Yasmine Seale's lecture

 As part of the MFA in literary translation, this semester we are taking a class titled: "A Thousand and One Nights: A Translator's Playground" where we have learned the rich and complicated history surrounding the translation of The Nights. In this context, to have had the opportunity to listen to Yasmine Seale, the newest translator of this work,  was absolutely wonderful. One of the things she mentioned which I really liked was that The Nights resists being called "a book" as it's more a tradition of storytelling.  This is very fitting since, as we have learned in this class, The Nights is a compendium of stories that grew throughout time until eventually reaching 1001. Seale mentioned that she might be interested in adding her own stories to this ever-growing tradition since the number 1001 is less of a concrete number and more of an invitation to infinity. I also found it very interesting how the lack of a clear original or an author has provided different translators leeway to experiment, reinvent, and adapt the work to their own purposes and audiences, as she mentioned "The Nights is not an artichoke, but an onion – peel away the leaves and you'll find nothing in the center", that is to say, no clear original, no authorial figure, no definitive manuscript.

Seale shared with the audience that she is having a hard time moving forward with her next translation of The Nights since is hard to think what can this new translation contribute to the long history of the English version of The Nights. She then reflected on three different ways her translation can differ from the previous ones: style, structure, and sensibility.  In regards to style, it was fascinating to see how she takes important characteristics of the text – that the stories are told at night, that Shahazard is constantly postponing finality – and makes them part of the stylistic features of the text. She proposed the idea of long sentences that would carry on until the night is over –the appearance of the sun would indicate the end of the sentence. She also shared how in her translation she was concerned with retaining the "poetic prose" that appears in The Nights to describe beauty, signal something important, or add to an emotional climactic moment. When reading her translation, the poetic quality of the prose really stands out in contrast to other new versions like Haddawy's or Lyons.

In regards to structure, she shared that she is considering translating from different manuscripts to signal how the stories have been added, adapted, and changed throughout time. This is a very interesting proposal that would disrupt previous versions since normally translators take only one manuscript as their main source. She would like to include different manuscripts and sources to show that The Nights is almost a living entity that would change every time the stories were told. In regards to sensibility, she shared the interesting idea that perhaps the way to be most faithful to The Nights is to be irreverent since this fits with its long textual tradition of changes, erasures, and adaptations. She also mentioned that she has found that women tend to be more irreverent towards the treatment of The Nights than men and it has been because of this that many versions haven't been considered translations. Overall, it was a wonderful talk filled with interesting and subversive ideas about translation and The Thousand and One Nights.

-Lia