The fog descended from the arcade, fretted the windows, turned around and went to the pine and poplar trees…
The House of Edrisis
Ghazaleh Alizadeh
translated by Rosa Jamali
This month, I want to tell you about a translation that stopped me in my tracks. I lingered over it, not because I would have translated every phrase the same way, but because it made me look closely at what the translator was doing. Of all the ways she could have rendered those words, she chose the ones on the page.
Then, almost without thinking, I asked AI. The answer didn’t surprise me. It arrived within seconds, concise and to the point, every word landing exactly where it should.
The words were there. And yet, something was missing.
Although I couldn’t argue with the quality of the words the AI had chosen, they conveyed something cold, almost as if no one were at the helm. The author’s voice seemed to have been quietly replaced by something else. A presence, a ghost perhaps, that was pulling the strings.
In fact, I preferred Rosa Jamali’s rendition to the AI version because hers has a heartbeat. It makes you feel that you are going somewhere, that something else is brewing just beyond the scene, something you might be able to see if you give it enough time, if you can resist the temptation to invite the AI ghost back into the room.
The author, the late Ghazaleh Alizadeh, was setting a scene, creating a background that would make the entrance of the characters feel natural and meaningful. The machine, the AI, was quietly replacing her, one word at a time. It was as if its words had drawn a thick line across the canvas the author was painting, breaking the scene in two.
And yet, this was difficult to discern because its version was so masterfully crafted. The words were polished, precise, and perfectly plausible. It was hard, if not impossible, to see what had been displaced.
Perhaps it could see the words, but not where the characters were coming from.
Thank you for reading In Context.
Next issue: November 2026