Translating Nouzha Fassi Fihri's La Baroudeuse: A Case Study in ...

glossary for readers’ convenience. "Souak," on the other hand, appears neither in
English dictionaries nor on cosmetics counters in the United States. Therefore, in
the final version, rather than transcribe the word, offer a full paratextual
definition, and risk giving undue importance to this relatively minor element of
the narrative, the translator chose to replace the word with enough of the
definition to maintain its cultural specificity and suggest the image that would
have been implicitly available to at least part of the original audience.
In some instances, an Arabic word was replaced with an explanatory
phrase in the effort to recuperate indispensable cultural information, as in example
20.
20 o: La vue des campagnards déchaînés, sans foi ni loi, beaucoup plus
que celle des chars distributeurs de mort, éveilla en eux une peur viscérale,
héritage des temps de la "Siba". (149)
20 i: Much more than the deadly tanks, the sight of unleashed, faithless,
lawless country ruffians awoke in them a visceral fear, a memory of the
times of "Siba."
Siba glossed: Lawlessness, lawless lands, the time before Morocco was
unified under one king.
20 f: Much more than the deadly tanks, the sight of unleashed, faithless
country ruffians awoke in them a visceral fear, a memory of the lawless
times.
Though the transcribed Arabic word in the original text is likely to trigger strong
emotions in Moroccan readers who use the term "siba" in everyday language to
refer to lawlessness, Anglophone readers are not likely to experience this effect.
The final version paraphrases this word, thereby increasing accessibility of
meaning and eliminating an element that would interrupt the reading and
defamiliarize but not inform the reader.
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