Translation as a Set of Frames: Ideology, Power, Discourse, Identity & Representation 9780367456962, 9780367456979, 9781003024828

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TRANSLATION AS A SET OF FRAMES

Envisioned as a much needed celebration of the massive strides made in translation and interpreting studies, this eclectic volume takes stock of the latest cutting-edge research that exemplifies how translation and interpreting might interact with such topics as power, ideological discourse, representation, hegemony and identity. In this exciting volume, we have articles from different language combinations (e.g. Arabic, English, Hungarian and Chinese) and from a wide range of sociopolitical, cultural, and institutional contexts and geographical locales (China, Iran, Malaysia, Russia and Nigeria). Those chapters also draw on a diverse range of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches (e.g. critical discourse analysis, Bourdieu’s sociological theories, corpus linguistics, narrative theory and structuration theory), focusing on translation and interpreting relating to various settings and specialised genres (traditional media, digital media, subtitling, manga, etc.). As such, this volume serves as a dynamic forum for intercultural and interlingual communication and an exciting arena for interdisciplinary dialogues, thus enabling us to look beyond the traditionally more static, mechanical and linguistics-oriented views of translation and interpreting. This book appeals to scholars and students interested in translation and interpreting studies and issues of power, ideology, and identity in interlingual and intercultural communication. Ali Almanna is Associate Professor of Linguistics and Translation at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar. Chonglong Gu is Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Chinese Translation Studies and programme director of MA in Chinese-English Translation and Interpreting at the University of Liverpool.

Routledge Studies in Language and Identity Series Editor: Reem Bassiouney

The Routledge Studies in Language and Identity (RSLI) series aims to examine the intricate relation between language and identity from different perspectives. The series straddles fields such as sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, applied linguistics, historical linguistics and linguistic anthropology. It aims to study identity and language by utilizing novel methods of analysis as well as groundbreaking theoretical approaches. Titles in Series: Language, Identity, and Syrian Political Activism on Social Media Francesco L. Sinatora Mixing and Unmixing Languages Romani Multilingualism in Kosovo Amelia Abercrombie Research Companion to Language and Country Branding Edited by Irene Theodoropoulou Translation as a Set of Frames Ali Almanna and Chonglong Gu Languages, Identities and Intercultural Communication in South Africa and Beyond Russell H Kaschula For more titles, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-Languageand-Identity/book-series/RSLI

TRANSLATION AS A SET OF FRAMES

Edited by Ali Almanna and Chonglong Gu

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Ali Almanna and Chonglong Gu; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Ali Almanna and Chonglong Gu to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-45696-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-45697-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-02482-8 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

List of tablesvii List of figuresix Editorsx Acknowledgementsxiii Setting the agenda: translation as a set of frames xiv   1 Interpreters as key agents in reframing interwar power relations: the Paris Peace Conference as narrative turning point Elena Aguirre Fernández Bravo and Asunción Taboada Lanza

1

  2 Framing translation as Discourse and discourse Said Faiq

17

  3 Agency changes in manga translation Yean Fun Chow and Hasuria Che Omar

32

  4 Translation: Reinforcing or challenging hegemony? Reflections on a structurationist approach to power and hegemony Shabnam Saadat   5 Translating Nigeria: reconceptualising Nigerian fiction in French translations Ifeoluwa Oloruntoba

49

65

vi Contents

  6 Translation, resistance and national consciousness in the Nigerian postcolony Francis Ajayi   7 (Un)biased exegetes: “Moderate Islamism” and the reframing of Islam and the Muslim world in the aftermath of 9/11, 2001 Hajer Ben Hadj Salem   8 “Domesticating” Saudi Arabia: news “transediting”, representations and power negotiation Asma Alqunayir   9 Russia and Vladimir Putin framed on China’s video-sharing platform Bilibili: an analysis of strategic audio-visual narrative Wang Rui 10 Hedging in interpreted speech: cognitive hedges in English and Hungarian interpreting Andrea Götz

80

95

110

128

147

11 Reframing Arabic metaphorical expressions in English subtitles: the case of Noom El Talat165 Amer Al-Adwan and Mohammed Ahmed Thawabteh 12 Celestial bodies: a case of reframing Omani realities through translation Musallam Al-Ma’ani and Areej Al Jamaei

180

13 Translating “nation” in late Qing China: the discourse and power of nation in the remaking of Chinese society, 1895–1911 Qing Cao

193

14 Eliza’s two voices and the transformation of women’s identity in China Yu Jing

209

Index223

TABLES

1.1

Misrepresentations of Germany’s agency in her willingness to submit to the Allies 1.2 Lexical choices delegitimising Germany through verbal expressions of her surrender of power 1.3 Verbal coercion strategies expressed through the sense of urgency 1.4 Number of times Germany is referred to the PCIJ in the Locarno Treaties 2.1 Literary translations from Arabic in the UK & Ireland 3.1 Components in manga proposed by Natsume (1997) and McCloud (2006) 3.2 Distribution of the parallel corpus used by this study 3.3 Modes and semiotic resources used in manga 8.1 UK-based dailies 8.2 Dailies based in Arab countries 8.3 Saudi Arabia-based dailies 8.4 The identity subthemes 8.5 The action and status subthemes 8.6 The relations subthemes 8.7 “Women” collocation relationship 8.8 “Says” collocation relationship 8.9 “Adds” collocation relationship 8.10 The self and the other most frequent pronouns 10.1 The properties of the corpus and its subcorpora 10.2 The properties of the interpreted English subcorpus by type of interpreting 10.3 The frequency of hedges in English and Hungarian discourse 10.4 The linguistic motivation of I think

11 12 12 14 23 35 37 38 114 114 114 115 115 115 117 118 118 119 152 152 153 154

viii Tables

10.5 10.6 10.7 10.8 10.9 10.10 10.11 10.12 10.13 10.14 10.15 10.16 10.17 10.18 11.1 12.1 13.1

The linguistic motivation of gondolom and hiszem The frequency of unmotivated hedges The frequency of I think by the first language of interpreters The frequency of motivated and unmotivated I think tokens The absolute frequency of source- and target-oriented hedges in interpreted English and Hungarian The frequency of I think by gender in interpreted English The frequency of gondolom (“I think”) and hiszem (“I believe”) by gender in interpreted Hungarian The linguistic motivation of hedges in interpreted English discourse by gender The linguistic motivation of hedges in interpreted Hungarian discourse by gender The frequency of motivated and unmotivated I think tokens in interpreted English The frequency of motivated and unmotivated gondolom (“I think”) and hiszem (“I believe”) tokens in interpreted English The frequency of unmotivated I think tokens across native English and Hungarian speaking interpreters by gender The frequency of source- (SO) and target-oriented (TO) hedges in interpreted English by gender The frequency of source- (SO) and target-oriented (TO) hedges in interpreted Hungarian by gender Strategies for subtitling metaphors and their frequency Comparison between ST and TT Different translations of “nation”

154 155 155 155 156 158 158 159 159 159 159 159 159 160 171 185 197

FIGURES

  2.1 Most translated Arab authors in the UK and Ireland   4.1 The dimensions of the duality of structures   9.1 “The Observer • Putin” thematic page from the Observer website (produced by kind permission of the Observer)   9.2 Screenshot from the video, “A grand presidential inauguration has taken place in the Kremlin, opening Putin’s fourth term”. The subtitle is a mistranslation (produced by kind permission of the Observer)   9.3 Screenshots from “Seeing a veteran pushed away by a security guard, Putin walks directly over to him”. The title explains the content of the video (produced by kind permission of the Observer)   9.4 Screenshots from the video titled “High five! Putin and Saudi crown prince interacted enthusiastically at the G20 Summit”, illustrating the addition of punctuation and special effects to Russian source videos (produced by kind permission of the Observer)   9.5 Screenshots from the video titled “High five! Putin and Saudi crown prince interacted enthusiastically at the G20 Summit”, illustrating the addition of photos to Russian source videos (produced by kind permission of the Observer)   9.6 Screenshots from the video titled “The emperor is angry! Putin responds harshly to new sanctions against Russia”, illustrating the addition of the RT logo, the names of the news source and editors, and a short animation to Russian source videos (produced by kind permission of the Observer) 13.1 Word frequency of key concepts, 1903–1926 13.2 Word frequency of key concepts, 1830–1930

24 51 131

139 140

141

142

143 205 205

EDITORS

Ali Almanna has a PhD in translation studies from the University of Durham

(UK) and an MA in translation studies from Westminster University (UK). Currently, he is Associate Professor of linguistics and translation at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar. His recent publications include The Routledge Course in Translation Annotation (Routledge), Semantics for Translation Students (Peter Lang), The Nuts and Bolts of Arabic-English Translation (Cambridge Scholars Publishing), The Arabic-English Translator as Photographer (Routledge) and ReFraming Realities through Translation (Peter Lang). Chonglong Gu  is Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Chinese Translation Studies

and Programme Director of MA in Chinese-English Translation and Interpreting at the University of Liverpool. Chonglong holds an MA in conference interpreting and translation studies (Leeds University) and a PhD in interpreting studies (Manchester University). His recent academic writings have appeared in Target, The Translator, Perspectives, Discourse, Context and Media, Critical Discourse Studies, Translation and Interpreting Studies, and various book chapters (Routledge, Springer, Peter Lang, etc.).

Contributors Francis Ajayi is a graduate of the humanities PhD program in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. His current research interests include postcolonial translation theory, nationalism, postcoloniality and African-Europhone literatures, and religio-cultural conceptualisation of translation in pre-colonial African communities.

Editors  xi

Amer Al-Adwan is an assistant professor of audiovisual translation at Hamad Bin

Khalifa University (HBKU). He obtained his doctorate in translation and intercultural studies from the University of Manchester/UK. Before joining HBKU, he worked at Jordan University and the Applied Science University. He has also worked for few international institutions, including BBC Arabic and Aljazeera English, as a translator and a subtitler.

Musallam Al-Ma’ani is Associate Professor at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU).

He is the author of two military dictionaries: Dictionary of Contemporary Military Abbreviations and Dictionary of Sultan’s Armed Forces Military Terms, both of which are in-house references for the Sultan’s Armed Forces in Oman. He has also published on general and technical translation.

Asma Alqunayir is an assistant professor at Qassim University, Saudi Arabia.

She holds a master’s degree in Arabic-English translation and interpreting from the University of Durham (UK) with distinction. She also holds a PhD from the University of Durham in translation studies.

Hajer Ben Hadj Salem is an assistant professor at the High Institute of Humanities of Tunis, Tunisia. She is currently a visiting assistant professor at the department of English at Al Zahra College for Women, Muscat. She was a Fulbright visiting scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2002–3 and 2006. She earned a PhD in American studies in 2010. Elena Aguirre Fernández Bravo, PhD, is Director of the MA in Conference Interpret-

ing at the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Multilingual Communication, Universidad Pontificia Comillas. Her research areas are (meta)cognition in interpreter training and the role of interpreters in the interplay between power and discourse.

Qing Cao is Associate Professor in Chinese studies at the School of Modern Lan-

guages and Cultures, Durham University. His research focuses on the role of mass media and social changes. He is the author of China under Western Gaze (2014). His most recent publications include a co-edited book Brand China in the Media, Transformation of Identities (2019).

Andrea Götz is a research fellow at Károli Gáspár University in Budapest, Hun-

gary. Her research interests include corpus-based translation and interpreting studies, corpus pragmatics, contrastive linguistics, and discourse markers. She is a co-founder of the Pannonia Corpus, a large Hungarian translation and interpreting corpus, which has provided data for several research projects.

Said Faiq, FRSA, is a professor of intercultural studies and translation at the American University of Sharjah (UAE). Prior to this, he worked in Africa, the

xii Editors

Middle East and the United Kingdom. He is a teacher and researcher of inter/ cultural studies. His research sits at the interface of intercultural communication, media and representation, translation/interpreting, English and linguistics. He has published extensively on these areas. Yean Fun Chow is a senior lecturer in the Translation and Interpreting Studies Section, School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia. Her research interests include Japanese translation, Chinese translation and media and translation. Yu Jing is Associate Professor with the School of Foreign Languages at Shanghai Jiao Tong University with a PhD degree in translation and interpreting studies from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research interests include literary translation, the translation of dialects in literature, audio-visual translation and translation theory. Asunción Taboada Lanza holds a dual degree in international relations, transla-

tion and interpreting with a focus on public policy, security and diplomacy (Universidad Pontificia Comillas). She is currently studying for a NOHA master’s in international humanitarian action, and her research in translation and interpreting is narrowly linked to diplomacy.

Ifeoluwa Oloruntoba holds a PhD in anglophone studies from Université d’Orléans in France and is a member of RÉMÉLICE. Her research interests are in translation and the French reception of anglophone African literature. Hasuria Che Omar is Associate Professor in the Translation and Interpreting

Studies Section, School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia. Her research interests include audiovisual translation and media and translation.

Wang Rui is a PhD student at the University of Manchester. Her research interests are located at the intersection of audio-visual translation studies, digital media studies and strategic narrative studies. She is currently working on the online remediation of Russian audio-visual strategic narratives by a Chinese statealigned media agent. Shabnam Saadat holds a PhD in translation and intercultural studies from the University of Manchester. After leaving her teaching position at the University of Allameh Tabatabai, she cooperated in projects with Microsoft and Oxford’s global languages. Her main research interests are the sociology of translation, hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discourses in translation, collaborative translation, and translation in cyberspace. Mohammed Ahmad Thawabteh is Associate Professor of translation at Al-Quds University, Palestine. His research interests include translator training, translation studies, pragmatics, cultural studies and discourse analysis.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We owe a debt of gratitude to many people for their meticulous feedback on the manuscript. In particular, we would like to thank: Mohammed Zagood, Beata B. Piecychna, Jawad Kadhim Jabir, Muhammad Fawzi Alghazi, Juan José MartínezSierra, Jasim Al-Maryani, Khaled Tawfik, Hussein Huwail, Rafik Jamoussi, Hala kh Najim, Aladdin Kharabsheh, Musaab A. Raheem Al-Khazaali, Muayyad J. Juma, Hesham Mohammed Abu Mostafa and Balsam Mustafa.

