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

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Challenge, mainly . . . I suppose I felt an extremely strong proselytizing urge to counter people's preconceptions, prejudices and ignorance about many aspects of the Arab world, through imaginative rather than polemical channels. Describe some of the decisions you made while translating in which you felt the influence of, sought to impose your influence on, or otherwise anticipated the responses of your audience. Often these had to do with different concepts of e.g. what was vulgar obscene and what wasn't, and how far to impose this on audiences. English-speaking audiences are continually surprised to find so much sex in Arabic novels, which says more about their preconceptions than the Arabic novels. I tried to avoid inappropriate archaisms or over rhetorical language. I've noticed that some translations of Arabic into English seem to slip into a semi-Biblical or Thousand and One Nights kind of tone, and when you look back at the original Arabic you find it's really simple style. 265
Appendix E: Marilyn Booth's e-mail response to the questionnaire When you were translating "My Grandmother's Cactus," did you have an audience in mind? Yes, but vaguely so. At the time, I was living in England (and then in Cairo when I did the final editing/page proofs etc.). I was a bit "spoiled" in that the UK audience is more sophisticated than the US one in terms of translated literatures, so in some ways I probably subconsciously took audience for granted, didn't think about it as much or as specifically as I might now, depending on the project. Let me describe briefly how the Cactus project came about. I was in London seeing my friend Zelfa Hourani, at Quartet Books, and she asked if I'd thought about putting a short story collection together. I hadn't, but we talked and I got very enthusiastic. I had a couple of specific motivations: I wanted English speakers to recognize female Arab writers who were not Nawal el-Saadawi (for whom I have a lot of respect as an activist--after all, I did translate her prison memoirs! but at the time, it seemed like she was the only female Arab writer that one saw in bookstores). I have to really put myself back into my thinking at that time: it has been quite a while and I've done a lot of translating since, so I am trying very hard here to not let later experience shape what I am saying. Anyway, and this is connected to your next question, I thought first in terms of a fairly "conventional" anthology--that is, a more or less historically organized collection, one story per author, probably starting with Suhayr Qalamawi (some of whose work I would still like to translate!), and so forth. However, when I started to read, things changed. I'll put hat off until your "audience question" below where it more properly belongs. Anyway, so this idea that was genuinely mutual, formulated with Zelfa, had behind it a vague sense of audience, but I had a lot to learn! If so, what individuals might you list as belonging to this audience? (yourself? the author? your publisher? a professor you had? classmates in one of your courses? professional readers? non-professional readers?). Definitely, at the time, nonprofessional readers. I felt (and feel) strongly about the political responsibility of translators--or at least of me as a translator--in trying to complicate a nonacademic (as well as academic) audience's understandings of and/or reactions to Arab and Muslim-majority societies and histories and to what is going on now culturally in terms of contemporary Arabic literature. Since, at the time, I wasn't teaching and really wasn't even thinking much about teaching, an audience of students was not foremost in my mind. But inevitably, I'm my own first audience. That is, I have learned the hard way (about a year after I finished Cactus) that I should not translate something I don't like--it is excruciating. And being my own first audience is certainly pertinent to the way Cactus evolved. Here, I take up the story I started in the previous answer. When I began to read stories (before this, what I had read by Egyptian women was mostly novels), and to collect more in Cairo once I was there, I started to feel a bit panicked. I recognized the historical importance and "emplotment" of women's stories from the 1930s on, but did not feel that my audience--however vaguely imagined-- 266
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Copyright by Jean Laurie Love El Ha
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Translating Nouzha Fassi Fihri's La
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Acknowledgements I sincerely thank
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complete, final version of "The Fig
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Chapter Four: The Fighter..........
