 2, 2008) was an influential writer and filmmaker who spent much of her life in the field producing numerous ethnographies and films that capture the struggles and turmoil of African and M ...
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Bassam Frangieh
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Ferial Ghazoul
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Sayed Gouda
Sayed Gouda (born in Cairo) is an Egyptian poet, novelist and translator. He majored in the Chinese language. Dr Sayed Gouda was born in Cairo and moved to Hong Kong where he currently resides. He did his undergraduate studies in Egypt and China, ...
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William Granara
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William Alexander Greenhill
William Alexander Greenhill (1 January 1814, Stationers' Hall, London – 19 September 1894, Hastings) was an English physician, literary editor and sanitary reformer.
Biography
William Alexander Greenhill was the youngest of three sons of Georg ...
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Marilyn Hacker
Marilyn Hacker (born November 27, 1942) is an American poet, translator and critic. She is Professor of English emerita at the City College of New York.
Her books of poetry include ''Presentation Piece'' (1974), which won the National Book Award, ...
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Hala Halim
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Stuart A. Hancox
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Nay Hannawi
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Yasmeen Hanoosh
Yasmeen Hanoosh is an academic, fiction writer, and translator from Iraq. She was born in Basra in 1978. She moved to the United States in 1995, subsequently obtaining a BA, MA and PhD (in Middle Eastern Studies) from the University of Michigan. Th ...
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Michelle Hartman
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Paula Haydar
Paula Haydar (born 1965) is an American academic and translator. She has a PhD in Comparative literature and an MFA in Literary translation. She won an Arkansas Arabic Translation Prize for her translation of Elias Khoury's ''The Kingdom of S ...
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Samuel Hazo
Samuel Robert Hazo (born 1966) is an American composer, primarily of music for concert band.
Biography
Hazo is the son of the poet and playwright Samuel John Hazo and his wife, Mary Anne. After elementary and secondary schooling in the Upp ...
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Sherif Hetata
'Sharif Hatata ( ar, شريف حتاتة; 13 September 1923 – 22 May 2017) was an Egyptian doctor, author and communist activist.Gikandi, p. 308.
Early life
Hatata was born in Egypt on 13 September 1923 to an Egyptian father,Botman, 1988, p. ...
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William M. Hutchins
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Elisabeth Jaquette
Elisabeth Jaquette is an American translator of contemporary Arabic literature. Her work has been shortlisted for the National Book Award and TA First Translation Prize, and supported by the Jan Michalski Foundation, the PEN/Heim Translation Fund, ...
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Salma Khadra Jayyusi
Salma Khadra Jayyusi ( ar, سلمى الخضراء الجيوسي; born 1926 or 1927) is a Palestinian poet, writer, translator and anthologist. She is the founder and director of the Project of Translation from Arabic (PROTA), which aims to provi ...
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Zahra Jhishi
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Denys Johnson-Davies
Denys Johnson-Davies (Arabic: دنيس جونسون ديڤيز) (also known as Abdul Wadud) was an eminent Arabic-to-English literary translator who translated, ''inter alia,'' several works by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, Su ...
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Fady Joudah
Fady Joudah is a Palestinian-American poet and physician. He is the 2007 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition for his collection of poems ''The Earth in the Attic''.
Life
Joudah was born in Austin, Texas in 1971 to Palestinian r ...
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Reem Kelani
Reem Kelani (born 1963) is a British Arabs, British Palestinian musician, born in Manchester, England. Initially influenced by the jazz music her father played on his record player, her interest in Palestinian music was sparked by the music at ...
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Trevor LeGassick
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Frances Liardet
Frances E. Liardet (born 10 December 1962) is a writer and translator of Arabic literature. She studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She has translated several book-length works, including two books by the modernist Egyptian ...
* David Larsen, translator of ''Names of the Lion'' by
Ibn Khalawayh
Abu Abdallah al-Husayn ibn Ahmad ibn Hamdan al-Hamadhani, better known simply as Ibn Khalawayh (; 890s, in Hamadan – 980/81) was a 10th-century scholar of Arabic grammar and Quranic exegesis. He was active at the court of Sayf al-Dawla, the Hamda ...