SETTING THE AGENDA: TRANSLATION AS A SET OF FRAMES

Since the genesis of translation and interpreting as standalone areas of scholarly investigation, translation and interpretation (T&I) have made huge strides over the past few decades. Moving beyond the initial preoccupations with such concepts as “equivalent”, whether the most “accurate” rendition has been provided and the prescriptivist diktat in terms of what the correct and best translation or interpretation should or must be like, attention now has gradually shifted to the examination of translation and interpreting as socially embedded activities that are mediated by agents, subject to ideological mediation and often caught up in intricate power relations within a range of historical, sociopolitical, cultural and institutional contexts. Indeed, within this strand of scholarly enquiry, a limited yet certainly growing range of studies have explored the nexus between T&I, ideology, discourse and power in various settings and geographical localities, drawing, for example, on (critical) discourse analysis (Beaton-Thome, 2013; Gu & Tipton, 2020; Hatim & Mason, 1990; Kang, 2007; Munday, 2007; Schäffner, 2012; Valdeón, 2007; Wang & Feng, 2018; Zhang, 2013) and more recently the narrative theory (Baker, 2006; Harding, 2011; Kim, 2018). In fact, translation and interpreting can be conceptualised as a set of frames (Almanna, 2020, pp. 1–5), where different versions of fact, truth and reality are reflected, enacted, mediated, (re)constructed, (re)framed, (re)narrated and even manipulated and contested in the process. Notably, as major agents in the interlingual and intercultural communication process, translators and interpreters are often not ideologically neutral but might mediate in the process and effect change possibly on a greater scale regionally and globally. This is particularly true, given the increasingly interconnected and mediatised world we are living in in the 21st century. This points to the great relevance and imperative to conceptualise the translation and interpreting product as essentially a kind of discourse and look

Setting the agenda  xv

at translation and interpreting as a mediated activity that is closely related with issues of ideology, power, agency, identity, hegemony and representation, beyond the traditional source text-oriented lenses that focus on “equivalence” or “accuracy” merely on a linguistic level. Envisioned as a much-needed celebration of the massive strides made in T&I, this eclectic volume takes stock of the latest cutting-edge research that exemplifies how translation and interpreting might interact with such topics as power, ideological discourse, representation, hegemony and identity. In this exciting volume, we have articles from different language combinations (e.g. Arabic, English, Hungarian and Chinese) and from a wide range of sociopolitical, cultural and institutional contexts and geographical locales (China, Iran, Malaysia, Russia and Nigeria). Those chapters draw on a diverse range of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches (e.g. critical discourse analysis, Bourdieu’s sociological theories, corpus linguistics, narrative theory and structuration theory), focusing on translation and interpreting relating to various settings and specialised genres (traditional media, digital media, subtitling, manga, etc.). More importantly, this volume serves as a dynamic forum for intercultural and interlingual communication and an exciting arena for interdisciplinary dialogues. As we look beyond the traditionally more static and mechanical views of translation and interpreting as semi-closed systems and self-contained practices, it is high time we perceived T&I in brand new ways. Looking beyond an “inwardlooking” view of T&I, in this volume, we as editors call wholeheartedly for an “external turn” in translation and interpreting studies to seek further interdisciplinary dialogues and dynamic collaborations with such areas as intercultural communication, international relations, social and political sciences, media studies, journalism, history, discourse studies and literature. As T&I have gone through the teething troubles, come of age and now have entered into maturity, it is about time we celebrated those remarkable achievements and readied ourselves to venture out into the future.

Structure of the volume The chapters contained in this volume present an opportunity to reconsider international connections and conflicts from the specific standpoint of Translation and Interpreting (T&I) as a dynamic and socially engaged activity carried out by various stakeholders and not just by a translator or interpreter alone. Chapter  1 by Elena Aguirre Fernández Bravo and Asunción Taboada Lanza looks into the role of diplomatic interpreters as tools for exerting symbolic power (Bourdieu, 1991, p.  170) in the negotiation of the Treaty of Versailles, and the repercussions thereof in reframing the totalising grand narrative (Lyotard, 1979) that prevailed in politics throughout the interwar period on the basis of the following assumption: the choice of English and French as the Paris Peace Conference’s main working languages (and the subsequent exclusion of German) had a direct impact on the ensuing conformation of alliances and animosities among the parties

xvi  Setting the agenda

involved in the negotiations and, therefore, in world politics. An interdisciplinary approach drawing on sources from International Relations, Interpreting Studies, and, most specifically, the dynamics between language and power addressed by critical discourse analysis will be used to analyse a corpus of minutes of conferences organised by the League of Nations between the years 1918 and 1943. In Chapter 2, Said Faiq is of the view that translation represents realities through the deployment of strategies that produce texts (translations) normally to target audiences, who have systems for the mediation of information and knowledge. The systems have a higher-level order, Discourse (D), which regulates a lowerlevel order, discourse (d). D covers aspects such as ideology, politics, agency, and d covers language (discursive) choices as well as symbols and images associated with particular communities. So, translation as D-discourse means negotiating translation as D, which in turn fashions translation as d and where d reflects D. Framing translation as D-discourse and drawing on instances of literary translation from Arabic, Chapter 2 explores how sources are turned into targets by an established D-d for the production and consumption of meanings. Chapter 3 explores the changes of agency in applying multimodality in translation by Malaysian manga translators and publishers. In their chapter, Yean Fun Chow and Hasuria Che Omar conclude that written messages, which exist in various forms of speech balloons, are given salience by translators. The modal affordance of writing mode in the target language is rarely expanded to convey a more comprehensive meaning in translations. Nevertheless, the translations published in 2010s show that the translators and publishers utilised the typography and layout modes to complement the mode of writing to convey a more complete message. This proves that there is an increasing awareness of the importance of utilising multimodal ensembles to preserve meaning in manga translation in the Malaysian context. Drawing on a sociological perspective, Chapter  4 introduces Anthony Giddens’ theory of structuration to explore its potential usefulness for addressing the concept. While Giddens’ theory is instrumental in conceptualising the relationship between translators’ actions and the rules and resources conditioning them, it also offers distinctive insights into the analysis of power in a more holistic framework. Structuration theory not only addresses the asymmetrical hierarchy of power but also allows ample space for resistance and change. In her chapter, Shabnam Saadat examines the potential applicability of structuration theory to conceptualising translation activity and makes a case for a structurationist interpretation of power and hegemony. Post-revolution Iran is used as a case where illustrative instances of prominent asymmetries of power, hegemony and counterhegemony can be found. The case of translation activity in post-revolution Iran illuminates how socio-political structures condition translators’ actions and decisions, how translators might contribute to reinforcing or flouting the structural context within which they operate and how external controlling measures can also engender unforeseen consequences.

Setting the agenda  xvii

Research on Nigerian literary texts written in English and translated into French has mainly involved the text itself. Chapter  5 furthers the scholarship by examining the elements that surround the texts. Drawing on narrative theory, the notion of framing and imagology studies, Ifeoluwa Oloruntoba investigates the construction of Nigerian literary works translated from English into French between 1953 and 2013 through their peritexts. The study reveals a tendency to reconstruct the translations as ethnographies in France. This is achieved through selective appropriation, labelling and generic shifts. The reconceptualisation of these works as documentation of Nigerian culture reinforces the negative images of Nigeria. It downplays the literary qualities of the works and can prevent the French readers from engaging with them from a different standpoint. Interdisciplinary in nature and drawing on translation and literary studies, in Chapter  6 Francis Ajayi revisits the politics of ethnographic representation in Africa and its centrality to the perpetuation of Western misrepresentations of African civilisation to expose the role of orality and translation in capturing and exposing the Nigerian post-colony’s past struggles for cultural emancipation and current yearning for self-purification in view of the contemporaneous social realities dogging the nation. Further, Ajayi discusses the need to forge a national consciousness in a nation-space fractured along ethno-religious lines. Although translation played a significant role in perpetuating negative stereotypes about Nigeria and reinforcing unequal power relations in the colonial state, it would, in the postcolonial era, lend itself to the purposes of resisting Western hegemony and the sociocultural, economic and political inequalities that threaten the integrity of the nation-space. Through a literary analysis of postcolonial novels, Ajayi showcases Nigerian literary artists’ attempts at replacing dehumanising colonial narratives on Nigerian civilisation with more positive accounts that celebrate Nigerian humanity through a deliberate infusion of native oral aesthetics and realities into the language of colonialist imposition. On September 11, 2001, Americans woke up to the nightmare of devastating terrorist attacks conducted on their home soil. As news organisations were quick to identify the villains of the 9/11 attacks, the American public relied heavily on TV for information. To compensate for the dearth of information on Islam, American Muslims were frequently selected as media sources. Newsrooms held mass-mediated debates, where scholars and leaders of mainstream American Muslim organisations acted as translators and interpreters of Quranic texts inciting violence. Drawing on CNN, Fox News and The New York Times transcripts and other primary sources, Hajer Ben Hadj Salem in Chapter  7 examines the role played by leaders of American Muslim organisations and American Muslim scholars, as representatives of a suspect community, in translating and interpreting Islamic teachings to the uninformed American public and media. Firstly, the chapter investigates the extent to which their interpretations reinforced the media and government-sponsored binary post-9/11 ideological construct of “moderate Muslims” versus “terrorists”. Secondly, it gauges the efficiency of their discourse

xviii  Setting the agenda

as an alternative to the time-honoured Orientalist discourse on Islam and Muslims in the West. Translators in newsrooms routinely apply the strategy of transediting, which might lead to manipulation in translation. Asma Alqunayir, in Chapter 8, investigates, firstly, the key themes that the BBC Monitoring Middle East (BBCM-M) service tended to focus on when reporting on Saudi Arabia from Arabic news output from 2013 to 2015 in relation to other British news sources reporting in English, secondly, the representation of Saudi Arabia in relation to gender, authority and agency, and the extent to which it contributed to such representation and, thirdly, the power dynamics between the Arabic source and English target texts through transediting. This chapter reveals three key themes that characterise the BBCM-M’s coverage of Saudi Arabia: identity, action and status and relations. Moreover, the chapter shows that Saudi Arabia is represented as full of men with authority. Importantly, this representation is “anchored” to stereotypical “social representations” (Moscovici, 2000) that fit into the “system of representations” of Arabs and Muslims in Western media and literature (Said, 1978). The paper also exposes a power imbalance in favour of English both prior to and during the “transediting” process, which enabled the active contributions of BBCM-M professionals to this representation. This chapter demonstrates how translation in a cross-cultural context such as news translation can be an apparatus of “coloniality of power and knowledge” (Quijano, 2000). It also shows how a certain “system of representations” can be sustained across time, languages and cultures via the constant reproduction of certain images that “anchor” the same “social representations” that exist in that system. As a distinctive political leader, Russian president Vladimir Putin generally enjoys high-profile exposure in the global mediascape. In today’s digitally networked media environment, Putin’s popularity in China encourages Chinese media agents to collect videos about him that were originally broadcast on Russian state TV, which are then edited, translated, subtitled and recirculated on Chinese websites. In Chapter 9, Wang Rui adopts the strategic narrative conceptual framework, according to which political actors work to frame their own images, those of other actors and those of the world, by promoting a set of preferred narratives aiming to gain strategic advantages for themselves. She explores this phenomenon through a case study based on videos produced by Russian international broadcaster RT, which are then mediated by the Chinese state-aligned video uploader the Observer and published on a major Chinese video sharing website, Bilibili. This study examines how the uploader orients its Chinese audience towards particular interpretations of Russia and Putin using various audiovisual translation strategies. It also assesses the challenge the Observer faces in retaining its political narrative standpoint on the one hand and catering to Bilibili users’ entertainment needs in the quest for new audiences on the other. Chapter 10 by Andrea Götz investigates the use of cognitive hedges in English and Hungarian in European Parliamentary (EP) interpreting. The frequency and functions of the hedges I think and its Hungarian counterparts are contrasted

Setting the agenda  xix

between the original and interpreted discourses, female and male interpreters, and native and non-native speaking interpreters of English. The author concludes that in this institutional setting interpreters use more hedges than speakers, while female interpreters use hedges more frequently than men. However, the two interpreting directions show substantial differences, underlining the observation made by other studies on EP interpreting that beyond gender cross-linguistic differences also play a role in shaping interpreted political discourse. Chapter 11 investigates a problematic issue that subtitlers frequently encounter, namely the translation of Arabic metaphorical expressions into English. In their chapter, Amer Al-Adwan and Mohammad Ahmad Thawabteh examine the translation of these expressions in the Egyptian comic film Noom El Talat, which is subtitled into English and shown online on Netflix. The analysis reveals that subtitlers have mainly resorted to four strategies when transferring the frames triggered by various types of metaphors into English: image transfer, image substitution, reduction to sense and omission. The analysis also shows that most of the identified metaphorical expressions have been sacrificed. Further, it is observed that some Arabic metaphorical expressions have been inaccurately subtitled into English in their given context, which often clash with the visual channel of the original film. Therefore, the English subtitles have often communicated a less vivid and less humorous version of the film’s dialogues. The 1980s signalled what is termed the “cultural turn” in translation studies, where attention has gradually shifted to the various sociocultural dimensions and translation has been perceived, for example, as “rewriting”. As rewriting, translation brings together such variables as ideology, power and the dominant poetics. In Chapter 12, Musallam Al-Maani and Areej Al-Jamaei hold that the product of a rewriting process is a translation (target text) that is mostly fashioned by target audience poetics and ideology. Framing translation as rewriting and adopting a descriptive methodology, they explore the translation of the novel ‫سيدات القمر‬, literally meaning The Ladies of Moon, by the Omani author Jokha Alharthi from Arabic into English as Celestial Bodies, with a focus on an exploration of the rewriting that went into translating. The possible reasons for doing so are also posited. Drawing on the idea of translation as conceptual transfer, Chapter 13 by Qing Cao examines the translation and discursive formations of “nation” in late Qing China, focusing on the pivotal years between the 1895 Jiawu defeat and the 1911 Xinhai Revolution. Three aspects of the negotiation of meanings of “nation” form the focus here: (1) the way in which different renditions of nation are temporally enmeshed with traditional episteme and spatially reconfigured by mediating between the Chinese reality and the Western concept; (2) how different understandings of nation led to different discourses of nation and therefore different programmes of action; and (3) how the discourses of nation reconfigured China’s epistemological atlas and contributed to the transformation of China from a traditional empire to a modern nation-state. Far from being a linear linguistic transfer of ideas across civilisational boundaries, translating “nation” arguably is part and

xx  Setting the agenda

parcel of China’s socio-political struggle to cope with the onset of modernity to survive in the Western-dominated “modern” world. It seemingly is a complex practice of appropriating, negotiating or resisting foreign values, institutions and practices for China’s own domestic purposes. Translation represents a powerful tool in constructing, reinforcing, challenging and subverting ideologies about identity. In Chapter 14, Yu Jing approaches identity and translation from the perspective of narrative theory, focusing on how the female identity has been (re)framed in (re)translations as illustrated in a case study of two canonised Chinese translations of Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. Eliza’s Cockney voice plays a central role in the play for the construction and transformation of her social and gender identities. While she was given a voice different from that of Higgins in both translations, the two voices were imbedded with divergent sociocultural connotations which (dis)engendered her identities and redefined the power dynamic in the play. Paratextual devices were used in both translations to streamline the multiple themes intended by Shaw and orient the narrative towards first a feminist story and then one about social emancipation. The paradox between social status and gender identity for Chinese women revealed in the case study shows that gender identities are negotiated and constructed in translation, rather than simply being transferred into the target culture. Such negotiation and construction are motivated by the political and cultural agenda about women advocated by the translation agents or by the mainstream ideology. Ali Almanna and Chonglong Gu

