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

in our audiences, the novel and the translation offer the experience of
participating in at least two cultures at the same time and have the potential to
challenge audiences' expectations.
La Baroudeuse presents every reader with a certain level of cultural or
linguistic dislocation. Moroccans read about and participate in their own culture
through the appropriated colonial language. As they read in French, they translate
back into their own language and culture and participate in the narrative from an
interior perspective. Francophone readers of other post-colonial societies may see
a close parallel with their own national, social, and personal histories. French
nationals are likely to feel both at home and abroad as they read the original: at
home with the French language of the narrative, but removed from their element
by the hybridity of the language as well as the setting and narrative perspective.
At times they need to translate Arabic words and phrases into the terms of their
own language and culture. They will recognize the historical events in which their
nation participated, but view these actions from the Moroccan point of view and
see themselves portrayed as the enemy. Thus, the post-colonial estrangement
functions at every level of readership and needs to be maintained at least to some
extent in the English translation.
In English as well, native Anglophones will likely experience the
translational effect of reading this foreign narrative in their own language, though
I made an effort to gauge the degree of defamiliarization my imagined readers
would accept. Sentence structures, word choice and culture-bound concepts
frequently required active tilting of the text to the target audience. Nonetheless, I
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