In her recent review of our fabulous September Book Club selection, Editor-at-Large Allison Braden praised the book’s candor, humor, and heart, as well as its fresh take on Moroccan culture. Below, she revisits these and other topics in conversation with award-winning translator and former Asymptote member Emma Ramadan. Straight From The Horse’s Mouth, they agree, defies our preconceptions of Morocco, its women, and the makings of great literature in translation.
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Allison Braden: I want to start by asking how you found this book. What attracted you to the story?
Emma Ramadan: Other Press came to me and asked if I wanted to translate the book, and I read it through and loved it. What I really like about it, and what I have tried to look for in other translation projects I’ve pitched, is that it’s by a Moroccan writer and it’s about Morocco, but not the cliched version of Morocco that can get neatly packaged to American readers. This happens with a lot of countries where there aren’t that many English translations already in existence: there’s an expectation that they will read a certain way, or that they will educate us about a certain aspect of that country or culture, as if that were the only thing those literatures were supposed to do. I like that this book doesn’t really provide the view of Morocco that English-language readers might have in mind, or that publishers might want to sell to them. It’s a wild Morocco that is both more devastating and more fun than anyone might expect. I love Jmiaa’s story, and I love her voice, and I love that she’s allowed to have a painful existence as a sex worker but also a radical transformation into a famous movie star. It’s a really fun book, and we don’t get a lot of those from certain countries.
AB: I noticed on Twitter that you said you often wish for more fun and funny books in translation. I’m curious about why you think there aren’t as many of those.
ER: I have a lot of thoughts about this, but I’ll sum them up by saying that I think there’s a certain pressure when you’re pitching a translation, or when publishers are acquiring a translation, for it to be a big, important, prize-worthy book; it’s very expensive to do translations, and there’s this idea that they don’t sell very well, so to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth, there needs to be some important hook or payoff in the form of big reviews or awards. These more fun, funny, light books that have a lot to say—that definitely have their readers and an importance of their own—may not seem as appealing or worthy in that way, but I would really disagree. Sometimes you just want to translate a book because it’s really good, and good doesn’t necessarily mean heavy and political and invested with all this cultural capital about what it means to live in a specific place. Sometimes it can just be a great book. And that should be, and is, enough.
AB: You’ve also translated some very serious Moroccan literature—I’m thinking of Ahmed Bouanani’s The Shutters. Did translating that inform your translation of Straight From the Horse’s Mouth, even though it’s such a different tone and genre?
ER: It did inform my translation insomuch as I got to know Morocco very well through that project, living there as I was working on it. So then, in translating this other book that’s very much set there, I was able to say, “Okay, they’re going to this town, I know what that town looks like.” It was deeply informative in that way, even if it’s a very different kind of book. There are other comparisons to be made, too: Bouanani uses some language that resists being translated, and in Straight From the Horse’s Mouth, Meryem Alaoui uses Arabic words in her French text that I left in Arabic, so both authors are writing from a culture that uses multiple languages. The challenge for me there was letting all those voices come through and not forcing them into some kind of neat English.
AB: You’ve written about translating humor in other Moroccan literature, like Fouad Laroui’s The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers, which featured both wordplay and absurd situational comedy. How would you describe the humor in this book?
ER: It’s actually neither of those things. I don’t remember there being much wordplay in Straight From the Horse’s Mouth, and I also don’t think it’s that absurd. It’s very character-driven. Jmiaa as a narrator is just so funny, without necessarily meaning to be, and she’s put in these ridiculous situations. She describes dancing to some music in her apartment and getting really caught up in it, for instance, which works because it’s both a funny image and also extremely relatable. You don’t need wordplay on top of that.
AB: So it didn’t pose as many challenges for translation?
ER: The biggest challenge was conveying the voice. When I was first asked to do the book, I had to submit a sample and the author had notes, so I was able to take those and run with them. They revolved around “this voice should sound like this” or “it should be a very casual narration and it should be fun and playful.” So finding Jmiaa’s voice was the biggest challenge, but I really enjoyed it.
AB: Was it hard to maintain her fun and playful tone without being flip about the darker parts of the story?
