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

Arab women, few have more precise information about the challenges facing
Moroccan women now or Moroccan women's perspective on their own history
and culture. However, since most are aware of the challenges facing women in
modern Western society, I expected that those who read the translation would
respond to Kenza's struggle for self-determination and recognize in this narrative
the belief in the equality of all humans, the ability of people to change and
develop, the love of homeland, the need to respect the rights of others, the value
of solidarity against an aggressor, and the importance of education.
In this translation of a post-colonial novel by a Moroccan woman, I
imagined that readers would expect recognizable though foreign elements of
setting, characterization, conflict, and plot, and that they would accept a certain
degree of linguistic hybridity in the form of transcribed Arabic words. Knowing
that the narrative would make great demands of the reader, I nonetheless offered
as nearly as possible the original experience of reading La Baroudeuse, including
the romantic and lyrical passages, the occasional indeterminacy of the speaker,
and the lack of textual distinction between the protagonist's thoughts and speech.
I imagined I was writing for educated, curious readers who would
recognize and identify with basic human values and engage with--indeed perhaps
enjoy--defamiliarizing elements and themes in the narrative. I translated the
political message of the original text so that my audience might comprehend the
forces at play and participate vicariously in this dialogue. I used a literary register
hybridized with colloquial expressions that would challenge power structures of
language and culture as do many narratives in the Anglophone literary traditions.
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