## TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

A translation as good as the original is especially challenging in the case of a consummate public speaker whose words are carefully chosen and skillfully crafted to transmit as clear and determined a message as possible. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s mastery of the Arabic language cannot be divorced from his devotion to Shia Islam, the strength of his political convictions, his personality, and his public appeal as a political and religious leader. My main challenge was therefore to allow the personality of the man and the integrity of his ideas to filter through every word and sentence, while also capturing the breadth of the rich Arabic language he employs, without sounding trite in the more utilitarian English language. To this end, I constantly had to strike a balance in his easy shifts from poetry to hard facts, from affection to condescension, from the religious to the profane, from pride to humility, and from steely determination to consummate pragmatism, without losing any of the style, tempo or tenor of the language that makes him who he is.

Even for a translator who does what she does because she enjoys word-crafting and the subtleties of language, not all translations are equally interesting. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’ speeches and interviews—vehicles through which he shares his ideology and opinions with the Lebanese, Arabs and Muslims in general—are among the most thought-provoking and challenging documents I have ever worked on. I could not forget for a single moment that I was duty bound to transmit diligently to a worldwide audience the words and intentions of a controversial leader whose impact on Lebanon, on the Middle East region, and beyond, has increased significantly in recent years, and will undoubtedly continue to do so.

Ellen Kettaneh Khouri
Beirut, March 2007