…for anyone interested in producing their own Islamic designs. I ordered ‘Islamic Designs for Artists and Craftspeople’ from Amazon last week and it arrived yesterday. It is full of wonderful patterns and designs ready to use for your own projects. Highly recommended!
As September is drawing near I’m thinking more and more about what to write for my dissertation. The past two years of study have thrown up numerous possibilities, but this summer I realized that rather than write about a topic that would make sense professionally (but could potentially be quite dull), I’d rather spend the year writing about a topic that I feel inspired and passionate about! The Islamic illumination course that I took this summer inspired me in many ways, and I began to think about literature in Medieval Cairo. After some research, I discovered a text written in the 16th century by a fascinating character called Ibn Zunbul. It is a romantic account of the final years of the Mamluk empire and the Mamluk Sultan’s battles with the encroaching Ottomans, and Harvard has a copy (alhamdulillah). I picked it up last week and love it. At the moment I’m considering translating part of it for my dissertation, and complementing the translation with a commentary on the problems of translating Medieval Arabic, insha’Allah.
At last! My website is finally live – hooray! After many months and some mistakes, I cobbled something together and am quite pleased with the result! It’s a work in progress, but I’m happy to have a site finally up. The picture on the home page is of of my bookshelf, and the design in the background was inspired by my Islamic illumination class. Next task – business cards! 
So a few months ago I officially set up my own business (drum roll), Katherine Osgood Translations LLC! Yay! The first few months have definitely been a learning experience, but I’m very happy to report that I’ve been extremely busy! So busy in fact, that I’m starting to get a little bit freaked out about how I’m going to balance the business with my studies. I have a few clients at the moment that are sending me work almost on a daily basis, and I’ve been frantically trying to squeeze in my Master’s work around them, but this week I decided that that system was not sustainable. My solution is to be more strict about my schedule and only make myself available for freelancing from Mon-Thurs, giving myself Friday, Sat and Sunday to concentrate on my Masters. I’m going to see how that goes for the next month or so. I keep telling myself that the good news is that I’ve got plenty of paid work, but now I just need to learn how to handle it all!
I painted two new Islamic illuminations last week; one for my mum and one for my sister. I was quite pleased with the results!
A new hataya which I gave to my sister
A new shamsa which I gave to my mum!
I think I might try something more adventurous over the weekend. I’ll post the pics if I manage to produce anything decent!
Last week I took a week-long workshop on Islamic illumination through the Prince’s School for Traditional Arts. It was absolutely amazing and I learned so much! It was also taught by my incredibly talented friend, Ayesha Gamiet, which made it even more fun. Below is a selection of pics from the paintings I managed to create. I’m definitely planning on continuing with this wonderful practice!
Creating a ‘shamsa’ design:
1. The French ochre tracing
2. Gilding some of the petals
3. Starting to fill in with paint
4. The finished shamsa!
Painting a ‘hataya’:
1. Starting to paint the hataya with the halkar technique
2. Finished with the halkar and the gilding - just the outline to go!
3. Finished! This was one of my favourite painting techniques.
I also created one final piece that was lots of fun to do – with lots of gold paint! It is not finished yet though, so I’m going to save posting pictures of it until it is complete!
Does anyone know any legal Arabic-English translators? A friend of mine at Harvard is looking for help understanding some legal documents…let me know if you do!
Hello all! The ladies over at the Translation Times blog had a nice idea recently – to post a list of favourite language blogs that we follow! They invited everyone to create a post entitled A ♥ for Language Blogs so we can all share our favourites. Here is a selection of mine:
Jabal Al Lughat: Excellent blog by Dr. Lameen Souag about all things linguistic when it comes to Arabic and Berber. I can’t always understand the finer points, but his posts are fascinating!
Language Hat: A treasure trove of language discussions. ‘Hat’ himself speaks about 13 different languages – incredible!
ALTalk: This is the American Literary Translators Association blog. Its a great resource for calls for submissions, competitions, interesting links and anything else that literary translators might be interested in!
MA Translation Studies News: Very regularly updated and a hive of information for translation students run by Carol O’Sullivan at the University of Portsmouth. Excellent resource.
Arabic Literature (in English): Last but not least, M. Lynx Qualey’s blog about all things to do with Arabic literature. It is my go-to blog each day to see what has been happening in the world of Arabic literature in translation. I’d be lost without it!
I’m looking forward to seeing what language blogs others follow!
Here is a fun question to while away a few minutes (or in my case, the past two weeks). How would you translate “الشيشة” into English? It’s one of those funny things that initially seems really straightforward, but for me has somehow taken on a life of its own.
Shisha, nargile, hookah...
I’m working on my translation of “A Cafe on Politics Street”, and the main characters are regularly smoking الشيشة, so clearly I need to think about the best way to render this in English. I could just go with the straight forward transliteration – shisha, but I know that hookah is also frequently used in English. Other possibilities I know include nargile, water pipe, or my Mum’s favourite – hubbly bubbly. So a dilemma begins…
Here is what I deduced from a quick wikipedia search (don’t knock it – you know you use it too):
Shisha is derived from the Persian word for glass, and is used to describe said water pipe in Egypt, Sudan, the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Somalia and Yemen.
Nargile is derived from the Persian for coconut (which apparently suggests the original water pipes were hewn from coconut shells – don’t quote me on it) and is used in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Israel.
Persian man in traditional dress smoking a...?
OK, so that’s where the terms shisha and nargile are used, but what about when translated into English?
Apparently hookah is an Indian word and a remnant of the British Raj. Water pipe is clearly a literal English description – maybe I should use that. But what about Mum’s favourite? Unfortunately thus far I’ve not found out how hubbly bubbly came into being - if someone knows, feel free to comment!
In typing out these thoughts out I think I’ve managed to narrow the field to shisha, hookah or water pipe.
For some reason I don’t feel comfortable using hookah, so I think I’m going to leave that out of the running too.
So I’m left with the literal Egyptian – shisha – or the literal English – water pipe. Hmm. I notice that I’ve used water pipe when describing الشيشة in this post…could that be a sign? I might have to keep thinking!
I’m looking forward to spending this summer in my native England, and while most of it will be spent working on my translation project and spending time with friends and family, I’m definitely planning on taking time out to visit the British Museum. If you are in London I really think it is a must-visit. I absolutely adore my trips there, and this summer there are a whole trove of events happening.
The main exhibition I can’t wait to see is the Treasures of Afghanistan exhibition. Iain saw some of it in Washington D.C. a few years ago, but I was at a conference and couldn’t attend (typical!). He has been raving about it ever since so I’m pleased I’ll finally get to see all the wonderful artifacts. There is also a lecture from the exhibition’s curator that I’m hoping to attend.
In addition to Afghanistan, there are a number of other gallery talks and lectures going on, including a talk on the Ancient Egyptian tomb of Nebamun, Ancient Egyptian plant use, contemporary Arab culture and the science behind Omani silver!
I’ll definitely post my thoughts on each!
Gold Crown from Tilya Tepe, 1st century AD
