In Memoriam: Shuckran Kamal (1938-2014)

Details

Written by Joe Mazza at Language Services with input/insertions from Mona Miller – Shuckran’s Daughter

It is tough to imagine a world without our friend and colleague Shuckran.  For many of us, she was a role model—as a translator, a teacher, a co-worker, and a human being.  And most will agree that no one in The Department of State Language Services has ever had more zest for life than Shuckran, who forever strove to unite us around the lunch table or on any dance floor she could find.

Shuckran El-Abd was born on December 15, 1938, in the Egyptian city of Mansourah, the “Pearl of the Nile Delta,” during the reign of King Farouk I.  Her father’s people were Kurds, long established in Egypt.  Her mother’s people were Turkish, and Shuckran was proud of the fact that her mother had met the great leader Atatürk.  Shuckran grew up trilingual in Arabic, Turkish, and English in an Egypt that abruptly transitioned from monarchy to Republic.  She also studied French and German.  After graduating from the American College for Girls in Cairo, she majored in English Language and Literature at Cairo University.  A masterful test grader, Shuckran liked to recall her own university finals—a grueling multi-day exam on the works of William Shakespeare, which she said was the hardest test she ever took.   Somehow we all know she aced it!

After college, Shuckran married Amin Kamal – a PhD in Mechanical Engineering and together they raised three children: Ahmed, Hassan and Mona.  In 1969, during the period where it was illegal for professionals to leave Egypt, Shuckran and Amin took great personal risk to move their young family to the United States.  They settled in Raleigh, NC where Amin was a professor of Engineering at NC State and Shuckran continued her studies. Shuckran earned an MA in English from North Carolina State University in Raleigh and a PhD in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During those early years in the US, she also taught English.

The Kamal family moved to Knoxville, TN when Amin accepted a job with The Tennessee Valley Authority.  Shuckran became the first Executive Director of The Knoxville Women’s Center where she worked tirelessly to help disadvantaged women achieve their potential in their careers. When Amin was transferred to Chattanooga, TN, Shuckran continued her mentoring work through Chattanooga State Community College.     

During all these transitions, Shuckran started freelance translating in the early 1970s, first part time, then full time, working for a variety of clients, including Lawyers & Merchants and The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) of the US Government.  She joined the American Translators Association (ATA) in 1978, and became an ATA legend as the pioneering chairperson of the group’s Accreditation Committee.  Shuckran joined the Language Services family in 1983 as a contractor, first as an interpreter and then as a translator.  She won plaudits from President George H. W. Bush himself for her LS work during the First Gulf War, and LS was thrilled when she accepted an offer to become its first staff Arabic Translator in 1998.

It is no overstatement to say that her arrival revolutionized Arabic translation at LS, an effort previously handled by contractors or by very busy staff interpreters Camille Nowfel and Zaki Aslan.  Shuckran worked painstakingly to develop a roster of reliable Arabic translators, teaching workshop after workshop—at LS, Georgetown University, and the University of Maryland—and personally mentoring visiting LS contractors and interns.  And she was demanding, with “translation  methodology” as her mantra.  Her method was to understand the source text inside and out, recodify it in the target language, then make sure the resulting target text is smooth and clear and reflects the source text completely.  Though that method might seem simple on the surface, it is an approach that many translators forget.  When you made the grade with Shuckran as a translator, you knew you had arrived. 

An individual of seemingly inexhaustible energy, she worked for years at LS as a one-woman into-and-out-of-Arabic translating marvel.  Rare is the translator who can work into and out of the native language.  Shuckran’s lifelong passion for English stood her in good stead, and she was one of those wonders of nature who could write with a native hand a language other than her mother tongue.  Even in the LS Translating Division, few have been asked to do that on a daily basis.  It was with joy and relief that Shuckran welcomed Magda Ghanima as her Arabic Translator colleague in 2011.

Shuckran retired last summer from LS, in the midst of a heroic fight against cancer.  In a 2002 commendation, her supervisor at the time, our dear colleague Brigitte Lent, wrote “although the translation requests may come ever so thick and hard, Mrs. Kamal squares her shoulders and soldiers on.”  And we all know that Shuckran showed the same tenacity in every area of her life.  All of those who learned from her, laughed with her, and danced with her will miss her no end.

Shuckran lived life to the fullest, but always with kindness and grace.  She loved being at the beach, practiced Yoga long before Yoga was cool, and loved to dance.  She started with tap dancing and clogging, but then found her ultimate love in Flamenco dancing.  In October 2010, she was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer.  As in so many aspects of her life, she defied the odds, and once again, became a wonder of nature in not only surviving, but thriving during this period.  She continued to work, dance, practice Yoga, make new friends and inspire all those she met. 

Shuckran passed away Tuesday, July 8, 2014.  Widowed in 2009, she is survived by her three children and a grandson.