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challenged and reformed in ways tha
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night. She plans and carries out hi
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soumis, de bien bon, de bien con" [
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Unlike her daughters who submit to
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Les fleurs, comme une fantaisie de
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The shifts from past to future tens
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it rather than through the bias of
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Arab women, few have more precise i
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in our audiences, the novel and the
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Fassi Fihri was in a position to ra
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and in these cases the translator t
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2002 edition of The American Herita
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nonetheless an outsider whose persp
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emphasizes universally recognizable
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questions of translation approach a
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Translators Analysis of these trans
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To find out more about how these tr
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sentences" and to recreate the aest
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She further explains that "people w
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paratextual explanations has change
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participated intellectually in poli
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community. Having the characters--m
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If you were a ring, my finger would
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Arrivée face à sa nièce, elle ta
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Chapter Two: A Critical Analysis of
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eaders' expectations, thereby augme
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Theorists such as Edward Said and M
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translation. However, in accordance
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attitude toward the original author
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the target audience and its expecta
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literature tends to reflect the cul
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Alternate solutions were judged and
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Others, however, deplore the effect
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This translation sought to challeng
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influence. The language, cultural c
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in with the literary traditions of
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QUANTITATIVE VARIATION ANALYSIS Alt
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tolerance and moderation. This pass
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media. Consequently, most Anglophon
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CONSTRAINTS ON NOVELISTIC PROSE The
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family union through new blood ties
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original journalistic tone was main
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14 o: Les persiennes laissaient dev
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special occasions; when the cooking
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variation in the treatment of trans
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The culturally specific exclamation
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en cadeau à sa fille pour une prem
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translator's perception and applica
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" . . . and chickens with almonds--
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patios, polish the tea trays, and s
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They were children, and they remain
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ut he was more so, and he had total
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The three old people raised their h
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Mina, his younger sister, intervene
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He was already there, sitting on th
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She ran away from home one morning,
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"Let's not get upset," he intervene
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Sometimes her mother came to visit,
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sharif, in spite of his material po
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"I was on a business trip in Madrid
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ambergris, your smile sweet as a su
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eliefs, and trampled our traditions
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eturn. Most of them only knew of hi
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In the side alleyways, one could se
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lack ears," as they called the Sene
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"What's new?" Sharif asked the arti
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him with a pumice stone, anoint him
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Kenza had inherited her father's ga
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Oh, rosy cheeks, red rose of Sidjil
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Kenza contemplated her girls for wh
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The family gathered around a cousco
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"We'll force them!" "We are a free
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future. But can you prevent the you
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Tayeb, was under house arrest and f
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mules loaded with produce were turn
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one another on makeshift platforms,
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these young men as solid as rock. I
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nonexistence? The suicide of dreams
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He began to decipher the sky for he
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violence. They were peaceable citiz
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temper. The neighbor men and women
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Carrying his slippers--he wanted to
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Great," which Sharif took as a welc
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obstinate character. She is stubbor
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Who was this hero who came so late
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humanity. It is the third monotheis
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egular army. We simply meant to sho
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drowned in the gurgle of the wall f
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man had come. They went down slopin
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Walking around the exposed bodies,
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"'France was no longer the invincib
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Finally, they saw a faint light and
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looking like scarecrows set up to k
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with suddenly dies, you get caught
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"Now he is dead, and I still have t
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athes and warms new chicks. So I be
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You have left me like one who cooks
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the men who stood there looking at
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Another used a ladle to fill bucket
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"exclude them from their own cultur
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They were still forced to help him,
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they neglected their old father. He
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wondering eyes of a dada who was ba
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Their love was not guilty. They lov
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acelets of the leader.' I even had
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"I want her to be free like the ant
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Page 231 and 232: Then he reached out and grabbed the
Page 233 and 234: Her dada held a silver platter with
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Page 237 and 238: "He who claims to be strong dies of
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Page 241 and 242: "It has not satisfied my thirst!" "
Page 243 and 244: people, so vulnerable and ancient,
Page 245 and 246: "Don't worry about it. I had my sha
Page 247 and 248: conjures images, brings them alive
Page 249 and 250: The young men arrived exhausted and
Page 251 and 252: calculations. However, the revenue
Page 253 and 254: Everything went as she had wished.
Page 255 and 256: ut beneath her nobly arched forehea
Page 257 and 258: Kenza left the world and its confli
Page 259 and 260: Fassi Native of Fez. Filali A famil
Page 261 and 262: Traditions of the Prophet Refers to
Page 263 and 264: Oui, l'histoire de Le Ressac, l'his
Page 265 and 266: littérature et de la poésie en pa
Page 267 and 268: the household. She is a second moth
Page 269 and 270: Appendix B: Marjolijn de Jager's e-
Page 271 and 272: that right. I wanted it to be a kin
Page 273: Appendix D: Catherine Cobham's e-ma
Page 277 and 278: the most important aspect or result
Page 279 and 280: References Abouzeid, Leila. Year of
Page 281 and 282: Johnson-Davies, Denys. E-mail to th
Page 283 and 284: Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. Sa
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