ER: There’s one section where she’s talking about the different kinds of violent encounters you can face as a sex worker, and the tone and register of the text changes: it gets a little more literary and distant. There’s also a lengthy scene about the dissolution of her marriage in which Alaoui uses italics to represent her inner thoughts, so I think the text itself played with dipping into different kinds of styles to reflect different moods. One thing about this character is that even in her darkest moments, she finds ways to feel joy—again, even before she gets a big part in a movie, she’s dancing around in her underwear in her apartment. So I think the author wrote the text in a way that flagged the more serious moments for the reader, without having to make Jmiaa’s character change to reflect them.
AB: You’ve mentioned in another interview that your translation curriculum made you cognizant of cultural disparities, and this book is full of language, class, and cultural differences. How did you approach those, either in your research or in your translation?
ER: This is one of the beautiful things, too, about the character. She’s making fun of people around her who belong to a different class, who don’t understand certain things: she mocks her director, whom she calls Horse Mouth, and some of her habits. When she goes to America, for instance, she attends a series of parties in which they only serve really small appetizers, and she’s like, “Of course I got wasted—they’re just passing around these tiny finger foods!” The character does a really good job of exemplifying these disparities and using them to further highlight her own personality.
In terms of my research, I was in Morocco for a year and then left, so I can somewhat see myself in the characters she mocks and distrusts; as a translator who’s working on Moroccan literature, I need to be aware of my place and role in that context. My process is never going to be perfect in that sense, but I try to be aware of, say, not smoothing things over when different languages are used, or when there are certain cultural references; I try to make sure that they’re understood. This book had a built-in glossary, and we added a couple of things to it, and I think that’s important because I don’t want to erase anything. I want people to have to pause and reflect upon these things, to truly get them. As a translator, I have to do the same, with the knowledge that I’m going to have gaps and I won’t be able to fully inhabit a character’s place. So I think it’s about being aware of that and doing the research where I can, and also helping readers have access to certain reference points.
AB: I was just going to ask if that glossary was your idea or if that was your preferred solution for those terms.
ER: Because it’s a book about Morocco, but it was written in French and published in France, the glossary was already there. The author was already aware that not everyone was going to understand certain things that she wanted to include, and I think we only added maybe five things. If there hadn’t been a glossary, I’m not sure how we would have handled it. Maybe we would have added it ourselves, because I do think having access to something like that for this kind of book is key.
AB: Having spent time in Morocco yourself, are there any cultural references or details you wish readers in English understood as they read this book?
ER: If you’re a reader who’s coming to this book with very little knowledge of Morocco, that actually might be better, because then it’s not necessarily challenging any stereotypes. There are a lot of preconceptions about Morocco—about Moroccan women and what they’re able to do. Here Jmiaa is spending all night out at bars and having a ton of fun with her girlfriends, and their social circle really revolves around alcohol and things like that. It’s not typical for every single Moroccan woman, just like it’s not typical for every woman here in the States, but it’s part of life and it’s shattering a specific stereotype of “Moroccan women can’t go out to bars” or “Moroccan women can’t socialize in this way.” So coming to this book with a clear mind is great.
AB: Is there anything else you would want readers to know?
ER: The one thing I would add—which is something that I do with every book, actually—is that I read out loud as I translate. This book in particular called for that, and made it especially enjoyable, because it was so voice- and character-driven.
Emma Ramadan is a literary translator from French based in Providence, Rhode Island, where she co-owns Riffraff bookstore and bar. She is the recipient of a Fulbright, an NEA Translation Fellowship, and the 2018 Albertine Prize. Her translations include Sphinx by Anne Garréta, The Shutters by Ahmed Bouanani, A Country for Dying by Abdellah Taïa, and Straight from the Horse’s Mouth by Meryem Alaoui.
Allison Braden is a writer and Spanish translator. In addition to representing Argentina as an editor-at-large for Asymptote, she is a contributing editor to Charlotte Magazine and an editorial assistant for the academic journal Translation and Interpreting Studies. Her writing has appeared in Columbia Journalism Review, The Daily Beast, Asymptote, and Spanish and Portuguese Review, among others.
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