About Me

Hello. I’m Hiba, and I am a professional linguist who does bidirectional translation and other work in Arabic and English.

A little bit about me: I’m an Arab American who grew up in diverse and eclectic communities in the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon. Being a third culture kid has given me a unique international perspective. Being a native speaker of both Arabic and English has given me deep knowledge of the idiomatic structures of both languages. These are good things for a linguist to have.

My publications and awards:  My literary work appears in or is forthcoming from The Kenyon Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, 580 Split, Mizna, and the Evergreen Review among others. I am a recipient of the 2012 Jane Foulkes Malone Fellowship from Indiana University and the 2013 JoAnn Athanas Memorial Award in literature from the National Society of Arts and Letters.

My clientele and experience: I’ve been freelancing since 2010. Clients I’ve worked with include:

• The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies
• Day Translations
• HSBC Amana
• Ibsar, Nature Conservation Center for Sustainable Futures
• JWT Beirut
• The Lebanese Telecommunications Regulatory Authority
• Verbalize It

I’ve also done work for many smaller individual clients.

My academic background: I’ve been in the humanities for nine years, manipulating and exploring language across multiple disciplines. I hold a B.A. in English literature with a minor concentration in linguistics and an M.A. in philosophy, with a focus on political philosophy and ethics, both from the American University of Beirut. I’m partway through my M.F.A. in fiction writing from Indiana University. I’ve done a lot of things with my expertise in these fields. I’ve been a university instructor, a researcher, a magazine and newspaper editor, a staff technical writer, an artist of varying sorts. And always, always, I’ve worked with language.

There’s a really neat and remarkable thing that happens when a bilingual academic spends so many years delving into literature, language, philosophy, creative writing, and pedagogy. I’ve become intimately acquainted with the terminology and ethos of the humanities as a whole. I’ve spent years building bridges and webs between ideas, concepts, and holistic forms of expression and intelligence. Cross language, cross culture. Cross clients. That’s you.

I translate political, historical, general, IT, and tech advertising documents. My repertoire of skills also includes legal, literary, academic research, and scientific translations. You can find samples of my work in my portfolio.

Like what you see?

Let’s connect. Contact me with your project and I’ll give you a quote.