Bibliography Almanna, A. (2020). Introduction: Translation as a set of frames. In A. Almanna & J. J. Martínez Sierra (Eds.), Reframing Realities through Translation (Vol. 32, pp.  1–10). Oxford: Peter Lang. Baker, M. (2006). Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account. London and New York: Routledge. Beaton-Thome, M. (2013). What’s in a word? Your enemy combatant is my refugee: The role of simultaneous interpreters in negotiating the lexis of Guantánamo in the European Parliament. Journal of Language and Politics, 12(3), 378–99. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gu, C., & Tipton, R. (2020). (Re-)voicing Beijing’s discourse through self-referentiality: A  corpus-based CDA analysis of government interpreters’ discursive mediation at China’s political press conferences (1998–2017). Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice, 28(3), 406–23. Harding, S. (2011). Translation and the circulation of competing narratives from the wars in Chechnya: A case study from the 2004 Beslan hostage disaster. Meta, 56(1), 42–62. Hatim, B., & Mason, I. (1990). Discourse and the Translator. London: Longman. Kang, J. (2007). Recontextualization of news discourse: A case study of translation of news discourse on North Korea. The Translator, 13(2), 219–42. Kim, K. (2018). Retranslation as a socially engaged activity: The case of The Rape of Nanking. Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice, 26(3), 391–404. Lyotard, J. F. (1979). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

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Moscovici, S. (2000). Social Representations: Explorations in Social Psychology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Munday, J. (2007). Translation and ideology: A textual approach. The Translator, 13(2), 195–217. Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power and Eurocentrism in Latin America. International Sociology, 15(2), 215–32. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon. Schäffner, C. (2012). Unknown agents in translated political discourse Target, 24(1), 103–25. Valdeón, R. A. (2007). Ideological independence or negative mediation: BBC Mundo and CNN en Español’s (translated) reporting of Madrid’s terrorist attacks. In Myriam Salama-Carr (Ed.), Translating and Interpreting Conflict (pp.  99–118). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Wang, B., & Feng, D. (2018). A Corpus-based study of stance-taking as seen from critical points in interpreted political discourse. Perspectives, 26(2), 246–60. Zhang, M. (2013). Stance and mediation in transediting news headlines as paratexts. Perspectives, 21(3), 396–411.

1 INTERPRETERS AS KEY AGENTS IN REFRAMING INTERWAR POWER RELATIONS The Paris Peace Conference as narrative turning point Elena Aguirre Fernández Bravo and Asunción Taboada Lanza Introduction In diplomatic negotiations, “an interpreter who knows not only the language but also the politics, personalities and culture of a particular situation can be a unique asset” (Albright, 2008, p. 71). Translators who deal with documentation at international conferences are key in spreading the main ideas of those events. The access to information in different languages through interpreters and translators, which we nowadays take for granted, was a privilege not so long ago. In the dawn of the 20th century, only the languages of hegemonic powers were spoken at international conferences, and resulting documents were produced in those languages only. The Paris Peace Conference and subsequent creation of the League of Nations (LoN) are a good example thereof: in addition to their economic and military capabilities, the winners of the First World War used the officiality of their languages as a way of imposing their soft power, thus persuading others to do what they wanted without force or coercion (Nye, 1990), what Bourdieu (1991, p. 170) would in turn call “symbolic power”. After the First World War, the Paris Peace Conference (1919) enabled the Allies to negotiate conditions for peace with the defeated nations from the Central Powers (Sanz Díaz, 2009, p. 297). Although the allied powers numbered a total of 32 states, only five had significant weight in decision-making processes. Represented in negotiations by Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy and the United States, the Allies began their gatherings in January 1919. Meetings were led by the Committee of Four, integrated by Woodrow Wilson, Georges Benjamin Clemenceau, David Lloyd George and Vittorio Emanuele Orlando (Neila Hernández, 2009, p. 330). Countries defeated in the conflict had no voice in meetings, leaving their future exclusively in the hands of the winning powers.

2  Aguirre Fernández Bravo and Taboada Lanza

By virtue of this conference, several international treaties were drafted and signed with the purpose of reorganising world order and redistributing power in the aftermath of the conflict. One of them is the well-known Treaty of Versailles, signed in Versailles in 1919 by over 50 countries and which contains, among others, the conditions that would have to be met to put an end to the hostilities resulting from war (Ibid., p. 331). By means of this document, and in association with other treaties and protocols, a key international body in international relations was created: the LoN, forerunner to the current United Nations. When diplomatic relations began in Europe, the official language par excellence was Latin (Freeman & Marks, 2018). It was not until the Enlightenment that a change in paradigm occurred. In the Golden Age of France, the taste for knowledge and reason fostered great technical and cultural progress that made the French language burst onto the international scene (Gore-Booth, 1979, p. 38), due to the strong diplomatic activity developed by France during the reign of Louis XIV and the development of the French diplomatic service by Cardinal Richelieu (Ostrower, 1965, pp. 281–2). French diplomats and politicians believed that their claim for their mother tongue to become the official language at the 1919 Peace Conference made sense: not only had French quickly consolidated as the language of diplomacy due to its precision and elegance but, on top of that, the conference was to be held in Paris. However, other parties attending the conference did not agree with this imposition. British and American representatives claimed the rights of their language to be official, arguing that it represented a large majority of population at the summits and stressing the importance of these two countries’ actions in the Allied victory. It was argued that a simplified English, common to the United States and Great Britain, could be the Conference language (Ostrower, 1965, p. 312). Such were the puzzles emerging from the lack of understanding that even Esperanto was proposed as official language, but it was eventually decided that both English and French would be used at summits and become official languages of all of the institutions derived from the conference (Baigorri Jalón, 2014, p. 39). This dichotomy made it a priority to hire interpreters to facilitate an otherwise impossible communication. Although the only official languages for consecutive interpretation were these two, delivering a speech in a different language was allowed, but interpretation would be at the expense of the representative (Universidade de Vigo, 2020), and the cost of translating minutes to other languages would have to be borne by the country concerned (Shenton, 1933, p. 379). Throughout these pages, we will argue that languages (and, therefore, translators and interpreters) can serve as tools to subtly project power, as we believe was the case in this historical turning point. Based on Van Dijk (2009) and critical discourse analysis (CDA), we will analyse the role and impact of interpreters in political leadership, diplomatic negotiations and power dynamics during the interwar years.

Interpreters as key agents  3

Data and methodology In his studies on the impact of postmodernity on the human condition, Lyotard (1979) refers to the importance of grand narratives or metanarratives in giving a totalizing, comprehensive account of historical events or even social phenomena based on the appeal to universal truths or values. Metanarratives are used by powerful entities (countries or groups) to legitimise authority, power or even social traditions, and they influence how people see and understand the world. Even though Lyotard refers to narratives such as Christianity during the Middle Ages, his line of argumentation could be applied to other historical moments to study the two-way relation between power and language, more specifically, the exercise of power through language. We have defined an important milestone in the history of the old continent as our research scope: the interwar period and the creation of the LoN. The rationale behind this choice is that the Paris Peace Conference was a crucial landmark for international relations and for conference interpreting. On one hand, it paved the way for drafting treaties that gave birth to the LoN, a decisive international institution which eventually became an international body of reference in solving disputes and establishing common rules for countries. On the other hand, this historical period is particularly meaningful for conference interpreting, since the uproar on the international scene contributed to the institutionalisation of the profession in the political arena, this being one of the first occasions in which the interpreter’s role was made visible to the very powerful stakeholders involved in decision-making processes. In this context, though, despite the constellation of countries involved, it is conspicuous that only English and French ended up playing a prominent and influential role as official languages. Building on Lyotard’s ideas, we will argue that, after the First World War, the dominant narrative that permeated international relations was the one told by the winners of the conflict and that this was partly possible due to the choice of French and English as the main working languages on the international stage and, indirectly, thanks to the role played by diplomatic interpreters who took part in interwar conferences, meetings and negotiations, since, in the same way meta-narratives create a reality, languages are also systems that shape values, interests and identities, thus structuring our understanding: “how we talk about the world influences the society we create, the knowledge we celebrate and despise, and the institutions we build” (Machin & Mayr, 2012, p. 21). In the following pages, we will: (1) delve into the reciprocal dynamics between language and power, taking some core ideas of CDA as theoretical framework; (2) analyse the role of interpreters in the diplomatic negotiations of the Treaty of Versailles and, subsequently, in reframing interwar politics, highlighting their relevance in co-constructing the metanarrative of the time;

4  Aguirre Fernández Bravo and Taboada Lanza

(3) emphasise the importance of language not only in shaping reality but also in exerting soft power: first, by exploring the presence of English, French and German, official languages of the main interwar actors, in a corpus of international communicative events that took place during the interwar period and in the first half of the Second World War (the years 1918–1943); second, by analysing the pragmatic dimension of political communication in a selection of these texts, identifying salient examples of language uses that can be linked to the strategic functions identified by Chilton and Schäffner (2006, pp.  311–3): coercion/resistance, legitimisation/delegitimisation, and representation/misrepresentation. Our corpus compiles 47 covenants, treaties and minutes which have been obtained from various sources (Siepmann, 1920; Gregory, 1921; World Peace Foundation, 1921; Walsh, 1925; United Nations, 1949; United Nations, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c, 2020d; Library of Congress, 2020). The analysis of the languages used and the uses of language that were present in these communicative events revolves around the following main research questions: Can we identify a tendency to give a more leading role in the negotiations to certain actors while others were pushed to the background? Could this have had an impact on the power dynamics in world politics at the time, resonating in the ensuing conformation of alliances and animosities in the period between the two world wars? We believe this is a legitimate approach based on Van Dijk’s statement (2009, p. 94) that institutional dialogues are often paired with texts functioning as guidelines or references for the speech act to materialise: most formal meetings, even when resolved orally, include a written agenda and a series of documents used as basis for discussion or written as result thereof. As per this author, texts are literally the consolidation of communicative power in most institutional contexts.

Theoretical framework: language, power and social reality Building on Sapir’s idea (1929, p. 209) that language is a guide to social reality powerfully conditioning how we feel about social problems and processes, the principle of linguistic relativity (Whorf, 1956, p.  221) established that the background phenomena of language provide automatic, involuntary patterns that are specific for each language and constitute their “grammars”. According to this author, users of different grammars are pointed towards different types of observations and evaluations of externally similar observations and, therefore, are not equivalent as observers but must arrive at somewhat different views of the world. Although the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is no longer accepted by most linguists, there is more consensus around the idea that the way we see the world might be influenced by the language we use, rather than determined by it (Machin & Mayr, 2012, p. 16). This would also be a two-way process in which

Interpreters as key agents  5

language is also influenced by the way we see the world, both referentially and metaphorically (Halliday, 1978, p. 191). Before the 20th century, the study of language was never a central topic for academic disciplines concerned with politics. Nevertheless, some political philosophers have from time to time made clear their awareness of the question (Chilton & Schäffner, 2006 p. 303). More recently, the view that “both the terms of political debate and political processes themselves are constituted and communicated through text and talk, a development which is also referred to as the ‘linguistic turn’ in political sciences” has spread, a critical perspective generally shared by linguists, who see political realities as constructed in and through discourse (Ibid., p. 305). According to Van Dijk’s account (2012, p. 28), at the end of the 1970s, a group of researchers led by Roger Fowler started to take a more critical and sociopolitical view of the use of language, discourse and power. During the 1980s and 1990s, this approach quickly became an international critical discourse analysis (CDA) movement. Rather than focusing on sociolinguistic or ethnographic aspects of communication, CDA drew attention to ideology (Van Dijk, 1998), political discourse critical study (Chilton, 1985) or the discursive reproduction of social power (Fairclough, 1989). The study of political cognition focuses on the mental representations shared by political actors. Our knowledge and opinions about politicians, parties or presidents are modelled by different types of texts and conversations over the course of our socialisation and formal education (Van Dijk, 2009, p. 251), but it is important to note that our moral worldviews are mostly within the cognitive unconscious, so they are not discussed openly in public discourse (Lakoff, 2008, p. 110). Attitudes and ideologies are mental representations shared by the members of a social group, ideologies being the basic beliefs underlying more specific group social attitudes (Van Dijk, 2011, p. 124), and mental models are cognitive representations of our experiences (Van Dijk, 2012, p. 103). Taking all of these ideas as general framework, we believe it can be argued that the choice of working languages for a given international communicative event can impact the bidirectional dynamics between discourse and power, as it contributes to turning a specific narrative into the socially agreed and/or accepted mental models. And throughout that process, interpreters inevitably play a pivotal role as senders-receivers of a message they inexorably contribute to spread.

