The following is a list of translators primarily translating literary works in the Arabic language into English editions that have been published in print. [1] The leading prizes in this field of translation are the Banipal Prize, DarArab Translation Prize and the Arkansas Arabic Translation Award.
Tayeb Salih was a Sudanese writer, cultural journalist for the BBC Arabic programme as well as for Arabic journals, and a staff member of UNESCO. He is best known for his novel Season of Migration to the North, considered to be one of the most important novels in Arabic literature. His novels and short stories have been translated into English and more than a dozen other languages.
Zakaria Tamer, also spelled Zakariya Tamir, is a Syrian short story writer. He is one of the most widely read and translated short story writers of modern Syrian literature, as well as one of the foremost authors of children’s stories in Arabic. He also worked as a freelance journalist, writing satirical columns in Arabic newspapers.
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, Brazilian Portuguese, and Greek.
Banipal is an independent literary magazine dedicated to the promotion of contemporary Arab literature through translations in English. It was founded in London in 1998 by Margaret Obank and Samuel Shimon. The magazine is published three times a year. Since its inception, it has published works and interviews of numerous Arab authors and poets, many of them translated for the first time into English. It is also co-sponsor of the Saif Ghobash–Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.
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, officially 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.
Wajdi al-Ahdal is a Yemeni novelist, short story writer and playwright. Laureate of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) in 2008, is known for his contemporary literary style and sometimes socially critical works, some of which have been censored in Yemen. Until 2019, he has published five novels, four collections of short stories, a play and a film screenplay.
Ali al-Muqri is a Yemeni novelist and writer. Two of his novels - Black Taste, Black Odour and The Handsome Jew - have been long-listed for the Arab Booker Prize. He also received a special commendation from the jury of the 2015 French Prize for Arabic Literature, for his novel Ḥurma, translated into French by Khaled Osman and Ola Mehanna.
Yahya Taher Abdullah was an Egyptian writer.
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.
Hamdi Abu Golayyel was an Egyptian writer. The author of several novels and collections of short stories, he is known as one of the new voices in Egyptian fiction. Among other awards, he won the Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation in 2022. The literary magazine ArabLit called him a "chronicler of the lives of Egypt’s marginalized and working-class."
Edwar al-Kharrat was an Egyptian novelist, writer and critic.
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.
Issa J. Boullata was a Palestinian scholar, writer, and translator of Arabic literature.
Michelle Hartman is an academic and translator. She obtained a BA from Columbia College in 1993 and a DPhil from Oxford University in 1998. She is currently a professor of Arabic and francophone literature at the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University. She is the author of a number of academic papers and several monographs including "Breaking Broken English: Black Arab Literary Solidarities and the Politics of Language", which won the College Language Association award for creative scholarship in 2020. She is also a translator of contemporary Arabic literature, and has translated twelve novels and a short story collection, including Iman Humaydan Younes’s Wild Mulberries and "The Weight of Paradise", and Alexandra Chreiteh's Always Coca-Cola and Ali and His Russian Mother, Shahla Ujayli's "Summer with the Enemy" and "A Sky So Close to Us" and Jana Elhassan's "The 99th Floor" and "All the Women Inside Me" among others. Wild Mulberries was shortlisted for the 2009 Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.
maia tabet is an Arabic-English literary translator with a background in editing and journalism. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1956, she was raised in Lebanon, India, and England. She studied philosophy and political science at the American University of Beirut and lives between the United States and Cyprus.
Saif Saeed Ghobash Al Marri was an Emirati diplomat and engineer. He was the United Arab Emirates first Minister of State for Foreign Affairs.
Elisabeth Jaquette is an American translator of modern 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, and several English PEN Translates Awards. She has a BA from Swarthmore College and an MA from Columbia University and was a CASA Fellow at The American University in Cairo. She is also Executive Director of the American Literary Translators Association.
Sarah Enany is a literary translator.