The ATA Chronicle - January/February 2018 - 30

OUR WORLD OF WORDS: SPOTLIGHT ON T&I PROFESSIONALS

BY TONY BECKWITH

Interview with Abdelhafid Missouri, Arabic Interpreter

M

y guest today is Abdelhafid
Missouri, a U.S. citizen who was
born in Morocco. He has been
an Arabic<>English conference interpreter
with the U.S. Department of State
since 2010.
One of his most high-profile
assignments was in May 2017, when he
accompanied President Donald Trump's
team to the summit between the U.S. and
the Cooperation Council for the Arab
States of the Gulf (GCC) in Riyadh, the
capital of Saudi Arabia. Abdelhafid was
also on the White House interpreting team
at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in 2014.
He has interpreted for various American
secretaries and undersecretaries, and has
worked in military settings as well.
Abdelhafid studied at the King Fahd
School of Translation in Tangier, Morocco,
in 1993. In 1994, he earned a BA in
English language and literature from Sidi
Mohamed Ben Abdellah University in Fes,
the central Moroccan city often referred
to as the country's cultural capital. He
then earned an MA in foreign language
teaching at L'Ecole Normale Superieure
in Rabat, Morocco, in 1997. He moved
to the U.S. and settled in Philadelphia in
2004. He earned a certificate in politics
from the Fels Institute of Government at
the University of Pennsylvania in 2010. 
Abdelhafid was a professor of Arabic
at the University of Pennsylvania's Asian
and Middle-Eastern Studies Department
and College of General Studies from
2004 to 2005. More recently, he was a
professor of Arabic at Temple University
(Center City Institute) in Philadelphia
from 2005 to 2010.

Thank you, Abdelhafid, for joining us today.
Let's start with a little background. You
were born in Morocco?
I was born in Berkane, which is in
northeastern Morocco, a 30-minute
drive from the beautiful beaches of the
Mediterranean Sea. But when I was five,
my father moved us to his birthplace,
Missour, the capital of the province of
Boulemane, about 125 miles east of Fes.
30

The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018

their languages. As a Moroccan, I started
learning formal Arabic in first grade,
French in third grade, and, as I mentioned
earlier, English in tenth grade.

What prompted you to study translation?
Was it a popular field of study at that
time and place? Did you specialize in any
particular kind of translation?

Where and how did you learn English? Did
you speak English at home? What other
languages do you speak?
I began studying English in the
tenth grade in 1987. My teacher, a Peace
Corps volunteer, told me, "You're doing
very well. You should continue to study
English." That did it. From that point
forward I spoke only English, even at
home. I also watched shows on the Dish
Network incessantly, the BBC constantly,
and insanely sought out anyone with
whom I could practice my English. It
turns out that my decision to speak
English was not such a crazy one after
all. Now, all over Morocco, everyone,
especially the younger generation, wants
to learn English. I also speak French,
to which I was formally exposed in the
third grade.

How did you become interested in languages?
Morocco is multicultural and multilingual
by nature. Moroccans don't necessarily
expect a foreigner to speak to them in
their native language. They accept foreign
languages so readily that they enjoy
meeting people from other countries and
are always pleased to engage others in

By ninth grade I was good at French
and started wondering why the English
I would soon be learning in tenth grade
uses the same alphabet, and even more
or less the same sounds, but is a different
language. This curiosity made me think
about the structural and semantic
similarities and differences between
languages. So, in 1992, I decided to apply
to the King Fahd School of Translation in
Tangier, Morocco. I passed the exams and
was admitted.
As to whether translation was a popular
field of study at that time, I can say that it
was seen as a way to attain a good position
and status. After all, Morocco is only
about 10 miles from Spain. Translation
has always been a promising field in
North Africa, but the King Fahd School of
Translation in Tangier is the only wellestablished school in the country.
As for specialization, students at the
King Fahd School are given a wide range
of material with which to work, including
legal terminology and reports on world
affairs. The school boasts of having
Moroccan, Sudanese, British, and Iraqi
teachers who provide a wide range of
perspectives and methodologies.

Did the King Fahd School of Translation also
teach interpreting? Was their curriculum
based on Modern Standard Arabic?
The King Fahd School of Translation is
an ideal place to learn the secrets of our
profession. The curriculum is taught in
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), so there
are no dialects involved. While I'm sure
the school has made numerous changes
to their curriculum since I was there
in 1992-1993, I remember that even
though we mainly worked on translation,
we had many opportunities to practice
interpreting. I remember, for example,
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