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

She further explains that "people who read a lot of fiction in English–rightly or
wrongly–find Hanan's fiction a bit light or feminist or quasi-journalistic," a
negative judgment with which Catherine Cobham does not agree.
The translators who wonder most about audience indicate most awareness
of self in the process and the text. Recognizing the active agency of the translator,
Catherine Cobham reflects ironically on her own subliminal belief that she "was
just being a vehicle for the original writer!" Marilyn Booth affirmed that she was
her "own first audience" and acknowledged that she "was trying hardest to satisfy
[herself]." She was also able to situate her attitude toward her imagined audience
as being "somewhere between hope and alienation."
Notwithstanding individual variations, these translators wrote for similar
audiences and for comparable purposes. Though they belong to a class of highly
educated "professional" readers, they tend to write for a broader readership of
"non-professional" readers who are nonetheless like themselves. They are largely
ideologically motivated by the impulse to share the counter-discursive aesthetic
beauty, knowledge and understanding they see in these works. Denys Johnson-
Davies chose to make available to a larger audience works that he believed
deserved to be published though they were "not rightly regarded in [their own
cultural contexts] at the time" because he thought they were "worthwhile" and had
"literary merit" (Johnson-Davies). Catherine Cobham had a "mission to translate
Arabic novels so English speakers could relate to Arabic culture at an imaginative
level," and an "idealistic belief in powers of fiction to influence lives." She sees
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