-Kurdshop
On Saturday, October 14, 2023, the Mam and Zeen Cultural Center held the fourth Mam and Zeen Festival in Media Hall in Erbil, with the participation of writers and intellectuals from all four parts of Kurdistan. It presented the fourth prize of the festival to the writer and translator from the eastern part of Kurdistan, Mohammad Ramazani.
Mohammad Ramazani was born in 1960 in the Jewish neighborhood of Bokan. He started his primary education at Saadi School in Bokan. He was a bright student from childhood and was known for reading fifth and sixth grade books very well when he was in first grade.
He studied Golestan Saadi with a relative who was mullah in the fourth grade of primary school, which encouraged him to start reading books, especially literature, outside of school.
He lost his father at the age of five and his mother opened the first confectionery factory in Bokan to raise her children. Mohammed has worked for his mother since childhood.
He studied the eighth grade in Bana and began writing stories there. The next year, he returned to Bokan and continued writing stories. He read his first stories to his classmates. That same year, Mohammed's talent for language learning became apparent and he began to learn English himself. The next year they moved to Mahabad, where he became a member of the city's public library. This provided Mohammed with a unique opportunity to access dozens of novels, stories, plays, and poetry in English.
The first novel he read in English was The Pearl by John Steinbeck. Before completing secondary school, Ramazani had read dozens of novels, poems, and plays in English at the Mohammad Reza Shah School, where later its name changed to Ustad Sharikandi, in Mahabad. He recorded BBC and VOA radio programs and soon understood the difference between British English and American English accents. He also began to learn French himself, which he learned very well.
In 1979, he went to Tehran University to study English literature. A year later, the Islamic Republic government closed all Iranian universities under the name of the Cultural Revolution for three or four years. Ramazani did not return to his hometown and worked in Tehran until the universities reopened. In his first year of university, Ramazani published his first translation "Does China Want to Shake Asia" by Ernest Henry at the Spidar Press in Tehran and spent all the money he received to buy English books.
Character Designer: Hemn Qaremani
In 1983, he returned to university and resumed studying English language and literature at Tehran University. Before graduating from university, he translated several books on art and literature from English into Persian, which were warmly welcomed by readers. For example, Picasso's Failure and Success by Jean Meijer was published by Shabahang Publishing House in Tehran. These books were well received by students and teachers of Tehran universities and teachers of Tehran universities encouraged students to read the translations.
After returning to Kurdistan in 1989, Ramazani decided to launch a literary movement in the east. He held literary groups in his house. At night, thirty or forty people would sit in Ramadan's house until morning, each reading his own books, whether poems, short stories, or parts of novels, essays, etc.
Ramazani and the attendees listened and made their observations. This project produced very good results and this wave covered most of the cities of the East part of Kurdistan, and literary councils were established in most of the cities. Ramazani's translations and short stories were published in Srwa magazine and student magazines of Iranian and East part of Kurdistan universities, as well as in magazines in the southern part of Kurdistan, especially in Erbil and Sulaimani.
Mohammad Ramazani is considered a teacher of the third generation of storywriters in the eastern part of Kurdistan. In the late 1990s, he published his first collection of stories, Mzgeni, which was well received and launched a new wave of story writing in the East part of Kurdistan, which continues to this day. The collection of short stories "Mzgeni" has now been reprinted twice. Now, more than twenty years later, another collection of stories, The Devil's Birthday, is ready for publication and will be published soon.
For several years, Ramazani has been translating works of world literature such as short stories and novels from English into Kurdish. The most important works he has translated in the past few years are:
- "Voice of Harman" which is a translation of a collection of short stories and has been reprinted twice.
Translated "The Sound and Fury" by William Faulkner from English into Kurdish and explained all the historical, literary, religious, and technical symbols of the novel in the margins. (He translated the same novel into Persian and published it in Iran).
Ramazani has been translating Ulysses novel by James Joyce for more than a decade. The eighteen-part novel is considered the greatest literary novel in the world. The eighteen chapters include eighteen different styles of prose. Ramazani has translated six parts of the novel into Kurdish so far.
