Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
#177 - Sawad Hussain
325 Plays5 months ago
Awarding winning translator Sawad Hussain joins us this week to tell us about how she tackles translation, what it's like to get into and work as a translator in publishing and her latest publication "The Djinn's Apple".
💖 Join the Patreon 🙏
Support the show and get access to the extended cuts early and ad-free!
📚 The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes 🥳
Jamie, Melissa and Noami talk about all things writing, tropes and publishing!
✍️ WriteMentor 🧑🏫
Get a whole month with WriteMentor's Hub for free using the coupon code 'Write&Wrong'.
🎙️ Zencastr 🎬
Click on this referral link to get 30% off your first three months with Zencastr.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Writing and Plot Holes
00:00:00
Speaker
Ooh, a spicy question. I love it. Because the writing is sort of everything. You can fix plot holes. So some readers love that, and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this. So it's kind of a gamble.
Meet Savard Hussein, Translator Guest
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello, and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast. Joining me on this episode is award-winning translator, Savard Hussein. Hello, welcome. Hi, Jamie. Thank you for having me. Thanks so much for coming. I'm actually really excited to have you on because ah you are the first translator that ah that I've had on the podcast. So... Oh, wow. Okay. Definitely representing then. Yeah, exactly. No pressure.
Translating 'The Gin's Apple'
00:00:42
Speaker
But first, before we get into all of that, let's start with, ah I think your most recent publication, and that is the ah English translation of The Gin's Apple by Jamila Marani. Tell us a little bit about that book.
00:00:57
Speaker
Yes, yeah. So in the UK, it's definitely my um most recent publication, um which is a murder mystery YA novel set in the Abbasid era, which Abbasid era is like around 700 AD. And it takes place like geographically in what is now modern day Iraq. And ah I mean, it's there's no spoilers, as in by me telling you or the listeners this. I mean, I think ah that Jameela's father is murdered within the first few pages of the book um right before her eyes and the rest of the book is her seeking vengeance and also trying to figure out um why he he he was killed in and obviously yes, who's done it?
00:01:45
Speaker
It's ah definitely a page turner and there's been mixed responses in terms of some people, ah some of the reviews I've read, people wish that it was longer, which I think is always, is better than people wishing it was shorter, right? yeah and So I'm like, okay, if that's like your, you know, the biggest critique you have of it, like I'm happy. um And then some other people thought that actually it was refreshing that you could have like a sort of prime, ah you know ah narrative ah in such a concise sort of package and read it in one sitting, um which is, it just yeah, which is great to hear.
00:02:26
Speaker
Yeah, I totally agree with that. i I think I subscribed to the School of Thought that sort of leave them wanting more that is much better than when you're, if you're watching a movie or something, you're like, this could have been an hour shorter. Exactly. you know Yeah, yeah. So definitely happy with the reception so far. What's it
Risks and Emotional Impact of Translation
00:02:45
Speaker
like? I'm curious because like, This is this is a translation, like it's not your story. What's it like for you when the book like this comes out and you you reading the reviews? You're not reading it, I guess, with the same from the same position as the author. Well, actually, a friend of mine, um yeah Anton Herr says that going on Goodreads is ah toxic. It's kind of like, ah you know, touching a barrel of um
00:03:11
Speaker
What's the word, like, you know, poisonous waste, toxic waste. Yeah. OK. And but I disagree because even if they're bad reviews, I like reading them. But yeah, I think I still read reviews with the same amount of trepidation as an author, because even though the frame was there, you know, and provided by the author, these are my words. Like a good translator will not translate word for word. You have to take risks. You are. you know, moving away from the original in order to come closer to it with regards to the essence, spirit of the text, right? So ah yeah, it is, I'm always ah anxious, equal parts, excited to to read reviews.
00:03:55
Speaker
But I appreciate, i always like now that I'm later in my career, because I've been translating for about 15 years now, um I don't mind bad reviews. I'm just glad that like the reader has engaged with the book, whether you hate it or you love it or you feel lukewarm about it. For me, the most important thing is that you read it. Even if you didn't finish it, that's OK. But I want the book to make you feel something, um wherever that lands on the spectrum of emotion is is fine with me. Okay. So as long as it's not apathy, you you're yeah you're happy with that. Yeah. ah you know I mean, if it was so bad that you're just not feeling anything, yeah, that's that's not a good sign. But I have a few books where people, yeah, they're quite divisive. So this is interesting.
