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

media. Consequently, most Anglophones are likely to have formed concepts of
Muslim Arab women based on images formulated by others. Analyzing American
television and print advertisements that include pictures of veiled Muslim women,
Faegheh Shirazi demonstrates that
advertisers exploit 'fixed' images of Muslim women--images that have
been ingrained on the Western mind: the concubine in the harem at the
mercy of her tyrannical master; the exotic but inaccessible veiled woman;
and the suppressed woman who is treated like chattel. 45
Nouzha Fassi Fihri portrays Lalla Kenza as a highly complex and powerful
individual who calls these 'fixed' images into question. Anglophone readers may
well have met with similarly complex female characters in other currents of the
Anglophone literary tradition such as works by African-American women. Alice
Walker's Celie, 46 Zora Neale Hurston's Janie 47 and Gloria Naylor's Mama Day 48
also rebel, challenge, love and lose but triumph. Though Western feminist readers
may resist the description of a female protagonist as "mad," others may see Lalla
Kenza's irrational imaginings as a counter-discursive literary technique.
Accordingly, in the final as in the initial version, the translator domesticates none
of Kenza's traits.
45 Faegheh Shirazi, The Veil Unveiled, The Hijab in Modern Culture (Gainsville:
UP Florida, 2001) 11-12.
46 Alice Walker, The Color Purple (San Diego, California: Harcourt Brace
Javanovich, Inc., 1982).
47 Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1978).
48 Gloria Naylor, Mama Day (New York: Vintage Books, 1989).
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