Bulgarian translator and academic Maya Tsinova has expressed her perspective, stating that “the Palestinian cause defends itself. It only needs to be given the word to speak, although the contemporary world prefers to forget it and look away. That’s how October 7 came to be, yet it was not a beginning.”
In her dialogue with Al Jazeera Net, the lecturer in the Arabic Language Department at Sofia University’s Arabic and Semitic Studies division shared that her personal beginnings with the issue came in the summer of 1976, towards the end of her first year studying Arabic at the university. She was engrossed in the news of the Tel al-Zaatar massacre and became so involved that she neglected her university summer exams to set up solidarity festivals for Palestine and Lebanon.
Tsinova considers the Arabic language as having brought her “the cause of my life or the causes of my life.” As a translator, she emphasized the use of words in their precise meanings, mentioning the role of translation and cultural exchange in bridging the gap between Arabs and Bulgarians, despite some who prefer distance and neutrality. She added, “I always try to find the common moral grounds, and what pleases me the most is when a reader tells me that Arabs are just like us.”
“Seventh Neighbor”
Tsinova recalled her time as a translator at the Lebanese Embassy when the Lebanese ambassador used to say that “a neighbor is up to the seventh house,” noting that Bulgaria is a neighbor to the Arab world alongside Turkey, which lies in between. She pointed out that Bulgaria and the Arab world are parts of the Mediterranean culture or the “Eastern Mediterranean” civilization, sharing a common Ottoman history with strong ties. She warned, “Those who do not understand the need to revive these ties will suffer a significant loss.”
Tsinova, who translated a selection of works by Gibran Khalil Gibran, Mahmoud Darwish, Adonis, and others into Bulgarian, believes that translation is “creative work, not a profession or recognized as art,” noting that Oriental studies in Bulgaria are relatively new.
She elaborated that the teaching of Arabic in Bulgaria began in the late 1960s and early 1970s, partly because Bulgaria was not a colonial country but found itself in new historical circumstances with the independence of former colonies, prompting it to expand its possibilities for fruitful international relations in all fields.
She highlighted that Bulgarian professors of Arabic were graduates of universities in Baghdad, Damascus, and Moscow.
Al Jazeera and the Iraq War
Regarding her memories with Al Jazeera during the Iraq War, Tsinova mentioned that people on the street recognized her, and when she went to buy bread, locals would express their support. “I did not know how to convey this support to Al Jazeera from the ordinary people.”
“In 2003, during the war and occupation of Iraq, I was assigned by the National Bulgarian Television, which had contracted with Al Jazeera and CNN since the beginning of the war, to rely on the two global channels’ correspondents. Based on this agreement, I was task with another translator from English to follow Al Jazeera’s bulletins to cover the war,” she explained.
“We had three bulletins every day, summarizing the most important events of the war in one to two minutes,” she continued. “I was living day and night with Al Jazeera to be ready not just to translate what appeared on the screen as soon as it did but to know what was most important over a 24-hour period.”
Tsinova described the events she translated during that period as “very painful events, and I believe I stopped following when I saw the live picture from the camera on one of the American soldiers in the first tank that entered Baghdad without any resistance as if they were entering a resort… it was very painful.”
She said with emotion, “One of the correspondents was martyred at work.. Tareq Ayyoub, may God have mercy on him.”
Translation: Creativity Not Profession
Regarding the challenges of translating between Bulgarian and Arabic, Tsinova said, “The difficulties are traditional, like with any other language. Creativity is difficult work, but there is no text that is untranslatable since all people of the world live the same reality despite differences, and therefore, whatever happens on the ground can be expressed in any of the world’s languages.”
The translator, who studied Arabic proverbs and published on them, said she feels happy when Bulgarian readers see similarities between their culture and the Arab culture. She continued, “We have friends in Sofia who founded the MENAR Festival for Middle Eastern and North African cultural exchange and rapprochement between peoples, choosing each year a theme for the festival.”
“One year, the theme was women’s cinema. They asked me if I could read Arabic female poets’ poems for fifteen minutes before the movie screening. I agreed and was very pleased. After the reading, the audience asked: How can we read these texts?” she said.
She then approached the Palestinian ambassador, saying, “We owe it to the Bulgarian reader. There is interest, and we have a duty to satisfy it.” Consequently, she edited the book “Loneliness Named Homeland,” a selection of works by 40 Palestinian female authors about the alienation of Palestinians from the inside, the camps, and the diaspora, tirelessly heading towards the homeland and finding this homeland in their souls and hearts.
Tsinova dedicated the selections to the 40 authors, considering it an attempt to “reassemble the loneliness on the way to creating the homeland.” She also translated other selections of contemporary Palestinian poetry chosen by the Palestinian Writers’ Union in 1994, which included 25 Palestinian poets, among them three women.
Continuing her discussion on translating Arab poets and poetesses, she said, “In Doha, by a fortunate coincidence better than a thousand appointments, I met the Kuwaiti poet Saudia Mefreh, and we discovered our close affinity as if we had grown up together. I had translated samples of her poetry into Bulgarian decades ago, and I did not know how to deliver them to her.”