00:04:39
Speaker
Oh, okay.
Translation Process and Challenges
00:04:41
Speaker
And I'm interested in the actual sort of process of the the logistics of you being a translator. So if we use something like Jen's Apple, for example, and I imagine this does vary from book to book, project to project. But when when it comes to like that that sort of story exists, obviously, the author has written that. Do you put yourself forwards to translate or does somebody else reach out to you? So would you like the long sort of answer to this question or? Yeah, give us all the details. Okay, okay. Because actually, I've used the Jin's Apple as a case study for a number of talks I've given at universities and I have up here like the the roadmap.
00:05:22
Speaker
um yeah so Just to give you an idea, this book took a bit longer because I had a kid while like I was on the journey of translating this book, so I did have to ask for an extension. but my very initial sort of ah would say sort of introduction to this book is I read a blog post about it in January of 2018. And then it kind of spanned all the way up until just like, when did this come out in April of 2024? We're in now so that's six years. That's a lot longer than it normally takes. Usually it's about takes me a year to translate a book and then there'll be about six months for publicity.
00:06:02
Speaker
um You know sending out arcs and stuff and then oh I forgot the editing process. That's like another three months So in total usually takes two years, right? um From when I start translating a book to it coming out, but with this book the Jin's Apple Once I had I had hadn't come across it. ah just because, I mean, African literature written in Arabic is not as fetid in the Arabic literary sphere as literature, you know, written in the Gulf is, or
00:06:35
Speaker
um you know the Levant like Syria and Lebanon are publishing style words like historically but not so much um when you think about North Africa there's a lot of literature coming out of there written in Arabic but it doesn't get as much I would say um you know publicity in terms of newspaper reviews and Online and even less so when you're talking about why a right young adult um literature, which is only now experiencing a sort of boom in the past five years of so um Written in Arabic. So yeah, basically what I did is I contacted the blogger to get the author's um you know details and I asked her for a
00:07:18
Speaker
the entire manuscript. I did an excerpt for Words Without Borders to try to garner the interest of editors and publishers. um And also it just helps editors when you are pitching you know to publishers for them to see that the excerpt was seen as you know um worthy enough to be published on their online literary outlet, right? As opposed to you just doing an excerpt and being like, hey, I really like this book. What do you think about it? It's like, oh, hey, I really like this book and this online magazine thought it was interesting too. This is the excerpt if you want to read it. um
00:07:57
Speaker
So I pitched it to Neemtree Press and we applied for an English pen grant. God bless English pen because they are instrumental in a number of my translations getting funded, ah which allows me to be a literary translator. We got the grant in 2020 of December, but I didn't start translating until March of 2022, just because I had my son in 2020. Um, and then yeah, so bees it actually then does work out to two years. Now, looking at the timeline, if I started translating in 2022 of March and we published in April of 2024, so actually it is pretty much two years. Wow. I just realized that for the first time. Anyway, yes. Okay. so Um, but, uh, yeah, what, what I'm really excited about, I know you didn't ask me this, but it's just getting more YA literature written. Um, which was originally written in Arabic into English because I find the YA.
00:08:51
Speaker
you ill lit scene, particularly in the UK, I feel like in the US, a little bit more diverse, but still like lacking a range of perspectives is how I'll put it.
Diverse Cultural Perspectives in Literature
00:09:05
Speaker
and And so I think by bringing like voices in from other languages doesn't just have to be Arabic, but that's what I'm working from, ah is is definitely needed for younger audiences yeah these days. No, I totally agree. And it's it's also just like um fun to to to read something because as someone who who's from the UK, grew up in the UK, has read not just read books, traditionally sort of in that kind of Western folklore kind of setting.
00:09:34
Speaker
but also, you know, it's it's movies, it's television, it's like, you know, how many retellings of Arthurian legend have i have I experienced as someone who grew up in the UK? It's so exciting when I get something like, ah you get like a translation from like a Chinese fantasy story or like a kind of folklore from a different culture or something like that, because it's a whole new world at that point. Like, it's not connected like all the other things that I've read are whether As a big fancy reader you know you read so much stuff where it's just like this is just an iteration of what Tolkien did a hundred years ago.
