Walter Werner Arndt was a world-renowned scholar and translator of Russian, German and Polish. At the time of his death, he was the Sherman Fairchild Professor of Humanities, Emeritus, of Russian Language and Literature at Dartmouth College. With degrees in business administration from Warsaw University, in political science and economics from Oxford University, a master's degree in engineering from Robert College (Istanbul), and a PhD in comparative literature from UNC, Chapel Hill, Arndt was well known for his metric translations, which included versions of Goethe's Faust, Aleksandr Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, a number of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, as well as works by Busch, Morgenstern, and others. His translation of Eugene Onegin won the Bollingen Poetry Translation Prize in 1962.
Hoda Barakat is a Lebanese novelist. She lived most of her early life in Beirut before moving to Paris, where she now resides. She has published six novels, two plays, a book of short stories, and a book of memoirs. Her works are originally written in Arabic and have been translated into English, Hebrew, French, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Romanian, Dutch, and Greek.
Khaled Mattawa 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 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States, where he currently lives and writes.
The Banipal Prize, whose full name is the Saif Ghobash–Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, is an annual prize awarded to a translator for the published English translation of a full-length literary work in the Arabic language. The prize was inaugurated in 2006 by the literary magazine Banipal which promotes the diffusion of contemporary Arabic literature through English translations and the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature. It is administered by the Society of Authors in the UK, and the prize money is sponsored by Omar Saif Ghobash and his family in memory of Ghobash's late father Saif Ghobash. As of 2009, the prize money amounted to £3000.
Humphrey T. Davies was a British translator of Arabic fiction, historical and classical texts. Born in Great Britain, he studied Arabic in college and graduate school. He worked for decades in the Arab world and was based in Cairo from the late 20th century to 2021. He translated at least 18 Arabic works into English, including contemporary literature. He is a two-time winner of the Banipal Prize.
Yasser Abdel Hafez, is an Egyptian novelist and journalist. He was born in Cairo and studied law at Ain Shams University. He has worked as a journalist for the Arabic-language literary journal Akhbar al-Adab for more than 20 years. Abdel Hafez's most notable work is his novel On the Occasion of Life, published in 2005. Excerpts from this novel have been translated into English and were published in Banipal magazine in 2006, in an issue devoted to new writing in Egypt. He has recently finished his last novel " كتاب الامان" "book of safety" which was published in 2013, the novel isn't translated to English yet but will be soon. He is married to the writer and novelist Mansoura Ez Eldin.
William Maynard Hutchins is an American academic, author and translator of contemporary Arabic literature. He was formerly a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.
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 African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. She has also taught at Columbia, Princeton and Aix-en-Provence universities.
Jabbour Douaihy was a critically-acclaimed Lebanese writer, translator, and professor of literature. His novels were nominated four times for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and he has also published translations, short story collections, and children's books. His work, mostly originally in Arabic, has been translated several languages, including English and French.
Sahar Tawfiq is an Egyptian novelist, short story writer and translator. Born and raised in Cairo, she studied Arabic language and literature at Al-Azhar University. She has worked as a teacher and educationist in both Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Paula Haydar 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 Strangers. Her work has appeared in Banipal magazine and she has translated the literary work of Jabbour Douaihy, Rachid Al-Daif and others.
Marilyn Louise Booth 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 a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.
Nancy N. Roberts is a translator of Arabic literature. She won the University of Arkansas Translation Award for her translation of Ghada Samman's Beirut '75. She also received a commendation from the judges of the 2008 Banipal Prize for her translation of Salwa Bakr's The Man from Bashmour.
Issa J. Boullata was a Palestinian scholar, writer, and translator of Arabic literature.
Abbas Beydoun is a Lebanese poet, novelist and journalist. He was born in the village of Sur near Tyre in southern Lebanon. His father was a teacher. Beydoun studied at the Lebanese University in Beirut and the Sorbonne in Paris. He was involved in left-wing politics and spent time in jail as a young man in 1968 and 1982.
Adam Dawid Szostkiewicz is a Polish author, commentator on religion and politics, journalist and translator.
Youssef Rakha is an Egyptian writer. His work explores language and identity in the context of Cairo, and reflects connections with the Arab-Islamic canon and world literature. He has worked in many genres in both Arabic and English, and is known for his essays and poems as well as his novels.
Saif Saeed Ghobash Al Marri was an Emirati diplomat and engineer. He was the United Arab Emirates first Minister of State for Foreign Affairs.
Najlaa Osman Eltom is a Sudanese writer, poet and translator writing in Arabic. She also has translated short stories by other Sudanese literary writers into English. Since 2012, she has been living in Sweden.
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 and works in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
