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

perception regarding audience composition and influence in this small group of
translators who had worked with narratives by Arab women. The responses
indicate that though their approaches to translation vary in many respects, they
coincide on several issues. Whether or not the translators "imagined an audience,"
they all aimed to meet various sets of criteria corresponding to anticipated reader
expectations.
These translators approached their job from various positions and
backgrounds and with dissimilar priorities and perceptions. Denys Johnson-
Davies occupied the position of translation initiator, publishing editor and
translator for Distant View of a Minaret. Marilyn Booth collaborated closely with
the publishing editor who initiated the Grandmother's Cactus project and could
choose which stories to translate for the collection. Marjolijn de Jager, Catherine
Cobham, and Barbara Parmenter were commissioned to translate their respective
pieces, but in practice, the separation of duties between the author, the translator
and the editor is often less distinct and more permeable than their role titles
suggest.
Their responses indicated various hierarchies of values and objectives.
Denys Johnson-Davies, Marjolijn de Jager, Catherine Cobham and Marilyn Booth
noted the importance of attention to recreating the emotive and aesthetic effects of
the original. Marjolijn de Jager hopes to share her enthusiasm for the work she is
translating and to pique readers' interest in reading similar works. She tries "to
inhabit characters, feel the music, understand events, and then put [the text] into
the new language relating it in atmosphere and feeling as closely as [she] can."
Catherine Cobham aims to convey "the feeling and atmosphere of individual
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