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

2002 edition of The American Heritage College Dictionary. 9 Other transcribed
words, such as foundouk (19, 102), are explained in context and in the glossary.
Apparently, the translator and editor chose to transcribe the Arabic word for "inn"
to maintain the narrative's cultural grounding but wished to help the reader by
providing the explicit meaning of italicized words wherever the reader might
look.
The glossary of four "Terms of Address" that precedes the narrative in
Booth’s My Grandmother's Cactus introduces the reader to the cultural context of
the narratives. Three of the four terms–Amm, Khala, Sitt–are used to address
members of the family or other respected members of the society. The stories of
this collection are set in a society in which family ties are close and feelings of
affectionate respect extend beyond the family to encompass members of the
neighborhood, and even previously unknown members of the broader society. In
this culture, a person's gender, age, level of education, and social position
influence social interactions in strongly prescribed and widely accepted ways.
Booth's decision to include an initial glossary and the choice of words to include
in it suggest that she imagined an LC2 audience whose culture tends to restrict
family relations and sanctions social prejudices based on gender, age and social
standing.
Of the several translations considered here, the glossary of Djebar’s
Fantasia, An Algerian Cavalcade most definitely arrests the reader's attention.
Preceding the narrative, this glossary of seventy-two common and proper nouns
9 Djellabah, imam, jihad, kif, medina, muezzin, pasha, and sheikh. The American
Heritage College Dictionary, 4 th ed. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002).
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