00:10:09
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That's it's refreshing to hear because a lot of the times publishers, uh, you know, like to stick with the tried and true, so but but then they feel FOMO when someone else takes, uh, you know, the risk and then it does like, you know, the three body problem, right? I don't know who originally published that, but now it's like a Netflix show, you know, or is it Amazon prime show, one of them. Uh, but originally I think that. book was considered too much outside of the box. Like who would be interested in this Chinese fantasy, you know, um sort of narrative and now it's just blown up.
00:10:43
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I guess as time goes on and the internet kind of expands and expands, we're all so much more integrated than we used to be and things like that. But um getting back onto... So my original question was sort of like, how does it work? And so I'm thinking from what you just said, this was you were very much the driving force in making this translation happen. Yeah, so that actually tends to be the case of the majority of I've done about like 17 books now and 14 of them I have been the instigator in terms of
00:11:19
Speaker
you know, contacting the author. i'm like cure i'm cure I'm a curator pretty much of Arabic literature in English. And if you are a translator working from a language which does not have a robust agenting infrastructure. So like you're working from Telugu or you're working from, I would even say, I mean, like Japanese, I feel like they have a few more agents now, but Korean and Swedish, for example, have a ton of agents in French and Spanish and German. And by agents, in case anyone's not familiar with that with um you know our listeners, it's someone who is representing the book on behalf of the author. So the agent is the one who's going to you know pitch it to publishers, et cetera. Now, the thing is a number of
00:12:03
Speaker
languages don't have agents just because, you know, it's it's not traditionally been the case or it just is untapped. And Arabic is one of those languages. So if you are a translated from Arabic, you are um also an agent. But I basically do a lot of the work that agents do, but it's unpaid. um Yeah. Right.
Dual Role: Translator and Agent
00:12:25
Speaker
You represent yourself basically. Yeah, no, I'm representing actually, yeah, myself, but more so the author and their work. So I'm the one who's going to publishers being like, hey, there's this book, would you be interested in translating it? And then I need to put them in touch with the author and, you know, um
00:12:43
Speaker
Basically advise the author on contract terms, etc. ah Because if I don't do that, no one else is taking these books to publishers. And unfortunately, in if we're just talking about the Anglosphere in UK and US, in-house editors do not have Arabic. um as a matter of course like in their pocket right they have many of them have French, Latin, Spanish, German so these are all books that they can kind of research I mean like literary sort of ecosystems they can research and then find out what's the latest best seller or who won the gancoul or like you know the all these different prizes but for Arabic that's not the case it's like this unknown entity and the only way they're able to break into it
00:13:26
Speaker
is if you have a translator who's bringing them the books, or on the rare occasion, an agent who works with Arab authors to be like, hey, this is the latest like thriller in Arabic, or this is what is really like picking up on TikTok. You know what I mean? like None of these trends um are being shared with publishers, except through the channels by which I've just like mentioned. um So that's the key thing, is that they just don't have the information. And that's another issue, right? There was like this report released, I think, two, three years ago, just about like the who works in publishing in both UK and US. But this report focused primarily on the UK. And a majority of it are white people, which is not an issue. But what's concerning is that the number of people in publishing who
00:14:15
Speaker
like there You were just mentioning Arthurian legend um you know and like retelling of Greek mythology, etc. If you grew up with a very particular understanding of like what is good literature or your understanding of you know literature needs to look like this or sound like this, you're not going to want to venture out to see like what other literatures there are. So you'll just be acquiring German books, French books, Spanish books, but what about books written in Taiwanese? What about books written you know in Uzbek? So yeah, I hope I'm making some kind of sense here.
00:14:50
Speaker
No, yeah.
Publishing Diversity and Exposure
00:14:51
Speaker
it makes makes closer and Especially with, and this is happening across all industries, is like a lot of these big corporations, like big publishers are becoming more and more risk averse too, which doesn't help that same kind of issue that that you're talking about where, yeah, books in the UK are branching out. It's still very Eurocentric. you know yourre it Yeah, it's Greek mythology. It's like things that we've been told are We've grown up thinking are like oh well this is the great stuff so we need to at least tie it to this in some way because we just haven't seen a lot of the other things from around the world and we don't know the the market they don't know how the going to react to that I guess.
