Adil Babikir

Adil Babikir (عادل بابكر) is a Sudanese literary critic and translator into and out of English and Arabic. He has translated several novels, short stories and poems by renowned Sudanese writers and edited the anthology Modern Sudanese Poetry. He lives and works in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Biography
Babikir graduated from the Faculty of Arts, University of Khartoum, and also holds an M.A. in Translation from the Faculty of Languages, Sudan University of Science and Technology. Babikir was employed by the state-run Sudan News Agency (SUNA), in its English news desk. Later, he moved to Saudi Arabia and worked for several companies in business and general translation. Next, he joined the US Embassy in Riyadh as information officer for more than ten years. He then moved to the United Arab Emirates, working in translation and business promotion for several companies.

Babikir's translations to English have appeared in Africa World Press, Banipal, Al-Dawha Magazine, and others. His published translations include The Jungo: Stakes of the Earth and The Messiah of Darfur, excerpted in the Los Angeles Review of Books, by Abdel Aziz Baraka Sakin, and Mansi: A Rare Man on his Own Way by Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih. For the latter, he received the 2020 Sheikh Hamad Translation Award. Further, Babikir also translated Summer Maize (2017), a collection of short stories by Sudanese-British writer Leila Aboulela, from English to Arabic.

Babikir is the editor and translator of the anthology Modern Sudanese Poetry, published in 2019, and translated the texts of Literary Sudans: An anthology of literature from Sudan and South Sudan. His study The Beauty Hunters: Sudanese Bedouin Poetry, Evolution and Impact, described as complementing works on Sudan’s cultural identity was published in 2023 by University of Nebraska Press. On this occasion, the literary magazine ArabLit published part of the book's first chapter, with excerpts about Sudanese writer Al-Ḥārdallo’s life and poems. The Beauty Hunters was selected by Brittle paper literary magazine as one of the 100 Notable African Books of 2023.

Among his works of literary criticism, Babikir published an essay in 2013, two years after the independence of South Sudan, about South Sudanese writer Mongo Zambeiri writing on the conflict between politics and culture. In 2021, Babikir received the Africa Institute's Global Africa Translation Fellowship. Further, he has contributed several translations to literary magazines, such as Banipal and ArabLit & ArabLit Quarterly.