Politics of Selecting Translated Arabic Literature: Manipulation and Ideology

Politics of Selecting Translated Arabic Literature: Manipulation and Ideology Hamza El Ouchouni Mohammed V University Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences  Abstract The selection of translated Arabic literature is influenced by cultural and ideological factors. This paper aims to explore how ideological manipulation takes place in the selection of translated Arabic literature, either to be taught or published. This research first focuses on both the education and publishing sectors in the USA. It examines two novels that are commonly taught in college. Whereas in the publishing industry sector, it analyzes Rajaa Alsanea’s Girls of al-Riyadh by highlighting the thematic similarities between the three novels; this, consequently, helps us understand how manipulation takes place within the two domains and enables us to identify how the education system affects the Western reader's horizons of expectation as well as the publishing industry. Also, it attempts to provide concrete examples of how educational systems tend to encourage literary works that promote stereotypical images about Muslims and Arabs. Keywords: manipulation, translation, Arabic literature, stereotypes, political ideology Politics of Selecting Translated Arabic Literature: Manipulation and Ideology Culture and ideology are two major influential factors in translation, and they affect the process of translation as well as the selection and distribution of translated works. The substantial relationship between language and culture makes the debate over culture and ideology within translation inevitable. For instance, Said Faiq (2004) argues that some scholars consider translation to be an act of violation; the latter takes place, for example, when the source text is translated to any other language. The ST (source text) is subjugated, too, to domestication, and this occurs through neglecting cultural values and linguistic features of the ST. Culture and ideology, therefore, must be taken into consideration whilst studying a translation phenomenon. Second, translation is culturally and ideologically in human societies; consequently, this importance makes decisions in translation primarily political and ideological. In this regard, Schaffner (2007) argues that ‘’any decision to encourage, allow, promote, hinder or prevent to translate is a political decision’’ (p.136). For this reason, ideology and politics are forces that interfere with and influence the whole process of translation. This leads us to consider a couple of major concepts in the theory of patronage; namely, political ideology and manipulation. To understand how the two concepts operate in translation, Chen (2016) proposes a paper that explains how ideology functions at various levels of translation. However, since this research focuses on ideology at the level of selection, we are going to concentrate on the concept of political ideology, and on how it affects translation. Chen argues that political ideology ''constructs the repertoire of translated literature via its manipulation of a selection of ST, general strategies of translation, reception of translations'' (p. 110). Again, this makes it clearer that political ideology has a huge influence on the process of selecting and distributing translations. Not only this, but it also manipulates the process of selecting the ST. Central to Arabic literature, this latter struggles to enter the Western libraries and universities; however, when it does, it is usually used as means that transfers stereotypes about its source-culture, and this is due to various factors. To begin with, Allen (2010) suggests that the primary problem of Arabic translation, in general, is rooted in the Westerns' negative attitudes toward the Arabic language. He wrote: ''here the claim by a New York publisher declaring Arabic to be a “controversial language” famously quoted by Edward Said is a well-known reflection of an attitudinal problem’’ (p. 481). Furthermore, other papers suggest that the purpose behind translating certain Arabic novels is to confirm certain pre-existing misrepresentations of Arabs. Meaning, Arabic literature is considered to be a source from which Western readers update their knowledge about the Arab-world. Nash (2017) argues that ‘’western readers are acculturated to the reproduction of a specific repertoire of representations and images of Arabs'' (p. 4). Hence, all the subjects that I mentioned above are target-related ones, and the ideological component is strongly linked to those issues. Ideology, politics, and economy are factors that play a major role when it comes to translation, and Arabic fiction has been manipulated and violated throughout history due to the influence of these factors. Therefore, this paper argues that manipulation does not occur only in the process of translating literary works, but it also does take place at the level of selecting those works. In other words, most of the selected translated literary works, either to be taught in colleges or published, share many thematic aspects; themes such as war, Islam, women's oppression, are the most predominant. As a consequence, the selected literary works become an active source that reproduces and reconfirm certain stereotypes and generalizations about Arabs. If it is the case, one might argue that the decisions of selecting translated works are made based on certain ideological and political factors. In this respect, a study was conducted by Gomaa and Raymond (2014) shows that most of the novels that constructors present