00:15:31
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And I think what I was trying to say when it said in the report that most people in publishing are white, I'm not trying to i'm not saying that, oh, if you're white, like you can't be exploring other cultures or literatures. I'm just saying it's more likely than not, if you grew up in a in a household which was only exposed to one culture, one language, it's less likely that you are going to want to acquire you know literature from other countries as opposed to someone who grew up in a different country. You know what I mean? Or with a different language set. like That's why I think the key thing is there needs to be, like and I don't like this word, but diversification like in the publishing industry with the acquiring editors, et cetera. Because you can have, like you know there's this whole thing about
00:16:15
Speaker
movement within literary translators. This has become very activist talk now, Jamie. I don't know if you want to keep this in, but there's been this whole like movement within the literary translations here that oh, like we need to, you know, that majority of literary translators are from a very specific sort of economic background, right? Because even to be a literary translator, you're operating from a position of privilege. It's not a well-paid profession. I have a full-time day job. I do literary translation in the morning before I go to work, in my lunch break, and in the evenings, because you can't subsist only on literary translation unless you're someone like Anne Goldstein, who is Alana Ferrante's translator, who also used to work as an editor at the New York Times, by the way, so she's like very well connected.
00:17:03
Speaker
um Unless you're someone like that who, you know, you have people knocking down your door to translate books, to be a literary translator is very much, um you know, it's not, you're operating from a position of privilege. And as a result, most literary translators, um and for example, in the US, the Authors Guild did this report, are um are male and white. um But I don't know if you want to include all this Jamie, because it's it's it's fair yeah you might want to just delete all this. Let's get back to your questions. It's interesting. It is interesting stuff.
Fair Payment and Royalties in Translation
00:17:35
Speaker
But I mean, on on from that thread, just as a kind of, um yeah just like an informational thing, in terms of like payment and stuff like that, for for an author, obviously, the the book is going to be published, they're going to have an advance, and then when that gets paid off, they will receive royalties. As a translator,
00:17:53
Speaker
Is there a similar kind of structure to that or is it just a one-off payment for the translation? So it varies from house to house. um University presses are unfortunately um known for trying to you know just give a ah payment and they also try to retain copyright and not give royalties to translators. So whenever I'm a mentor, ah you know, a number of translators and I always highly recommend that they stay away from academic presses. um Even though they're known to have the most translations published, it's under the worst, you know, working conditions for translators. um One of the best houses I've worked with in terms of, ah you know, contracts and even the editing process was Fitzcorraldo Additions.
00:18:41
Speaker
which, um as I'm sure you and our listeners know, you know, they are the house which has published Nobel Prize winners and winners of the international Booker prizes like Olga, Tkachuk, et cetera. So they gave me royalties from first copy sold, which is still something that a lot of translators fight for because sometimes in your contract they'll say, okay, you're whatever payment you're receiving, you have to earn out before you can get royalties. So you have to sell like 15,000 copies, which is really rare because the average literary translation in the UK only sells between 300 to 350 copies. Wow. Ever. So if you get over that threshold, that means like your book, you should be very happy as a translator. um You know,
00:19:26
Speaker
if you sell over that. And that's something I've been doing is like keeping a record of how much each of my books are selling just to get an idea um of where things fall. Even if I don't get royalties from those books, right? Neemtree Press again is a wonderful house where I do get royalties from the first copy sold, which is great. ah But and there are a number of houses I've worked with who are well reputed, um but don't give ah royalties to translators. in essence because it needs to take about 30, 40 years if to to earn out and that's even if you ever do. yeah yeah Okay, that's interesting. But it is kind of similar to to the payment the the payment structure that authors get in that there is an advance which you can earn out and then you will receive royalties.
00:20:11
Speaker
Yes, yeah, except authors obviously get a higher percentage of um royalties. um And then if you even start thinking about, like, this is something interesting that happened. I don't know if you or this is going to be interested in this, but one of the books I co-translated, which is about, um it's called the Book Sensors Library, it just came out with restless books in the US and it will be published with Selkie's House, which is a Scottish press and in in the autumn.
Complexities of Relay Translation
00:20:40
Speaker
And the the book has been doing so well that it's been selling into other languages, right, which as in the
00:20:49
Speaker
Arabic book, like once publishers in Italy and Russia have have have seen the book in English, they want to buy the rights. But what's different this time is they want to do this thing called relay translation, where they want to translate from my and my co-translator's English translation into Russian and into Italian. um So they're bypassing the Arabic altogether, which is interesting ah because usually that doesn't, and that usually happens like under the table where, you know, people might translate from your English translation and they don't tell you about it. But if they do tell you about it upfront as a translator, you're meant to get some sort of financial compensation for that because those are our words that you're translating from.
