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Journal / 01 — The Craft / Arabic-to-English Literary Translation: Navigating Metaphor, Parataxis, and Flow
01 — The Craft • 10 min read

Arabic-to-English Literary Translation: Navigating Metaphor, Parataxis, and Flow

Arabic prose favors polysyndeton (the repetition of "and") and ornate metaphorical resonance; English favors hypotaxis and concision. How translators bridge the two.

Scriptorium Editorial Board
Scriptorium Editorial Board
August 21, 2026

In classical Arabic rhetoric, the connector "wa" (and) creates a majestic, cumulative wave of meaning. Directly translating every "and" into English produces clunky run-on sentences. Translators must sculpt the underlying emotional rhythm into English syntactic equivalents.

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Scriptorium Editorial Board
Literary Craft & Research Fellows

Scriptorium Editorial Board

A collective of developmental editors, narrative theorists, and computational linguists dedicated to advancing the craft of long-form fiction.

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