The Poetics of Translation

In this book, the translator presents a distillation of his long experience with translation—not as a technical exercise, but as an intellectual and sensory practice in engaging with texts while rendering them into Arabic. The text is written as a personal monologue, drawing on nearly thirty years of work, most of which has been devoted to translating the critical writings of Gaston Bachelard.

Boukhlet does not aim to theorize; rather, he opens his experience to the reader, revealing its details, questions, and limits. The Poetics of Translation extends a previous trajectory of media dialogues collected in Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics and Translation Issues (2022), where the central question was always: What is translation?

In the present edition, he sets aside external dialogue in favor of a reflective, introspective approach, discussing his relationship with the text and the temporal dimension that translation creates within language. It is a calm, personal text that relies on experience and practice rather than ready-made answers.

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Said Boukhlet is a Moroccan researcher and translator, a member of the Union of Moroccan Writers, and holds a PhD (2004) in literary criticism on the thought of Gaston Bachelard and the poetics of the four elements.

His work focuses on contemporary philosophy, the philosophy of imagination, and literary criticism, with special emphasis on Gaston Bachelard, alongside studies and translations of major figures in modern thought, such as Karl Popper, Albert Camus, and others.

His articles have appeared in numerous Arabic print journals and newspapers, including Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Akhbar Al-Adab, Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi, and Nazwa. He has published numerous books with Arab publishing houses in Morocco, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq, and is considered one of the prominent voices in the dialogue between philosophy and literature in contemporary Arab culture.