{"id":30213,"date":"2013-11-11T13:53:46","date_gmt":"2013-11-11T09:53:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=30213"},"modified":"2013-11-11T13:53:47","modified_gmt":"2013-11-11T09:53:47","slug":"translating-bigots-one-authors-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/translating-bigots-one-authors-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Translating for Bigots’: One Author’s How-To Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fight-Anti-Muslim-Bigotry1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Adam Talib<\/i><\/a> recently gave a talk at the American University in Cairo on \u201cTranslating for Bigots.\u201d Talib, who is working on his fourth translated novel, posed the question \u2014 how should one translate for a prejudiced audience?\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Talib began by saying that he didn\u2019t want \u201cto stereotype the bigot. I don\u2019t want to say his address is in Cleveland.\u201d After all, Talib said, one doesn\u2019t translate Arabic literature into English for a North American or British audience, but for an audience of English-language readers worldwide.<\/p>\n

Publishers, Talib said, can sometimes package books for bigots (see right). This packaging might be one reason why readers leap to particular conclusions about an author\u2019s narrative. On the other hand, Talib added, he doesn\u2019t necessarily \u201cblame\u201d the publishers, as he also wants to get translated Arabic literature out to a wide audience, and this might be one way to do it.<\/p>\n

So who is this wide audience? Talib briefly touched on studies that measure Islam- and Arabophobia, remarking on a time when a British-Egyptian filmmaker he knew was asked by a UK audience member: \u201cCan women in Egypt use the Internet?\u201d<\/p>\n

This question, although a particular head-scratcher, is \u201cevidence of a cultural gap between the specialist translator and the potential audience,\u201d Talib said. \u201cShould a translator keep this in mind? I personally have a hard time not<\/i> keeping these things in mind.\u201c<\/p>\n

These prejudices are an issue with any Arabic literature in translation, but they were most at hand, Talib said, when dealing with Arab women writers and Arab women characters.<\/p>\n

\u201cTranslating Arab women characters is\u2026extremely fraught. Why? Because if you\u2019re a reader of modern Arabic literature, you know that what happens in modern Arabic literature. People date in modern Arabic literature; people have sex in modern Arabic literature; people drink and take drugs. And a lot of times, you will just translate what you find on the page, and you\u2019ll find that reviewers find this peculiar.\u201d<\/p>\n

If a reviewer \u2014 who Talib sees as a proxy for the reader \u2014 finds an Arab woman not wrapped in ten layers of fabric, forced to marry her cross-eyed cousin, and pushed to the back seat of a car, then, \u201cthe reviewer says, \u2018What an unrealistic depiction of Arab women.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a hostility in the reader\u2019s mind\u201d to characters who don\u2019t fit particular stereotypes, Talib said.<\/p>\n

Moreover, he said, normally strong readers can lose their bearings when looking at Arabic literature. He pointed to Mekkawi Said\u2019s novel\u00a0Cairo Swan Song<\/i>, which has a distinctly unlikeable protagonist. English-language readers are more likely to conflate this protagonist with the author, Talib said, and \u201cyou\u2019ll find less tolerance for this sort of psychological depiction in Arabic literature than you\u2019ll find in English literature.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor some reason, there is some obstacle to sophisticated reading when you\u2019re dealing with translated literature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talib also wondered if there was a way to compensate for readers\u2019 stereotypes in the language.\u00a0Certainly, translators can help by bringing out the power of the author\u2019s language, which \u2014 in a best-case \u2014 should help to re-create the author\u2019s authority.<\/p>\n

The talk ended on a discussion of a section of Khairy Shalaby\u2019s The Hashish Waiter<\/i><\/a>.<\/i> The novel, Talib said, had a section abridged in the French edition because a few of the characters were discussing the use of Holocaust narratives as propaganda. In so doing, the characters brush aside the great sufferings of Jews and others during the Holocaust. This section could be read, at a stretch, as Holocaust denial, and thus it was truncated in the French.<\/p>\n

Because Shalaby is an Arab writer, Talib guessed that people are predisposed to read the characters\u2019 views as his and to see him as an anti-Semite. \u201cI don\u2019t want Khairy Shalaby to be read as an anti-Semite.\u201d But how to change the reader\u2019s expectations? The question remained open.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M. LYNX-QUALEY: If you’re looking to communicate with an audience that is, let’s call it, less sympathetic to your views how should you go about it? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":30215,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,124,80,235,482,5],"tags":[17994,17993,16910,16815,17885,18284,16573,16647,6278,17035,16909,17992,17599],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30213"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30213"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30217,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30213\/revisions\/30217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}