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

questions of translation approach and audience. In this introduction, she explains
her reasons for compiling, translating and publishing this work, notes
characteristics of these narratives, and discusses how the "interplay" of the author,
the text and the reader affect the translator's decisions. She recognized that "rich
and colorful information readily available in prose fictional writings by Saudi
women might yield insights perhaps not available through social science inquiry
or statistical analysis" (1), "saw the need for their voices to be heard and for their
views to find an audience beyond their country's borders" (1), and translated these
works to serve "as a facilitator between Saudi Arabia and the Western English-
speaking world" (21). She notes characteristics of these works such as stream-of-
consciousness writing, "convoluted and fractured prose," "puzzling shifts in voice
and perspective, tortuous development of plot, [and] ambiguous grammar and
style" that may afford these writers their best chance of criticizing "the prevailing
social order" and getting "past the censored environment and into print" (13).
Aman Attieh discusses the tension between perceived reader expectations and the
need to convey the text's counter-discursive tension as well as traverse the
linguistic and cultural distance between the two audiences. She acknowledges
expectations regarding repetition, punctuation, paragraphing, voice and the clarity
of symbols and metaphors, and explains that she chose to maintain some elements
that challenge these expectations to reflect "the force, spirit, and flavor of the
idiosyncratic forms of the Arabic language" and preserve "the culture-specific
traits of Saudi society" (22). Analyzing the paratexts of these published
translations provided insights into the ways in which the translators’ imagined
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