Interwar interpreters: translators, scribes and diplomats The origins of consecutive conference interpreting can be traced back to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and to the period between the two world wars (Setton & Dawrant, 2016a, p. 133). This was the time when the LoN, the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) and the International Labour Organization were established as tools for mediation and understanding, thus ending the monopoly of French as the diplomatic language and making it necessary for interpreters

6  Aguirre Fernández Bravo and Taboada Lanza

to mediate between languages and cultures (Baigorri Jalón, 2005, pp. 987–96). But, while the individuals who acted as interpreters were capable of transmitting a message from one language into another, they sometimes lacked the skills and expertise that international summits require: “the most elusive dimension of an acquired language is the expression of finer interactional and implicit meanings, such as irony, innuendo or scepticism” (Setton & Dawrant, 2016b, p. 224), which political and diplomatic interpreters must deal with routinely. Note that, by that time, conference interpreting did not exist as discipline yet; in fact, these interpretations were performed consecutively because simultaneous interpreting had not been institutionalised and was not until the Nuremberg Trials (Gaiba, 1998; Setton & Dawrant, 2016a, p. 254). The uniqueness of interwar interpreters stems from their constant physical presence amongst negotiating politicians as bilateral mediators, which made them highly visible and sometimes led them to play the leading roles in meetings (Baigorri Jalón, 2004, p. 6). This practice, however, would not persist: first, because the arrival of simultaneous interpreting after World War II reframed the role of these professionals as less visible actors by physically placing them inside a booth, thus limiting their presence to that of a distant voice reaching users through a set of earphones; second, because, with the development of codes of ethics for this emerging profession, such a deviation from the principle of neutrality would nowadays be considered a serious violation of professional standards in any interpreting context and modality. In the LoN, however, the initial steps taken to overcome language barriers were usually improvised and based on the premise of the English-French co-officiality. According to Setton and Dawrant (2016a, p. 32), the classic mode of diplomatic interpreting, still used nowadays at formal bilateral meetings, is full consecutive and “the standard consecutive note-taking technique was developed in the first half of the 20th century by interpreters working in diplomatic settings”. In 1918, the War Council appointed twelve interpreters who would also be responsible for providing all the necessary documentation during the conference as well as for preparing the minutes (Roland, 1999, p. 121). In view of the previously cited idea that institutional texts can function as guidelines for a speech act to actually materialise (Van Dijk, 2009, p. 94), this double role of interpreters as scribes, unique and unrepeatable in the history of the profession, is crucial for understanding the relevance of interpreters as diplomatic actors who contributed to the outlining and reframing of interwar politics and power relations. Moreover, those interpreters who took part in the peace conference in Paris were not chosen at random; many of them had previous experience during the First World War, working for national Defence departments in the translation of propaganda (Herbert, 1978, p.  5), so they were familiar both with the context and the required uses of language. The double task of interpreters as translators is worth highlighting, since at the time it was often the case that the same people performed both assignments. Taking all this into account and given the lack of additional information, it seems logical to infer that the languages spoken in (and

Interpreters as key agents  7

interpreted from and into) the meetings were the same ones in which minutes were drafted, an important detail for our analysis. Although there are no audio-visual records of the first LoN sessions, it is possible to obtain information about the languages used by knowing the twelve men (unsurprisingly, there were no women) who performed the task of interpreting. According to Baigorri Jalón’s account (2014, pp.  31–7), Paul Mantoux was a Frenchman, the son of a bourgeois, who worked with the English-French combination, though he also had notions of Italian and German which he used mainly when communicating with members of the Italian delegation. Gustave Camerlynck, an Algerian citizen who worked with French-English, succeeded Mantoux in interpreting the plenary sessions. Stephen Bonsal, who had travelled the world and knew languages from remote places, worked mainly for Wilson and the American delegation, also with the English-French combination. Georges Meyer was a Frenchman about whom we do not have extensive information since he appears little in the minutes, although it is known that he worked with English and French. G. Demolon was the one who generally arranged the work of the interpreters and took care of administrative tasks. As for Jean Herbert, his name does not appear in the minutes, but Baigorri Jalón has compiled several testimonies of his participation as interpreter in this historical period. Jean Duhamel and Captain Portier also worked with English and French as languages. Besides this majority of interpreters working between English and French (a fact that also adds up to prove the importance given to these languages), four other interpreters are noteworthy: Arthur Hugh Frazier, who interpreted for the American delegation and spoke Italian, used to interpret the bilateral meetings between House and Orlando; Major Jones, who also worked with this language pair; Saburi, a Japanese secretary who was fluent in English; and George Michaelis, the only German interpreter, of whom it is said that his nerves betrayed him in the few interventions he made, which seriously damaged Germany’s interests. At that time, these people “moved freely among the principals of the Conference, which made them very visible; they were not only interpreters, almost always they were translators, revisers and also verbatim reporters” (Baigorri Jalón, 2014 p.  55). Therefore, according to the various cited sources, although their names and/or signatures do not appear in all available documents, it seems safe to assume that the interpreters themselves wrote and translated the minutes.

Analysing the corpus of minutes The anecdotal presence of German It is important to highlight that French and English were official languages, not only at high-level meetings but also in sessions devoted to assessing specific topics and even during unofficial bilateral talks taking place between conference participants. As winners of the war, France, Great Britain and the United States felt

8  Aguirre Fernández Bravo and Taboada Lanza

entitled to decide the future of Europe. The fact that they managed to reach a coofficiality agreement explains the strengthening of ties that would later materialise in World War II. In this sense, the text analysis is unequivocal: in our corpus of minutes, very noticeably, 46 out of the 47 compiled documents have a version both in English and in French. Just one of the minutes was only published in French: the one corresponding to the first meeting of the Permanent Court of International Justice (1922), that used French as its only official language at the time. In contrast, the very anecdotal presence of German (and of Germany itself) is noteworthy throughout the 47 documents that constitute our corpus. The total number of texts is relevant to prove the role of language in this historical moment, since only two were translated into German: •

•

An agreement between Germany and Hungary regarding the direct transport of their respective war prisoners (May 1920), published in English, French, and German, and intended to alleviate the situation of war prisoners by seeking to ensure the protection of their basic rights (United Nations, 2020b) A bilateral economic agreement between Austria and Germany (September 1920). The German-speaking countries were those attending this bilateral meeting, and therefore, it makes sense that the official language of the event was German; nevertheless, its minutes were also translated into French and English (United Nations, 2020c)

Both documents were published in 1920, a year in which Germany was not yet a member of the LoN, whereas, in the records produced during between 1926 and 1933, we have not been able to find any other document translated into this language. German is a difficult language with a weak international tradition that covers a small geographic area. Beyond these reasons, “the fact that German was not considered is not at all surprising since Germany was not admitted into the League until 1926 and, as early as 1933, left the League under the rule of Nazism” (Ammon & Hellinger, 2013, p. 433). From a pragmatic perspective, this lack of translation into German over the years could itself be seen as an example of coercive strategic function in political discourse, since “power can also be exercised through controlling others’ use of language—that is, through various kinds and degrees of censorship and access control” (Chilton & Schäffner, 2006, p. 311). Indeed, while studying the corpus, the main aspect of the relationship between Germany and the LoN that stands out is the ambiguous policy of the latter towards the former: the presence or absence of Germany in the LoN as well as the presence of German in negotiations and meetings could be deemed haphazard at the very least, despite the fact that there was a permanent German interpreter in the organisation. As mainly responsible for the disastrous situation after World War I, Germany’s fate was decided by the winners of the war, without Germans having a say in the decision-making process. The exclusion of Germany and AustriaHungary as conference participants certainly disrupted German’s pre-war achievements as a diplomatic language (Northrup, 2013, p. 112). This rejection generated

Interpreters as key agents  9

a response in Germany—the government in Berlin despised the LoN, considering it an instrument created by the World War I victors to suppress the defeated Germans and establish a new world order based on their own interests alone. In 1924, however, Gustav Stresemann, Germany’s foreign minister, adopted a new policy toward the institution and, after two failed attempts (1924 and 1925) Germany was accepted as a member in 1926 (Stresemann, 1926) thanks to a proposal that, ironically, had been drafted in German. Our research has further revealed that only four sets of documents within the corpus (the Treaty of Versailles, the minutes of the first assembly of the LoN, the convention concerning the territory of Memel, and the Locarno Treaties) explicitly mention Germany. In these documents, this country is mainly referred to as loser and/or held responsible for what happened between 1914 and 1918. These four texts define the bilateral relationship between the LoN and Germany, thus setting the rules for future interaction between the winning powers and the main loser of the conflict. In support of our view, we will focus our pragmatic analysis on these documents.

Laying the foundations of a new geopolitical metanarrative: the Treaty of Versailles There are several aspects in the Treaty of Versailles (Library of Congress, 2020) that are worth analysing. In terms of content, this text is relevant since, as the legal act it constitutes, it has a performative quality, enacting Germany’s surrender by explicitly stating everything that she will lose by signing it: handing over their colonies to the LoN, returning Alsace-Lorraine to France, reducing their weaponry, providing economic compensations for the most affected populations or even acquiring a new nationality. Besides that, a particular grammatical feature is salient in a great number of articles mentioning those actions that should be performed by Germany— sentences are mostly formulated in an active voice, holding Germany as active subject, accountable for each of the actions (emphasis added): Art. 33: Germany renounces, in favour of Belgium all rights and title over the territory of Prussian Moresnet. Annex to art. 50, chapter III, art. 35: Germany hereby agrees to make such renunciation of her sovereignty in favour of the League of Nations as the latter shall deem necessary. Art. 61: The German Government undertakes to continue and complete without delay the execution of the financial clauses regarding Alsace-Lorraine contained in the Armistice Conventions. Germany isn’t therefore asked, urged, compelled or forced to act: according to the drafting, Germany actively undertakes, renounces, agrees, accepts, recognises/ recognizes, declares, consents and acknowledges a total of 173 times throughout

10  Aguirre Fernández Bravo and Taboada Lanza

the Treaty of Versailles, a figure that is particularly relevant if we take into account that there are rarely other actors associated with these actions, as portrayed by Table 1.1. All of these verbs are straightforwardly used in this treaty and, combined with the grammar, lead the reader to think that Germany is willingly carrying out the actions. From a pragmatic point of view, this strategy of misrepresentation could be considered a euphemistic manipulation of the narrative, which has “a cognitive effect of conceptually ‘blurring’ or ‘defocusing’ unwanted referents, be they objects of actions” (Chilton & Schäffner, 2006, p. 312). At the semantic level, the vocabulary choice often seems aimed at explicitly pointing out that the way for Germany to compensate others for the damage suffered implied renouncing the elements associated with traditional power structures (see Annex to art. 50, Chapter III.35, art. 118, and art. 158 as examples). By such lexical choices, the Allied powers simultaneously play the speech-act cards of delegitimising their counterpart in the conflict and misrepresenting Germans by denial (Chilton  & Schäffner, 2006, p. 312). Table 1.2 provides a summary of the 46 examples of such constructions that can be found within the treaty. Last, the sense of urgency added to mandates by the expressions “without delay” and “immediately” also connects to the idea of powerlessness, since Germany’s options are limited to submitting to the treaty at the earliest possible moment. This sense of permanent coercion is recurring throughout the text, with these two expressions being used up to 17 times in the context of urging Germany to action, as Table 1.3 accounts for.

Depicting Germans as evil and submitting them to the yoke: from the first assembly of the LoN (1920), to the convention concerning the territory of Memel (1924), and Locarno Treaties (1925) November 1920 saw the first assembly of the LoN take place, and despite Germany not being one of the main topics of this reunion, it is interesting to examine the language employed when referring to her. There are only eight references to Germany in the 208-page account of this historic event. Three of them are factual and therefore perfectly neutral (World Peace Foundation, 1921, pp. 135, 141 and 162), but the remaining five are value judgments (pp. 134, 140, 141, 141–2 and 183) echoing the general idea that the position of the LoN to Germany may be best defined by a legal parallel. We are the defendants and Germany is the plaintiff. It is Germany’s duty to show that she is fit to come in, that she will comply with the terms of Article 1. That is for her to prove. (World Peace Foundation, 1921, p. 142)

Interpreters as key agents  11 TABLE 1.1 Misrepresentations of Germany’s agency in her willingness to submit to the

Allies

Verb

Total number of mentions in the text

Number of mentions explicitly related to Germany (%)

UNDERTAKES

83

79 (95 %)

RENOUNCES

30

30 (100 %)

AGREES

37

31 (83 %)

ACCEPTS RECOGNISES

10 9

6 (60 %) 9 (100 %)

RECOGNIZES

7

8 (100 %)

7 3 2 188

4 (57 %) 4 (100 %) 2 (100 %) 173 (92 %)

DECLARES CONSENTS ACKNOWLEDGES TOTAL

List of articles where Germany is the subject of each verb

31(x2), 41, 53, 61, 62, 65, 77, 88 annex I.2, 99, 117, 118, 124, 125, 126, 131, 141, 148, 155, Part V Introduction, 213, 220(x2), 222, 223, 230, 232(x3), 239, 241, 244 annex III.6, 244 annex IV.1, 244 annex IV.4, 244 annex IV.6, 244 annex V.2(x2), 244 annex V.3, 244 annex V.4, 244 annex V.5, 244 annex V.8, 247 (x2), 259 (x3), 261, 264, 265, 266, 274(x2), 275, 276, 278, 279, 283, 291, 294, 297, 298, 312, 319, 321, 322, 323(x3), 338, 353, 370, 374, 379, 432, 434, 439, 440, Protocol signed by Germany 10 January 1920(x2). 33, 34, 40(x2), 49, 71(x2), 83, 87, 88, 99, 100, 110, 119, 125, 128(x2), 133, 134(x2), 138(x2), 141, 142, 147, 152, 156, 184, 244 annex VII, 258. 46, annex to art. 50 III.35(x2), 80, 83, 97, 116, 132, 164(x2), 179(x2), 236, 240(x2), 244 annex II.18, 244 annex III.5, 244 annex III.6, 244 annex III.7, 244 annex IV.5, 259(x2), 272, 304 annex I. 7, 349, 354(x2), 362, 374, 438, 440. 40, 116, 142, 231, 433, 440. 135, 147, 228, 244 annex III.1, 259, 290, 292, 358, 440. 32, 40, 81(x2), 87, 139, 240, 250. 50, 118, 147, 364. 31, 151, 152(x2). 80, 116. n.a.

12  Aguirre Fernández Bravo and Taboada Lanza TABLE 1.2 Lexical choices delegitimising Germany through verbal expressions of her

surrender of power

Expression

Total number of mentions in the text

List of articles where these expressions appear

HAND OVER (Germany) shall/will hand over . . .

10

RIGHTS/TITLES/ PRIVILEGES (Germany) renounces/cedes all (her) rights and title/ privilege(s)/title(s)/ titledeeds SOVEREIGNTY (Germany recognizes sovereignty [of others]/ renounces (all rights of) sovereignty/ sovereignty is restored [to others]/ is transferred [to others] TOTAL

24

38, 52, 158, 228, 246, 303 annex III.12, 358, Protocol Signed by Germany January 10 1920(x3). 33, 38, 45, annex to art. 50 III.35, 83(x2), 87, 88, 99, 100, 118(x2), 119, 128, 130, 135, 138, 141, 156(x3), 158(x2), 244 annex VII. 22, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, annex to art. 50 III.35, 51, 52, 110, 113, 371.

12

46

n.a.

TABLE 1.3  Verbal coercion strategies expressed through the sense of urgency

Expression

WITHOUT DELAY IMMEDIATELY

TOTAL

Total number of mentions in the text 8 28

36

Number of mentions explicitly related to Germany (%)

List of articles where these expressions appear

6 (75 %) 11 (39 %)

38, 52, 60, 61, 216, 223. 31(x2), 88 annex I.1, 109, 167, 244 annex VI.2, 297(x2), 430, 431, Protocol signed by Germany January 10, 1920. n.a.

