Petra Dünges
Arabic Children's Literature, Translations from Arabic into German

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Last Revision: 16 January 2012

About my work

Mein neuer Freund, der Mond. Walid Taher. © Edition Orient

I have been interested in Arabic children's and youth literature since many years. I have good contacts to Arab authors, illustrators and publishers and to German speaking publishers of children's literature. I am a member of the German association of literary translators Verband der Literaturübersetzer VdÜ, the Deutsch-Arabische Freundschaftsgesellschaft DAFG, the Deutsch-Jemenitische Gesellschaft DJG, and of the Association for Children's and Youth Literature Arbeitskreis für Jugendliteratur AKJ, which is the German Section of the International Board on Books for Young People IBBY.

I have published several articles on Arabic children's literature. Among the publishers are the influential German weekly ZEIT and the International Youth Library in Munich. The International Youth Library is the largest library for international children's and youth literature in the world. The Library prepares a travelling exhibition and a catalogue called "The White Ravens - An Annual Selection of International Children's and Youth Literature". This exhibition is presented at the Bologna Children's Book Fair and elsewhere. An annotated list of Arabic children's books is available from the International Youth Library.

In January 2011 my article on Arabic Children’s Literature Today: Determining Factors and Tendencies appeared at PMLA, the journal of the Modern Language Association of America. (Download of this article is restricted to institutions with a subscription of PMLA. Many universities in the USA and abroad have got the permission to download; if you do not have this permission, contact me, and I will send you the article.)

I have worked for leading Arab publishing houses like The Arab Institute for Research and Publishing (Beirut and Amman) and Dar al-Shorouk (Cairo).

I am collecting Arabic literature for children and the youth in behalf of the Gutenberg Museum Mainz and the International Youth Library Munich.

My translations of Arabic children's books from authors such as Abdelwahab Elmessiri, Radschi Anait and Samah Idriss can be ordered by publishers interested in obtaining the rights.

• Read more about my translations from Arabic into German in the German part of my Web site.
• Jean Ridings and I have translated the story al-thaub al-mughamir (The Brave Dress) by Fauziya Rashid into English. This story has been recommended for publication in the UNESCO database Literature and Translation. The book appeared in the Arabic original in the publishing houses al-Warscha al-Tadschribiya li-Kutub al-Atfal in Cairo and The Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, Beirut and Amman.

"The Society, registered as a non-profit association in Frankfurt, has set itself these objectives: to monitor literary trends and developments and select the best examples of creative writing from Africa, Asia and Latin America for translation into German, and to promote them in Germany, Switzerland and Austria by encouraging contacts between authors and publishers from the "Third World" and those in the German speaking region; to serve as an information centre and clearing house about literature from Africa, Asia and Latin America; to help establish and encourage a forum of debate about "Third World" literature." (from litprom.de)

In the publishing house Edition Orient in Berlin three bilingual Arabic-German children's books have appeared with my translations from Arabic into German. The stories are by Fauziya Raschid (Bahrain), Fuad Qa'ud (Egypt), Walid Taher (Egypt) and Rania Zaghir (Lebanon). They are illustrated by Fuad al-Futaih (Yemen), Racelle Ishak (Lebanon), Ihab Schakir (Egypt) and Walid Taher (Egypt). These books are suitable for Arab and German children alike and they are often used in classroom for German speaking learners of Arabic and for Arabic speaking learners of German.

Die Stadt, wo man sagt: "Das ist wunderschön!". Fuad Qa`ud, Fauziya Raschid, Ill.: Fuad al-Futaih, Ihab Schakir. © Edition Orient

