〖 Found in translation  〗

We asked nine writers not what was lost but what was found in translation, as a text is given new surfaces and new depths. What’s the rightest or wrongest or closest or strangest thing that a reader of yours has found in a new language? What’s something you wish would be found?

As a stateless poet, whenever my work is translated, one thing that seems to be persistently contested is my identity label. When I sent my book of poetry to the publisher in Cairo, where it was published in 2004, I didn’t have a chance to look at drafts of the manuscript. I was in Kuwait at the time, and emails and PDFs were not that common yet in the publishing process. I received a copy of the published book, like any interested reader.

One change — a violent mistranslation perhaps — I still find amusing was with a poem titled 1965. It was a very short poem in reference to the 1965 census. In Kuwait, this was the first census after the independence of the country, and it’s used against us, the Bidoon [a stateless minority in Kuwait, the word itself meaning « without » in Arabic], to erase us from history, from our presence in the country. The Egyptian publisher did not understand the reference, assumed it was a typo and proceeded to change it to 1967, as in the year of the Six-Day Arab-Israeli war. This story still makes me laugh, as does the fact that my being « Bidoon » is often mistaken for « Bedouin ». I think these mistranslations speak of the impossibility of minority identities finding host in larger identities and contexts.

Mona Kareem ( كريم منى ) is a Bidoon (stateless) poet born in Kuwait and exiled in the United States. Her poetry collection I Will Not Fold These Maps, translated by Sara Elkamel, will be published by the Poetry Translation Center in London in the spring of 2023.