00:21:31
Speaker
as opposed to translating directly from the Arabic. And that happens a lot when you're working with languages like, you know, Korean or Vietnamese, et cetera. There's not many translators working in, let's say like Russian to Vietnamese, right? Or like Korean to, you know, Italian or something. So they'll go through via like the English translation in order to get it into their language. but um It just goes to show that there's so many things translators have to be aware of other than just the contract. I mean, other than just the craft or translation. And I have to admit, like with each contract I do, I'm always like, oh man, like I should have done that. And then you remember it for the next book. Like, oh, I should have asked for this. um But yeah.
00:22:13
Speaker
That's so interesting. so in For some translations I imagine there's a sort of um Chinese whispers element to the thing where it's like the translation of a translation of a translation. Yeah, that's re that's what they call relay translation. um And it's happening more and more, as you said, because like our world is becoming more interconnected, that more languages do want to translate literature from far-flung territories, but are unable to access that language. So they go via the English translation. But this is where it's really key for all translators listening to make sure you have a clause
00:22:50
Speaker
regarding relay translations in your contract because I did not. and So then I was like, I never thought someone would want to translate an entire book from my translation. You know what I mean? And then you're like, wow, it's not just one language. There's two um that that want to do this. So it just gives you it's just kind of like a reality check, like to have a little bit more self-confidence in your work and realize that actually, yeah, my work is good enough that, you know, someone might just want to try and do a translation of my translation. which is pretty mind-blowing for me. Yeah. Yeah. That's so interesting. And also I had some had a German author on not that long ago called Leonie Swann, and she was talking about her translations into into English. And she was saying how um lost in translation is the kind of the thing that you hear but when people say it's like, oh, this was lost in translation. But she said,
00:23:44
Speaker
for everything that was lost she also finds new things in translation so she's like there's so many exciting like and funny kind of turns of phrase that you use in the UK that I learned about that I think are brilliant that I never could have put in the German version originally so when you get those like relay translations I imagine you're like it it doesn't it's not necessarily worse but like with each translation it is going to get further and further away from the source material Definitely. Yeah. 100% to what she said and what you're saying as well, which is why I personally am not a fan of Relay translation um unless you have access to the translator. like
00:24:23
Speaker
uh, you know, to just double check things and ask things because it there's just so much unseen. Like when I'm translating work, I take leaps of faith, right? Like I asked the author for, you know, better understanding of certain passages, but in order to get, you know, maybe the humor across definitely when translating humor, I have to like, you know, move maybe four steps away from the original Arabic in order to make it make sense in the English. ah For the reader because if I translated it as it is it just would fall flat Yeah, yeah, because yeah, I imagine every country even if you look at countries that have the same Language like the US and the UK the sense of humor is wildly different. Yeah
00:25:09
Speaker
So different, so different. I mean, even in just this podcast, I've used so many like sports metaphors because American English uses a lot of sports metaphors. um Whereas in the UK, that's not that's not as common. Yeah. ah Yeah. I mean, but the thing is, we know them all from like television and movies. So yes we will understand what you're saying, even if we don't play baseball. Yeah. and but Well, I don't even play baseball and I say these things. You know, what could I be? Yeah, we all do. You can't escape it now. yeah um What's funny is I actually read an article ah recently about how, obviously, like the in English, sports metaphors were the kind of universal thing that a lot of people could could could understand, so that's why they became integrated into the language. but
00:25:54
Speaker
the new thing is video game terms apparently which are now getting added into the dictionaries because it's that's the new like universal thing for like young people which i thought it was interesting can you give an example um so like you see them sometimes in like they've hit like memes and stuff now so like owning people
00:26:15
Speaker
it that's ah That's come from video games. I think nerf is a video game term, which now means to like make something worse is like to nerf it. Okay. No, I didn't know nerf, but I've heard about owning, but I didn't know that that came from video gaming. Yeah, it came from video games. Yeah. So like there's a lot of these words which are just creeping in because that's the new universally understood kind of medium for for young people, I guess. Wow. I'm always so amazed when they add new words to the dictionary. I just find it very um exciting and also encouraging because there are a lot of languages which do not update their dictionaries. Right. And and it's just sort of, you know, namely like Arabic is one of them where the newer usages of language are just ah codified ah verbally, you know, yeah in an oral manner as opposed to having it ah written, which I think is always great. Yeah.
