ALI JAWAD ZAIDI

For the fifth round of the Jawad Memorial Prize for Urdu-English Translation, our jury has decided to release a shortlist before they announce the names of the winner(s). While there is no cash award attached to the shortlist, we are hopeful many more translators will be encouraged to redouble their efforts, finish projects, and find publishers. We wish them all the very best. The following seven translations of Urdu short stories have been shortlisted; all the translators' names will be included here after the final award has been announced:

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1. Sana R. Chaudhry - My Dear Teacher (Urdu: 'Pyaare Ustaad' by Julien Columeau)
2. Nandini Krishnan - Save Me From My Friends (Urdu: 'Mujhe Mere Doston Se Bachao' by Sajjad Haider Yaldram)
3. Hamza Naseer - Joota (Urdu: 'Joota' by Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi)
4. Shama Askari - Begum (Urdu: 'Begum' by Ibn-e-Sai'd)
5. Sabyn Javeri - The Busy Woman (Urdu: 'Masroof Aurat' by Khalida Hussain)
6. Saba Bashir - Darkness (Urdu: 'Andhera' by Razia Sajjad Zaheer)
7. Daniele Speziale - The Souls who Mourn (Urdu: 'Sog Manaane Wali Roohein' by Rahman Abbas)

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Bio notes for all the shortlisted candidates include the bio of the winner and runners-up.

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For ‘Joota’:

Hamza Naseer is a Bachelor’s student majoring in Philosophy and minoring in Psychology. He is currently based in Lahore, Pakistan.
 

 

For ‘Begum’:

Shama Askari has been associated with the performing arts for the last twenty years. She started her acting career in theatre in 1999, with Tehrik-e-Niswan, and then moved on to television, film, and dramatized readings, performing all over Pakistan as well as India. In 2021, Shama was selected to be a part of the Transforming Narratives – Cultural Leadership Programme supported by the British Council, which provided a platform for collaboration between creatives from UK, Bangladesh and Pakistan. She is currently working with the Adab Festival, Pakistan, and recently completed a project ‘Producers of the Future: From Keighley to Karachi’, led by the Bradford Literature Festival. She is looking forward to exploring the realm of translations as a means of connecting and communicating with a wider audience.

 

For ‘The Busy Woman’:

Sabyn Javeri is the author of Hijabistan (Harper Collins: 2019) and the novel Nobody Killed Her (Harper Collins: 2017) and has edited two multilingual anthologies of student writing titled, The Arzu Anthology of Student Voices (Vol I & II. HUP: 2019, 2018) and the upcoming ‘Ways of Being’ an anthology of Pakistani Women’s Creative Non-fiction (Women Unlimited, Jan 2023). Her writing has been widely anthologized and published in London Magazine, Litro, Bookends Review, and Wasafiri amongst other publications. She writes a monthly column for 3Quarks Daily  on gender and identity and her articles on decolonizing global education have been published in EdSurge. She has won the Oxonian Review short story prize and been short listed for the Tibor Jones prize. She is Senior Lecturer of Writing, Literature & Creative Writing at New York University, Abu Dhabi and her research interests include translations of Urdu women writers, transcultural feminism and inclusive pedagogy.

 

For 'The Souls who Mourn’:

Daniele Speziale, born in Switzerland, 1998, and residing in the town of Savona, Italy, is an Italian writer, aspiring poet, language enthusiast and amateur translator. Daniele recently completed his MSc in Development Studies at the SOAS University of London, having previously studied International Relations at Leiden University, and has a history of volunteering for social causes in Italy, Malaysia and India. Daniele has studied roughly 15 languages throughout his life and published his poetry in Italian-, English-, Malay- and Hindi-language anthologies and platforms.

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For ‘Save Me From My Friends’:

Nandini Krishnan is the author of Hitched: The Modern Woman and Arranged Marriage (Random House, 2013) and Invisible Men: Inside India’s Transmasculine Networks (Penguin Random House, 2018). She is also the translator of Estuary (Westland Books, 2020) and Four Strokes of Luck (Juggernaut, 2021) by the Tamil writer Perumal Murugan. She has been shortlisted for the PEN Presents translation prize 2022. Having been monolingual until her teens, Nandini began to study other languages from a yearning to read works of literature in the original. Her love for Urdu was nurtured by her move to Delhi in 2007. After returning to her hometown Madras, she has been under the tutelage of Dr. Javeeda Habeeb, professor at the Justice Basheer Ahmed Sayeed College for Women, since 2012. She believes that in a world where people are reduced to symbols and labels, and linguistic chauvinism goes hand in hand with communalism and parochialism, learning multiple languages is one way we can talk to, rather than at, each other. Nandini is mama and slave to thirteen dogs and nineteen cats.

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For ‘Darkness’:

Saba Bashir is a poet, author and a translator. Her first book was a collection of poems, Memory Past (Writers’ Workshop, 2006). Her PhD (IIT, Delhi) on the poetry of Gulzar was published by HarperCollins as I Swallowed the Moon: The Poetry of Gulzar (2013). She has also translated Gulzar’s screenplays of Premchand’s Godaan and Nirmala and Other Stories (Roli Books, 2016) along with other pieces of fiction by Premchand and Manto. Her recent books are Aandhi: Insights Into the Film (HarperCollins) and Women of Prey (Speaking Tiger), a translation of selected stories by Manto. Saba is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

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For ‘My Dear Teacher’:

Sana R. Chaudhry is a researcher, writer, and translator. Hailing from Pakistan and having completed her masters in Florida, USA and her PhD in York, UK, Sana is currently writing a book in collaboration with Clemson University Press, USA. Her bilingual and interdisciplinary work focuses on Urdu writers from South Asia and their representations of trauma and muteness in the wake of Partition violence. Her first translation of French Urdu author Julien Columeau’s novelette, Kamran Ali Khan Qawwal, chronicles the life of a musical legend and was published in The Aleph Review. Sana teaches popular fiction, postmodern literature, diasporic literature, and Muslim narratives at the National University of Modern Languages. She is also the founder of Adabistan|The Writing Studio, a virtual educational initiative that seeks to foster literary excellence and promote the humanities worldwide.

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2022-23 JMP Award Winners

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