News at Eleven: A: Being a physician, we always

want to talk about things like they're craft-like, mechanical, technical. But I grew up speaking Arabic. I grew up reading Arabic poetry. Whenever I read in Arabic it's that original domain that opens up, and it's always fresh. I become someone else and I also submit the person I am now to a departure, and go into that Arabic text. For me, translation doesn't take a long time. What takes a long time is living with the text. And it's not a very highly conscious process. It's almost like living in a domain of song. Part of the work of translation is just loving to be lost in language.

from The Houston Chronicle: Fady Joudah: On poetry, translation and power

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