Anna Learn is a first-year student in the Interdisciplinary Near and Middle Eastern Studies Ph.D. program at the University of Washington. Her focus is on contemporary Persian, Spanish, and Urdu Literature.
When and how did your interest in translation begin? Do you have a focus?
I began to be interested in literary translation as a reader. In high school and college, as I began to read fiction as a way to learn more about different parts of the world, I found that I was drawn to books in translation. From there, I began to follow certain translation-oriented literary platforms, such as Words Without Borders, Asymptote, and World Literature Today. During this time, new translation-focused prizes such as the Man Booker International and the National Book Award for Translated Literature were just starting up and gathering steam, so my interest in literary translation was nourished and fed by this type of support and attention that was being given to the craft.
What is something you found particularly challenging to translate?
Last summer, before starting my current doctoral program, I worked on a translation of a short story written in Persian. I was not intending to publish the story, but rather was doing it as a sort of language-acquisition exercise, and as a translation challenge for myself. The difficulty this particular story presented was how to convey the historical background that the story so deeply relied upon in Persian (but never explicitly explained) into English. This brought up interesting questions for me about audience: who was I assuming was the audience of the source text, in Persian, and could I assume that every Persian-language reader would have complete knowledge of the historical event underlying the story, just because it happened fairly recently in Iran? Should I assume that my potential English-language reader would not have any knowledge of the historical event? Was this particular historical event the most important thing to animate in the story in my translation, or should I try to focus on bringing forth the stylistic or aesthetic elements of the story instead of obsessing over its socio-political ramifications? These are the sorts of questions that challenge and excite me about translation.
What project(s) are you working on currently?
I have been doing a fair bit of work interviewing literary translators and authors in translation, and writing reviews of books in translation for various literary platforms. Currently, I am working on a review of a dark, sexy, and acerbic collection of short stories published posthumously by an understudied Moroccan female author.
Could you give us a few book recommendations - either by your favorite authors in translation or favorite translators?
This is such a fun question, as it allows me to go into my Goodreads archives and look through some old favorites. Please go and read the recent translation of Fernanda Melchor’s Paradais, translated by Sophie Hughes. It will horrify and delight you. Also, Bitter Orange Tree by Jokha Alharthi, translated by Marilyn Booth and In Case of Emergency by Mahsa Mohebali, translated by Mariam Rahmani.