I am an Arabic-to-English translator. My translation of Ahmed Naji’s prison memoir Rotten Evidence was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in autobiography. I was a 2021 recipient of a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for my translation of Haytham El-Wardany's Things That Can’t Be Fixed. I was awarded the 2017 Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation for my translation, with Adam Talib, of The Dove's Necklace by Saudi author Raja Alem. The novel was also shortlisted for the 2017 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.
As well as modern standard Arabic, I translate premodern Arabic and colloquial Arabic in both written and spoken forms, especially for film and theatre. To date I've worked with Egyptian, Sudanese, Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian, Iraqi, Saudi and Algerian dialects.
I’m also a member of 10/11, a new European literary agency and collective committed to bold and excellent literature dealing with timely and timeless issues, in Arabic and translated into other languages.
I hold a BA (first-class honours) in Arabic & Hebrew from the University of Oxford, an MA (distinction) in Translation & Interpreting from the University of Manchester, and an MA in Middle East Studies from the American University in Cairo. I have taught Arabic at the University of Oxford and translation at the University of Manchester.
You can contact me at katharine (dot) halls (at) gmail (dot) com or find me over at my literary agency, teneleven.org