HUMPHREY DAVIES
He made me a translator D
enys Johnson-Davies made me a translator.Which is to say that he intervened in my life on two occasions (even though in one case he was totally unaware that he had done so) in such a way as to make me change its direction.The first was when I read his translation of the collection of short stories by Alifa Rifaat titled View of a Distant Minaret. Despite a recently completed undergraduate training in Arabic that had included a laborious introduction to a few modern classics, when I read Rifaat I was unconvinced, in my callow way, that modern Arabic literature could speak to a different readership. But here was the real thing – stories that excited, stories that made one think “Yes! It can be done!”
The second time was when I first met Denys a few years later. I was a travelling publisher’s rep in the Middle East and Denys, hearing that I’d studied Arabic simply assumed that of course I would translate – and provided me with notes of introduction to all his writer friends in Beirut, where I was bound. I didn’t contact any of them and it was perhaps twenty years before Denys’ sublime confidence bore fruit, but the seed had been planted. I owe him much.
Humphrey Davies is an award-winning literary translator
BANIPAL 43 – SPRING 2012 61