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

Others, however, deplore the effects of foreignizing techniques. Though
transcribed words may give a sense of place, Indira Karamcheti finds that they
stress the otherness of place and increase the difficulty of reading, even when
footnoted or glossed. 41 Though foreignisms may open spaces for literary
innovation and lead the reader to discover meaning, Maria Tymoczko believes
that too many "unfamiliar words, unusual grammar and other linguistic
anomalies" and too much new cultural information are likely to detract from the
narrative's perceived literary qualities ("Post-colonial writing" 29). Interrupting
the narrative with footnotes and glossary references renders the translator visible
but according to Richard Jacquemond, allows the authoritarian language of
Orientalism to "reassert its status as the indispensable and authorized mediator
between Arabo-Islamic and Western cultures" in the translation of the subgenre in
question. 42 Thus, it appears that a translation that uses foreignisms demands
reader participation but also risks causing the reader to refuse this difficult and
perhaps unpleasant position. According to Albrecht Neubert and Gregory Shreve,
"resistive, non-fluent translation replaces the communicative needs of the target
reader with the communicative needs of the critic or special reader" and "may
even be translation for the translator's sake." 43
41 Indira Karamcheti, "Aimé Césaire's Subjective Geographies," Between
Languages and Cultures: Translation and Cross-Cultural Texts, ed. Anuradha
Dingwaney and Carol Maier (Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1995) 189, 190.
42 Richard Jacquemond, "Translation and Cultural Hegemony: The Case of
French-Arabic Translation," Rethinking Translation, Discourse, Subjectivity,
Ideology, ed. Lawrence Venuti (New York: Routledge, 1992) 149.
43 Albrecht Neubert and Gregory M. Shreve, Translation as Text (Kent: Kent
State UP, 1992) 119.
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