Rana Seif: The Translator Bringing Japanese Women’s Lit, Manga, and More to Middle East Readers

Captivated by Ghibli

Rana Seif was in high school when she first thought about becoming a Japanese-Arabic translator. She was captivated by Miyazaki Hayao’s My Neighbor Totoro, which she saw on a satellite channel. “A lot of the Disney cartoons I watched as a child had beautiful princesses as heroines. But in Ghibli anime, ordinary girls leap into adventure with powerful determination. I thought that was amazing. The Totoro I saw was in English with Arabic subtitles. I decided I wanted to be able to translate Japanese anime into Arabic, and to go to Japan and study the language.”

She was a fan of other anime too, like Detective Conan and Hunter x Hunter. At the same time, she was a great lover of literature. The first Japanese literature that she read in Arabic was Ōe Kenzaburō’s semiautobiographical A Personal Matter, when she was 12 or 13. “It’s about a man who’s massively conflicted when his son is born disabled. I found it shocking. It doesn’t gloss over anything. I was still a child and I was so taken aback, thinking that this was how novels could be.”

Set on Translation

Seif studied Japanese at Ain Shams University in Cairo, which is well known for its foreign language programs. “The first year was the hardest,” Seif says. “I was crying while I was studying because I couldn’t comprehend how kanji could have multiple readings. But now I can guess the meaning when I see a character, so while I used to hate kanji, I like them now.”

The first story she read in Japanese was Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s “The Nose.” “I like Akutagawa’s short stories,” she says. “And I like Edogawa Ranpo; the first of his stories I read was ‘The Human Chair.’ Edogawa Conan, the hero of Detective Conan, takes his name from Ranpo so I always had an interest in the writer.”

She spent her third year in Japan as part of an exchange program with the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. After graduating from Ain Shams University, she returned to Japan to take a master’s degree in linguistics.

“In Egypt, it’s usual for students who graduate at the top of their class to continue their research and become professors. But as I liked translation, I wanted to make that my job rather than going into research. The playful creativity involved means that I don’t get bored or tired. While I’m reading, I get excited when I discover a new word and start thinking about how to translate it.”

Rana Seif in a Cairo café. (© Menna El-Azzamy)

Rage and Ambiguous Endings

Recent years have seen publication of Seif’s Arabic translations of Yagi Emi’s Diary of a Void and Imamura Natsuko’s The Woman in the Purple Skirt, which won the Akutagawa Prize.

“When I submit translation proposals to publishers, I try as much as I can to pick contemporary women writers,” Seif says. “Novels translated into Arabic are overwhelmingly by male authors, and mainly old works that are out of copyright. At the same time, there’s a strong idea that ‘Japanese literature equals Murakami Haruki,’ although almost all of his books are translated from English rather than Japanese.”

She says that she chooses the works that particularly speak to her. “I’m interested in books about women and their working lives. For instance, in the descriptions of the circumstances of women with irregular positions in The Woman in the Purple Skirt and Oyamada Hiroko’s The Factory, you can see that there’s a social issue. I like these kinds of novels.”

© Menna El-Azzamy

Diary of a Void is about a woman who fakes a pregnancy. “I can feel the rage at the heart of this novel, which conveys the dissatisfaction of women in the workplace and the burden on pregnant women. These are problems for Egyptian women too, and my translation sparked a huge reaction on social media and book review sites. Many people said that they well understood the anger of the main character.”

After completing her master’s in linguistics, Seif studied gender theory at Cairo University, learning about politics, economics, society, and literature from a gender perspective. “Every day, I feel that there’s a big gender gap in Egypt,” she says.

Despite legal equality, women tend to be restricted by social customs and prejudices, facing many difficulties in everyday life. Seif says this is the same in Egypt and Japan. “What I can’t understand is why Japan still has a major gender gap, despite the fact that it’s a developed country. Even if this is the reason there are books expressing women’s anger that we can empathize with.”

Seif also appreciates ambiguous endings. “Egyptian and other Arabic literature clearly conveys the development of the narrative. But in The Woman in the Purple Skirt, for example, readers have different interpretations of the ending. I’m drawn to books that don’t provide clear answers and make the reader think.”

Fighting Piracy

The Cairo International Book Fair, which was held from the end of January to the start of February 2025, is the biggest publishing event in the Arab world, attracting crowds of enthusiastic bibliophiles. Seif’s translations of Diary of a Void and The Woman in the Purple Skirt, as well as of the manga titles Ultraman, Old Boy, and Rooster Fighter, appeared at the fair.

