Barbara Romaine

Barbara Romaine (born 1959) is an academic and translator of Arabic literature.^[1] She currently teaches at the Institute for Global Interdisciplinary Studies at Villanova University. Romaine has translated a number of literary works from Arabic to English. These are:

• Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery by Bahaa Taher (University of California Press, 1996)
• Siraaj by Radwa Ashour (University of Texas Press, 2007)
• Spectres by Radwa Ashour (Interlink Books, 2011)
• Blue Lorries (original title in Arabic, "Farag") by Radwa Ashour (Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, 2014)

Romaine won a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 2007 to facilitate her translation of Spectres. She was named runner-up for the 2011 Banipal Prize for the same book. She has been awarded a second NEA fellowship for 2015, to support the translation of a novel by Egyptian writer Mohamed al-Mansi Qandil, to be titled in English, A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore.

Romaine trained as a classicist. In 1987 she was sent to Egypt to research Roman sites in and around the city of Alexandria. Fascinated by the Arabic language, over the next six years she attended university extension classes, two intensive (full-immersion), summers at Middlebury College, and a year on fellowship at the American University in Cairo (1992-1993). She taught Arabic at the College of William and Mary from 1993 to 1996; she has since taught at Middlebury College, the University of Pennsylvania, Washington College, Swarthmore College, Princeton University, and Villanova University, among other institutions.^[2]

See also

• List of Arabic-English translators

References