17 (47 %)

This is the most salient example of a narrative presenting the Allies as the goodwilled, hopeful party in the conflict, willing to help the losers though unable and helpless because of the inevitable problematic nature of Germany, depicted as villain of the story, reluctant to renounce the imperialistic exploitation of others she is used to exert. Language choices contribute to spreading a conflict metanarrative that can be seen as a condescending and paternalistic speech act of legitimising

Interpreters as key agents  13

versus delegitimising the two sides of the same coin, also misrepresenting Germany by verbal evasion and denial (Chilton & Schäffner, 2006, p. 312). For its part, the Convention on the Territory of Memel (United Nations, 1949) addresses a very interesting issue: the territorial disputes in which the LoN was meant to arbitrate. Articles 1, 5, 6, 7, 15 and 35 include passages where it is stressed that Germany would no longer have power over certain territories that had previously belonged to her, by clearly stating that the LoN was in charge of administering (and redistributing) land. Moreover, articles 1, 5 and 6 are clear examples of how the Allies turn to legal language to suppress Germany’s agency over the control of her territories, in a speech act of coercion that fits within Chilton & Schäffner’s definition (2006, p. 311), backed by a legal act formulating a direct command. Since pragmatic strategic functions can sometimes overlap, this paragraph could also be seen as legitimisation strategy: by resorting to the Treaty of Versailles, the winners formulate their right to be obeyed (Chilton & Schäffner, 2006, p. 312), making Germans aware of the reasons why they should relent and acquiesce. Article 17 also makes reference to the fact that Germany needed to submit to the institutions of the LoN even before becoming a member, or to the PCIJ, where German was not an official language, an idea that appears more clearly throughout the Locarno Treaties. Signed in October 1925, the Locarno Treaties (Walsh, 1925) inevitably push Germany to submit to the rule of the LoN—to enter into force, they required Germany to become a member, thus forcing her to compromise to their terms in order to be accepted in the exclusive club: Any question with regard to which the parties are in conflict as to their respective rights shall be submitted to judicial decision, and the parties undertake to comply with such decision. All other questions shall be submitted to a conciliation commission. If the proposals of this commission are not accepted by the two parties, the question shall be brought before the Council of the League of Nations. (United Nations, 2020d, p. 7, emphasis added) Despite the short extension of this document (a total of 25 pages), there are many references similar to this (see articles 2, 4, 5 and 7 of the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee between Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain and Italy). Article 10 accordingly states that the treaty will enter into force “as soon as all the ratifications have been deposited and Germany has become a member of the League of Nations” (United Nations, 2020d, p. 10). These formulations constitute a speech act of coercion, where political actors exert their power through “positioning the self and others in specific relationships, and making assumptions about realities that hearers are obliged to at least temporarily accept in order to process the text or talk” (Chilton & Schäffner, 2006, p. 311). Another language-related idea present throughout these treaties is how the system itself hampered the presence of Germany as a nation with full powers in the

14  Aguirre Fernández Bravo and Taboada Lanza TABLE 1.4  Number of times Germany is referred to the PCIJ in the Locarno Treaties

Protocol

Articles

Total

Arbitration convention between Germany and Belgium Arbitration convention between Germany and France Arbitration convention between Germany and Poland Arbitration treaty between Germany and Czechoslovakia

1, 2, 16, 19 1, 2, 16, 19 1, 2, 16, 19 1, 2, 16, 19

4 4 4 4

international system. Table 1.4 shows that 16 articles of these texts refer Germany to the PCIJ in case of dispute with other countries, an institution where only English and French were spoken, which would create barriers for Germany to access justice, which, from a pragmatic perspective, could be considered a speech act of secrecy or, at least, quantitative misrepresentation, where information given to a certain interlocutor is quantitatively inadequate to their needs or interests (Chilton & Schäffner, 2006, p. 312).

Concluding remarks Our analysis of the presence of different languages in the selected corpus of minutes makes it reasonable to conclude that English and French prevailed over German at the time, both in the negotiations of the Paris Peace Conference and in subsequent interwar political meetings, while German was (and Germans were) mostly ignored in the official texts, a view also supported by the historical accounts previously cited. The further pragmatic analysis of the historic texts that explicitly address Germany has been used to highlight that there is reason to believe that the use of language made by the LoN towards Germany could be linked to the pragmatic strategic functions of coercion, legitimisation, delegitimisation and misrepresentation. Considering the theories and arguments presented on the course of these pages, such strategies might well have contributed to spreading a metanarrative in which First World War winners imposed their moral views as hegemonic. Last, but certainly not least, as documented by the sources cited, the unique and unrepeatable role played by diplomatic interpreters in this context would most likely have turned them into invaluably influential soft power tools—unusually present throughout the process of negotiating text drafting, participating not only as interpreters, but as mediators and scribes. As our analysis has argued from a pragmatic perspective, wording nuances may have an impact on the mental models and ideologies that later permeate societies, especially when it comes to texts as historically relevant as the Treaty of Versailles. Therefore, on the basis of the texts and accounts that have survived in writing to the present day, we believe that it is legitimate to vindicate the importance of interpreters’ contributions as intercultural and interlinguistic mediators at the time, as they may have played a significant role in the conformation of alliances and animosities among the parties involved in international interwar politics.

Interpreters as key agents  15

Bibliography Albright, M. (2008). Memo to the President. How We Can Restore America’s Reputation and Leadership. New York: Harper Collins. Ammon, U.,  & Hellinger, M. (Eds.). (2013). Status Change of Languages. Berlin: Germany: De Gruyter. Baigorri Jalón, J. (2004). Interpreters at the United Nations: A History. Salamanca, Spain: Ediciones Universidad Salamanca. ———. (2005). Conference interpreting in the first international labor conference. Meta, 50(3), 987–96. ———. (2014). From Paris to Nuremberg. The Birth of Conference Interpreting. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press. Chilton, P. (Ed.). (1985). Language and the Nuclear Arms Debate: Nukespeak Today. London: Pinter. Chilton, P.,  & Schäffner, C. (2006). Discourse and politics. In Teun A. Van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse Studies. A Multidisciplinary Introduction (pp. 303–30). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and Power. London: Longman. Freeman, C. W., & Marks, S. (2018). Diplomacy. In Encyclopaedia Britannica, inc. (Ed.), Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved from www.britannica.com/topic/diplomacy Gaiba, F. (1998). The Origins of Simultaneous Interpretation: The Nuremberg Trial. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. Gore-Booth, L. (1979). Satow’s Guide to Diplomatic Practice. London: Longman. Gregory, C. (1921). The first assembly of the League of Nations. The American Journal of International Law, 15(2), 240–52. Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as Social Semiotic. The social Interpretation of Language and Meaning. London: Edward Arnold. Herbert, J. (1978). How conference interpretation grew. In David Gerver  & Wallace H. Sinaiko (Eds.), Language Interpretation and Communication. Proceedings of the NATO Symposium on Language Interpretation and Communication, Venice (pp. 5–10). New York: Plenum Press, 1977. Lakoff, G. (2008). The Political Mind. A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics. London: Penguin Press. Library of Congress. (2020). Treaty of Peace with Germany. Retrieved from www.loc.gov/ law/help/us-treaties/bevans/m-ust000002-0043.pdf Lyotard, J. F. (1979). The postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Machin, D., & Mayr, A. (2012). How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Neila Hernández, J. L. (2009). La paz de París y la configuración del nuevo sistema internacional (1919–1923). In Juan Carlos Pereira (Ed.), Historia de las relaciones internacionales contemporáneas (pp. 319–46). Barcelona, Spain: Ariel. Northrup, D. (2013). How English Became the Global Language. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Nye, J. S. Jr. (1990). Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. New York: Basic Books. Ostrower, A. (1965). Language, Law and Diplomacy. A Study of Linguistic Diversity in Official International Relations and International Law. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pensylvania Press.

16  Aguirre Fernández Bravo and Taboada Lanza

Permanent Court of International Justice. (1922). Rapport annuel de la Cour Permanente de Justice Internationale. Retrieved from www.icj-cij.org/files/permanent-court-ofinternational-justice/serie_E/English/E_01_en.pdf Roland, R. (1999). Interpreters as Diplomats. A Diplomatic History of the Role of Interpreters in World Politics. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. Sanz Díaz, F. (2009). La Primera Guerra Mundial (1914–1918). In Juan Carlos Pereira Castañares (Ed.), Historia de las relaciones internacionales contemporáneas (pp. 281–99). Barcelona: Ariel. Sapir, E. (1929). The status of linguistics as a science. Language, 5(4), 207–14. Setton, R., & Dawrant, A. (2016a). Conference Interpreting. A Complete Course. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins. ———. (2016b). Conference Interpreting. A Trainer’s Guide. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins. Shenton, H. N. (1933). Cosmopolitan Conversation. The Language Problems of International Conferences. New York: Columbia University Press. Siepmann, H. A. (1920). The international financial conference at Brussels. The Economic Journal, 30(120), 436–59. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/i338817 Stresemann, G. (1926). Membership of Germany in the League of Nations. Letter from Gustav Stresemann. Retrieved from www.wdl.org/en/item/11597 United Nations (1949). Annexed Statute of the Memel Territory. Retrieved from https:// unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/23EBD0C6D1BF9E0385257506007F764C ———. (2020a). Research Guides. International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation. Retrieved from https://libraryresources.unog.ch/lonintellectualcooperation/IIIC ———. (2020b). Agreement between Germany and Hungary with Regard to the Through Transport of Their Respective Prisoners of War. Retrieved from the League of Nations Treaty Series: https://treaties.un.org/Pages/showDetails.aspx?objid=080000028023507 6&clang=_en ———. (2020c). Economic Agreement. League of Nations Treaty Series. Retrieved from the League of Nations Treaty Series: https://treaties.un.org/Pages/showDetails.aspx?ob jid=0800000280236088&clang=_en ———. (2020d). Treaty of Mutual Guarantee, Done at Locarno, October 16, 1925, Final Protocol of the Locarno Conference of the same Date and Collective Note to Germany dated London, December 1, 1925, regarding Article 16 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Retrieved from the League of Nations Treaty Series:https://treaties.un.org/ Pages/showDetails.aspx?objid=08000002801683d0 Universidade de Vigo. (2020). Historia de la interpretación. Retrieved from http://linkter preting.uvigo.es/que-es-la-interpretacion/historia/?lang=en Van Dijk, T. A. (1998). Ideology. A Multidisciplinary Approach. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. ———. (2009). Discurso y poder. Barcelona: Gedisa. ———. (2011). Sociedad y discurso. Barcelona: Gedisa. ———. (2012). Discurso y contexto. Un enfoque sociocognitivo. Barcelona: Gedisa. Walsh, T. J. (1925). Protocol of the Locarno Conference. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Whorf, B. L. (1956). Language, Thought, and Reality. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. World Peace Foundation. (1921). The First Assembly of the League of Nations. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/firstassemblyofl00worlrich/page/n0

2 FRAMING TRANSLATION AS DISCOURSE AND DISCOURSE Said Faiq

Introduction In the 1980s, translation studies witnessed an important shift that came about because translation examined “under the auspices of traditional dichotomies experienced a crisis when the untenable nature of value-free and detached pointof-view and the embeddedness of human sciences in culture and ideology started to be foregrounded in Translation Studies” (Dizdar, 2012, p.  58). As such, the injection of ideas and paradigms from a basket of disciplines (discourse analysis, cultural, colonial, postcolonial, gender, conflict studies, etc.) into the exploration of translation and translating has contributed a great deal to the enlargement of the discipline, including the manners in which it is deployed to investigate a plethora of areas. Translation is information communicated in one context, then moved to another. As communication, translation requires—and is examined through—the prisms of relevance to and manipulation by translators because of and within some contexts (Valdeón, 2012). In this way, translation stands for process, product and reception (Lefevere, 1992), and it is examined and represented through a unique combination of culture and language. This places translation at the heart of discourse analysis in its explorations of the macro and micro levels of communication. The macro level, or what Gee (2004) calls Discourse (with a “D”), investigates aspects of intentionality (producer, who), acceptability (receiver, to whom), situationality (when and where, context), informativity (type of information embedded in produced/received texts) and, to a large extent, intertextuality (relationships between texts, semiotics); in other words, the sociocultural practices of discourse/communication (Hatim, 2012). The micro level, or what Gee (2004) labels discourse (with a “d”), largely investigates aspects of cohesion

18  Said Faiq

(grammar, etc.) and coherence (structural architecture of texts) that is the sociotextual practices of discourse/communication (Hatim, 2012). Defined as such, translation brings Discourse and discourse (or loosely put, culture and language) together as it transports texts (products of D-discourses) as other texts. Here, Discourse can be defined as being of mostly a mental attitude or frame that includes the knowledge people need to have to function effectively in their social context. It (Discourse) informs its members what to expect from their environment and so reduces confusion by allowing them to make sense of the present and predict the future, often based on a past or even pasts. Generally, the basic elements of Discourse form an integrated amalgam of religion, history values and social organisation. These elements of Discourse are animated (communicated and transmitted) by discourse (language) (Faiq, 2019). Accordingly, central to translation, and this chapter, are the intricacies of the relationship between language, identity and culture, which “inform on the construction of identity and on the social and cultural contexts where identity is profiled” (Kiely & Rea-Dickins, 2006, p. 1). Identity and language immediately invite representations. In the grand scheme of history, representations of weak cultures by powerful ones in mostly negative terms have been part of human interaction, but perhaps no culture has been misrepresented and even deformed by Western cultures as has the Arab culture (Said, 1995). Terminologically, “West” is used here to refer to intellectual paradigms rather than to particular geographical places or particular communities. Likewise, in mainstream Western literature, the term Arab tends to subsume Muslims as well. So, both terms are used here in their general denotations. In the case of translation, the semiotic triad of producer, text and receiver of D-discourse is theoretically supposed to be replicated from the source into the target; but is this always true? Is the target the source? Perhaps so for certain pragmatic texts, as Lefevere (1999) labels them, but not with non-pragmatic ones such as literature or sensitive texts. Decisions at the Discourse (macro) level influence and guide the decisions made at the discourse (micro) level. Framing translation as D-discourse, as postulated by Gee (2004), and drawing on examples of translation of Arabic literature, the purpose of this chapter is to examine how the constraints and pressures of D-discourse (a system of representation) have conditioned translation of Arabic literature into English and other European languages. For our purposes here, insights from the interpretive methodology are adopted to explore practices that generate meanings between humans as interactants, and particular practices that lend themselves to generalisations. As Bevir and Kedar (2008) point out, an interpretive methodology sees “human action as meaningful and historically contingent”. Practices of translation as D-discourse stand—for a good case in point.