to their students revolve around subjects such as war, Islam, masculinity, and women's oppression. They argue that ''the patterns that emerged from [their] research are grouped under the following topics: Arab masculinities, states of war, and women's place’’ (p. 29). In sum, this paper aims to analyze and explore how Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero and Hanan Al Shaykh’s the Story of Zahra are manipulated in terms of selection, and it also sheds light on how these two novels influence the students’ horizons of expectation. Not only this, the process of selecting the works does not impact only the reader but also the publishing industry, for the education sector and publishing one are interconnected. Arab Women Writers in the West One may argue that most celebrated novelists in the West are women, and RajaaAlsanea and Nawal El Saadawi are real-world examples. Although the two writers have achieved remarkable success in the West, several papers problematize their literary works. For example, Booth (2010) argues that Muslim women get translated and promoted for commercial and political purposes. The same thing for Alsanea, she gets translated and celebrated by the Western media, not for her work’s aesthetic value. The works are instead turned into a commodity that contributes to the production of the Orientalized Other. In this respect, Booth argues as follows: ''I mean a way of seeing and writing the Other that grounds authority in a written narrative of personal experience, “capturing” a society through the I/eye’’ (2010: 151). So, the Orient, in this case, is no longer constructed by the West only, but Arab writers contribute to its composition, too. Also, Booth claims that the novel has been Americanized and domesticated. In other words, the novel is translated and promoted to meet the Western reader with his/her familiar exotic world within a more global and modern setting. Similarly, Amal Amireh (2000) demonstrates how Nawal El Saadawi was as well framed in and appropriated, alongside with her works, to the Western society. She contends that despite El Saadawi’s achievements in the English speaking countries, especially in the U.S, she is ‘’not always in control of either her voice or her’’ (p. 219). Like many other Arab feminist writers, El Saadawi has experienced the accommodation of her works by the U.S publishing houses and media. Furthermore, El Saadawi’s woks are manipulated in their English version para-textually and the textually. More importantly, Amireh argues that Nawal El Saadawi’s literary works usually function as ethnographic reports and particularly in Western classrooms. This suggests that these works are not taught in the classrooms as fictional works but rather as documents that mirror the Arab world reality. Arab Women Writers in U.S Classrooms As we have seen, most of the works that students encounter in the U.S revolve around subjects such as war, religion, women's oppression, and masculinity. Consequently, one might assume that this literature is selected based on political and ideological factors rather than on literary ones. In this case, the student’s experience with Arabic literature is manipulated because of the process of selecting the works. The student, as a result, constructs a distorted and generalized worldview of the Arabs identity. Especially that this latter, as Al-Mahrooqi and Denman (2016) argue, is ‘’not entirely within a person's control, but must, to an extent, rely on the perceptions of others – whether this identity is placed upon an individual by others or whether that person looks for acknowledgment of their identity by others'' (p. 13). So, the Arabs identity is not entirely constructed by Arabs themselves, but it is mostly constructed by how the West perceives them. However, The Arabs are, for most of the time, misrepresented by the West through means such as media and literature. As Edward Said (1978) suggests, the Orient has been created by the West, and it has been through a process of content manipulation, misrepresentation, and a racialized regime of representation. Through literature, media, movies, and postcards, the West has constructed the exotic, mysterious, uncivilized, and dangerous Orient. This stereotyped Other, the East, is now produced through translated literature. In sum, the novels that will be analyzed in this section and which are commonly taught in U.S colleges are adequate data that will demonstrate these points in more detail. Nawal El Saadawi: Woman at Point Zero The first part that the reader is encountered with is the novel's cover, and it gives an impression about the work and its nature. On the one hand, one can predict the subject of the work from the title of El Saadawi’s novella. From the combination of the title and the author’s name and her background, one can predict that the novella is about an oppressed Arab woman, and subject such as this one is highly consumed among Western readers. Also, Western readers have built expectations about Arabic literature through his/her previous experiences with it, so it is meeting their horizons expectations rather than challenging them. On the other hand, the design of the cover makes the prediction of the novella’s subject much easier and accurate, for it consists of symbols that represent Arabs. For instance, the design of the Amazon version of the novella consists of Arabic decorations and a silhouette of an arched Eastern facade; as a result, this design stresses that the woman, who is ‘’at Point Zero’’, is not any woman but the Arabic one. Woman at Point Zero (2007) tells the story of an Egyptian woman called Fidaus. Through this story, El Saadawi tells us about the experience of this woman and her sufferings in a patriarchal country, Egypt. Firdaus used to live in a village with her family and with a father who oppresses and beats her mother. She has a little memory of her mother who has her circumcised at an early age. Whilst she got circumcised, her family prevented her from going to the field where she used to play with a young boy and with whom she experiences her first sexual pleasure. After the death of her parents, she moves to the city willing to live with her uncle who assaults her sexually and pushes her to marry a man that she does not know. As her father does to her mother, her husband oppresses and violates her. When her husband injured her for the second time, Firdaus is pushed to work as a prostitute, but she quits after a while and starts working in a private industry where she falls in love with a colleague. This latter betrays her by marrying the chairman’s daughter. Then, she goes back to her previous profession—prostitution. Eventually, she kills her pimp as self-defense and goes to prison. As the above plot summary shows, Firdaus experiences a very difficult life because of her culture and society that marginalize her in various ways. However, the most dominant form of women's oppression in this novel is the sexual abuse, violence, and betrayal; it happens first with Firdaus’ mother, then with her uncle, husband, and colleague. These particular forms of oppression conform to the Westerns’ ideology and to their way of perceiving the Arabic woman. Drosihn (2014) argues that El Saadawi’s perspective about religion ‘’serves as an interesting vantage point for Westerners to explore the purportedly greater oppression of Muslim women’’ (p. 26). Also, when professors and students deal with this novella as an ethnographic report, not as a fictional work; this story becomes confusing, and it can be generalized by the reader upon all Arab women especially that the novella starts with ‘’this is the story of a real woman’’. Amireh (2000) argues that instructors who teach Woman at Point Zero work hard to prevent students from confirming the stereotypes about Arabs. Nevertheless, she proceeds to clarify that the teachers’ efforts are not always sufficient, so there is a great chance that the text reinforces stereotypes. The reader, as a consequence, believes that Egyptian women, not to say all Arabic women, lives within an ‘’an extremely oppressive patriarchal social system that places enormous store in the tenets and laws of Islam’’ (Govender, 1996, p. 54). In sum, this novella discusses some of the main themes which are highly consumed by Western readers, and the work constructs a stereotypical image of the Arabs, not necessarily because of the work itself, but because of the way it is dealt with by the reader. Hanan al-Shaykh: The Story of Zahra Similar to El Saadawi’s novella, the cover of the Story of Zahra (1995) is designed exactly to confirm the Western’s reader horizons of expectations right from the first sight. In the Anchor Books edition of al-Shaykh’s novel, the design of the cover consists of geometric patterns that the Muslims and Arabs use in their architecture. It also includes an image that consists of a room with a Kalashnikov standing on the ground, a white bed, and two pillows; these elements suggest war and love or maybe a love story in war. Accordingly, the paratextual elements of both El Saadawi’s and al-Shaykh’s works are not only used to attract the reader’s attention but also to give the plot of the stories. According to Kovala (1996), the paratext can be used as a means of ideological closure; one of its main functions is to diminish the distance between the work and the reader. He continues to argue that the paratext is just one of the three elements that mediate between readers and the works. The selection of works to be translated, however, ''controls what can be perceived'' (p. 140). Consequently, the selection of the design and the translated work to be taught suggest that it is chosen exactly to meet the reader or the student with the familiar Arabic world that he/she already has met through other means of communication. This novel opens with Zahra's childhood when she is used as an excuse for her mother to leave home and have an affair with another man. Zahra describes her father as brutal and Hitler-like mustache. The father beats her severely, for he suspects her to be having a role in his wife’s betrayal. Consequently, Zahra, the formerly hardworking student, retreats into herself and starts having a meaningless affair with a married man resulting in two abortions. Then, her family sent her to West Africa to live with her exiled uncle. Zahra tells us about her uncle’s suspicious behavior; he holds her hands in the mornings, sleeps by her side, and hides out in the bathroom while she is there. This behavior causes her sickness and pushes her to accept a marriage proposal of a local Lebanese man. She describes the marriage as a disaster, and how it makes her more withdrawn into herself. In desperation, she returns to Beirut that is already destroyed by war. As the war intensifies, her family moves to their native village while Zahra stays in the city of war. For the first time, she falls in love with a sniper and starts making love with him. As a result, Zahra wants a normal life for the first time, but it is too late. Zahra becomes a victim of her society and war. To begin with, the novel discusses universal themes— war and the betrayal inside a marriage for example. However, al-Shaykh stresses some of the images which stereotype the Arab man, for example, her ‘’brutal father’’ with a ''Hitler-like mustache'', her uncle, and his friends. Gomaa and Raymond (2014) argue that ‘’there are no ways of studying [the Arab male] outside the Western view of religion as anti-modern, of nationalism as anti-Western, and of Arab culture as anti-women’’ (p. 30). Thus, the Arab man and Arab culture is represented as anti-women in this novel, and this is the right source from which the Western reader can feed his pre-existing knowledge about the Arab culture and man. The authors suggest within the same article that the language which Zahra uses to describe her exterior self is abstract and full of clichés. This, as a result, influences the reader’s experience with the literature in a manner that he/she cannot think of it without linking it to violence, women's victimization, sexuality, and war. As Said (1990) clearly states, to "interdict any attention to texts that do not reiterate the usual clichés about 'Islam,' violence, sensuality, and so forth?" In conclusion, both El Saadawi’s and al-Shaykh’s works highlight conditions in which Arab women live, but the study of this condition is tremendously linked to the Arab man. For example, the victimization and the suffering Zahra and Firdaus, which represent most of Arab women, are results of how they are treated by the other gender and the environment around them. Consequently, this reinforces stereotypes about both Arab genders in the West, so the selection of these works is highly influenced by Western ideology and how they perceive Arabs. Also, students can conclude from reading these works that the Arab man is dangerous and women are underestimated and neglected by him and by society. While promoting this works and treating them as ethnographic documents by the reader, the attitudes toward Arabic literature remain fixed and the reader’s horizons of expectations, too. Before moving to discuss how the education system affects the publishing industry, translated Arabic literature, and reader, the paper will first start with the situation of the literature in the publishing sector by taking Rajaa Alsanea’s Girls of Riyadh as an example. Rajaa Alsanea in the Publishing Industry As a matter of fact, "Only three percent of all books published in English are translated from foreign languages, and within this group translations from Arabic represent the weakest of the weak" (Aboul-Ela, 2001, p. 42). This statement reflects one of the primary problems that the Arabic novel faces in the Western market, but the real issue here is with what gets translated and published— less than three percent. Not surprisingly, most of the translated literary works that get published are either domesticated, manipulated, or confirm stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims together, and they do not reflect the real aesthetic value of Arabic language nor that of Arabic literature. Faiq (2004) argues that ‘’translation keeps reinforcing the same representations orientalism has created: …the images of a complicated orient, irremediably strange and different; yet familiar and exotic’’ (p. 12). These images of the unfamiliar and exotic Orient have been consumed by Western audiences for centuries now, so it is no wonder that Alsanea’s Gils of Riyadh achieves recognizable success in the Western market. Girls of Riyadh (2007) is a novel that describes the private lives of four rich Saudi young-women. Through fifty yahoo emails, the secret romantic relationships of Gamrah, Michelle, Lamees, and Sadeem are revealed. The novel starts with an email where Alsanea invites her readers to join a new world that she will reveal to them. Also, she claims at the beginning of the novel that it is based on true events, and she changed the names of the characters to protect them from their men. Throughout the story, the narrator tells us how women are not allowed to speak to men in public, and how they are shunned from Saudi society for losing their virginity before marriage or getting divorced. What makes this novel a best-seller book across Europe and the United States? In an interview, Allen (2009) is asked for his opinion of Girls of Riyadh. Before he replies, He asks why to signal out this work in particular. The response is as follow: He replied that he was one among many literary critics with a continuing interest in trends in contemporary Arabic fiction who were perplexed as to why a novel written by a 23-year-old Saudi female dentist in the form of e-mail messages exchanged between four girls living in the Saudi capital should have been deemed worthy of translation and publication in English (and by Penguin Books, no less). (Allen, 2009, p. 9) Booth (2010) —the original translator of Girls of Riyadh—answers the above question as follows: first, Western readers tend to ''conflate female authors and female protagonists'' (p. 154). This is the case of all the works we have seen so far; Firdaus, Zahra, and the four girls of Riyadh. Second, the selection and promotion of works as these are driven by certain political and ideological forces; these novels function as '' native informant texts'' (p.154). In other words, the works function as documents through which the West promote false images and negative about Islam/Muslims. Last but not least, the selection of these novels by publishing houses is strongly motivated by commercial interests; as already mentioned, a large group of Western readers is eager to discover the exotic, yet familiar place. Thus, Girls of Riyadh is a ‘’personal tour guide [that] will reveal to [them] a new world’’ (p.1). To sum up, Alsanea is a controversial writer, and many argue that she wrote Girls of Riyadh with the West reader in mind. In other words, when she wrote the novel for the first time in Arabic, she did not write it for the local reader. But instead, the work was written to get translated. However, this can be applied, to some extent, to many Arab authors, who wants to get his /her work not only translated but published as well, for they have to conform to the patron’s ideology. They have to conform to the publishing houses' ideology, and to what the market demands, for example; indeed, they have to turn their works into commodities. Also, the education sector and the publishing one are tremendously similar in terms of the politics of selection. For instance, they both select the works that are full of clichés and stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims. Nevertheless, the educational system has a significant influence on the perception and consumption of Arabic literature as we shall see in the following section. The Translated Arabic Novel as a Cultural Capital Based on a study that was conducted by Khalifa and Elgindy (2014), the translation of Arabic fiction into English is considered as a field and socially situated phenomenon from a sociological perspective. The concept of field is derived from the works of the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. This concept refers to ‘’a socially organized, quasi-autonomous space that has definable boundaries’’ (Khalifa & Elgindy, 2014, p. 2). According to Bourdieu, the field is occupied by positioned agents that compete and struggle over ''stakes'' and ''capital''. What we are interested in here, however, is the concept of capital and particularly the cultural capital. This latter is defined as ''non-financial assets, such as educational qualifications, which could promote social mobility beyond economic means'' (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990). The field of Arabic fiction translation is occupied by certain agents, such as publishing houses, which compete with each other over capital which is then translated Arabic literature. Educational systems and publishing houses, as agents, condition the function of the field. In other words, they influence the translation of Arabic works and consequently affect the perception and consumption of translated Arabic literature as a cultural capital. Lefevere (1998) argues that the cultural capital of a given culture is transmitted, distributed, and regulated employing translation. He, however, proceeds to point out that educational systems monitor the creation and circulation of cultural capital greater than translation does. Therefore, the Western education sectors can influence and change and the current status of translated Arabic literature through changing the way of how they are dealing with it; by presenting to students translated works that challenge their horizons of expectation and reading them as aesthetically valuable fictional works, the student’s experience with Arabic literature will be changed. As a result of the student’s confrontation literature that reflects the real Arabic aesthetics and literary values, the publishing sector will be influenced as well. There will be more demand for literature that represents the Arab author, world, and Arabic literature, and they will, hopefully, start writing more fictional works that challenge the readers' horizons of expectation. Conclusion Most translated Arabic literature that is published or taught to students in the West is manipulated in terms of selection. The Western reader is encountered with works that are full of clichés and stereotypes about Arabs. Not only this, but they are also reading it as a document that reflects the Arabs reality. Also, the process of selecting the works is influenced by ideological and political forces that make the criteria upon which the works are selected go far beyond the world of literature. More importantly, the works which are selected become a weapon that is used against the Other—that is, it reaffirms certain false or abstract images about Arabs and Muslims to the extent that they become confused. The reader starts seeing Arab, Muslims, and terrorists as one. This also meets the reader with his/her familiar Arab world that is constructed through media and other forms of communication. The reader, as a result, becomes eager to read and discover more about ‘’facts’’ which are transmitted through translations of the fiction. Consequently, it drives certain authors to write with the Western reader by imitating models of writing which the target reader has been used to read in other translations of Arabic literary work. This, as this research argues, can be changed through the target culture’s educational system; when teachers select and present works that challenge the readers’ horizon of expectation, this will in return influence positively authors, translators, publishers, readers, and translated Arabic literature. References Al-Saadawi, N. (1983). Woman at point zero. Trans. Hetata. London: Zed Books Ltd. Al-Shaykh, H. (1994). The story of zahra. Trans. Peter Ford. New York: Anchor Books. Allen, R. (2010). The happy traitor: Comparative literature studies, 47(4), 472. doi: 10.5325/complitstudies.47.4.0472 Alsanea, R. (2007). Girls of Riyadh. Trans. Alsanea and Booth. New York: Penguin. El Sadaawi: Arab feminism in a tran Amireh, A. (2001). Framing Nawal snational world.” Intersections: Gender, nation and community in Arab women’s novels. Eds. Lisa Suhair Mahjah, Paula W. Sunderman, and Therese Salibi. New York: Syracuse University Press BOOTH, M. (2010). “The Muslim woman’’ as celebrity author and the politics of translating Arabic: Girls of Riyadh go on the road. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 6.3 Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J. C. (1990). Reproduction in education, society and culture. London, UK: Sage. Drosihn, N. (2014). Orientalizing the other today: Arab feminism in western discourse. Alifa Rifaat’s Distant view of a minaret and Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at point zero in comparison (Master’s thesis). University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam. Retrieved from aculty of Humanities UVA Scripties Online at https://scriptiesonline.uba.uva.nl/en/scriptie/498453Orientalism GOMAA, S. & Chad R. (2014). Lost in non-translation: The politics of misrepresenting arabs. Arab Studies Quarterly 36. 1 khalifa, A. & Elgindy, A. (2014). The reality of arabic fiction translation into english: A sociologcal approach. International Journal of Society, Culture & Language. Retrieved from https://www.ijscl.net/article_5433.html Littau, K. & Kuhiwczak, P. (2007). A companion to translation studies (topics in translation). Multilingual Matters. Lefevere A. & Bassnett, S. (1998). Constructing cultures: Essays on literary translation (topics in translation). Multilingual Matters. Nash, Geoffrey. (2017). Arab voices in western writing: The politics of the Arab novel in English and the anglophone Arab novel. Commonwealth Essays and Studies, 39 (2). ISSN 0395-6989 Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. SAID, E. W. (1990) Embargoed literature. The Nation. Appendix A The Reality of Arabic Fiction Translation into English: a sociological Approach Abstract To explore the translation of Arabic fiction from a sociological perspective, Abdel Wahab Khalifa and Ahmed Elgindy employ two sociological concepts that were propounded by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Field and capital are two key analytical tools that are used in the text to describe and interpret the translation activity within a sociological framework. Firstly, the writers introduce their paper with discussing the importance and the aim of their work; the latter studies the translation of Arabic fiction because of its significance a medium in the contemporary publishing domain. Also, this paper aims to explore the cultural and social conditions under which the translations are produced. Secondly, they proceed to explain Boudieu’s concepts in relation to the domain of Arabic fiction translations. The paper, therefore, examines the translations within the framework of Boudieu’s field alongside with the economic, social, and symbolic capitals. In doing so, the translations are considered to be situated within the field and, as a result, affected by external factors as well as internal ones. Thirdly, this paper argues that there are four phases through which the development of the field has taken place; namely, the initial, expending, post-Nobel, and post-9/11 phase. They argue that the initial phase can be traced back to 1908—during which little or no attention was given to the field for a set of reasons. However, between the years of 1932 and 1964, Arabic fiction has become increasingly translated into English. After that, the phase is followed by the expending one which takes place between 1968 and 1988. This latter is mainly focused on the enrichment of the modern Arabic literature content, and as a consequence of this, Arabic literature had become increasingly disseminated and appreciated—although it was dominated by Egyptian fiction. In addition, during this period, the field has privileged Arab women-writers due to the feminist movement in the West. In 1988, Naguib Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel Prize, and this was the departure of the post-Nobel phase which ends in 2001. Khalifa and Elgindy argue that Mahfouz’s occasion has brought a more external interest in the translation of Arabic fiction. Consequently, this phase is marked by the emergence of a number of organizations that are interested in the field such as the Project of Translation and the General Egyptian Book organization. Last but not least, there is the post-9/11 phase which a product of the 9/11 incident; the Western reader has become eager to discover the Arab world through literature. Moreover, they further argue that the reading of Arabic literature has been encouraged by academic and professional domains. In sum, this paper lays the ground for a sociological study of translated Arabic literature, and it identifies internal and external factors that influence it. It also states a number of geo-political and socio-cultural events that highly influence the development of the field. Keywords: Arabic fiction, the sociology of translation, field and capital, Arabic translation Appendix B Casablanca is Me In this essay, I am going to compare between the two translations, in English and French, of an Arabic text that is written by the Moroccan poet Abdallah Zrika. This comparison is going to cover almost all the tactics which are used by the Moroccan and the French translators, namely, M. Karimi and Francis Gouin. Also, I will briefly discuss the process of translation and the difficulties it involves; moreover, it is very important to discuss the process from the translator’s perspective, for the latter has a significant impact on the TT (the target text). First of all, translation is a process, for it involves a set of actions; the translator has to take a group of strategic decisions during the process such as understanding the text, knowing