Convergences

About the Book

This anthology is an amalgam of the author’s output in the domains of interpretation, translation, and literary scholarship. It is a serious attempt to highlight the cardinal traits common to said fields. This research is a vested trek into the inner workings of the author’s profession; interpretation and translation, as well as his standing engagement with literary genres throughout the ages. The book’s uniqueness resides in treating a diversity of matters interrelated in various ways, although on the surface it appears to make up a queer admixture of dissimilar elements—hence the title, Convergences. Interpretation and translation are twin vocations, and between them, convergence is all encompassing. Both transform a message from a source to a target language. Complementary and mutually supportive as they are, yet there is a train of difference in the execution of these two inseparable professions: the method, nature and techniques involved in each. Interpretation is the instantaneous, the simultaneous, in a word the express mode of communication; and translation is the meditative, the slow or the local medium of correspondence. Concomitantly, literature is the crucible for teleologically permeable convergences and incredible divergences. It has a noble ontological message and brings out humanity’s hidden treasures, experiences, thoughts, and choices. Literature’s lofty missive is grounded in understanding the scenes, events, and characters it depicts excerpts of which feed into discourses to be interpreted and translated. Clients come up with multiple interpretations depending on circumstances and the context in which texts are couched.

About the Author

Dr. Nabil M. Abdel-Al, a former United Nations Senior Interpreter in New York (1982-2017), is a university lecturer, published author, scholar, researcher, public speaker, writer, and translator. Born in 1957 in a small village in Upper Egypt, he fell in love with the English language at an early age. He holds a BA in English literature and translation (1979), an MA in interpretation and translation (1982), an MA in English and American Literature (1987) and a PhD for his thesis on “E. M. Forster as a Critic” (1994). He is a member of the International Lawrence Durrell Society (USA) and a life member of the Marlowe Society (London). In his official capacity as a UN interpreter and wearing his academic hat Dr. Abdel-Al traveled to more than forty countries. He lectured on a broad variety of topics relating to interpretation, translation, and English literature, through his involvement in external studies, the UN outreach program, MOU between the UN and Universities or taking part in international conferences and seminars. He translated E. M. Forster’s Pharos and Pharillon into Arabic, which has been serialized in the faculty of Al-Alsun’s translation publication. Many academic works of his have been published in Malaysia, Canada, the United States, and Egypt. Dr. Abdel-Al now lives in New York with his wife, Wafaa Kassem, and their five children.