00:27:11
Speaker
Okay, okay. um Before we head over to to the desert island, did I do want to quickly ask um as ah someone who who who does translate sort of professionally, how did you get into it? Or how did you kind of first find your way into into doing that?
Savard's Path into Translation
00:27:28
Speaker
Yeah. So I'm like a number of my colleagues who you know tend to say that they accidentally fell into translation um or that you know they just meandered and ended up on the translation sort of road. I was very much um
00:27:51
Speaker
actively chose to be a linguist, I had gone to the US s through pre-med. Coming from South Asia, usually the sort of three professions your family encourages you to pursue are either like law, medicine, or banking, right? So I was like, okay, like, ah since I was young, I was like, okay, first I was wanted to be a veterinarian, turns out I'm allergic to half the animals, so that had to be scrapped. And then I'm like, okay, kids, yeah, I'll be a pediatrician. So you know I medicine, went to the US, did first year pre-med and realized that actually this isn't for me. At the same time, I was taking an Arabic ah language course because Arabic is not my my native tongue.
00:28:32
Speaker
and French at the same time and I just loved Arabic and my teacher was actually Ukrainian funnily enough for my arabic um Arabic class and I was like wow she can achieve this level of fluency ah you know she was blonde haired blue eyed and I was just like why can't I like I can also learn Arabic right and um She was just so engaging. I think this speaks to the power of teachers. like I used to be a teacher as well, but I think sometimes people forget how much of an impact teachers do have on us as individuals. And she really just shifted my life course. um So I left pre-med to the great chagrand of my family. um And they're like, we didn't send you abroad to study languages. You already speak a number of languages you don't need anymore. um And just pursued Arabic and French. and
00:29:22
Speaker
When I graduated, ah by then I was doing like I would just, you know, I knew that I liked translation, but I didn't really know it was something I could make a full time sort of. And by full time, I mean, as I said, I have a day job still, but I'm still like in, you know, all my other moments I'm translating. um as So I became a teacher, I was teaching languages, so I was teaching Arabic and French, but doing translation at the same time. But it was in 2008 when I was doing my master's degree that um and know it was a long time ago. I was approached by an agency to translate this manuscript of a Palestinian novel.
00:30:01
Speaker
And that was like within a year of then I had graduated. And so when I did that, I got paid for it. I was like, hey, this was like so great. I loved it. You know, I can do it um for my life. But then it took me seven years to get my first contract with an actual publishing house in Hong Kong. And that was after really like, you know, as they say, like grinding away and and knocking on doors and Doing samples and readers reports etc so when I mentor translators today, and if they don't have a contract within a year I'm like listen. It's just a year like you wait a little bit more so on average now They're getting it within two years. They'll get a contract um You know if not quicker, but at that point you know I was also living in Johannesburg which is like outside of this you know the publishing centers and
00:30:49
Speaker
of the world at that time. And yeah, so I would say I actively wanted to be a translator. It just took a long time to get there, but I think having to, um you know, go through those sort of longer routes to get into translation has served me well because I picked up a number of other sort of skills along the way, which I now use, you know, when I'm running workshops and stuff.
Mentoring New Translators
00:31:14
Speaker
So. Okay. So yeah, I mean, it's very much I knew I wanted to do translation. It was just, I didn't know how to get into it but was what was what it was. um And I didn't have a mentor at the time. And these days, thankfully, you know, they have mentoring schemes and stuff for literary translators. But at that time, there was just one and
00:31:34
Speaker
It was the BCLT one, which is the British Center for Literary Translation. I applied for it three times and I got rejected and I stopped applying. But what's really funny in a full circle moment is I have been their mentor now for the Arabic track for like four years. So it's it's hilarious. um Yeah. so So I'm always really happy to to share that story. Yeah. That's funny. It all came full circle in the end. Yeah. You know, got there in the end. that's Amazing. That's that's a great story. um And that brings us to the point in the episode where we wander over to the desert island and I ask you so that if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book do you hope that it would
Desert Island Choice: A Dictionary
00:32:16
Speaker
be? OK, but before I answer it, can I ask what you would take to the desert island? Does anyone ever ask you this? Yeah, sometimes people do do like to ask. And I would say it would probably change on a fairly regular basis. ah Interesting. My go-to answers are either um Small Gods by Terry Pratchett or The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, which are very similar in their like vibe and their kind of scope, ah just kind of very light-hearted, silly, but strangely meaningful comedic ah adventures.