(
Wave Books
Wave Books (established 2005) is an American independent press focusing on the publication of poetry, with a focus on innovative, contemporary poetry and poetry in translation. This independent publisher has published books by CAConrad, Don Mee ...
, 2017), winner of the 2018
Harold Landon Morton Award.
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Khaled al-Masri
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Khaled Mattawa
Khaled Mattawa (born 1964) is a Libyan poet, and a renowned Arab-American writer, he is also a leading literary translator, focusing on translating Arabic poetry into English. He works as an Assistant professor of creative writing at the Univers ...
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Karen McNeil
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James T. Monroe
James Thomas Monroe, or James T. Monroe, is an American scholar and translator of Arabic. He is emeritus professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, University of California at Berkeley, focusing on Cla ...
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Ibrahim Muhawi
Ibrahim Muhawi (born 1937, ar, إبراهيم مهوي) is a Palestinian academic and writer, specializing in Palestinian and Arabic literature, folklore and translation. He is a member of the Palestinian diaspora.Ibrahim Muhawi,’Translation and ...
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Daniel L. Newman
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Amira Nowaira
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Osman Nusairi
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Wen-chin Ouyang
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Tahera Qutbuddin
Tahera Qutbuddin (born 1964, Bombay) is a professor of Arabic literature at the University of Chicago. A Guggenheim Fellow (2020) and a winner of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2021, she is best known for her works on Arabic oratory and the usage ...
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Jeremy Reed
Jeremy Thomas Reed (born June 15, 1981) is an American former professional baseball outfielder in Major League Baseball (MLB).
Early life
Reed graduated from Bonita High School in La Verne, California in 1999, and went on to play college basebal ...
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Nancy N. Roberts
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Barbara Romaine
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Ahmad Sadri Ahmad Sadri is an Iranian sociologist, author, and translator. He is the James P. Gorter Professor of Islamic World Studies and Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Lake Forest College. He is the twin brother and collaborator of Mahmoud Sadri. ...
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Samah Selim
Samah Selim is an Egyptian scholar and translator of Arabic literature. She studied English literature at Barnard College, and obtained her PhD from Columbia University in 1997. At present she is an associate professor at the Department of Africa ...
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Saadi Simawe
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Reuven Snir
Reuven Snir ( he, ראובן שניר; born 1953) is an Israeli Jewish academic, Professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Haifa, Dean of Humanities, and a translator of poetry between Arabic, Hebrew, and English. He is the ...
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Ahdaf Soueif
Ahdaf Soueif ( ar, أهداف سويف; born 23 March 1950) is an Egyptian novelist and political and cultural commentator.
Early life
Soueif was born in Cairo, where she lives, and was educated in Egypt and England. She studied for a PhD in lin ...
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Paul Starkey
Paul Starkey is a British scholar and translator of Arabic literature.
Life and career
Starkey received his doctorate from Oxford University; the subject of his dissertation was the works of the Egyptian writer Tawfiq Hakim. He is emeritus pro ...
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Raymond Stock
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Maia Tabet
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Peter Theroux
Peter Christopher Sebastian Theroux (born 1956) is an American translator and writer. The younger brother of writers Alexander Theroux and Paul Theroux, during college Peter studied for a year at the University of Cairo. He became interested in Ar ...
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Christopher Tingley
Christopher Tingley is an English academic and translator of Arabic literature. He was born in Brighton and read English at the University of London ( MPhil 1973) and at Leeds University, for many years lecturing in English and linguistics at vari ...
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John Verlenden
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Magdi Wahba
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Max Weiss
Miksa (Max) Weisz (21 July 1857 – 14 March 1927) was an Austrian chess player born in the Kingdom of Hungary.
Weiss was born in Sereď. Moving to Vienna, he studied mathematics and physics at the university, and later taught those subjects.
Wei ...
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Lisa White
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Jonathan Wright
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Nariman Youssef
Nariman Youssef is an Egyptian translator. She obtained a BSc in computer science from the American University in Cairo before moving to the UK for graduate studies. She has master's degrees from Birkbeck College and the University of Edinburgh, a ...
See also
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Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation
The Banipal Prize, whose full name is the Saif Ghobash–Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, is an annual prize awarded to a translator (or translators) for the published English translation of a full-length literary work in the Arab ...
References
{{reflist
Arabic-English translators
Literary translators