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

community. Having the characters--men and women, educated and illiterate,
upper and lower class--speak in a uniform register disallows their categorization
based on gender or class and encourages the reader to give equal consideration to
what they are saying. A reader for whom voice distinction is an aesthetic criterion
may expect differentiation in the register and style of characters' speech, but the
lack of voice distinction may have the effect of highlighting a similarity and
solidarity between characters in the story, thereby implying unity of cultural
values and political objectives.
Readers commented on the translation's manner of presenting stream-of-
consciousness. In one passage, the original text uses quotation marks to
distinguish Lalla Kenza's internal monologue from the narrative voice, and I
followed suit.
Elle sourit et se dit qu'elle sera debout avec le lever du jour. [. . . ]
"Moulay Ali sera là vers 13 heures, 14 heures au plus tard. [. . .] Moulay
Ali raffolait jadis des pieds de veau aux pois chiches et aux céréales. Et
piquants s'il vous plaît, et bien mijotés. . . " (7-8)
She smiled and told herself she would be up and about long before sunrise.
[. . .] "Moulay Ali will be here at about one o'clock, two at the latest. [. . .]
Moulay Ali used to love knuckle of veal with chickpeas and barley. Spicy,
please, and slowly simmered..."
In this instance, the reader wondered if italics might not be a better technique for
indicating stream-of-consciousness. Nouzha Fassi Fihri chose to vary the
narrative perspective without consistently using quotation marks to differentiate
the authorial voice from Kenza's stream of consciousness (87-91), thereby
creating an ambiguity which one reader questioned in the translation. The author's
treatment of stream-of-consciousness allows the reader to perceive several
monologic perspectives: internal musings, organized but unvoiced thought about
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