Welcome to my site.

Thank you for visiting my webpage! I am Yazid Haroun, an academic and literary writer with a passion for cross-cultural translation, sociology of translation, and intersectionality. Here, you can find updates on my latest research publications, academic and novel reviews, and public lectures. Please feel free to share links and engage with my posts. I would be delighted to answer any questions or queries you may have. Happy browsing!

Latest Posts

The Vernacular Qur’an by Travis Zadeh

Travis Zadeh’s ambitious study of Persian exegesis and translations of the Qur’an appeared in 2012. It is an ambitious work that traces the “socio-linguistic process of vernacularisation as it relates particularly to the Qur’an” (Zadeh 2012, xviii). A more robust description would be something like that: a socio-linguistic study of the intellectual, institutional, and codicological movement…

21st Aug 202121st Aug 2021

Mapping Frontiers by Travis Zadeh

Mapping Frontiers examines the early Abbasid’s translation movement and the many viewpoints on translation prevalent at the time, particularly as it related to the feasibility of translating the Qur’an. It studies a famous passage from Ibn Kurradadhbih’s Kitab al-Maslik wa-l-mamalik (Book of Routes and Realms), and its reception and use over time (albeit it cannot be used as…

21st Aug 202121st Aug 2021

Religion and the Specter of the West by Arvind Mandair

During colonial India, translation played a key role in changing the practices of Indians, their society and languages. Colonisers assumed that meanings are comparable and that identities are fixed, not fluid. Their goal was to standardise India’s languages, laws, and customs with all their hybridity and complexity in the image of the colonised themselves—the spectre…

21st Aug 2021