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

If you were a ring, my finger would be your size. / If you were a golden
tahlil, I would be the braided belt. / If you were a dagger, I alone would
wear you strapped across my chest
Logically, in this context, tahlil refers to a kind of gown, or perhaps a belt buckle,
but Arabic dictionaries do not list these meanings for this word, and Moroccan
readers offer various interpretations. My decision to transcribe this Arabic word
and maintain its irresolvable ambiguity assumes a high degree of reader tolerance
and participation.
In addition to sociocultural constraints, readers’ comments about
transcribed words related to linguistic concerns such as the need to follow rules of
English grammar and phonetics. In the sentence "They came wrapped in their
white hayek" ("Elles arrivaient, emmitouflées dans leurs Hayek blancs" [20]), the
word hayek raised a question of grammar. Hayek is the transliteration of the plural
form of haik in Arabic. Whereas many of the original readers would recognize
hayek as the phonetic transcription of the Arabic plural of haik, few Anglophone
readers have any knowledge of the grammatical variations of Arabic, and most
would expect to see an s when the context requires the plural form of the word.
One reader noted the need for the transcribed words to obey rules of
English phonetics and spelling. An Anglophone reader would have difficulty
pronouncing the initial consonant cluster in the name “Rkia” (64). To transcribe
this name in accord with English phonetics, I wrote it with an apostrophe to
suggest an elided vowel sound: “R’kia.” Similarly, I transcribed the name
“Cherif” as "Sharif" to indicate that the initial sound is that of the word “share”
rather than “church” and that the vowel sound receives more emphasis than a
schwa.
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