00:32:55
Speaker
Mm hmm. Yeah. So when you ask this question, I'm kind of going back and forth between two books. One of them is a Khaled Husseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. But then I'm just like, I don't want to be sobbing the whole time on the desert island. So because I mean, it's just such it's such a great book. And then I was um it sounds so but then I don't even know like which The other thing I was thinking of is like just taking like a and it sounds so dorky, but just like a massive dictionary. Yeah. yeah um And just because I don't know how long I'll be there, but I was like, if I'm there, I might as well like do some, you know, self improvement while I'm out there and like so continue to learn new words. I really like when I'm reading, I'm kind of like a ah word magpie, like I'm always writing. I have these notebooks and I just write down words or phrases that I like.
00:33:53
Speaker
Um, so that's just kind of a daily practice for me. So I feel like having a dictionary would allow me to do that. Um, although I prefer to do it like when I'm reading, you know, fiction or nonfiction, as opposed to just have dictionary entries, but If it's only one book, right, as opposed to like two, I would just take a dictionary with me, an English english language dictionary. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Like a thick one. That's cool. I like that answer. Like a really heavy one. Yeah, that's that's a good one. And then you could learn all the video game terms. Yeah, right? Exactly. If it's an up-to-date edition, that way when like I am found by whichever search party is hopefully looking for me, I can just jump back into the world.
00:34:38
Speaker
I'm up to date. Yeah, exactly. I feel like the the way, especially English language, like the speed at which it's evolving is so hard to keep up sometimes. It really is. but it you know even though that So this is why I find it funny. like Even though the dictionary will update itself, when you're translating um you know into English, the pushback you get from editors so many times to be like, oh, this word, like you know even the word, like gin, right? Like the gin's apple for bringing it back to the book now.
00:35:12
Speaker
um And a few other words in here, but even if we're thinking about the word like gin, I'm not saying this happened with name tree press, but it has occurred where I've used that word in a different you know context, in a different book. Editors will be like, oh, shouldn't we just say like spirit or like demon or you know ghost or something like this? I'm like, no, like the word is gin, it's in the dictionary. um And they're like, oh, but even if it's in the dictionary, like how many people will know it? And so that's why I'm just like, if the words in the dictionary, it has been approved. like there It's in a common usage, like widespread enough usage to be codified. like If it's in the dictionary, I'm putting it in my translation. um But even if words that aren't in the dictionary, right there's that whole like back and forth about if you italicize words or not. But ah yeah, so all I was just trying to say is that
00:36:03
Speaker
Even if we are happy to have the dictionary updated, a lot of the times editors and publishers are still stuck in a particular era of the sort of language that they want to use yeah and what's acceptable or not. And what would the reader like? When a lot of the times the readers are fantastic and open-minded and are happy to have new words. Exactly. Yeah. And it kind of gives it, it gives it like a word like gin gives it, uh, there's like ah a tie to a certain culture, to a certain place, to a certain time with that. Which if you just change it to demon or whatever that you lose that it's like lost in the kind of heritage of the word. Right. You know, next time I'm having this back and forth with the editors, I'm going to give you a call.
00:36:47
Speaker
okay I'll give him a piece of my mind. yeah I've got some more questions about research and keeping up with local lingo and AI, ah but this is the end of the regular episode and that will all be in the extended cart and exclusive to my amazing Patreon subscribers. um which i hope the readers also won buy yeah i meanless yeah yeah um Amazing. well thank you Thank you so much, Savard, for coming on. It's been great chatting with you. Same here. Just before you go, let me let me tell everyone where they can keep up with you. That is on Twitter. You can find her at SavardHussein on Instagram at Savard18, or you can find her website, savardhussein.com. To support the podcast, like, follow, subscribe on your podcast platform of choice and follow along on socials. Join the Patreon for extended episodes ad free a week early and check out my other podcasts, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
00:37:38
Speaker
Thanks again so much, and thanks to everyone listening. We will catch you on the next episode.