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

influence. The language, cultural context and intended audiences of the original
text set the first parameters of the translation, and the original text’s language and
style present certain degrees of difficulty. Even if the original French text uses a
high literary register and complex sentence structure, I feel that the translator may
occasionally opt for a less formal register of language and use shorter and less
complex sentences in English when doing so enhances the readability of the
narrative without unduly altering tensions inherent in the original text. If the text
uses a variety of linguistic and literary techniques to transmit a political message,
the translator might aim to produce a literary work that will carry the same
political message, using similar techniques. The translator may keep many of the
transcribed Arabic words and provide paratextual explanation if necessary to
avoid too great a loss of cultural information, but avoid the use of footnotes that
might interrupt the reading and tend to distance the reader from the narrative.
Translating La Baroudeuse into English primarily for an Anglophone
readers who do not read Arabic or French, it was necessary to assume a level of
linguistic and cultural distance, and this disparity between Nouzha Fassi Fihri’s
audience and my own influenced the translation strategies. Transcribed words,
italics, intertextual allusions, and stylistic variations in the original result from
authorial choices that had to be analyzed to recreate the effect for the receiving
audience. If the original text had described the culture from the perspective of a
foreigner, presented familiar themes, and used linguistic structures that correlate
easily with those of the language and culture of translation, no footnotes would
have been necessary, but in the case of La Baroudeuse, some elements of the
original were untranslatable and required explanation. When the narrator belongs
70