Translation as D-discourse and translation from Arabic The term discourse is defined in different ways—from the study of language occurrences above the sentence rank, to the examination of how sentences are

Framing translation as D-discourse  19

combined to produce meaning at text level (textuality), through the analysis of the use of language in social contexts (see Olher, 2004; Gee & Handford, 2012). For Fairclough (1992; 1995), for example, discourse refers to the link between texts and social practices that affect them in three dimensions: text, discursive practices and social practices. In general, discourse analysis explores two levels of communication: macro and micro. Gee (2004, pp. 6–7) elaborates on this as follows: The distinction between “Discourse” with a “big D” and “discourse” with a “little d” plays a role throughout this book. This distinction is meant to do this: we, as “applied linguists” or “sociolinguists,” are interested in how language is used “on site” to enact activities and identities. Such languagein-use, I will call “discourse” with a “little d.” But activities and identities are rarely ever enacted through language alone . . . When “little d” discourse (language-in-use) is melded integrally with nonlanguage “stuff” to enact specific identities and activities, then, I  say that “big D” Discourses are involved. We are all members of many, a great many, different Discourses, Discourses which often influence each other in positive and negative ways, and which sometimes breed with each other to create new hybrids. Following Gee’s definition, framing translation as Discourse invokes higher-order levels of analysis (often pre-existing translation itself as both process and product), and where Discourse may be said to encompass culture, understood as what the members of a particular community ought to know about how to act, interact and interpret their experience and texts in distinctive ways. These ways are based on specific components, including a particular religion, history, social structure, values and beliefs. All these aspects (Discourse) are expressed and given shape by discourse (language or discursive realisations). So, Discourse involves the totality of attitudes towards the world, events, other communities and the manner in which the attitudes are mediated (Fairclough, 1995), or as Van Dijk (1998, p. 8) succinctly puts it, [T]he basis of the social representations shared by members of a group. This means that ideologies allow people, as group members, to organize the multitude of social beliefs about what is the case, good or bad, right or wrong, for them, and to act accordingly. (emphasis in the original) Discourses are thus animated and transmitted by discourses (languages). Both Discourse and discourse can be seen as two sides of one coin and are so intertwined that it is difficult to conceive of one without the other. A very basic definition of discourse (language) is that it is no more than the combination of a good grammar book and a good monolingual dictionary. But these two do not capture what users actually do with the grammar rules and the words neatly listed

20  Said Faiq

in dictionaries. Instead, use very much depends on users, and discourse assumes its importance as the mirror of the ways members of a Discourse perceive reality, identity, self and other. Subsumed under discourse are material elements, which generally refer to products and habits such as food, clothes, sleeping norms, marriage and divorce ceremonies, prayers, modes of transportation, habitat, flora and fauna, and so forth. These elements do not usually represent serious difficulties in translation, and can be remedied through footnotes, although this may affect readability. This said, these elements may well become signatures (icons) reflecting a Discourse, and their use can easily trigger underlying perceptions of the translating Discourse about the translated Discourse (the use of turban, beard, veil, camel, for example). While discourses are generally prone to change over time, Discourses do not change quickly, if at all. When Discourses cross and mingle, often pasts clash and a struggle for power and influence becomes inevitable. Old formulations and modes of mediation appear on the surface and their realisation is made possible by discourse: the data bank of discursive options. Through adherence to the requirements and constraints of translation as Discourse, source and target become situated into ways of representation ingrained in the shared experience and institutional norms of the self (the translating Discourse). The representation of others through translation is a strategy of exclusion used by a self as normal and moral (Said, 1995). Not surprisingly, this exclusion is also accompanied by an inclusion process of some accepted members from the other (translated Discourse) as long as the acceptees adopt and adapt to the underlying Discourse and its associated discourse of the accepting self, acceptors, namely the translating Discourse (Faiq, 2006; Jacquemond, 2004). Seen as Discourse, translation becomes the site for examining a plethora of issues: race, gender, colonialism and its post phase, publishing policies, censorship and otherness. Here, all stakeholders involved in the translation enterprise (from choosing texts for translation to linguistic and editorial decisions) tend to be highly influenced by their own Discourse and its influence on the Discourse they are translating from. The production and reception of texts, including translations, require a discourse (language) which is at the same time controlled by “a historically particular structuring of discursive [text-producing] practices” (Fairclough, 1995, 7), namely a Discourse. As D-discourse, translation can bring together a number of analytical tools, linguistic and non-linguistic, to explore discourse realisations and the agenda-setting or framing involved in such realisations, as Robyns (1994, p. 406) appropriately argues, [I]n order to study the role that translation plays in the dynamics of selfdefinition, the focus of attention has to be shifted from individual texts or linguistic features in translation (however “contextualized” the analysis may be) to interference between discourses and discursive structures and strategies.

Framing translation as D-discourse  21

As discourse, translation does not exist! It becomes when a text is utilised by a user (= translator) to produce another text with all the likes, dislikes, prejudices, ideology, and so on of this user, who operates under the influence of a Discourse, causing translation, as Niranjana (1992, p. 1) aptly writes, to become “a significant site for raising questions of representation, power, and historicity. The context is one of contested stories attempting to account for, to recount, the asymmetry and inequality of relations between peoples, races, languages”. In other words, the intricacies of translation as D-discourse. Two examples are in order. The first is by Mason (1994) and used by Venuti (1998) to represent the negative consequences of translation. Mason refers to the April 1990 monthly magazine, Courier, published by the UNESCO to promote intercultural understanding. In this issue, an article appeared in both the Spanish and English editions of the magazine. The article deals with the history of the Mexican peoples. For Mason and Venuti, the problem lies in the English translation, which represents pre-Columbus Mexicans as inferior, for example, “antiguos mexicanos” (ancient Mexicans) became “Indians” in English. Accordingly, for both Mason and Venuti such a translation represents an “ideological slanting” against a particular people. I would posit that the translator/s might not have been aware of any ideological slanting, but operated, unwittingly, within the demands of the Discourse, which constructed their frame of reference when dealing with other Discourses, the ancient Mexicans in this case. In other words, the constraints and norms of translation as Discourse seemed to have guided translation as discourse and the resulting representation of the source Discourse and its people. The second example is Lefevere’s (1992) discussion of how the Arabic qasidah (ode) as a genre has not been effectively translated into European languages: The apparent failure to “naturalize” the qasidah in the Euro-American system to the degree that the haiku, for instance or even the roba’i have been naturalized, has absolutely nothing to do with the competence of the rewriters: their knowledge of Arabic is not questioned. Simply, no rewriter has, as yet, found a “slot” in the Euro-American poetics to fit the qasidah. (74–5) Finding a “slot” is not the full story, though. The encounters between the two worlds are historical, and as such, there should be no real problem accommodating the qasidah in one way or another. I would agree with Price (2000, p. 29) that the reason lies elsewhere—in translation as Discourse: Despite differences in . . . genre, histories, and traditions, Arabic and EuroAmerican traditions have existed [and] intermingled for thousands of years. Arabic poetry, mathematics, philosophy, are deeply imbricated in the development of a “West,” from Maimonedes to Averröes (Ibn Rashd), Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Pakuda, Edward Said, Lila Abu-Lughod, David Williams, and so

22  Said Faiq

on. What I draw attention to here is the presupposition of incompatibility in a general way which goes beyond the difficulties of the particular genre of qasidah. What does he [Lefevere] mean by incompatibility? From where does one derive such an idea? The example of the qasidah is just one instance of a long encounter. The last two decades or so, in particular, have witnessed an apparent increase in translation from Arabic. But every augmentation has usually been ignited by a terrorist attack on Western interests with little effect on the existing gulf between the two Discourses. Particularly into English and French, translation of Arabic literature has largely remained prisoner of geopolitical relations rather than a reflection of a genuine attempt to explore Arabic literature (some promising projects have come and gone such as the Mémoires de la Méditerranée [Ettobi, 2008]). Encounters between Arab culture and the West through translation have been characterised by strategies of manipulation, subversion and appropriation, leading to representations that fit the requirements of the translating Discourse. Such strategies have become rather nasty since the events of September 2001. The different media have played a major role in the rapid diffusion of subverted translations and coverage of this Arab World—suffocating its rich diversity and heterogeneity. This situation not only distorts original texts, but also leads to the influencing of target readers through translation, leading thus to translations that imply the production of subverted texts at all levels, “not only the source text, but also the target context experience the alteration infused by the translation process when their deeper implications are thus revealed” (Carbonell, 1996, p. 93). In his discussion of translation of Arabic literature into mainstream European languages, van Leeuwen (2004), for example, concludes that this remains closely attached to relations that create and reinforce Western dominance and hegemony over the source (Arab) culture, preventing along the way “the emergence of an authentic discourse on Arab identity, since the problem of identity was wholly seen through the prism of European conceptions” (16). And despite its recent interest in foreign literatures of the rest of the world (South America, for example), the West has shown limited interest in Arabic literature. This is reflected in the exclusion of this important human body of literature from mainstream academic programmes in the United States, for example, as Salama-Carr (2013) rightly points out. Despite the momentous (tragic) global events of this new century attributed to the Arabs/Muslims, interest in One Thousand and One Nights, or the Arabian Nights as it is affectionately known in the West, still assumes supremacy over Arabic literary texts chosen for translation. About an approximate, miniscule total of 401 Arabic literary texts translated over two decades (1948–68) into six languages (French, English, Italian, German, Spanish and Portuguese), Ettobi (2008, p. 17) notes: “Tales and the One Thousand and One Nights were the most selected works since some 275 translations thereof were produced, whereas only 74 contemporary literary texts and 52 other classics were made available in the same

Framing translation as D-discourse  23

languages.” As the quote indicates, the focus was—and still is—on translating that fits the requirements of a particular Discourse. Almost a decade before the events of September  11, 2001, Barber (1992, p. 53) posited two futures for humanity. One future is dictated by the forces of globalisation: by the onrush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers, and fast food—with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald’s, pressing nations into one commercially homogeneous global network: one McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications and commerce. The other future is driven by what Barber calls “tribalism” and is seen as the complete extreme opposite of the former: a retribalization of large swaths of humankind by war and bloodshed: a threatened Lebanonization of national states in which culture is pitted against culture, people against people, tribe against tribe—a Jihad in the name of a hundred narrowly conceived faiths against every kind of interdependence, every kind of artificial social cooperation and civic mutuality. Although Barber continues to critique both “McWorld” and “Jihad” as enemies of democracy (Barber, 2016), his choice of the words jihad and tribalism to describe the dangerous future for the human race immediately conjures up images of Arabs and Islam as the causes of destructive evil forces that threaten the way of life of the civilised McWorld. This is rather telling, but not coincidental. This situation is clearly reflected in the meagre number of translations from Arabic. In an extensive survey of literary translation from Arabic in the United Kingdom and Ireland carried out by Literature Across Frontiers (LAF), Büchler and Guthrie (2011, p.  21) provide the statistics of literary translation from Arabic over two decades, 1990–2010 (Table 2.1). The small number of translations from Arabic aside, what Büchler & Guthrie provide justifies the argument discussed previously. Furthermore, and as Figure 2.1 (adopted from Büchler and Guthrie [2011, p. 21]) indicates, this meagre number of translations is wholly dominated by Mahfouz and Saadawi, providing a valid indication of the Discourse underpinning translations from Arabic. TABLE 2.1  Literary translations from Arabic in the UK & Ireland

Fiction (novel)

Memoir

Miscellaneous

Poetry

Short Fiction

Plays

192

11

1

37

65

3

24  Said Faiq

40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

Naguib Mahfouz Nawal Saadawi

FIGURE 2.1 

Mahmoud Darwish

Hanan Al-Shaykh

Yusuf Idriss

Elias Khoury

Most translated Arab authors in the UK and Ireland

Even the awarding of the Nobel Prize in literature to the Egyptian novelist, Naghib Mahfouz, in 1988 is not considered an innocent act within the dynamics of the relationship between the Arab World and the West, as Ettobi (2008, p. 20) points out: It has been argued that among the reasons for which Mahfouz was given the most prestigious literary prize are his political views. In fact, he voiced some support for the Camp David peace agreement brokered by the former president of the United States of America, Jimmy Carter, and signed by Egypt and Israel in 1978, that is, in the wake of the Nasser era. For this reason, he was allegedly chosen among a list of Arab authors presented to the Academy. Along a similar line, Amireh (1996) indicates that the celebrity status Nawal Saadawi enjoys in the West through translation is not so much because she champions women’s rights but because she tells the Western readers what they want to hear. In this view, the West welcomes her feminist critique of Arab culture because it confirms the existing stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims as backward, misogynist and violently oppressive. (¶6) But even this darling of the West has not escaped the demands of translation as Discourse and its resulting translation as discourse. According to Amireh (2000,

Framing translation as D-discourse  25

p.  224), the English translation of Saadawi’s The Hidden Face of Eve exhibits manipulation and subversion through many deletions and additions. Entire chapters in the Arabic edition disappear from the English translation. Two chapters in particular, “Women’s Work at Home” and “Arab Women and Socialism”, in which El Saadawi critiques capitalism’s exploitation of women and argues for a socialist economic and political system, are not in The Hidden Face of Eve . . . Also absent are passages that assert Arab women to be ahead of American and European women in demanding equality for their sexes, that celebrate the progress Arab women have made, and that exhort them to see wars of liberation as empowering to them. The English translation also adds a new chapter on female circumcision (Amireh, 2000)—nothing surprising here! All these translational strategies (discourse level) were/are precipitated by the requirements of translation as Discourse. Still about Saadawi, and discussing the original writing strategies that went into the Arabic source of her Woman at Point Zero, Al-Assadi (2019, p. 170) points out that Saadawi “draws a stereotypic image of her protagonist Firdus as a representation of Arab and Muslim women in the mind-set of the Western culture; the victim of patriarchal oppression and the prostitute who sacrifices her body to survive”. The source Arabic text seems to have been written with an eye on the Discourse of the target audience (writing for/in translation). Translation as discourse is not the fundamental issue, but the existence of a Discourse that controls discourse is. The novel Girls of Riyadh by Alsanea (2005), translated into English by Marilyn Booth apparently with considerable intervention by the author and publisher (Alsanea, 2007), is a good case in point. Booth (2010) claims to have opted for a foreignising translation to let the source shine through. But when the translation appeared, Booth found it unacceptable; leading to the situation whereby such a translation is “[e]nforced by the prevailing practices of marketing, reading and evaluating translations” (Emmerich, 2013, 200). If Booth’s translation was altered, then the alterations were prompted by the requirements of a Discourse, presumably forced into and onto the English text by those working for the publishers most likely with little or no knowledge of Arabic. In the words of Lefevere (1992, 41), such a situation is the result because: Two factors basically determine the image of a work of literature as projected by a translation. These two factors are, in order of importance, the translator’s ideology (whether he/she willingly embraces it, or whether it is imposed on him/her as a constraint by some form of patronage), and the poetics dominant in the receiving literature at the time of the translation. In the translation of Girls of Riyadh, a date given in Arabic (Alsanea, 2005, 22) as “20/2/2004” becomes “February 20, 2004” (Alsanea, 2007, 14). Why opt for such

26  Said Faiq

a representation? Is it too difficult for US readers to interpret the Arabic as a day of a month of a year? In the same Arabic text (Alsanea, 2005, 23), the following passage:

