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

literature as "one very slow but effective way of changing people's awareness,
making them identify more with the diversity of Arab and Muslim culture." 19
Commenting on translation difficulties, these translators mentioned the
same sorts of sticking points. Barbara Parmenter realized the contrast between the
author's pronounced Islamic feminist political agenda and her own motivations
for translating the work. Catherine Cobham had to decide "what was vulgar (. . .)
and what wasn't, and how far to impose this on audiences." She also "tried to
avoid inappropriate archaisms or overly rhetorical language" that might distance
and distract the reader from the story by calling attention to the language. She
judged whether to make the reader adapt to the "slower" rhetorical style of
Arabic, which easily uses long sentences and verbal nouns, or revise the rhetoric
to accommodate what she imagined would be the reader's impatience to get on
with the plot. Barbara Parmenter chose to transcribe some words from Arabic and
explain them in footnotes unless the context sufficed. Her choice was based on the
judgment that too much cultural information would be lost in the translation of
words like "djellaba," for example, and that "it was important to leave these words
in Arabic to give a sense of place." Catherine Cobham gauged how literally to
translate colloquial language and wondered, "How much bewilderment can the
reader take?" Even when the original text defamiliarizes and challenges the
reader, to what extent can and should the translator do so?
Marilyn Booth chose to preserve certain "strange" usages from the source
text yet "be elegant and fluid in English." She noted that her attitude toward
19 Catherine Cobham, notes for a talk on translating, Edinburgh, 16 July 2001.
39