AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, Volume 6, Number 4. October 2022 p.1
Foreword
This issue of the Arab World English Journal for Translation and Literary Studies further underlines the journal’s standing as a viable showcase of pertinent and relevant disciplinary scholarship undertaken at universities in Arab countries. Especially in my own field of English/Anglophone literature, I have over the years seen far too little exposure given to or claimed by colleagues coming from or working in the Arab world, and I can remember a good many international conferences where I, a person with a German passport and a Scottish accent, appeared to be the sole representative of the vast and populous expanse that stretches from Morocco in the west, to Iraq and Oman in the east. In such a context, the existence of a platform such as AWEJ must be, and indeed is, greatly appreciated by many.
The current issue features a broad range of topics, from Tudor drama to poetics to comparative literature, and to issues in translation from Arabic to English. While the contributions on the literary topics fall more or less squarely into my core area of specialisation, I am no less appreciative of the translation studies papers, and in particular, of those that deal with translating varieties of Arabic. Linguists and literary scholars in the anglophone world are by and large becoming accustomed to thinking in terms of ‘Englishes’ rather than one monolithic standard ‘English’, while in the Arab world, a similar process seems to be unfolding, with a strengthening focus not only on the pragmatic dominance of different regional idioms as vehicles of everyday communication, but also on the creative power and potential inherent in these idioms as vehicles of literary expression.
Having said this, I strongly commend all of the essays in this volume to the readers’ attention, and I look forward to a continued relationship with a journal that will surely continue to blossom.
Guest Editor:
Manfred Malzahn
Professor of English Literature
United Arab Emirates University
Al Ain, UAE