‫اتخذت لميس مكانها إلى جانب ميشيل بينما تراصت بقية الفتيات وهن خمسة في‬ . ‫ وارتفع صوت المسجل مصحوبا ً بغناء الفتيات ورقصهن‬،‫المقاعد الخلفية‬ (literally, “Lamees sat in the passenger seat, while the rest of the girls, five in total, sat in the back seats. They all sang along with the loud music from the CD player and moved as if they were dancing”) is given in the published English translation as: Lamees took her place next to Michelle while Sadeem and Gamrah climbed into the backseats. The CD player was on full blast. The girls sang along and swayed their abaya-clad shoulders as if they were dancing on the seats. (Alsanea, 2007, 16) One can easily notice that facts are changed: where is the number five?, and why add, “their abaya-clad”? The only logical explanation is to consolidate the view of how these “little Arab girls dress”! The reviews of the English translation confirm the adherence to the requirements of a particular Discourse. Without a single exception, the excerpts that appear on the back cover of the English translation all invoke ideas about “most repressive society, a rare glimpse, secretive/closed society”: views that are clearly motivated by a Discourse whose existence precedes and controls how Arabic literature travels into English through translation as discourse yesterday and today (Al-Assadi, 2019; Farghal  & Almanna, 2015). Still about Girls of Riyadh, the translator, Booth writes (2010, p. 149): I argue that revisions made by press and author to my translation assimilated it to chicklit generic conventions in the Anglo-phone marketplace, muting the gender politics and situatedness of multiple kinds of Arabic that acted, in the original novel, as a critique of the Saudi system. Para-textual framing of the marketed book and translational choices emphasized the fiction as a writing of “experience”, bringing it closer to the memoir genre and linking it to a tradition of what I  call Orientalist ethnographicism. These effects produce a work and author-figure both exotic and familiar. Booth argues that the book not only became deforeignised—removing cultural and political references, poetry and Arab idioms in favour of clichéd English language—but also degendered. Booth’s opening “Ladies, Girls, and Gentlemen”, for example, which echoes the Arabic (‫ )سيداتي آنساتي سادتي‬and highlights the key role of young women in the book, was smoothed by Alsanea and most certainly the publisher’s editors to the familiar “Ladies and Gentlemen”,

Framing translation as D-discourse  27

indicating how translation as discourse animates translation as Discourse (translation as D-discourse). Translation of Arabic literature into French has not escaped from the effects of translation as D-discourse either. Jacquemond (1992, 2004), for example, outlines the orientalist focus of intercultural encounters through translation between the Arab world and France. But even this great defender of an ethical translation of Arabic literature into French (he has rendered noble services in this regard) is ready to attribute his success as a translator of Arabic works into French to being invisible: “I was an invisible translator, ergo I was a good translator” (2019, p. 36). He further states in the introduction to one of his translations from Arabic: it seems that I was very conscious of the effects on the book’s reception of my translation choices—from the very selection of the texts we chose to translate to the kind of translation I practised—and that I was desperately trying to preempt them  .  .  . In the transparent, domesticating translation strategy prevailing in France, this was the best proof of my success. (37) Jacquemond’s case and the other examples discussed previously paint a bleak picture of intercultural encounters between the Arab world and the West. But this bleakness could be countered by some glimpses of hope that generate some sanguinity. Clark (2000), for example, hails it “remarkable” progress, and even speaks elsewhere (Clark, 2013) of Arabic literature coming out of its “ghetto”. Nevertheless, Clark (2000, 23) notes the continuing bias in the cultural relations between the Arab world and the West: There is, alas, no doubt that some people are anti-Arab. Hostility towards and prejudice against individuals, national or racial groups is a fact of life and nourishes most political, strategic and military confrontations. A reading of the British popular press shows that there is nothing unique in antiArabism. Globalisation has not vanquished xenophobia. That said, more sanguinity can still be had. Snaije (2013), for example, reports on the “good” developments translation from Arabic has witnessed post-9/11. Some dedicated projects and publishers such as Arabia Books (started in 2008 with the support of the American University in Cairo Press, then functioning independently since 2011) and Banipal, which has since its inception, been very active in promoting non-mainstream Arab authors through translation into English. The most important development perhaps was the establishment in 2007 of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), Arabic Booker Prize, funded by Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) and morally supported by the Booker Prize Foundation (United Kingdom). IPAF has in many ways given some visibility to Arabic literature as well as funding and promoting its translation (Tarbush, 2008). However, such developments and the sense of sanguinity they may cast

28  Said Faiq

on Arabic literature through translation remain limited and may die once funding from patrons stops for any reason. The reality of the Western old/new Discourse remains as is and unchallenged. In such cases, “the image cast of the source material can be demonstrated to be the controlling determinant of particular translation decisions and strategies, as well as the shape of the entire translated text” (Tymoczko, 2007, p. 114), in other words, translation as D-discourse.

Concluding remarks This chapter has interpretively provided an exploration, albeit limited, of how translation as Discourse (higher order level—patronage, agencies, translators) regulates translation as discourse (lower order level—language/discursive choices). As such, translation as discourse does not exist, but becomes. Its becoming is contingent upon translation as Discourse. The examples discussed indicate that Arabic literary texts have not usually been chosen for translation into European languages (particularly English and French) because of their innovative approaches or for their sociopolitical perspectives. Rather, texts chosen are recognisable as conforming to the parameters of the Discourse of the target audience in representing Arabs. When Munif, a critic of the sociopolitical realities in the Arab World, is translated into English, the reception is rather different but expected. On Munif’s splendid Cities of Salt in English, Updike (1988, p. 117) comments, “despite his higher studies in Europe, [Munif] seems to be insufficiently Westernized to produce a narrative that feels much like what we can call a novel.” Contrast with the review excerpts from the back cover of Girls of Riyadh! The views about Munif and the representative samples discussed in this chapter all show how translation as discourse is ultimately bound up with translation as Discourse, which not only precedes actual translating but guides and regulates it. When translators “remain oblivious of the Eurocentric pretheoretical assumptions built into the discipline of Translation Studies, they not only play out hegemonic roles in their works, they willingly limit their own agency as translators” (Tymoczko, 2007, p.  8). Translation from Arabic into Western languages, particularly English and French, is a prime case in point. It has been prisoner of a stable Discourse that sustains the otherness of Arabs through the deployment of a specific discourse. At this stage of writing an academic chapter, there should axiomatically be no new information, but flouting the norms is perhaps reasonable here. One might say, regarding translation as D-discourse from Arabic by the West: so what! Perhaps the Arabs and those in the West who support an ethical translation enterprise may well look into setting agendas to do something about what Büchler and Guthrie (2011, pp. 17–8) say: Arabic literature in English, as it means that everything from the selection of titles to be translated, to the way they are translated and marketed, is potentially being dictated by the economics of translation and the commercial

Framing translation as D-discourse  29

imperative, which rules the publishing industry. At the same time and rather paradoxically, a region with some of the richest nation states in the world, and with such an intense need to be understood by the rest of the global community, is investing virtually nothing in the international promotion and translation of its literature. Perhaps establishing a project of translation from Arabic into mainstream European languages may well challenge the old/current translation as D-discourse, including sustained foreignisation as Elnaili (2019) argues. Such a project may have as a motto “foreignise, baby, foreignise.” In this context and given the uniqueness of contemporary geopolitics, the effects of globalisation and the lack of ethics in almost all intercultural encounters, our global world, as Bermann (2005, p. 7) writes, will “be less hospitable; in fact, it could founder”. A possible logical fallacy here: so what? It is, after all, a matter of translation as D-discourse.

Bibliography Al-Assadi, W. (2019). Power relations and translation as “rewriting” in the postcolonial context. In S. Faiq (Ed.), Arabic Translation across Discourses (pp. 159–74). London and New York: Routledge. Alsanea, R. (2005). ‫“ بنات الرياض‬Girls of Riyadh”. Beirut: Saqi Books. Alsanea, R. (2007). Girls of Riyadh (Booth, M. Trans.). New York: Penguin Press. Amireh, A. (1996). Publishing in the West: Problems and prospects for Arab women writers. Al Jadid, 2(10). Retrieved from www.aljadid.com/content/publishing-west-problemsand-prospects-arab-women-writers. ———. (2000). Framing Nawal El Sadaawi: Arab feminism in a transnational world. Signs, 26(1), 215–49. Barber, B. (1992, March). Jihad vs. McWorld. The Atlantic Monthly, 1992, 53–63. ———. (2016, January 30). Jihad vs McWorld. Sunday Guardian Live. Retrieved from www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/2884-jihad-vs-mcworld-2016. Bermann, S. (2005). Introduction. In S. Bermann & M. Wood (Eds.), Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation (pp. 1–10). Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Bevir, M., & Kedar, A. (2008). Concept formation in political science: An anti-naturalist critique of qualitative methodology. Perspectives on Politics, 6(3), 503–17. Booth, M. (2010). The Muslim woman as celebrity author and the politics of translating Arabic: Girls of Riyadh go on the road. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 6(3), 149–82. Büchler, A.,  & Guthrie, A. (2011). Literary Translation from Arabic into English in the United Kingdom and Ireland, 1990–2010. Aberystwyth: Aberystwyth University, Literature Across Frontiers, Mercator Institute for Media, Languages, and Culture. Carbonell, O. (1996). The exotic space of cultural translation. In R. Álvarez & C. AfricaVidal (Eds.), Translation, Power, Subversion (pp.  79–98). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Clark, P. (2000). Arabic Literature Unveiled: Challenges of Translation. Durham: University of Durham, Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. ———. (2013). Arabic: Out of the Ghetto. The Linguist, 52(2), 12–3.

30  Said Faiq

Dizdar, D. (2012). General translation theory. In Y. Gambier & L. van Doorslaer (Eds.), Handbook of Translation Studies (Vol. 3, pp. 52–8). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Elnaili, S. (2019). Foreignizing the translation of a post—Arab spring Libyan short story. In S. Faiq (Ed.), Arabic Translation across Discourses (pp. 175–82). London and New York: Routledge. Emmerich, K. (2013). Visibility (and Invisibility). In Y. Gambier & L. van Doorslaer (Eds.), Handbook of Translation Studies (Vol. 4, pp. 200–6). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ettobi, M. (2008). Literary Translation and (or as?) Conflict between the Arab world and the West. TranscUlturAl, 1(1), 14–24. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Longman. Faiq, S. (2006). Cultural dislocation through translation. In S. Faiq (Ed.), Identity and Representation in Intercultural Communication (pp. 41–60). Austin: Trinity University, IAICS. ———. (2019). Translation as D-discourse. In S. Faiq (Ed.), Discourse in Translation (pp. 1–8). London and New York: Routledge. Farghal, M.,  & Almanna, A. (2015). Contextualizing Translation Theories. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Gee, J. P. (2004). An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Gee, J. P., & Handford, M. (Eds.). (2012). The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. London and New York: Routledge. Hatim, B. (2012). Teaching and Researching Translation (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Jacquemond, R. (1992). Translation and cultural hegemony. The case of French-Arabic translation. In L. Venuti (Ed.), Rethinking Translation (pp. 139–58). London and New York: Routledge. ———. (2004). Towards an economy and poetics of translation from and into Arabic. In S. Faiq (Ed.), Cultural Encounters in Translation from Arabic (pp. 117–27). Clevedon and New York: Multilingual Matters. ———. (2019). Theory and practice in the French discourse of translation. In S. Faiq (Ed.), Discourse in Translation (pp. 31–47). London and New York: Routledge. Kiely, R., & Rea-Dickins, P. (2006). Introduction. In R. Kiely, P. Rea-Dickins, H. Woodfield,  & G. Clibbon (Eds.), Language, Culture and Identity in Applied Linguistics (pp. 1–6). London: Equinox. Lefevere, A. (1992). Translating Literature: Practice and Theory in a Comparative Literature Context. New York: Modern Language Association of America. ———. (1999). Composing the Other. In S. Bassnett & H. Trivedi (Eds.), Post-Colonial Translation (pp. 75–94). London: Routledge. Mason, I. (1994). Discourse, Ideology and Translation. In R. de Beaugrande, A. Shunnaq, & M. Helmy Heliel (Eds.), Language, Discourse and Translation in the West and Middle East (pp. 23–34). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Niranjana, T. (1992). Siting Translation: History, Poststructuralism and the Colonial Context. Berkeley: University of California Press. Olher, R. M. (2004). Translation and discourse. Acta Scientiarum. Human and Social Sciences Maringá, 26(1), 73–9. Price, J. (2000). Hybrid languages, translations, and post-colonial challenges. In M. Gaddis Rose (Ed.), Beyond the Western Tradition (pp. 23–52). New York: SUNY, Binghamton. Robyns, C. (1994). Translation and Discursive Identity. Poetics Today, 15(3), 405–28. Said, E. (1995). Embargoed literature. In A. Dingwaney & C. Maier (Eds.), Between Languages and Cultures (pp. 97–102). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

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Salama-Carr, M. (2013). Conflict and translation. In Y. Gambier & L. van Doorslaer (Eds.), Handbook of Translation Studies (Vol. 4, pp. 31–5). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Snaije, O. (2013). Using Arabic literature to bridge cultures in a post 9/11 world. Publishing Perspectives. Retrieved from www.publishingperspectives.com/2013/05/. Tarbush, S. (2008). Publication of Arab literature in English: Change of paradigm. Qantara.de. Retrieved from www.en.qantara.de/content/publication-of-arab-literaturein-english-change-of-paradigm Tymoczko, M. (2007). Enlarging Translation, Empowering Translators. Manchester: St Jerome. Updike, J. (1988, October 17). Satan’s Work and Silted Cisterns. The New Yorker, 117–20. Valdeón, R. (2012). Information, communication, translation. In Y. Gambier  & L. van Doorslaer (Eds.), Handbook of Translation Studies (pp.  66–72). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. van Dijk, T. A. (1998). Ideology. A Multidisciplinary Approach. London: Sage. van Leeuwen, R. (2004). The cultural context of translating Arabic literature. In S. Faiq (Ed.), Cultural Encounters in Translation from Arabic (pp. 14–25). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Venuti, L. (1998). The Scandals of Translation. London: Routledge.

