Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

Tagged: translation

Four people sit on a panel and stage, facing the audience, deep in discussion.

Conversations / MECAM

Multilinguality in Academic Research and Publishing

Maria Josua in Conversation with Diana Abbani, Souhir Zekri Masson, Maxine Rubin, and Andreas Ufen. Scholars working with and on the world regions in the Global South face a dilemma of doing fieldwork and researching in local languages and then publishing results in international outlets dominated by the English language. In this conversation based on the roundtable, we reflect on this tension navigating the requirements of academic publishing and career-related issues, and regional and local academic traditions in Southeast and West Asia as well as the African continent.

Hebrew text in a black font on a white background, arranged in six lines.

EUME / Issues

Ghayath al-Madhoun in Hebrew Translation Today

By Daniel Behar. In Arabic literary circles the rumor circulates that Ghayath al-Madhoun is the only living Arab poet in 2026 who can live off his poetry. As his Hebrew translator, I can attest that the rumor is plausible, even if matters might be more complex than the formula suggests. In a binational reading group where we read the poems in Hebrew and Arabic side by side, emotions ran high, but the debates were never strictly political, because in al-Madhoun’s work the politics cannot be separated from the personality. That inseparability is precisely what the poems aim for.

Conversations / MECAM

Not Lost in Translation: Textbook Exploring Arabic Studies in 21st-century Germany

Clara-Auguste Süß in Conversation with Anis Ben Amor and Christian Junge. On 19 November 2024, MECAM hosted a Rencontre Ibn Khaldun in Arabic, an event format designed to share research findings with the wider public and foster open, inclusive debate. The event was organized in cooperation with the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities (AGYA). Dr. Christian Junge and Dr. Anis Ben Amor led a discussion on Arabic Studies in 21st-century Germany. They presented their collaborative translation project of the German-language textbook “Arabistik. Eine literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung” (English: Arabic Studies: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies”) and highlighted approaches, methodologies and challenges in the field.

EUME / The Literary 1980s in the Middle East and the Maghreb

Against Remembering: The Fictional Truth of a Massacre

By Samad Alavi. Carolyn Forché’s Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness anthologizes poems that testify to some of the last century’s darkest political tragedies. In her introduction, Forché establishes her basic criteria for selection. First, she includes only poems, as she wishes to demonstrate that the old “arguments about poetry and politics ha[ve] been too narrowly defined” and that it is possible to understand poems as residing between the personal and the political.

The Humanities in the 21st Century: Perspectives from the Arab World and Germany

Pluralities, Transfers, Memories: Some Reflections on the Humanities Today

By Daniel Weidner. What can the role of the humanities be facing a world in crisis? However we describe that very crisis, it is clear that a lot of the assumptions that have, so far, founded the self-understanding of the humanities are no longer evident: neither the universalism of the European or western culture, nor the humanist values or even the distinction between culture and nature.

The Humanities in the 21st Century: Perspectives from the Arab World and Germany

تعدّدات، انتقالات، ذكريات: بعضُ تأملاتٍ في الإنسانيات اليوم

دانييل فايدنر (الأدب المقارن، جامعة هالِه، ألمانيا). ما الذي يمكن أن يكون عليه دور الإنسانيات إذ تواجه عالمًا في أزمة؟ كيفما وَصَفنا تلك الأزمة بالذات، يبقى جليًّا أنَّ كثيرًا من الافتراضات التي قام عليها، إلى الآن، فَهْمُ الإنسانيات لذاتها لم تعد واضحة: لا كونيّة الثقافة الأوروبية أو الغربية، ولا القيم الإنسانويّة أو حتى التمييز بين الثقافة والطبيعة.