Lobna Boukadi

“We do so many things together. We go to theatres, exhibitions, bookstores, we spend hours and hours discussing politics, books, films, friends. And you think I do these things for the same reason you do, because I enjoy them. But you're wrong. I do them all for it, for the tapeworm. That's how it seems to me: that my whole life is no longer for my sake but for the sake of what I carry inside me, of which I am now no more than a servant.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, Letters to a Young Novelist

“Translation is like any art: in the best of cases, it helps shed light on ourselves, on those hidden corners of ourselves that we barely knew existed, and whose discovery has enriched us. It exposes us to minds and voices able to awaken in us a particular sense of delight, an irreplaceable thrill of discovery that is avail- able nowhere else. The ability of these minds and voices to do this is unique, not because they come from a foreign land—or at least, not solely because of it—but because they are sui generis, as exceptional in their own culture as they appear in ours.”
― Mark Polizzotti

“I started to make a literary being of myself, someone who lives as if her experiences were to be written down someday.”
― Annie Ernaux, Mémoire de fille

“Every translator’s origin story seems to involve a measure of serendipity, and mine is no exception.”
― Mark Polizzotti, Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto