An-Najah National University Faculty of Graduate Studies The Reading of Post-Colonial Otherness in J. Wright’s Translation of A. Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad By Tareq Mohammad Asad Supervisor Dr. Mohammed Hamdan This Thesis is Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Applied Linguistics and Translation, Faculty of Graduate Studies, An-Najah National University, Nablus, Palestine. 2021 ii The Reading of Post-Colonial Otherness in J. Wright’s Translation of A. Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad By Tareq Mohammad Asad This thesis was defended successfully on 01/06/2021 and approved by: Defense Committee Members Signature 1- Dr. Mohammad Hamdan / Supervisor 2- Dr. Ahmad Ayyad / External Examiner 3- Dr. Rami Qawariq / Internal Examiner iii Dedication Family is everything, and I dedicate this work to my family which has always been my shield, my happiness and my justification for who I am today. With no exceptions; To my father, and mother, the stars who light my darkest nights, who have nurtured me with their kindness and generosity. To my wife, my beautiful rose whom I love, for she is my partner, best friend, and sweet companion. To my brothers, Mountains on which I lean in hard times, who have always been close, and supported me in every possible way. And, to each and every one seeking the truth, for itself, and for the value that it gives to other things... I dedicate this work. iv Acknowledgement I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation to all those who participated in feeding me with knowledge that enabled me to complete this work. First, special thanks to Dr. Mohammed Hamdan, my thesis supervisor, for his great and significant role as a guide throughout the stages of preparing this study. Second, I would like to express my deep gratitude to all instructors and teachers who enlightened my way and expanded my knowledge at all levels of my education, from primary school to university. Last but not least, I want to show my deep respect and recognition for the efforts of all philosophers, linguists and researchers who participated in the field of post-colonialism and translation, as they have paved the way for better understanding and wider perception of the postcolonial subject and the many possible dimensions of approaching and understanding it. v اإلقرار الرسالة التي تحمل العنوان: م قد أنا الموقع أدناه، م لآلخر في ترجمة جوناثان االستعمارية قراءة ما بعد رايت لرواية أحمد السعداوي فرانكنشتاين في بغداد The Reading of Post-Colonial Otherness in J. Wright’s Translation of A. Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad أ قر بأن ما اشتملت عليه هذه الرسالة، إنما هي نتاج جهدي الخاص، باستثناء ما تمت اإلشارة إليه ن قبل لنيل أي درجة علمية أو بحث حيثما ورد، وأن هذه الرسالة ككل، أو أي جزء منها لم ي قدم م .علمي أو بحثي لدى أي مؤسسة تعليمية أو بحثية أخرى Declaration The work provided in thesis, unless otherwise referenced, is the researcher's own work, and has not been submitted elsewhere for any other degree or qualification. اسم الطالب: Student's Name: :Signature التوقيع: :Date 01/06/2021 : التاريخ vi Table of Contents Dedication .................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgement ........................................................................................ iv Table of Contents ......................................................................................... vi List of Tables ............................................................................................... vii List of Abbreviations .................................................................................. viii Abstract ........................................................................................................ ix Chapter One ................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Background .......................................................................................... 2 1.2 Purpose of the study ........................................................................... 10 1.3 Statement of the Problem ................................................................... 11 1.4 Questions of the Study ....................................................................... 13 1.5 Significance of the Study ................................................................ 13 1.6 Limitations of the Study ..................................................................... 15 1.7 Layout of the Study ............................................................................ 15 Chapter Two ................................................................................................ 18 Literature Review ........................................................................................ 18 2.1 Post-colonial Approach to Translation Studies ................................. 19 2.2 Translation and “Power” .................................................................... 25 2.3 The Role of the Translator ................................................................. 30 2.4 Venuti’s “Invisibility”, “Domestication” and “Foreignization” ........ 34 Chapter Three .............................................................................................. 41 Corpus and Methodology ............................................................................ 41 3.1 Research Corpus ................................................................................ 43 3.2 The Descriptive Aspect of the Study ................................................. 47 3.3 The Analytical Aspect of the Study ................................................... 51 3.4 Translation Strategies, Procedures and Methods ............................ 51 Chapter Four ................................................................................................ 57 Data Analysis .............................................................................................. 57 4.1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 58 4.2 Collected data and analysis ................................................................ 59 Chapter Five ................................................................................................ 69 Findings, Conclusions, and Recommendations .......................................... 69 5.1 Findings and Conclusions .................................................................. 70 5.2 Recommendations .............................................................................. 75 References ................................................................................................... 77 ب ........................................................................................................... الملخص vii List of Tables Table (1): ST terms and their equivalent translation in TT. ....................... 60 viii List of Abbreviations SL: Source Language TL: Target Language SC: Source Culture TC: Target Culture DTS: Descriptive Translation Studies TP: Translation process ix The Reading of Post-Colonial Otherness in J. Wright’s Translation of A. Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad By Tareq Mohammad Asad Supervisor Dr. Mohammed Hamdan Abstract This study investigates the cultural and socio-political impact of translation strategies employed in Jonathan Wright’s translation of Ahmad Saadawi’s novel Frankenstein in Baghdad in light of the post-colonial translation theory. It explores how these strategies are used to translate the ST and how the final translation was influenced by the TT cultural background. The purpose of this study is to highlight the role of this translation in the creation of otherness in the ST. The significance of this study is that it shows how translation functions as a socio-political tool of manipulation that underscores or stresses the image of racial otherness in the TT. This study, hence, points out how the final product of translation can reinforce stereotypical cultures in the target text. The study uses Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet’s (1995) model to classify and analyze the collected data based on the procedures which the translator opts for to render the source text from Arabic to English. This model contains thirteen procedures, all of which are used to translate the source text. The study also uses Venuti’s strategies, namely, foreignization and domestication, to achieve a coherent and fruitful understanding of Wright’s translation via the employment of a post-colonial theoretical framework. In doing so, the researcher classifies the procedures under the x aforementioned strategies and analyzes the impact of each strategy on the target reader’s reception of the source text and the source culture. Following a thorough analysis of all the collected examples, the study concludes that the translator, Jonathan Wright, tends to use domestication as a strategy to translate the source text, which results in a fluent and natural narrative that mostly corresponds to the original culture in the target language. In respect to foreignization strategy, the study shows that the translator uses the procedure of literal translation when it is only readable to the target reader. In addition to literal translation, the translator employs borrowing and calque as other foreignization procedures, albeit in fewer instances. The findings of the study demonstrate that the hegemony of the target language and culture is emphasized in the final product of translation. Thus, the target culture becomes a superior force and form of expression that dominates the essence of the translation. The source culture of Saadawi’s text is pushed to the margins of social and political representation. This, indeed, creates a fixed imagination of otherness within the process of translation as a remnant waiting to be defined and domesticated. 1 Chapter One Introduction 2 Chapter One Introduction 1.1 Background Postcolonial translation has developed as a significant field of study through which political and cultural relations between the colonizer and the colonized are defined. In this regard, “postcolonial translation studies holds that translation is the battleground and exemplification of the postcolonial context, which is inevitably related to the ethnical-based cultural identity” (Liu 2007, p:136). Accordingly, post-colonial translation studies investigates the unequal power relations between two cultures and, hence, between two different linguistic systems (Susan, 2016). Historically speaking, the industry of translation has been utilized for the sake of highlighting cultural superiorities due to colonial tendencies to focus on translating literary texts for the use of European readers and the proliferation of Western values and beliefs, and that was “essentially foreclosing the prospect of mutual exchange” (Ilyas & Shahid 2021, p:90). This argument does not mean that translation from European languages to other languages did not exist, but in the time of colonization, translations were confined within missionary activities (Bassnett, 1999). In this regard, Maria Tymoczko (2000) views post-colonial translation theories as a means of providing “an exit from the textualized world of French criticism and a return to sensible expertise, significantly once the sensible expertise can 3 make compelling appeals for engagement and action, as will things of peoples battling underprivileged positions” (p:32). This possible utilization of translation as a tool of power and control shows that hegemony and “violence” are constantly applied to translation studies and practices, thus revealing the “epistemological” crisis and the stereotypical images forced via translation upon TR (ibid.). This crisis has been ingrained in “former colonial intellectuals’ consciousness to their cultural identity” (ibid). Instead of demanding and reclaiming an “authentic” identity, the fact is that writing, translation, history and power affect cultural identities greatly, which ultimately reshapes and reconstructs aspects of this identity. In postcolonial translation studies, identity occupies what Homi Bhabha calls the “in-between” textual space in his book The Location of Culture (1994). The concept of in-betweenness implies the meaning of “hybridity” in the texts and their translation between different cultures. It is true that hybrid spaces can shift our understanding of identity, but it may pose the problem of self-centrism in the sense that colonial intellectuals or writers can still reconstruct their cultural identity through such hybridity. Many scholars have recently showed a deep interest in both theories and approaches to translation in a post-colonial context. Some scholars approach postcolonial translation by demonstrating their experience of reading and rewriting texts from a native’s perspective. Gayatri Spivak’s essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988) and her book Outside the Teaching Machine (1993), and Tejaswini Niranjana’s book Siting Translation: History, Post- 4 Structuralism and the Colonial Context (l992) offer great examples of how translation has always created national divisions by fashioning stereotypes and perpetuating unequal relations between peoples, ideologies, races, religions and languages. Other scholars have made use of ready-made translations of Irish literature as case studies. Maria Tymoczko’s translation in a Post-Colonial Context: Early Irish Literature in English Translation (1999) and Michael Cronin’s translation of Ireland (1996) are good examples to illustrate how emergent postcolonial cultures can interrogate contemporary translation theory and practice, and mark the interdependence of the Irish translation movement. These scholars among others have demonstrated how postcolonial translation studies brought a huge contribution to translation theory, not only by their examination of real post-colonial practices, but also as a method of research that can answer critical questions about differentiation, power, and identification. Despite “their oppositional nature”, which may “have semiconductor diode for behaviors to be essentialized” (Ilyas & Shahid 2021, p:99), their findings and approaches should have analytical potential for alternative translation fields especially where unequal power relations play a critical role. In this regard, the major problem is to mark differences in post-colonial contexts and keep a standard emphasis, cultivating decent commonality and sometimes mutual causes that unite post-colonial critics within the field of translation (Gouanvic, 2018). 5 Since Post-colonial translation field intersects with other fields such as culture, ideology, power, and translation, it is necessary to explain these concepts and the relationship between them and the field of postcolonial translation. At the very heart of post-colonial studies is the concept of translation, which is defined by the Oxford Companion to The English Language as “the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text” (Bhatia 1992, p:51). According to Bassnett (2014), the “notion of transposition is inherent in the very word “translation”, which is derived from the Latin “translates”, the past participle of the verb “transferre”, meaning to bring or carry across” (p:3). Thus, the term “translation” refers generally to the conduct of transferring messages across languages and culture, which includes translation processes and the product of translation. Nations have known and practiced translation since the dawn of history; nonetheless, the establishment of translation as an industry and as a field of investigation or research did not take shape until recent years. According to Ali Ghanooni (2012), “it is James Holmes’s seminal paper “The Name and Nature of Translation Studies” that draws up a disciplinary map for translation studies and serves as a springboard for researchers with its binary division of Translation Studies into two branches: “pure” and “applied”” (p:77). Here, Holmes meant to distinguish between the theoretical study which relates information to theory or scientific basis, and applied or technical study which discusses ways of applying or using this pure study in life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_(linguistic) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation#source_and_target_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_and_formal_equivalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation#source_and_target_languages 6 Language and its post-colonial formations, moreover, play a major role in the field of postcolonial translation and translation studies, in general. According to Merriam Webster (2020), language is “the system of words or signs that people use to express thoughts and feelings to each other”. Language, hence, is a tool by which people communicate with others, but translators naturally use or deal with at least two languages, which belong to completely different cultures. This means that translators are not only conveyers of meaning between two languages but they are also held responsible for precise cultural transference. Any language presents a cultural reality; therefore, the translator utilizes languages to move from one culture to another. Edward Sapir (1921) emphasizes the idea that “language is a guide to social reality”, and since the language is the source of concepts and expressions in a society, “human beings...are very much at the mercy of the particular language” (cited in Madelbaum 1956, p:69). He also asserts that no culture can exist unless it has at its core a structure of a language, and no language can exist if it is not infused with the context of that culture. Probing the symbiotic relationship between language and culture has been a huge defining factor of post-colonial translation studies. Theorists have probed this relationship in different ways. Katan (1999) considers Robins Malinowski to be one of the first scholars to point out that language cannot be understood without its cultural frame. In 1923, Malinowski used the concept “context of situation” and argued that a person can comprehend language when both “contexts”, “situation and culture” are clear to speakers and receivers (Katan 1999, p:72). One of the most famous definitions of the 7 concept of “culture” – and probably the most common in Translation Studies– is that of Edward Burnett Tylor (1871). Tylor views culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (quoted in Katan 1999, p:16). This definition, which is also one of the earlier definitions of culture, suggests that language is a kind of behavior, which is “acquired” in a certain culture. For Newmark (1988), language cannot be considered as a part or a component of a culture because if that is true, then translating expressions and concepts, which are embedded in a certain culture to another culture, “would be impossible” (p: 95). Therefore, he defines culture as “the way of life and its manifestations that are peculiar to a community that uses a particular language as its means of expression” (ibid, p:94). This means that a language has its own cultural features; not vice versa. At the very heart of languages, cultures and translations lies the term post- colonialism, which generally refers to the study of the cultural legacy of a former colony. One of the significant concerns of post-colonial critics is the thorough multi-faced explication of “Identity” (Sheoran 2014, p: 1). Within the concept of identity, researchers study the multi-layers of relations between “self” and “other”, “us” and “them” and/or “subject” and “object” because such relations will ultimately affect relations between the colonizer and the colonized subjects toward each other. This necessitates a struggle to preserve identity against all attempts to distort it. One definition of identity is the resistance to colonial ideology (Kortright 2011, p:7-10); this 8 perception of identity is necessary to understand theories of post- colonialism. Among the various topics post-colonialists examine is the impact of the colonizer’s culture and ideology on the identity of colonized subjects throughout translation (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 2003, p:169). Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) is a great example of scholarly contributions to the field of post-colonial criticism and translation. His work re-examines the conventional place and understanding of the colonized other in canonical European literature. According to Leela Ghandhi (1999), “Orientalism is the first book in a trilogy devoted to an exploration of the historically imbalanced relationship between the world of Islam, the Middle East and the ‘Orient’ on the one hand, and that of European and American imperialism on the other” (p:66). Said presents the relationship between the West and the East as characteristically rooted in a strict philosophy of inequality between the colonizer and the colonized. The Western representation of the East in the form of stereotypical, distorted imaginations such as exoticism, ignorance, barbarism, and eroticism, are ideologically formulated in order to promote and perpetuate the idea of Western superiority over the East. Here, Said uses two concepts to reflect the sustainability of power relations that have ingrained a fixed kind of thinking about national and cultural categories to which the West and the East belong; these categories are “the Orient” or “the other” and “the Occident” or “the self”. Said’s Orientalism, more precisely, bespeaks “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 2003, p:88). 9 Edward Said and other scholars’ contributions to the field of post-colonial studies have inspired later scholars who persistently propose a genuine necessity of retranslating the colonial empire. In recent years, post-colonial discourses have become more commonly tied with translation studies in which translators seek to unearth textual imbalances of self/other representations in old colonial narratives. Lawrence Venuti, for example, investigates the relationship between the two disciplines, i.e. post- colonialism and translation, by focusing on the hegemony of Anglo- American publishing practices as they create well-defined “power relations” in a post-colonial world. This, as pointed out by Venuti, takes place through “invisibility”, a term which he uses “to describe the translator’s situation and activity in contemporary Anglo-American culture” (Venuti 1995, p:1). This term implies the degree by which the translator’s choices affect the final translated texts. Since “neither the word, nor the text, but the culture becomes the operational ‘unit’ of translation” (Lefevere and Bassnett 1990, p:8), Venuti concludes that either the translation brings the text to the target reader via domestication, or it takes the target reader to the source text and culture in a process which is called foreignization. This method is considered to be “an ethnodeviant pressure on target language cultural values to register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text, sending the reader abroad” (Venuti 1995, p:20). He, therefore, notes that it is a “highly desirable” effort is much needed “to restrain the ethnocentric violence of translation” (ibid). 10 In order to understand this ethnocentric violence in translation, this research investigates the image of the other in the English translation of Ahmad Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad, an Arabic novel written in 2013 by Saadawi after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The novel speaks about a strange or ‘freakish’ creature that is built from different parts of victims’ corpses in the city of Baghdad in Iraq. The creature is later held responsible for avenging and killing the murderers who caused the death of the victims whose body parts compose its body. Considering the cultural complexity of this text and given the time of its publication, its translation requires a considerable degree of neutrality in order to show how the image of otherness emerges from within cultural tensions which the researcher seeks to unfold in this thesis. 1.2 Purpose of the study This research examines and classifies the strategies employed in the translation of Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad, which I explain in details in chapter four. It also examines the creation and development of the image of otherness in Jonathan Wright’s translation by a means of the strategies used during the process of translation. The research demonstrates how racial otherness creates an image of difference that is meant to instil the superiority of the Western culture. In order to do so, the researcher analyzes Wright’s translation by using the descriptive approach of translational analysis. The changes and strategies noted and analysed in Wright’s translation help to understand the process by which the image of the Iraqi racial otherness is 11 created. This understanding is key to show how translation contributes to fashioning hegemonic cultures of superiority in which TL readers receive biased images of national, cultural and political representation. The analysis of Wright’s translation, therefore, seeks to bring balance to the final product by emphasizing and explaining direct and indirect racial imbalances that separate what is Western and Eastern on the basis of cultural difference. The research does not mainly aim at questioning the final product of Wright’s translation; rather, it pinpoints the inner working and traces of the colonial ideology that runs invisibly within the text by using the descriptive translation approach. In fact, this is the first research that deals with Wright’s translation, which was only recently published in 2018. Despite the scarcity of resources on this translation, the researcher offers an adequate description of how Wright’s translation is a practice that can perpetuate colonial ideologies while highlighting the necessity of a post-colonial re-reading of otherness in a target society that continues to see others in passive roles. 1.3 Statement of the Problem Frankenstein in Baghdad is a post-colonial novel that explores how the Iraqi society reacted to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, local crimes, terrorism and the multifaceted cultural, political and socioeconomic consequences of colonization either directly or indirectly. Even though Wright’s translation seeks to transfer the original content of Saadawi’s text, the produced translation fashions a fixed representation of otherness. Readers of Saadawi’s translated text experience an ideological clash of many 12 cultural terms and idioms that describe the native (Iraqi) people’s lifestyle, actions, customs and behaviours, including the way they react to the presence of the American army in their Iraqi cities and towns. Translating Saadawi’s text from Arabic to English can be quite challenging and demanding because it is envelopes idiosyncratic cultural and political terminologies which are directly driven from the Iraqi culture and citizens’ everyday experience. Some terminologies can even pose a greater difficulty since they are combinations of Islamic beliefs and local Arab traditions in a country that is already becoming influenced by another Western culture as a consequence of war and invasion. Therefore, the translation of Saadawi’s novel is a sensitive process if the translator does not take cultural specificities and the socio-political Iraqi context into high consideration in order to convey the image of Iraqi people and life as it originally appears in the SC to the TL. The problem of the study is, therefore, the textual faithful correspondence between the translation itself and the ST, which may result in a misguided representation based on racial otherness. This thesis tries to demonstrate certain textual imbalances or biases in Wright’s translation which could contribute to the misrepresentation of Iraqis and their culture as marginal, inferior or othered in the TC. In the process of translation, for example, readers may note a deliberate or unintentional silencing of ST terms, and this results from cultural differences between languages, political systems and cultures. The challenge, in other words, lies in the fact that the translator 13 belongs to a culture that is different from the original culture of the novel’s author, a fact which implies that a Western culture is and remains positioned as superior to other cultures in the East (Goldstone 2013, p:36). Accordingly, this study describes the ramifications or impacts of translating cultural elements that may reduce the Iraqi individual and his/her culture to the status of others in the TC by using the framework of post-colonial translation. 1.4 Questions of the Study This research investigates the translation of Frankenstein in Baghdad and seeks to answer the following questions: 1. What are the strategies used in translating specific cultural terminologies, names and terms from the SL to the TT? 2. Do cultural differences create barriers in the process of translation, which could generate a racial representation of Iraqi culture as inferior and othered? 3. How faithful is the translation to the ST? 4. Do old colonial discourses influence the final product of Wright’s translation and reception of Iraq-ism? 1.5 Significance of the Study This thesis is a detailed case study in which the researcher used postcolonial theoretical framework in translation to analyze the techniques or strategies used in rendering Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad, which is a 14 contemporary post-war Iraqi novel, from Arabic to English. The study offers a comprehensive example of how hegemonic powers and translational colonial practices can affect the translation of the novel by pushing native characters and their culture to the margins of representation. The study, thus, shows how certain strategic choices in transferring terms and concept from Arabic to English are influenced by cultural differences that are rooted in historical colonial formations of selfhood and otherness. Accordingly, the study elaborates how difficult it is to achieve full efficiency and quality in translating texts across different languages and cultures due to certain influences or factors such as history, culture, lifestyle, perspectives, feelings, target culture and colonial hegemonies and stereotypes. It thus appears that translation is a multi-dimensional process which is affected significantly not only by the style and linguistic building of translation, but also by the culture, ideology, social status, taste, and even historical relationship with the source text. The value of this thesis, moreover, emanates from its evaluation of the methods and techniques employed in translation, which are explicated through selecting specific examples from the case study to comment on and analyze, without necessarily undermining the value of the Iraqi dialect which is extensively used in Saadawi’s work. In this process, this study illustrates that a postcolonial translation of modern and contemporary literary texts, here a Middle Eastern one, from Arabic to English, is an intricate practice which must challenge and circumvent possible biases and mistakes that might label the translation per se as “unfaithful to the source text”. 15 1.6 Limitations of the Study This study was faced with several limitations which include: - This research aims to show otherness in the translation of Frankenstein in Baghdad. In doing so, the researcher had to choose only 17 examples out of a text which is loaded with cultural specific terms. - There is an obvious lack of critical studies on Wright’s English translation of Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad. Giving a nuanced critical reading of Wright’s translation, which was only published in 2018, is challenging because the researcher may make generalizations or judgments that are supported by previous claims in research on Wright’s translation of Frankenstein in Baghdad. - Lack of knowledge of the Iraqi political and religious structures that make the Iraqi national body and the reasons that have led to violence and revenge. 1.7 Layout of the Study This study is divided into five main chapters: Chapter 1: Introduction The current chapter gives a concise preface for the subject of the study, which is the translation in the post-colonial era, and how translations of the works of writers in countries that are designated as former European colonies are influenced by the certain cultural and political images and conceptions. 16 The chapter introduces the purpose of the study, states its problem, and proposes the questions it tries to answer. Then, it explains its significance, and states the limitations the researcher faced during its preparation. The methodology of this study is also proposed concisely. Chapter 2: Literature Review This chapter seeks to introduce the reader to several definitions and concepts that are beneficial in the course of the study, most remarkably the use of post- colonial theory to read or unread translations. Approaching the post-colonial conceptual framework, here, entails the explication of culture, role of translator, and the location of power. These concepts will make this case study clearer for readers who seek to know how a writer’s post-colonial background may influence the conduct of translation, by reviewing the opinions of researchers about the study main subject, and explaining how they approached it. Chapter 3: Methodology This chapter discusses the strategies, procedures and methods that can be applied by the translator in translating any work. All of these methods were mostly used by the translator of the novel discussed in this thesis, with varying degrees. More specifically, these strategies and procedures will subsequently be applied to the examination of Wright’s translation of A. Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad. In other words, the translation 17 strategies and procedures applied by the translator are to be discussed in the light of postcolonial translation theory. Chapter 4: Data Analysis In this chapter, the researcher examines the prevalence of using the procedures and methods explained in chapter three in this case study; i.e. the English translation of A. Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad by Jonathan Wright. As indicated in chapter three, the use of each strategy is to be analysed, while using specific examples as case studies. Chapter 5: Conclusion This chapter summarizes the findings that were elaborated in detail in chapter 4, and states the conclusion of the study based on presentation of data analysis. 18 Chapter Two Literature Review 19 Chapter Two Literature Review This chapter offers a brief overview of postcolonial translation studies to introduce and explicate the data analysis. The chapter starts with a review of the postcolonial approach to translation studies. The second section discusses “power” as a colonial factor that influences the translation process. In the third section, the researcher moves on to describe the role of the translator in conveying the meaning of the ST to TR. Then, the fourth section discusses important concepts proposed by Lawrence Venuti, which are translator’s invisibility as well as terms of domestication and foreignization in translation. The last section deals with the postcolonial Arabic novel and translations of Arabic novels in the same period. 2.1 Post-colonial Approach to Translation Studies The relationship between postcolonial theory and translation has thrived in the 1990s as a response to the significant shifts to cultural studies in academic arenas. Andy Cheung (2013) asserts that “the key lines of enquiry in postcolonial translation theory include an examination of how translation is practiced in former colonial cultures; how the works of writers from former colonies are translated; and the historical role played by translation in the process of colonization” (p:12). Accordingly, scholars like Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak have noted the vital role which translations have played in the colonial and post-colonial periods. On the one 20 hand, translation is used as a “colonial” tool for both distorting the image of the colonized and for offering an image of “Europe” “as the great Original, the starting point, and the colonies were therefore copies, or ‘translations’ of Europe, which they were supposed to duplicate” (Bassnett and Trivedi 1999, p:4). An example of this is the translation of One Thousand and One Nights, a remarkable manuscript which brought along and fostered traditional thoughts such as eroticism, oppression, inequality and lack of honesty about oriental cultures in the minds of European readers. The famous Afghani- American writer, Khaled Hosseini’s, The Kite Runner (2003) and A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007) also typify the Western desire to employ translation to sustain the other as inferior and backward. Hosseini’s novels, which were translated to many languages from English, displayed negative aspects of the Afghan community, a kind of description that shows how the Western fictional/ideological creation of the other is rooted in offering a distorted image of the Afghans through translation. It is important, on the other hand, to point out that translation per se also operates as an instrument against the colonizer’s hegemony. Counter translation can lift off the pressures on the stereotypical representations of otherness as undesired, inferior and less privileged category. When translators abide by the tenets and ideas of “universality” without submitting to the law of hegemonic national biases, the process of translation becomes transparent. Post-colonial critics “insist on particularity or heterogeneity, and thus the resistance to translation among languages, as crucial to larger projects of historical agency” (Rubel and Rosman 2003, p:160). Most of the 21 colonial and post-colonial translations reflect hegemony, dominance, class ranking and cultural superiority. In colonial translations, the TC’s ideological and political agendas are often reflected in the translation of foreign texts. Michael Cronin argues that “translation relationships between minority and majority languages are rarely divorced from issues of power and identity, that in turn destabilize universalist theoretical prescriptions on the translation process” (Cronin 1996, p:4). Post-colonial translation studies focus on the cultural identity in “globalized contexts” to enable the reader to establish a basis for comparisons, and formulate an idea about cultures of colonizers compared to the colonized. Spivak’s essay “The Politics of Translation” (1993/2013) is one of the most prominent works in the field of post-colonial translation studies. Sherry Simon (1996) explains Spivak’s fears about the “distortion” caused by translating “Third World” literature into English and the “ideological consequences” of the translation process (pp:145–7). In this essay, Spivak explains the significance of exploring the subjects of “translation, the transnational, and colonization” in relation to cultural studies, and to post- colonialism in particular (Munday 2016, p:210). Spivak’s interest in examining these subjects emanates from an unrelenting fear of disavowing otherness in canonical literature and translation as mere nothing or supplement. The verb “translates” is a central concept to Spivak’s work. She uses this term to mark translation that “eliminates the identity of politically less powerful individuals and cultures” (ibid). According to 22 Spivak (2004), “translates” does not convey the “rhetoricity of language” of the ST (p:371). Instead, she discusses the relationship between the concepts of “logic” and “rhetoric”. Spivak (1993) argues that “rhetoric” obstructs the “logical systematicity” of language” (p:201). She claims that if the translator does not comprehend the language and cultural background of the ST, the translation will not consider the distinctions and the variations of the “third world” feminist voices. To employ her own words, Spivak (2004) states that “in the act of wholesale translation into English there can be a betrayal of the democratic ideal into the law of the strongest. This happens when all the Literature of the Third World gets translated into a sort of with-it translatees, so that the literature by a woman in Palestine begins to resemble, in the feel of its prose, something by a man in Taiwan” (400). Spivak opposes culture “idealization”. She protests the beliefs of Western feminists in the authority of English and other languages of the colonizers, and speaks out against the expectations of translating the literature of the “third world” to these languages. In fact, she suggests that the translator’s knowledge of the language of the “other” will bridge the gap between different cultural societies. To her, the translator must be more responsible for the silencing negative representations of the “other”, simply because the TT reader perceives these representations through translational transference of native culture and language. If the translator fails to convey the meaning or style correctly, the translated text will transform into a cultural barrier that creates imbalances between the ST and TT or long-established inconsistencies between self- 23 image and delineations of otherness. Any translation process consists of an “ethical double bind in any act of translation - the impossibility of fully rendering another’s voice or meaning and, yet, the necessity of making the attempt” (Bermann & Wood 2005, p:89); hence, translation here is a “comprehension”, a taking of power, and a reduction of otherness” (ibid, p:90). In post-colonial translation studies, power turns into a site of conflict between the original and the translated texts. In Postcolonial Translation: Theory and Practice (1999), Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi investigate the relationships between power and language across and “beyond” the confines of culture, unveiling “the vital role of translation in redefining the meanings of cultural and ethnic identity” (Bassnett and Trivedi 1999, p:i). According to Bassnett and Trivedi (1999), “translation has always been at the heart of the colonial encounter” (p:17). Vicente Rafael (2007) similarly points out that translation “has served as an instrument of domination under colonial rule” (p:214), an “instrument” that has helped the colonizer in establishing the superiority of his language over the “other’s”, and as a consequence, his culture over the “other’s”. It is a fact that people in the colonized countries have viewed and perceived English as the “language of power” (Munday 2016:209). Bassnett and Trivedi (1999) argue that “asymmetrical” power relations are practiced in the “asymmetrical” conflict between different “domestic” languages against “the one master-language of our postcolonial world, English” (p:16). Consequently, translation represents the combat zone and impersonation of the “post-colonial context” (Munday 24 2016, p:212). However, in recent days, languages of the West – due to globalization – overlap with languages which were once considered as “less” or “inferior” languages. Moreover, scholars have an “increasing awareness of the unequal power relations involved in the transfer of texts across cultures”, which puts them “in a position to rethink both the history of translation and its contemporary practice” (Bassnett & Trivedi 1999:16). In Siting Translation: History, Post-structuralism, and the Colonial Context (1992), Tejaswini Niranjana similarly explores “power relations” within which the ex-colonized are “still scored through by an absentee colonialism” (Niranjana 1992, p:8). In her point of view, translation is one discipline among others such as philosophy and education that “inform[s] the hegemonic apparatuses that belong to the ideological structure of colonial rule” (ibid, p:33). In her work, Niranjana focuses on how the “colonial power” has centralized translation around the language of “the colonizer” to fabricate a distorted and manipulated image of the “East”, which later turns into “the true” East. She provides other examples of the way the colonizer forces his ideology on the colonized such as missionary teaching of and communication with the colonized as translators and linguists. Niranjana speaks against such groups that take huge part “in the enormous project of collection and codification on which colonial power was based” (ibid: 34), and she criticizes practicing translation in this frame of “power”. She describes this practice of “translation as a practice that shapes, and takes shape within, the asymmetrical relations of power that operate under colonialism” (Niranjana 1992:2). 25 Homi Bhabha’s interdependent notions of “cultural difference”, “hybridity”, “the third space” and “in-betweenness” are vital for the process of “cultural translation”, which includes questions of “agency”, “belonging” and “identity” (Bhabha 1994:303–7). In Bhabha’s opinion, “colonial power discourse” is complicated and often disguised. Still, the creation of “ambivalent cultural hybridity” may ruin the dominance of this discourse (Keith Booker 1996:145). This process of creation leads to a space for the discourse of the “other” to intertwine with the discourse of the “self” and subvert it. The outcomes are enormous for the translator. According to Michaela Wolf (2000), “the translator is no longer a mediator between two different poles, but her/his activities are inscribed in cultural overlapping which imply difference” (p:142). 2.2 Translation and “Power” One of the defining aspects of modern translation studies is the rise of what Bassnett and Lefevere (1990) call the “cultural turn”, which has moved the focus of translation studies from being strictly bent on language to becoming more centered on the study of the influential relationship between translation and culture (p:11). In other words, the “cultural turn” in translation studies signifies a necessary movement from translating the text as mere text to translating it as a cultural and political document. Culture-oriented theorists later used this concept to point out that the examination of any translation that happens within its political, ideological and cultural context. In colonial and post-colonial cultures, the relationship between translation and 26 colonialism is deeply rooted in history as culture. To Bassnett and Trivedi (1999), “colonialism and translation went hand in hand” (P:3). This colossal relationship, to be exact, can be illustrated in two ways; first when the translator renders the material culture of colonized nations to another language, she/he equips the colonizer with the vital knowledge to control and manipulate the colonized. This explains why all the colonialist propaganda always relied heavily on producing translations of the other national subject in order to understand and suppress it. The purpose of that was to regenerate the culture of the colonized as invalid and subservient to the power of the colonizing nation that was portrayed as a more suitable and comprehensible lifestyle for everyone. To put it simply, the main goal of colonial translation was “to domesticate the Orient and thereby turn it into a province of European learning” (Niranjana 1992:12). Secondly, the endeavor to transform and infuse the colonized into the linguistic norms and cultural traditions of the superior nations represents the second face of that relationship. Translation, in such case, signifies “not simply the ability to speak in a language other than one’s own but the capacity to reshape one’s thoughts and actions in accordance with accepted forms” (Vicente Rafael 1993, p:210). It, thus, goes without reflection that language is not only a tool used by the colonialist but also a defining means of control, which marks the colonial hegemony that is ingrained within the very heart of colonial discourses. This can be seen clearly in parts of the world like India whose official language became English instead of Hindi, and many African countries whose official languages turned to become 27 English, French, Dutch and Portuguese. This tells much about nationally and culturally fueled attitudes of Western colonizers who were able to impose their culture and language on nations that had continued to exist and live independently for a long time. The process of colonial invasion and civilization, therefore, was deeply rooted in Eurocentric philosophy of imperial, political and socioeconomic domination by a means of taming, subduing or restructuring other peoples rather than spreading civilization per se to these peoples. The colonization of translation has played a major role in the construction of power paradigms in which the image of the powerful Western colonizer remains intact and unfragmented. This takes place via the use of translation as a tool for cultural control of the other, who is always depicted as hungry for Western forms of knowledge and fantasy. Lefevere (1992) holds that the “control factors” (p:15) are responsible for the tampering and manipulating the production of various translations. He expresses these “control factors” (ibid) by using the expression “patronage”.Lefevere defines this “patronage” as “any power (person, institution) that can further or hinder the reading, writing and rewriting of literature” (ibid). This definition suggests that the ramifications of power go beyond the choices the translator makes during a translation process because they expand to include more contextual aspects like intercultural relations or the tendencies of translation procedures which the translator follows in a given period of time. It is important to perceive the meaning of patronage in order to understand the practices of colonization in translation and culture; the word itself means the power of a person to give 28 an important position to someone. This means that forces of colonization constantly acted as a means of censorship or governmentality over the translation to or from the languages of the colonized nations in order to pass only the information that can fortify and sustain the image of the colonizer as humanitarian and philanthropic. These translations exemplify how much translated texts are influenced by diverse ideological effects and to what extent “control factors” or “agencies” empower these translations to instill certain fixed colonial stereotypes during the process of translation. Scholars like Ali Darwish (1999), on the other hand, do not view “patronage” as a suppressive immovable might. “Patronage” is the motivation which triggers the translation process; it is the reason why translation products are created in the way they are supposed to be authorized. In other words, patronage is related to choosing what to translate (as a whole body), rather than translating everything and then practicing hegemony over the translated text, so practicing patronage depends on the idea of choosing the texts that can play the role of allies. Still, “patronage”, in Lefevere’s point of view, functions as “control factors”, and this happens on three levels, which are “ideology, economics and status” (ibid, p:16). These levels affect the translation directly if we, for instance, think about how or when “patrons” or “agents” can intervene in the rendition of the original text from one language to another if they demand that translators directly produce a translation to meet their set of goals, or indirectly force restrictions on the final desired product. 29 In fact, “macro” and “micro” are two levels, which present a better comprehension of how “control factors” influence and affect the translation process. The “macro” level and the concept “Eurocentrism”, which are essential to the definition of power in translation, illustrate how manipulation and alteration affect the text by reproducing it as a collective colonial hegemony during the translation process. This concept is derived from the “Ethnocentrism” approach, which lies at the crux of cultural studies. According to Bennett (1993), “Ethnocentrism” is the belief that “the worldview of one’s own culture is central to all reality” (p:30). By this definition, the idea of the radical and inherent superiority of “one’s own culture” is beyond any question – accordingly, Eurocentrism as a form of ethnocentrism is the belief that Europeans are far better than others, especially racially and culturally, based on the civilizational achievements of Europe all over the history on the levels of industry and human rights. This idea always goes hand in hand with hatred and disrespect toward other cultures. Beverly Mcleod (1981) states that culture is “what seems natural and right” to a certain group of people (p:47). She writes that “people of whatever nation, see themselves and their compatriots not as culture, but as “standard” or “right”, and the rest of the world is as made up of cultures” (ibid). This quotation can be naturally seen in any large societies and small communities, where individuals see whatever they are used to as the right model, behavior, sets of action or belief while others represent false or improper images or threats to the fixity of the Eurocentric system of cultural values. 30 Building on what has been said, “Eurocentrism” investigates the “Western” tendency toward dominance over translation processes and translation products. Lawrence Venuti, Maria Tymoczko, Tejaswini Niranjana and Peter Flynn criticize the “Eurocentric” view of translation studies. They warn against the growing influence of “Western” ideology that incorporates translation studies as a solid stand for power, and they consequently call for ethnocentric free translation studies. Norman Davies (1998) suggests that “Eurocentrism” “refers to the traditional tendency of European authors to regard their civilization as superior and self-contained and to neglect the need for taking non-European viewpoints into consideration” (p:16). Georges Bastin (2016) comments on the previous definition by suggesting that “translation studies discourse claims to be scientific and rigorous, but since it was developed and expanded in the West, mainly in Europe, it reflects its origins” (p:1). 2.3 The Role of the Translator The “micro” level focuses on the translator as a “control factor”. Lefevere (1992) states that translators have the power to enforce their ideology upon their translations. This power starts from choosing what works to be translated and the method by which the translation process achieves its ultimate goal. According to Bassnnet and Lefevere (1990), translators, in many cases, intentionally manipulate translated texts to make sure they serve their own ideology. Another reason to alter and censor some works is to meet the expectations of the target reader, as exemplified in the translation of 31 children literature in which great manipulations and changes are made consciously and considered as normal and necessary practices. A very famous example of alteration in children literature is the massive changes that where done to the famous classic text One Thousand and One Nights because of the excessive sexual content included within, which cannot obviously be taught to children explicitly as shown in the original text. Its translations, thus, which are directed at children, are free of explicit sexual content. Klingberg argues that the manipulations that happen at the level of the cultural context of a certain work may be justified because it becomes necessary to meet the “points of reference” of the TR. The cultural differences between the ST and the TT may result in translation difficulties, or they could lead to a version, which will not draw the reader’s attention. As a result, the translator has no choice but to alter the translation to meet the TR “points of reference”. Academic researchers in the field of translation studies, such as Basil Hatim and Ian Mason, have contributed to a better understanding of the role of the translator and her/his relationship with culture. In their writing, they highlight the concept of “cultural mediator”, which is one of the most important roles of the translator. This concept suggests that translation can be viewed as “cultural activity”. According to Hatim and Mason (1997), “mediation” is “the extent to which translator intervenes in the transfer process feeding their own knowledge and beliefs into their processing of a text” (p:147). This means that it is almost impossible to find a translator who is completely neutral and who can suppress his/her cultural background from https://www.google.ae/search?sa=X&biw=1366&bih=625&tbm=bks&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22Basil+Hatim%22&ved=2ahUKEwjttb7T4oPyAhUMzoUKHSMGBzwQ9AgwAXoECAYQBQ https://www.google.ae/search?sa=X&biw=1366&bih=625&tbm=bks&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22Ian+Mason%22&ved=2ahUKEwjttb7T4oPyAhUMzoUKHSMGBzwQ9AgwAXoECAYQBg 32 influencing his/her tone and style of translation. Since a translator’s duty is to “overcome those incompatibilities which stand in the way of the transfer of meaning” (ibid, p:141), then the translation process and the resultant text will carry traces of his/her ideology. Nida (1964) points out that “the danger of subjectivity” is inherent in translation and its “cross cultural” aspects (p:42). Subjectivity, by definition, happens when person is influenced by his/her own opinions and background, and this is clear in Nida’s argument. In his opinion, “it is always inevitable that translators be affected by their own personal set of values” (ibid). This explains why the translator must remain unbiased and try as much as possible to situate himself/herself in the middle between the SC and the TC. Mediating two cultures and/or texts represents “the point of refraction” (Katan 2002, p:188). The translator must be cautious when he/she decides to choose a cultural meaning in the TT. This is because “the meaning of a text depends on how knowledgeable a translator is about both the source and the target culture” (Caramella 2008, p:16). The translator must be able to solve any problem that may arise from cultural differences in a way that achieves a fluent meaning transference, and to produce a TT which is comprehensible and interesting to the TR despite these cultural differences and gaps. Translators, in many cases, nurture and sponsor self-censorship over their translations. This process happens without any compulsory pressure from the outside circle of the translation process – audience, publishers, and decision makers. The translator is considered, at the micro level, an individual with a 33 great power to alter the produced text. The interest in the role of individual translators, who are responsible for the task of translation, has recently become a controversial issue when it comes to investigating and deconstructing “power imbalance” in the original colonial texts (Leonardi 2008, p:83). “Power relations” can infiltrate and be obvious in translations. Accordingly, the phrasing, arrangement, alteration, and style of translation may differ significantly as per the translator’s original cultural background type and dominance. Translators are different from each other; their backgrounds are different economically, socially and politically. This leads to a huge impact on translation strategies they opt for and on how they view and interpret the world. The translator’s manipulations at the “micro” level, wherein the only concern or emphasis lies within the individual translator and his/her internal process of thinking, has not received fair attention within the greater “scale narratives” of “power and translation”. The translator’s “self-censorship” over the translation process in circumstances where imbalances of power relationship are obvious, as clearly seen in the translation of conflict-region or third-world literature, must draw more attention to translation processes and strategies (Inghilleri, 2012). Translation practices must be pushed to submit to ethical perspectives and universal standards. The translator becomes responsible for her/his choices because the greater context of processes and strategies are derived from inferences built on their choices. Despite the multiple external influences that may hinder or violate the 34 translator’s work in the text, it only remains his/her decision to be visible or invisible. 2.4 Venuti’s “Invisibility”, “Domestication” and “Foreignization” Lawrence Venuti’s cultural approaches to translation are influenced by Friedrich Schleiermacher whose work focuses on how to bring the ST author and the TT recipient together in direct textual correspondence. Schleiermacher argues that the translator has to choose one of two options before she/he starts translating; “either the translator leaves the writer in peace as much as possible and moves the reader toward him, or he leaves the reader in peace as much as possible and moves the writer toward him” (Cited in Venuti 2012:49). For him, moving the reader towards the author is the right choice. This strategy demands that the translator adopts an “alienating” method to translate the ST because the translator is required to appreciate the “foreign” text and to bring its “foreignness” to the TR. In The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation (1995), Venuti presents the notion “invisibility” and its relation to “domestication” and “foreignization” as two types which comprise the process of translation. He uses “invisibility” to describe “the situation of the translator and his practice in Anglo-American culture” (2008:1). He argues that the translator can achieve “invisibility” if the TT “reads fluently”, and he continues to suggest that “absence of any linguistic or stylistic peculiarities makes it seem transparent, giving the appearance that it reflects the foreign writer’s personality or intention or the essential meaning of the foreign text” (ibid). 35 Translation appears and functions as “original” to the TR, and thus gives an “illusion of transparency”, an obvious “effect of fluent discourse, of the translator’s effort to ensure easy readability by adhering to current usage, maintaining continuous syntax, fixing a precise meaning” (ibid). Venuti asserts “the prevailing conception of authorship” as a significant factor for reproducing the ST as an “original” text in the TL (1998:31). Consequently, translation is viewed as “subaltern” and of “inferior” quality and value because the achievement of invisibility and the reproduction of the ST as ‘original’ mean that the translator loses control over the text during the translation process, which is not entirely true since translators can exert power over the text by a means of ideology, political views, social values and cultural background. Venuti presents two strategies, which are “domestication” and “foreignization”, to deal with “cultural items” in the process of translation. These strategies can decide the process of choosing both the ST and the “method” of translation. These two strategies are specifically important for post-colonial translation studies because they form the direction or philosophy the translator tends to adopt; s/he can choose to ‘domesticate’ or tame the ST to make it close to the TR, or can ‘foreignize’ the TR to make it close to the meanings or messages conveyed in the ST. According to Venuti (2008), “domestication” dominates the American and British translation practices, especially the ones related to “cultural” translation. He laments the reliance on “domestication” since it necessitates “an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to receiving cultural values” (p:15). This strategy demands 36 that the translator use a fluent, transparent, “invisible” writing style to produce a TT with minimal “foreignness”. It also includes adherence to the conventions of the domestic literature by cautiously choosing suitable texts for such strategy (Venuti 1998:241). The problem, according to Venuti, lies in the excessive “power” the translator practices on the ST by bending its linguistic and cultural components to meet the TR expectations. “Foreignization”, on the other hand, “entails choosing a foreign text and developing a translation method along lines which are excluded by dominant cultural values in the target language” (ibid:242). Venuti believes this strategy to be a “highly desirable” and a “strategic cultural intervention” which aims to carry the TR and send him/her toward the ST by forcing the target culture to recognize the cultural and linguistic “foreignness” ingrained in the ST (2008:15-16). The translator must translate in an “alienating”, non- fluent or diversified style. This style aims to make the translator’s presence as “visible” as it could be and to “accentuate” the ST’s foreign aspects. Venuti argues that this method forces the translator to “resist” the “asymmetrical” and “vicious” cultural values of the English language, and how he/she saves the ST from the TC ideological “manipulation”. The strategy of foreignization, therefore, presents a vital source of resistance against the dominance of the TL over the ST (ibid, P:18). Accordingly, the “cultural differences are emphasized and translation is seen as coming to terms with ‘Otherness’ by ‘resistive’ or ‘foreignizing’ translations which emphasize the difference and the foreignness of the text” (Paula G. Rubel and Abraham Rosman 2003, p:6). Venuti asserts that translation has turned 37 into a warzone between the suppressed, ex-colonized “non-Western” ST and the target language and culture. Thus, foreignization represents a tool for resisting the “Eurocentric” linguistic and cultural conventions. As Venuti (1995) puts it, foreignization “seeks to free the reader of the translation, as well as the translator, from the cultural constraints that ordinarily govern their reading and writing and threaten to overpower and domesticate the foreign text, annihilating its foreignness” (p:263). To conclude, Venuti’s works among others who defend “foreignization” and promote “resistance” contribute to both translation studies and postcolonial understanding of literary texts. To summarize the nature of this resistance in Edwin Gentzler’s (2001) words, “rather than using translation as a tool to support and extend a conceptual system based upon Western philosophy and religion, postcolonial translators seek to reclaim translation and use it as a strategy of resistance, one that disturbs and displaces the construction of images of non-Western cultures rather than reinterpret them using traditional, normalized concepts and language” (p:176). 2.5 The Translation of Postcolonial Arabic Novel Having discussed the invisibility of the translator, it is of great importance to examine critical views of translators’ acts of textual invisibility in postcolonial fiction, in particular. In other words, it is always important to ask if it is possible for the translator to render a text across two languages without projecting his/her influence on this text. Nash (2017) writes that “clearly, whether Arabs write novels in Arabic, either with the intention or 38 the effect of their being translated into English, or attempt to incorporate Arab meanings into fiction by composing directly into a language that can command a global readership, what they produce will necessarily be modified from what is produced in a local, national context” (p:13). Many scholars believe that modification is inevitable, and the translator must leave a trace of his/her style. As noted by various scholars, there were many common features, such as Reclamation of culture, loss of culture and diaspora, are found in postcolonial third-world literature. Kadhim (2015), for example, points out these features in post-colonial Arab discourses, which aim at decolonizing and opposing imperialism. To Kadhim, these discourses present the Arab World as an alternative center of Western World that has always been focalized in literary world narratives, thus attacking the superiority of Western canons and discourses. He also mentions that post- colonial Arabic literature revolts against Western hegemony and endeavors to escape inferiority to Western literary hegemonies (p:134). The relationship between the East and West has always been characterized by a long history of ideological conflicts, one of whose sites is literature or translation. In their postcolonial writing, Arab writers express the relationship between colonized and colonizer by focusing on the rhetoric of subjugation. They highlight colonial practices by which imperial powers constantly seek to subdue colonized countries and control their wealth and resources. The Sudanese Al-Tayib Saleh’s Season of Migration to the North [Mawsim Al-Hijra Ila Al-Shamal] can be considered a great example of postcolonial Arabic fiction, which demonstrates extreme forms of violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora 39 due to colonial legacies and the ensuing crisis of identity of the Sudanese people in a time of ambivalent decolonization (Hughes, 2011, p:8). In her seminal research article, entitled “Otherness in Translation: Postcolonial Arabic Novel Translated into English, Case Study: Tayyeb Salih’s Mawsim al-Hijra ila al-Shamal” (2017), Nesrine Boudour discussed and analyzed Denys Johnson Davies’ translation of Saleh’s narrative by using a postcolonial theoretical framework. Boudour (2017) points out that Western and Arabic cultures mingle in this ST, but the translator chooses to merge Arabic and Western ideologies within his translation style in order to assert dominance of the Western culture. Doudour contends that “the strategies of borrowing, adaptation, literal translation, and equivalence do not account for the foreignness of the ST, and hence, their use is harmful” (Boudour 2017, p:75). Again, it appears mostly impossible to find a translation that conveys to the TR the exact cultural meaning(s) of ST. Lefevere (1992a) states that translation is actually a process of rewriting, and all rewriting inevitably includes manipulation (p:9). More studies on this field show that the translator can easily be influenced by his/her cultural background. In her article, Boudour (2017) points out that the “hegemonic trends involved in the translation of postcolonial texts reduce the otherness underlying the SL and the ST culture- bound references” (p:74). This study suggests that Davies, the translator, actually distorts the Sudanese culture and that he fails to depict its otherness as a whole distinct identity (ibid, p:75). 40 This research, similarly, examines the translation of Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad and offers answers to impending questions about the representation of Iraqi otherness portrayed in the translation from a postcolonial perspective by analyzing the strategies, techniques and style of J. Wright’s translation. 41 Chapter Three Corpus and Methodology 42 Chapter Three Corpus and Methodology This study investigates the various strategies employed in J. Wright’s translation of A. Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad by using a post- colonial framework. In this novel, Saadawi portrays a dilapidating image of the Iraqi society which continued to suffer a post-war moral decline, violence and trauma. In the representation of this society in local and international literature, Saadawi’s narrative shows the incessant fragmentation of the Iraqi people and the quasi-impossibility of return to political and cultural unity. Besides the use of certain culture-bound expressions, names of persons and places, religious terminology and dialects, Saadawi employs a sharp postcolonial jargon to deliver a negative message about the deteriorating Iraqi culture in particular, and the Middle East in general, which appears in the translated version that sometimes falls short of adequate representation. This research focuses on the ramifications of strategies used to translate the ST and how Saadawi’s narrative is culturally received by the TR. It investigates the strategies employed in the TT which produces stereotypical images of the Middle Eastern culture to Western readership. This means that this study will be product-oriented, and will focus on the TT and the outcomes of the translation process, which involves the selective terminologies and strategic conduct of the translation. Moreover, in the light of postcolonial critical theory and its relation to translation studies, the 43 researcher draws conclusions about the relationship between translation strategies and hegemony practiced over the text by using these strategies. The TT is thoroughly compared with the ST to account for each strategy used in the process of translation. This compression will ultimately focus on specific parts in the TT which have a massive momentum in defining the SC. In focusing on the effect(s) of using each strategy to render certain parts of the ST in Wright’s translation, the researcher evaluates the extent to which such effect(s) may be negative, positive or neutral. To make sure that the findings of this research answer the questions posed by the researcher, the data are carefully selected to represent not only the strategies used in the TP, but also to represent the various aspects of the SC, such as clothes, political terminology, food, etc. 3.1 Research Corpus Frankenstein in Baghdad is a novel written by the Iraqi novelist Ahmad Saadawi in 2013. It discusses the terror and the violence which dominated Iraq after its invasion and which culminated during and after the Iraqi civil war. In this narrative, Saadawi fashions a monster at the hands of Hadi al- Attag, a gossipy antique dealer who creates a monster which goes by the name of ”الشسمه“ or “Whatitsname”, leaving the reader and the translator bewildered and incapable of identifying or understanding this monster, its creator as well as process of creation. 44 The main concern of this research is to show how the translation of Frankenstein in Baghdad is affected by colonial discourses, what colonial aspects are directly or indirectly forced upon the translation, and the significant shifts of meaning as a consequence of translational choices made on the text. Once a reader starts reading the novel and finishes a few pages, s/he becomes soon conscious of a multi-layered crisis of identity, which is typically represented in Saadawi’s postcolonial language in Frankenstein in Baghdad. To use the words of Sheoran (2014), “the major themes in the works written in the post-colonial period have been the fragmentation and identity crisis experienced by the once colonized peoples and the important impacts of colonialism on the indigenous” (p:1). The crisis of identity cannot be only located in the identity of the monster; it also happens within the identity of each individual who plays a role in the novel. This complexity of identity crisis produces a thick narrative that pushes characters to search for a grand narrative, history or identity - the identity of the entire Iraq, which falters between the hammer of occupation and the anvil of civil war. Part of this identity crisis is the resultant complexity of the culture of the colonized people, which hugely defines the aim and scope of Frankenstein in Baghdad as postcolonial literature. In fact, the cultural background of the characters in the novel is essential to the events of the novel and its development due to certain pre-existent oriental imaginations about the Eastern culture in Western modes of thinking. Saadawi’s narrative is contextualized within an Eastern culture where readers can easily note a mixture of other nationalities such as Palestinian and Egyptian, so the 45 cultural background of Iraq becomes crucial to the understanding of the novel. The dialects the writer uses in the novel show another cultural aspect that makes this novel unique. The author uses both Iraqi and Egyptian dialects, but then he changes to standard Arabic as a mode of narration. What is more intriguing is that the monster uses standard Arabic when he/it speaks as if it signals its desire for non-belonging. This can be seen as a brilliant manipulation done by the author by combining the crisis of culture with the crisis of identity in order to present the monster to the reader. Frankenstein in Baghdad was translated to English in 2018 by Jonathan Wright. This translation is currently the only available English translation of this novel. Due to its recent publication, the researcher could not find sufficient information and resources written on this text. Yet, writing coherent research on Wright’s translation is a great opportunity to be seized, especially from a post-colonial point of view, as it touches upon recurrent Western philosophies about the old-fashioned Eastern lore. Wright is a well- known journalist and translator who worked in the Middle East for a long time, and he has a great knowledge of Arabic language and dialects, not to mention his knowledge about the cultures of the Arabic countries. Wright is a British translator who was born in 1953 in Adnover, Hampshire. He studied Arabic, Turkish, and Islamic civilization at St. John’s College, Oxford (Banipaltrust, 2013). He started his career by joining Reuters news agency in 1980. Then, he assumed several positions with the agency in many countries including USA, Germany, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia and Lebanon (Banipaltrust, 2013). 46 On August 29, 1984, Wright was kidnapped by a Palestinian group ‘Abu Nidal Organization’ in Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. The organization wanted to exchange him for members of the organization who had been imprisoned in London for attempting to assassinate the Israeli ambassador in Britain at the time, Shlomo Argov. However, Wright managed to escape two weeks later (The New York Times Archive, 1984). These examples demonstrate how Wright became well-versed in Arabic culture and politics later, and this provided him with the knowledge needed to translate texts from Arabic to English. In 2008, Wright started his translation career when he translated Egyptian novelist Khaled Al-Khamisi’s novel Taxi (2007); he then translated many major works for well-known writers from Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq (Banipaltrust, 2013). His continued presence, self-education and interaction in the Arab region earned him highly considerable levels of knowledge of the cultural and political context in this region. This knowledge of the Middle East made him an invaluable reference for postcolonial readings of Middle Eastern studies. In his translation, Wright employs various techniques to render Saadawi’s text from Arabic to English and introduces crucial changes to the body of the original text such as the deletion of what he deems unnecessary terms, phrases or sentences. These changes are caused by cultural differences between Western and Eastern systems, but the crucial issue further lies in the extent to which Wright’s final product of translation abides to serious textual faithfulness. After all, the audience at whom the translation is directed has formed a negative image about the culture of the Middle East, an image 47 where the East is demonized and considered to be the source of evil and “terrorism”. This image of the otherised Middle Eastern other can be further distorted in the translation of Saadawi’s novel, especially in rendering individualistic acts of terrorism and violence actions at the hands of Iraqi religious fanatics or political sectarians. The use of strategies will, then, be examined in light of power relations that define the West as superior, more developed than Eastern individuals. 3.2 The Descriptive Aspect of the Study To investigate “the translated text as it is” and examine its fundamental features which underlie its colonial nature (Hermans 1985, p:12-13) demands a methodology by which the researcher compares and analyzes the source and the target texts along with their cultural literary environments, as José Lambert and Hendrik Van Gorp emphasize in their work “On Describing Translations” (1985). In relying on Polysystem Theory and the communicative approach to translation, Lambert and Van Gorp explain the characteristics “of translational phenomena and offer a complex network of relations between literary systems worth considering in a descriptive study of literary translation” (Rosa 2016, p:6). This can be achieved, according to them, by collecting information about the author, the text and the reader in both the source and target cultures in order to construct a model which includes four categories of preliminary data. This model contains information about the title and general translation strategies, which describe the final conduct of translation at the macro- and micro-structural levels. At 48 the macro-level, the researcher collects information on acts, titles and presentation of sections, and text division. The information collected at the micro-level, however, includes the selection of words, forms of speech reproduction, formal literary structures and narrative perspective. At the “systemic context data”, the model finally includes “oppositions between macro- and micro-levels, as well as intertextual and intersystemic relations” (ibid). Here, the descriptive approach is used to understand and evaluate the context of the translation and consider the socio-historical conditions surrounding the process of this translation. By using the descriptive approach of analysis, the researcher assesses the impact of socio-historical conditions on Wright’s translation style, and this is not only limited to the assessment of a narrow range of equivalence. Critics and theorists of the descriptive approach highlight the centrality of the text and evaluate its norms, history, constraints and context of the TT in a specific cultural and historical period. This means that DTS theorists do not aim to apply their theories to the text in order to judge its performance and how a translator must act upon the rendition of ideology, culture and socio-political terminologies, but they rather observe how practically the translation is accomplished in a certain context. Kruger (2000) writes that “contrary to prescriptive theorists who theorize about translation and then attempt to prove these theories in practice, descriptive translation theorists start with a practical examination of a corpus of texts and systems and then attempt to extrapolate the norms and constraints operating on those texts in a specific culture and at a specific historical 49 moment” (39). To Kruger, DTS theorists seek to unfold the practical landscape of the translated texts by focusing on a certain culture and historical moment without necessarily prescribing how a translation must be done. This study employs Gideon Toury’s methodology to provide a descriptive analysis of Wright’s translation of Saadawi’s narrative. In a reaction against speculative prescriptive studies, Toury (1995) defines DTS as having the goal of producing detailed descriptions of “what it [translation] proves to be in reality” (Tour 1995, p:32). Accordingly, DTS helps to understand and explain the textual regularities by considering the correlation of translation as product, process and function, and by connecting these regularities in the process of translation with features of the sociocultural context within which they develop. Moreover, identifying relations of sequence, correlation or cause between the text and context helps to produce more refined systematic theoretical laws, which can predict what translation could be under a given set of circumstances. This methodology, according to Toury (1995:36-9 and 102), consists of three phases of systematic descriptive translation studies, which are: a. Find the place of the text within the system of the target culture, looking at its importance, significance and acceptability. b. Identify relationships between “coupled pairs” of ST and TT segments, where TT shifts are found and then compared to the ST. 50 c. Attempt to reconstruct and generalize the findings of the translation process for these “shifts” or “changes” between the ST and the TT. This methodology allows the researcher to examine TT for the methods, mental processes and choices, and what resources the translator may have used. It helps the researcher to “delve into translation as cultural and historical phenomena, to explore its context and its conditioning factors, to search for grounds that can explain why there is what there is” (Hermans 1999, p:5). What makes this methodology suitable for this kind of research is the relationship between the translation and postcolonial theory itself. The postcolonial nature of Saadawi’s text and its translation create barriers, shifts and perhaps misunderstanding due to conventional dichotomies between Western and Eastern representations of cultures, societies and political systems. As stated above, the translated text will target a specific culture, the Western culture, which is represented as superior and central. This methodology is a TT-oriented methodology, and it focuses on the translator’s use of certain techniques as the medium through which the ST moves toward the targeted audience. The researcher’s choice of this methodology, moreover, is enhanced by the fact that this translation is the first, most recent and only translation for this novel. It, thus, becomes important to offer a descriptive analysis and evaluation of Wright’s translation to form a solid basis for future research on this text. Research that classifies and describes 51 the strategies and procedures used during the translation will lay the foundation for other translation and comparative studies to come. 3.3 The Analytical Aspect of the Study Working with such methodology needs a well-defined analytical model to describe such “shifts” or “changes”. This research adopts the model of Vinay and Darbelnet to categorize the procedures the translator used in his translation. Other models such as Catford’s “shifts” are considered suitable references to be used and are referred to in this research. 3.4 Translation Strategies, Procedures and Methods Various classifications and taxonomies for procedures, i.e. strategies, are employed for translating cultural terms. The focus of this research, however, is on one of the well-known leading taxonomies, which is proposed by Vinay and Darbelnet. Their model consists of seven basic translation “procedures” divided into two general translation “strategies” (Vinay and Darbelnet 2004, p:128-137). Other scholars have improved and reformulated Vinay and Darbelnet’s classification and bisected the previous procedures into more distinct sub- categories. One of the most famous modifications for this model is the one suggested by Vázquez Ayora (1977, p:251-383). In his modified model, he differentiates between direct methods (literal translation, calque, and loan) and oblique translation procedures (adaptation, modulation, compensation, omission, explication, amplification, transposition and equivalence). 52 Another scholar who expands the model to account for problems of textual nature is Hurtado (1999, p:36-37). The strategies he suggests as a solution for such issues are description, extension, compression, discursive creation, amplification, particularization, generalization, reduction, variation and paralinguistic or linguistic substitution. Moreover, other studies focus on other translation strategies, which are used when handling cultural terms. For example, Graedler (2010, p:3) mentions four strategies, which are inventing a new word, clarifying the meaning of SL term instead of translating it, leaving the SL term as it is (borrowing), and using any expression which achieves the same “relevance” of the SL term. The procedures and strategies, which the researcher outlines in this section, include seven procedures derived from Vinay and Darbelnet’s model; the second six ones are borrowed from Hurtado’s later modifications or elaborations of the previous model, i.e. Vinay’s model. In short words, these procedures are: 1. Borrowing: This procedure means that the SL term is taken and transferred as it is to the TL without translating it. Such procedure is used to pinpoint a gap in the TL semantic system and/or to add a flavor to the TT. An example of this from the ST is the name of place باب الشرقي, which was borrowed to the TT as Bab al-Sharqi. 53 2. Calque: It is “a special kind of borrowing” (Vinay and Darbelnet 2004, p:129-130). Instead of borrowing the whole term from the ST, part of the term is borrowed and the rest of it is translated literally. For example, حي البتاويين is translated to Al-bataween District. 3. Literal translation: This is a “word-for-word” translation (Vinay and Darbelnet 2004, p:130- 132). It occurs, mostly, when the translation takes place between languages that belong to the same family. Here, “word-for-word” means to translate the ST to a TT with a slight change to fit within the TT language’s syntactic system. Style in this procedure has no importance. For example, the ST term .is translated literally to government spokesman ناطق باسم الحكومة The aforementioned procedures, according to Vinay and Darbelnet, form the direct translation strategy. 4. Transposition: Transposition happens when a grammatical category is changed to another, or when a part of speech is replaced with another. The sense of the translated text is not affected by the changes to the ST. Transposition seems clear when word classes are not committed, where an adverb, for example, can be translated to an adjective, but the meaning is still the same of course. An example for this procedure is the translation of the ST term حزبي to the TT as party member. 54 5. Modulation: This procedure “is a variation of the form of the message, obtained by a change in the point of view”. Its use is justified on the basis that “when, although a literal, or even transposed, translation results in a grammatically correct utterance, it is considered unsuitable, unidiomatic or awkward in the TL” (2004, p:133). This rephrasing is done to make the text more acceptable in the TL. The translation of the ST استر على نفسك احسن to You’d better keep low profile is an example of this procedure. 6. Equivalence: This term refers to the ability of languages to describe the same situation “using completely different stylistic and structural methods” (2004, p:134), like in the case of translating proverbs, idioms, clichés and nominal or adjectival phrases. An example of this procedure from the ST is the translation of غول to the TT as a hideous dragon. 7. Adaptation: This procedure is used when a situation is unknown in the TC. The translator, at this point, has to come up with a completely new situation that is known to the TR and has the same effect of the original one in the SC. An example is the translation of the ST term معسل to tobacco. The previous four procedures altogether form the oblique translation strategy in Vinay and Darbelnet’s model. 55 8. Omission, Reduction, condensation, compression: The four terms aim to minimize and suppress the information of a SL term. The translator uses them when he/she deems such information as unnecessary or unworthy of translation, or when the term could be misleading or does not have the same function in the TC. For example, the deletion of the ST term مرقة from the ST وفاصوليا ومرقة when it was رز translated to the TT as rice and beans. 9. Diffusion, Expansion, Amplification, Explication: In contrast with the previous procedures, these four terms aim to extra- translate a given cultural term. Explication, according to Vazquez Ayora (1977, p: 349), is to make what is implicit in the context of the ST explicit in the TT by supplying more information and details which are not expressed clearly in the ST. In the other three procedures, i.e., amplification, expansion and diffusion,1 more words are used in the TT to explain the same idea in the ST. An example of this is the translation of the ST اجتثاث البعث to the TT as de-Baathification regulations. 10. Description: The translator uses a description of the form or function of the SL term instead of translating it. This procedure is considered as a sub-category of the previous one. This is used with calque or borrowing to describe the 1 “Amplification” Vazquez Ayora (1977, p:137), “Expansion” Vinay and Darbelnet (2004, p:184), “Diffusion” Malone (1988, p 45). 56 meaning of the original word especially if it is new or recently coined. The translation of the ST term مناحة to the TT as weeping and wailing performance is an example of this procedure. 11. Particularization: Some terms, when translated, become ambiguous. This procedure removes the ambiguity in the TT by using hyponyms or more precise terms in the TL. An example of this procedure is the translation of the ST كناتير to kitchen and office units. 12. Generalization: Contrary to the previous procedure, hypernyms, or more general expressions, of the TL terms are used to replace the SL ones. An example of this procedure is the translation of the ST اآلمرلي to the TT as old man. 13. Substitution: This procedure, according to Hurtado (1999, p:36), is the replacement of a paralinguistic element in the ST by a linguistic term in the TT or vice versa, as in the cases of gestures and intonations. The researcher examines these strategies in J. Wright’s translation to show how the strategies employed during translation can shift and affect the semantic topography of the text, particularly from a post-colonial perspective. 57 Chapter Four Data Analysis 58 Chapter Four Data Analysis 4.1 Introduction Comparing the source text with its translated version in the light of post- colonial theory is a very challenging task. The ST’s linguistic items must be compared with their counterparts in the TT in order to describe and analyze the translator’s choices which she/he opts for in the process of translation; the challenge in this lies in the fact that translation procedures can tend to have some similarities or intersections like adaptation and equivalence. It is important to note here that the translator is in fact another/second author who, as suggested by some critics such as Bassnett, has the authority to intervene in the translation of a text to lessen the effect of white supremacy, while other critics, such as Louis G. Kelly, believes that translators should be faithful to the text and change only what is regarded as minor revisions. In this regard, Tymoczko states that “there is no obvious opponent or ideological target to which resistance in general can be presumed to refer”, a statement which clearly shows that “the object of resistance is unstated and vague” (2010, 8). As mentioned before, this research tries to answer questions about the relationship between the cultural and political ideology of the TT and the choices made to the original text while translating Al-Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad. Therefore, the researcher will present the data he 59 has collected from both the ST and the TT based on the classifications outlined earlier in chapter three. Then, he will analyse these data and try to demonstrate and describe the politico-cultural hegemony practiced on the ST, and to what extent this ideology interferes with the process of translation. 4.2 Collected data and analysis In this section, examples are collected and commented on to show how the translation was influenced a certain cultural, social and political conflicts that created incongruent power relations between the ST and the TT. 60 Table (1):