Painter, activist, translator: Rania Khallaf speaks to artist Adel El-Siwi, winner of the new Mediterranean Prize for Translation "I don't know why I fell into the trap of translation so often -- the trap that starts when the text begins to break up, allowing you to roam among its signs and signals, in the realm of its formation, as it were; that opens up a space between two languages, in which the translator's effort mingles with the achievement of the author." Thus Adel El-Siwi, 55, best known as a contemporary artist, in the preface to his translation of the complete works of Guiseppe Ungaretti (1888-1970), the Italian poet who was born and grew up in Alexandria. Winner of the Cairo International Book Fair's Mediterranean Prize for Translation, the book appeared with Merit this year. But what drives a painter to this kind of demanding work? "First of all," El-Siwi says, "I am a devoted reader of poetry. I read it in Arabic, Italian and English. The works of Tagore, Salah Abdel-Sabour, Adonis, Nazim Hekmat and Pablo Neruda among others have all contributed very much to my personal and cultural formation as a painter. In general, as Arabs, poetry still plays a vital role in the formulation of our psyche -- perhaps it's the one thing that's survived into our contemporary life." Still, why Ungaretti? El-Siwi concedes that, though he is proficient in reading and writing Italian, the aesthetics of poetry in that language should require a higher grade of fluency: "This is why the 643-page translation took almost ten years to materialise. I didn't even know much about the poet himself; I just loved his poems. At some point when I was really distressed about the loss of some dear friends, I decided this would be my project. His poems really amaze me. It is this sort of tough writing, which bears neither wisdom nor prophecy but drives you to a distant space where you have to meditate the meaning of words." Nor is translation ever perfect: El Siwi admits that some of the poems do not sustain their original power in Arabic. "For example," he elaborates, "there are words, like 'deluge', that can be pluralised in Italian but not in Arabic. Others, like 'the moon', have the opposite gender, so that when the poet kisses the moon in Italian, he is kissing a woman -- in Arabic the image is unclear." In a 1936 "Egyptian Notebook", Ungaretti, who departed Alexandria at the age of 24, discusses his relationship with the city in a neutral tone. He had been largely confined to the Italian community, developing few relations with Egyptians; and though he had mastered the vernacular, he did not read or write Arabic. Ungaretti famously believed that Alexandria was not generous with its past -- something that gave him the reputation of not liking Alexandria. It erases its history, in defiance of his main task: to save human memory. Unlike Cairo, in which histories coexist, having been superimposed one on top of the other, as it were, Alexandria bears no sense of Roman history, for example. "Yet on many occasions," as El-Siwi says, "Ungaretti considered himself Egyptian, Egypt his homeland." That kind of exchange has been passed down to El-Siwi himself, who spent ten years studying art in Italy and translated two reference works on classical and modern Italian painting, published in 1995 and 2004. He believes that the Mediterranean Prize, presented by the Fondazione Mediterraneo to be "a good step amid the negligence suffered by the cultured translator, whose role cannot be overestimated". It is an occasion for him to voice discontent with local state efforts in the same direction -- reflecting his unsympathetic view of the establishment. "With all due respect for the Translation Project, sponsored by the Supreme Council of Culture, I believe their newly established National Council for Translation will be working along the same governmental lines. We need to prioritise works that should be translated, and to have a detailed database of translators in Egypt, along with the languages they master and the topics they prefer. Sadly the Faculty of Al-Alsson, which Rifa'a El-Tahtawi established at the turn of the 20th century with the aim of producing a generation of cultured translators who could act as a bridge between Eastern and Western culture, has also failed in this mission; most of its graduates work in tourism or as simultaneous interpreters. It takes a lot more than basic knowledge of the techniques of rendering meaning in another language to be a cultured translator, and this is something no establishment seems to make available." The Italian Cultural Centre (ICC), El-Siwi goes on to say, played a vital role in recommending the book to the committee: "They had started to expand their cooperation initiatives and deal with publishers other than the Supreme Council of Culture and Dar Al-Shurouk -- cooperation with smaller houses like Merit and Sharqiyat helped break out of the vicious circle of translating from English or French; it's more vibrant now with people working from Italian or Spanish." But are such forays into translation a way to escape the frustration resulting from being marginalised as a painter? "Absolutely not," El-Siwi says without a moment's thought. "It's rather part of cultural project as an intellectual in my society. Yes, I hold the naïve belief in the role of the intellectual in society -- its importance of generating meaning and transforming reality through cultural means." Nor did the failure of the Writers and Artists for Change movement, of which he was a founding member in 2005, put him off such thoughts; he had expected it, he says: "It was not just our movement. Kifaya and others too have failed. Our enthusiasm blinded us to reality. The 2006 goals has not been accomplished and the reason is simple: Egyptian intellectuals, including myself, are incapable of organising themselves or sustaining any of the long-term schemes they have started." At least they can paint -- and translate Italian poetry. That counts.