• Fuad Qa'ud, Die Stadt, wo man sagt: "Das ist wunderschön", bilingual Arabic-German, with a foreword by Petra Dünges, translated from Arabic by Petra Dünges, Edition Orient, ISBN 978-3-922825-57-9, 42 pages, 1994, 10,00 Eur
  Two modern fairy tales for children and adults by Fuad Qa`ud and Fauziya Raschid with beautiful illustrations by Fuad al-Futaih and Ihab Schakir.
  The two stories appeared in the Arabic original in the publishing houses al-Warscha al-Tadschribiya li-Kutub al-Atfal in Cairo and The Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, Beirut and Amman.
  As far as I know the edition of Edition Orient is historically the first children's book originally written in the Arabic language and published in an Arab country which has appeared in a German edition.
• Walid Taher: Mein neuer Freund, der Mond, bilingual Arabic-German, illustrated by Walid Taher, translated from Arabic by Petra Dünges, Edition Orient, ISBN 978-3-922825-66-1, bound, 24 pages, 2004, 14,80 Eur
  A charming story with modern illustrations about a little boy who is going home on his bicycle one evening when he notices that the moon is following him. What does this mean? The moon wants to play with him, of course!
  The book appeared in the Arabic original in the publishing house Dar al-Shorouk in Cairo.
  In 2001 the Arabic original won the second prize in the Suzanne Mubarak Award for Children's Literature in Eygpt. In 2004 the German publisher Edition Orient won the Sonderpreis der Kreuzberger Kinderstiftung für ein ambitioniertes Kinderbuchprojekt for the bilingual edition at the Berliner Kinder- und Jugendliteraturfestival during the Berlin Book Fair.

• Wer hat mein Eis gegessen? Rania Zaghir. Ill.: Racelle Ishak. © Edition Orient

  Rania Zaghir: Wer hat mein Eis gegessen?, bilingual Arabic-German, illustrated by Racelle Ishak, translated from Arabic by Petra Dünges, Edition Orient, Berlin, ISBN 978-3-922825-81-4, 20 pages, 2010, 5 EUR.
  A girl is thinking hard about how to eat her ice cream cone. Should she lap it up slowly or bite off small bits? She gets good advice from a ghoul, a dragon, a griffin and a mermaid. But suddenly the ice cream has vanished! What has happened?
  This cheerful book appeared in the Arabic original in the publishing house al-Khayyat al-Saghir in Beirut.
  

In November 2011 I took part in the workshop Umgang mit Kinderliteratur im Klassenzimmer: Fragen nach Mehrsprachigkeit und Übersetzungen (Children's Literature in the Classroom: Multilingualism and Translations) of the faculty of German Studies at the Unversity of Siegen. I gave a talk on Zweisprachige Bilderbücher aus dem Arabischen: Ein Bericht aus der Praxis einer Übersetzerin (Bilingual Picture Books, Translated from Arabic: Experiences of a Literary Translator). The workshop has been organized by Gesa Siebert-Ott, Jana Mikota, Sabine Planka (all from the Unversity of Siegen).

In June 2011 I took part in the workshop Mehrsprachigkeit und Kinderliteratur (Multilingualism and Children's Literature) at the University of Mannheim. I gave a talk on Zweisprachige Bilderbücher aus dem Arabischen: Ein Bericht aus der Praxis einer Übersetzerin (Bilingual Picture Books, Translated from Arabic: Experiences of a Literary Translator). The interdisciplinary workshop has been organized by Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (University of Tübingen), Ira Gawlitzek (University of Mannheim) and Rosemarie Tracy (University of Mannheim).

In September 2010 I gave a talk on Arabic children`s literature and its translation into German at the 31. German Congress of Oriental Studies in the section Arabic Language - Literary Translation. This talk was supported by the Deutscher Übersetzerfonds.

Apart from my interest in Arabic children's literature I am a Ph. D. student at the Institute for Computational Linguistics in the University of the Saarland in Saarbrücken. My research interests are now in the area of logic and formal semantics of natural language. I am currently working on my PhD thesis with the title On the Foundations of Temporal Discourse Representation Theory. My supervisors are Manfred Pinkal,Patrick Blackburn and Werner Saurer.

In 1989 I got a degree in physics from the faculty of physics of the Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz: I am Diplom-Physikerin. A Diplom is roughly comparable to a Master of Science. My diploma thesis was written in the group for Theoretical High Energy Physics (ThEP) (formerly called: Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics) at the chair of Prof. Martin Kretzschmar about a subject of mathematical physics, namely Der Dirac-Operator über semiriemannschen, raum- und zeitorientierbaren Spinmannigfaltigkeiten von beliebiger Dimension und beliebigem Index. I still like it.

And I have worked as data base administrator and system manager in a VAX cluster of 50 machines at HBM in Darmstadt. Today I am reduced to system management on my own computer, but i always like the adventure when I update to a new linux version.

I learned about the beauty of the Arabic language at the Seminar für Orientkunde at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz. My teacher was Prof. Heribert Horst, who advised me to read a lot. I am still following his advice...

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