The correspondent of the Vanguard in Beirut, Tomás Alcoberro, reminds us that a friend of his (Antoine Khater), in a corner of the kitchen of his house on the days when the city was being bombed, was totally committed to the translation of the teresian work. Teresa of Avila is difficult to translate. Their language is colloquial, but difficult. The work of mystics cannot be read without further ado. In spite of his willingness to make it understandable with the aid of good metaphors, an approximate expression of his spiritual experience, how can one translate, for example, fundamental words to understand his discourse as rapture, ecstasy, rapture, mysticism?
Antoine Khater, however, has fled from a scholarly translation and has translated Teresa of Jesus with the same natural, spontaneous tone with which she would have done it herself, and given, as she also did, special attention to important terms. Trying to bring the text closer to the Eastern sensibility. 30 years have been necessary to complete the work: «Saint Teresa of Avila». Complete Writtings, Éditions du Patrimoine du Carmel, 2017.