its nature, and delimiting the strategies that he/she would use in the translation. Second of all, the translator faces many difficulties and issues during the activity especially when the latter deals with a text that includes culturally bound terms or expressions. In this case, the translator has to take the decision on how the latter can deal with this category of text, weather to foreignize or to domesticate. Finally, another inevitable issue that the translator faces in the translation loss; this latter occurs within any translation activity, so the translator have compensate the loss through using a set of tactics so he can minimize the loss. Now, I am turning my intention to the translator’s aspect. As it mentioned above, the translator has an important influence on the text, so in the reading of a given TT one has to take the translator into account. From a sociological perspective, the degree of the understanding of the ST (source text) differs from one translator to another; it depends on the translator’s engagement with the source society and culture. In short, translation is not only about finding an equivalent of a term or expression of a source language in a target one, but it also involves a maximal act of interpretation. Therefore, the commitment of the translator with the source culture has a great influence on his/her interpretation of the SS. Based on what I have mentioned before, I believe that the reader now has some ideas about the process of translation and what it is required from the translator to plan an adequate TT. Also, perhaps translation is not an easy activity as it might appear. With all this in mind, I am going to turn now to the main purpose of this essay which is the comparison of the two translations that are entitled as ‘’Casablanca is Me’’ in the English version and ‘’Casa c’est moi’’ in French one. First of all, the thing that I would to start with is the title; in English version, the name of the city, Casablanca, is transcribed as it is whereas in the French one is used as ‘’Casa’’. This means that the translators approach the translation of title differently; unlike the translator of the English text who stays faithful to the source text by translating the name literally, the French one approaches it freely by omitting the adjective ‘’Blanca’’ (lit. white). Second of all, I believe that both translations have successfully maintained the voice the author, Abdallah ZRIKA. Through the careful usage of the punctuation, they keep the rhythmic aspect of the text; as a result, the reader of the two target texts can feel the presence of the author while reading the text. All in all, I can argue that the loss is generally minimized in terms of rhythm. Second of all, I would like to start with the translation of the noun ‘’ زغاريد’’. In the French TT, it is translated as ‘’youyous’’ which means howling or wailing sounds, but it does not convey the same meaning of ululation as it is referred to in the Moroccan culture/s; whereas in the English TT, the name is translated as ‘’ uttering any shrill sounds of joy’’, so we can notice here that the translator goes beyond the literal translation of the name and uses sense-for-sense strategy. Therefore, we can conclude that the English one conveys the meaning that is close to that in the ST. In addition, I should remind you of the idea I mentioned before about the engagement of the translator with the society because of its existence in the examples discussed in this paragraph. Therefore, I can argue now that the translator in this context has an influence on how the meaning of the ST is transmitted in the TT. To close this paragraph, I will say that the translator of the English version sacrifices the economical aspect of his text in order to compensate the loss of the meaning. Finally, through the reading of the TTs, one notices that the translators use different strategies in the translation of the addresses in the ST. In the English TT, the translator has explicitly used the strategy of foreignization; the latter has introduced foreign terminologies to the text such as ‘’Souk al Kalb’’, ‘’Souk Chtaiba’’ and ‘’Souk Awâ’’. As you can see in these examples, the translator prefers not to translate ‘’Souk’’ as market which is the literal meaning, nor he has translated ‘’al Kalb’’ as dog. However, he has used the footnotes to explain the literal meaning of those names such as ‘’ al Kalb (lit. dog market)’’. This is on one hand. The French translator, on the hand, has not been stick to one strategy, but he has used both foreignization and domestication tactics. For example, he domesticates the address ‘’الكلب سوق’’ by translating it as ‘’souk du Chien’’. Whereas in the translation of ‘’ Souk Awâ’’, he uses foreignization and has added the reference outside the text. So, both translators have utilized various tactics to formulate an adequate TT. To sum up, Francis Gouin and M. Karimi have tried to stay faithful to the ST, and I think that they have successfully done that to a huge extent. However, the former has utilized some strategies of domestication which affect some meanings of the text by making them less accurate. Also, the latter, M. Karimi, has included footnotes within the TT and that has made it less economical. All in all, I believe that our translators have tried their best to compensate any important loss that would have been caused by the process of translation, and I would like to finish this essay the famous saying ‘’to translate is to betray’’. POLITICS OF SELECTING TRANSLATED ARABIC LITERATURE 18 Running head: POLITICS OF SELECTING TRANSLATED ARABIC LITERATURE 1