Clockwise from top left: At the entrance to the Cairo International Book Fair; lively crowds inside the venue; works including Diary of a Void and The Woman in the Purple Skirt lined up on bookshelves; a woman looking at manga translations, including those by Rana Seif. (© Menna El-Azzamy)

“I was approached by the publisher to translate Ultraman, which is the story of the son of the first Ultraman, Hayata Shin,” Seif says. “The other two I chose myself. Old Boy is an enjoyable manga and was made into a Korean film, while I appreciate the playfulness of Rooster Fighter. Having a rooster as the hero of a hard-boiled story is really funny.”

Seif says that she focuses on translating manga as well as literature as a way of fighting back against low-quality pirate versions. “Once, the only anime known in the Arabic-speaking world was Captain Tsubasa, which was broadcast on state television in Egypt. Now that there’s Netflix and other streaming services, all kinds of anime are popular—as are their original manga. At the same time, pirated digital manga are circulating online.”

She adds, “It’s not just that the pirate versions are illegal—their poor quality is a problem too. There are translation errors and the picture quality’s bad. Manga’s a visual art, so as you can’t appreciate it that way. You miss out on the true enjoyment of it.”

As Japanese manga publishers have little interest in having their manga published in the Middle East market, it is difficult for publishers in the Arab world to obtain translation rights and gain experience in this area. Right now, the only way to read some popular manga is through pirate editions, which are easy to get hold of. Seif wants to break this vicious circle.

Seif holding her translation of Old Boy. (© Menna El-Azzamy)

A Refuge for the Young

“Readers in the Middle East are interested in Asian literature,” Seif says. “This is because they can feel all kinds of fresh discoveries in works from Japan and South Korea that are totally different from books originally written in English-speaking countries.”

Even if the demand is there, publishers are not immediately meeting it, as translations cost money. As well as the cost of publishing itself, there are the expenses of securing translation and publication rights and paying agencies that facilitate negotiations over copyright and publishing contracts. “I received a grant from the Suntory Foundation to translate The Woman in the Purple Skirt into Arabic,” Seif says. “The Japan Foundation also has a grant system for overseas publishing, but I think Japan has comparatively few grants available. I also heard from an editor that grant foundations in other countries make proposals to publishers of works to translate, but we don’t see the same proactive approach from Japan.”

There are also only a limited number of people who can translate directly from Japanese into Arabic. “Literary translation doesn’t pay very well, so you can’t do it if you don’t enjoy it,” Seif says. She feels a big personal motivation in supporting young people in the Arab world. “I think translated works are a kind of place of refuge for young people in the Middle East. In particular, women and others who feel they don’t have their own place where they’re comfortable can encounter new ideas and find people in similar situations. Feeling you’re not alone is a great source of support.”

Seif is currently awaiting the publication of her translations of mystery writer Minato Kanae’s big hit Confessions and manga terror master Itō Junji’s Fragments of Horror later this year. She says, “My goal for the future is to strengthen ties with Japanese publishers and bring more feminist literature and other fascinating books to Middle East readers.” Japanese literature has a friend it can count on.

© Menna El-Azzamy

Referenced Works

In this interview, Seif speaks about Japanese books and manga translated into Arabic, but English titles are given for the benefit of English-speaking readers. Fiction in English translation mentioned in the text:

• Kūshin techō by Yagi Emi (trans. as Diary of a Void by David Boyd and Lucy North)
• Murasaki no sukāto no onna by Imamura Natsuko (trans. as The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Lucy North)
• Kokuhaku by Minato Kanae (trans. as Confessions by Stephen Snyder)
• Kojinteki na taiken by Ōe Kenzaburō (trans. as A Personal Matter by John Nathan)
• Kōjō by Oyamada Hiroko (trans. as The Factory by David Boyd)
• “Hana” by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (trans. as “The Nose” by Jay Rubin)
• “Ningen isu” by Edogawa Ranpo (trans. as “The Human Chair” by James B. Harris).

Manga in English translation mentioned in the text:

• Ultraman by Shimizu Eiichi and Shimoguchi Tomohiro (trans. by Joe Yamazaki)
• Ōrudo bōi by Tsuchiya Garon and Minegishi Nobuaki (trans. by Kumar Sivasubramanian as Old Boy)
• Niwatori faitā by Sakuratani Shū (trans. by Jonah Mayahara Miller as Rooster Fighter)
• Ma no danpen by Itō Junji (trans. by Jocelyne Allen as Fragments of Horror)

(Originally published in Japanese on March 10, 2025. Interview and text by Itakura Kimie of Nippon.com. Banner photo: Rana Seif holding her translation of The Woman in the Purple Skirt at the Cairo International Book Fair in February 2025. © Menna El-Azzamy.)