3 AGENCY CHANGES IN MANGA TRANSLATION Yean Fun Chow and Hasuria Che Omar

Introduction Major Japanese publishers established affiliates and subsidiaries to distribute translated manga and manga-related products in overseas markets. VIZ Media in the United States, Shogakukan Asia in Singapore (Japan Book Publisher Association, 2014, 2017) and Kadokawa Gempak Starz in Malaysia (Kadokawa Corporation, 2015) are some examples. Such associations display the global readership of Japanese manga. However, manga translation is often neglected in translation studies scholarship even though it is pivotal to the global distribution of the genre (Jüngst, 2004; O’Hagan, 2007; Rampant, 2010; Huang & Archer, 2014; Borodo, 2015; Takeyama & Armour, 2015). Several research projects have been conducted on discrete central themes to address diverse aspects of manga translation. These researched features include the translation of linguistic paratext (Celotti, 2008/2014), 擬音語 (giongo, words used to mimic sound) and 擬態語 (gitaigo, words used to mimic actions, situations or behaviours that do not involve sound) (Inose, 2010; Fujimura, 2012) and wine language (Jones & Normand-Marconnet, 2016). Scholarly literature on manga and comic translation has also delved into varied facets such as localisation (Zanettin, 2008/2014, 2014), globalisation (Jüngst, 2008/2014; Giovanni, 2008/2014), multimodal perspectives (Kaindl, 2004; Borodo, 2015), social semiotic multimodal perspectives (Huang  & Archer, 2014; Takeyama  & Armour, 2015), audio-visual perspectives (Borodo, 2016) and censorship (Zanettin, 2017). Abdolmaleki et al.’s (2018) study of agency in non-professional manga translation in Iran is the only extant examination addressing the issue of agency. Nevertheless, the agency of manga translators and publishers in utilising available multimodal resources to reconstruct meaning in the target context is yet to be diachronically explored.

Agency changes in manga translation  33

To fill the evident research gap, this chapter aims to explain the changes in the agency exercised by manga translators and publishers in using multimodal resources to reconstruct meaning in the Malay translations published in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. In doing so, the chapter adopts the social semiotic multimodal approach proposed by Bezemer and Kress (2016), the manga theory postulated by Natsume (1997), the comic/manga theory posited by McCloud (2006) and the translation procedures suggested by Kaindl (1999) to analyse the translation procedures and changes of agency of manga translators and publishers in applying multimodality in manga translation.

Agency in manga translation The concept of “agent” refers to intervening influences in the accomplishment of tasks and processes and may encompass human actors and non-human objects (Khalifa, 2014). In the translation process, the term “agency” alludes to interventions that occur because of certain social and historical contexts; it is an aspect of power and can influence the agents involved in translation (Khalifa, 2014). The study of agency in translation highlights the relationship between authority and ideology and queries why translation reflects power: to examine what is translated using the lens of ideology and to exert an impact on the sense imparted by the translation (Khalifa, 2014, pp. 11 and 14). Abdolmaleki et  al. (2018) conducted the only extant study that examined the issue of agency in manga translation. They investigated the agency of nonprofessional manga translators in Iran based on the three-tier model proposed by Haddadian-Moghaddam (2014). This model comprises three components: decision, motivation and context. Interviews were conducted with the founder and manager of AnimWorld (a website that offers free manga and anime translated into Persian in Iran) to collect data on the element of “decision”. Moreover, the authors also conducted an online survey to obtain feedback from AnimWorld’s manga translators to explain the “motivational” and “context” components. The significance of the study is that it posits a framework for the study of agency in non-professional manga translation.

Theoretical framework The social semiotic multimodal approach As explained in the introduction, this study adopts an integrated framework, which will now be explained. In the social semiotic multimodal approach proposed by Bezemer and Kress (2016), all signs, including the agency of the sign makers, are viewed as being involved in meaning-making and must be recognised. The major concepts of this methodology include the sign maker, motivated signs, modes, semiotic resources, modal affordances, multimodal ensembles, agency and interest.

34  Yean Fun Chow and Hasuria Che Omar

The term sign maker refers to the producer and the interpreter of a sign. The act of interpreting is the remaking of a sign (Jewitt et al., 2016). In the present study, the manga authors are the producers of all signs as they create meaning through the utilisation of discrete semiotic resources. The translators or publishers are the interpreters who reproduce signs in target texts. Motivated signs refer to all that are used in meaning-making, and they are driven by the sign maker’s interests. Modes are a set of socially shaped and culturally available material resources for meaning-making. Speech, writing, image, gaze, gesture and layout are examples of such modes. Semiotic resources are social aspects of making and communicating meaning through signs; properties are developed, shaped and constantly reshaped for use in meaning-making by members of communities depending on their interests. For instance, the mode of writing utilises the semiotic resources of grammar, syntax, lexis as well as typeface and font size (graphical resources) (c.f. Bezemer & Kress, 2016, pp. 16–7). Modal affordance refers to the potentials and limitations of a mode in the production of meaning. Multimodal ensembles indicate modes and semiotic resources that operate as complex sign systems and function complementarily to convey meaning (Bezemer & Kress, 2016). Interest reflects subjectivity and comprises all relevant social experiences of a sign maker. The interests of sign makers influence their agency, which represents their choice of resources to deploy in the design of a sign complex to make meaning (Jewitt et al., 2016). The term “social” indicates “the field of actions governed by power” (Bezemer & Kress, 2016, p. 103). Actions produce social change, which in turn causes semiotic variances. Bezemer and Kress (2016) explain that the notion of social change and the characteristics of a social context can be understood by analysing semiotic amendments through this assumption. Semiotic change can be explained through two terms, “transformation” and “transduction”. Transformation refers to the conversion of the arrangement of entities within a mode; however, the entities remain within the same mode. Conversely, transduction refers to a modal entity that has been altered for conveyance through another mode. For example, a meaning component conveyed through the mode of an image may be amended for transmission through the mode of writing. The preceding explication of terms demonstrates that the social semiotic multimodal approach proposed by Bezemer and Kress (2016) is suitable for the systematic and diachronic examination of the changes of agency in multimodal translation.

Manga and comic theory According to Natsume (1997, p. 5), many people think that anyone can understand manga because they have read manga since childhood. In fact, they are unaware that they have gone through a complex process of mastering the “grammar of manga”. Manga narration is performed using illustrations, panels and language as well as the relationship between these three components (Natsume, 1997, p. 66). The three components are subdivided into different elements to convey different meanings. For example, different types of speech balloons refer to different types

Agency changes in manga translation  35

of utterances (a speech balloon with a few bubbles pointing to a character represents monologue, whereas a jagged speech balloon represents a shout) (Natsume, 1997, pp. 97–101). The usage of different abstract symbols that function as metaphors to convey the characters’ emotional states is another unique norm of manga. For instance, sweat droplets near the character’s head indicate that the character is nervous and does not mean the character is sweating (Natsume, 1997, p. 86). McCloud (2006, pp. 8–10) explains that comic/manga construction involves five basic choices, namely choice of moment, choice of frame, choice of image, choice of word and choice of flow. Each of these choices can be subdivided into different types of choices with different functions in narration. Due to limited space, the elements of manga suggested by Natsume (1997) and McCloud (2006) are summarised in Table 3.1: TABLE 3.1  Components in manga proposed by Natsume (1997) and McCloud (2006)

Choice of moment Choice of frame

Choice of image

• • • • •

Choice of word

• • • • •

Choice of flow

•

Moment to moment • Action to action • Subject to subject Scene to scene • Aspect to aspect • Non sequitur Close-ups • Fixed middle distance and fixed viewing angle Flip-flopping angles of subject-to-subject transitions “Worm’s eye” view • Above a scene • Wider view • Establishing shot Character design • Facial expressions • Gesture Abstract symbols • Shapes of speech balloon Word-specific • Picture-specific • Duo-specific • Intersecting Interdependent • Parallel • Montage Typeface of words inside speech balloons • Design of giongo/ gitaigo Left to right (Western comic) • Right to left (manga)

Despite its immense value to the present investigation, the social semiotic multimodal approach does not incorporate a specific illumination of the manga elements used in meaning formation. Therefore, the manga and comic theories of Natsume (1997) and McCloud (2006) are applied in this study to identify the modes and semiotic resources of manga to aid systematic analysis.

Translation procedures Kaindl (1999) The present examination also adopts the translation procedures suggested by Kaindl (1999, pp. 275–84) to identify the meaning-making actions adopted for the target text. These procedures encompass repetition, deletion, detraction, addition, transmutation and substitution. Repetition (repetitio) directs that “source language, typography or picture elements are taken over in their identical form”, while the size enlargement or the reduction of pictorial elements depend on the decisions of publishers. Deletion (deletio) indicates “the removal of text or pictures”, while detraction (detractio) alludes to “parts of linguistic/pictorial/typographic elements

36  Yean Fun Chow and Hasuria Che Omar

that are omitted in the translation”. Detraction is often used at the pictorial level by retouching images to comply with censorship regulations. Next, addition (adiectio) represents “operations in which linguistic/pictorial material which was not there in the original is added in the translation in order to replace or supplement the source material”. Transmutation (transmutatio) denotes “a change in the order of source language or source pictorial elements” and, finally, the term substitution (substitutio) conveys “translation procedures in which the original linguistic/ typographic/pictorial material is replaced by more or less equivalent material”. Kaindl (1999, p. 284) also asserted that “different translation strategies can be applied to individual elements within the same panel”. The present examination adopts Kaindl’s procedures as they can cater both to linguistic elements and to typographical and pictorial elements. Nonetheless, this study attempts to further hone the proposed procedures through the lens of multimodal social semiotic to explain the changes in agency.

Methodology In the early 1980s, Japanese cultural content were imported into Malaysia under the “Look East Policy” (Ye, 2010, p.  87). Spurred by this programme, manga became popular in the 1990s; hence, only translated manga produced since the 1990s were selected for analysis by the present study. The present examination performed a qualitative content analysis on 50 pages of each sample of a corpus of nine manga in Japanese. Identical analyses of Malay translations published in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s were performed on 50 pages of the translated samples of the nine manga. Before April  2017, three publishing companies in Malaysia were producing Malay translations of manga: Comics House Sdn. Bhd., Penerbit Tora Aman and Art Square Creation Sdn. Bhd. The increasing popularity of online comic platforms diminished the sales of printed manga and Comic House Sdn. Bhd. shut down in late 2016. Penerbit Tora Aman ceased operations in April 2017, and in November 2015, Art Square Creation Sdn. Bhd. merged with Japan’s Kadokawa Corporation and changed its name to Kadokawa Gempak Starz Sdn Bhd. To reveal the agency of the three publishers in utilising multimodal means to reconstruct meaning in the target language, translations published by Comics House Sdn. Bhd. and Penerbit Tora Aman before their business ended were among the selected publications. Hence, the corpus studied by the present examination resulted from purposive sampling. The translations selected as representative publications of each of the three companies and their respective source texts are presented in Table 3.2:

Findings and discussion Modes and semiotic resources in manga Utilising manga and comic theories and the modes and semiotic resources proposed by Bezemer and Kress (2016), the analysis of source texts elucidates that

Agency changes in manga translation  37 TABLE 3.2  Distribution of the parallel corpus used by this study

1990s

2000s

2010s

Source text

Publisher

Target text

Publisher

ドラえもん 第32巻 (1985) ドラゴンボール 巻43 バイバイ ドラゴンワー ルド (1995) 名探偵コナン19 (1998) ワンピース巻四 十九 “ナイト メア ルフィ” (2008) 恋月夜のひめご と (2008)

Shogakukan Inc. Shueisha Inc.

Doraemon 32 (1997)

Penerbit Tora Aman Comics House Sdn. Bhd

Shogakukan Inc.

Rahsia Cinta Malam Purnama (2009)

名探偵コナン83 (2014) ワンピース巻 ハ十一 “ネコ マムシの旦那 に会いに行こ う”(2016)

Shogakukan Inc. Shueisha Inc.

式の前日 (2012)

Shogakukan Inc.

Detektif Conan 83 (2017) Budak Getah 81 Pergi Berjumpa dengan Tuan (master) Nekomamushi (2016) Raikan Cinta (2016)

君の名は 01. (2016)

Kadokawa Corporation.

Shogakukan Inc. Shueisha Inc.

Nine source texts Total: 18 source texts and target texts

Dragon Ball Mutiara Naga 43 Jumpa Lagi Mutiara Naga (1998) Detektif Conan 19 (2001) Budak Getah 49 Mimpi Ngeri Luffy (2008)

NAMAMU . . . 01 (2016) Nine target texts

Penerbit Tora Aman Comics House Sdn. Bhd. Art Square Creation Sdn. Bhd. Penerbit Tora Aman Comics House Sdn. Bhd.

Art Square Creation Sdn. Bhd. Kadokawa Gempak Starz Sdn. Bhd.

the semiotic resources utilised in manga work uniquely with the availability of its four modes. Table 3.3 outlines the modes and semiotic resources of manga. The identified modes and semiotic resources of manga serve as a checklist or guide to help researchers attend to each of the modes and semiotic resources. Such a method can aid the assessment of the meanings conveyed through the multimodal ensembles. It can also assist in the identification of the translation procedures applied by the translators to utilise the multimodes of manga to reconstruct messages.

Agency changes in manga translation The analyses performed in this study employed the identified modes and semiotic resources to ascertain the translation procedures of the writing mode of

38  Yean Fun Chow and Hasuria Che Omar TABLE 3.3  Modes and semiotic resources used in manga

Mode

Semiotic resources

Image

• • • • • • • • • •

Writing Typography Layout

Position of element • Choice of frame • Orientation • Spatial relation Size • Colour • Shape (lines and speech balloons) • Icons Choice of moment • Character design • Abstract symbols Dialogue duration • Pitch • Direction of gaze Duration of gaze • Gestures (position and hand movement) Facial expressions (movements of eyebrows and end of mouths) Grammar • Lexis • Syntax • Punctuation Colour • Silence (punctuation “. . . . . . . . . . . .”) Typeface • Font size • Layout of giongo Reading direction • Gutter

manga. The mode of writing used in manga can be divided into six categories: dialogue texts, giongo/gitaigo without speech balloons, giongo/gitaigo in speech balloons, inscriptions, narrations and titles. Nevertheless, the agency changes are noted in the application of translation procedures in translating four types of semiotic resources: the Japanese-specific cultural elements, ateji, giongo/gitaigo and inscriptions. The present analysis evinces that some translation procedures applied to manga target texts reflect non-fully utilised multimodal ensembles.

Japanese-specific cultural elements All the manga examined in the present study exhibited Japanese-specific cultural features, but the translation procedures applied across the three periods revealed significant changes in agency. Japanese cultural attributes were substituted with Malaysian cultural elements in manga published in the 1990s and 2000s. However, manga published in Malaysia in the 2010s retained the Japanese cultural elements in Malay translations, repeating Japanese pronunciations and including notes in the gutter under the panel. This change in agency is exemplified in Example 1, which was published in the 2000s; Example 2 was published in the 2010s. Example 1 ST English gloss

[どや] [？] [今度] [大阪] [に] [来ェへん] [か] [？]　[うまい] [うどん] [、] [なんぼでも] [食わしたるで] [！] [東京] [の] [は] [味] [が] [濃ォて] [かなわんからのー] [ . . . ] (Kansai dialect) [How was it] [?] [This time] [Osaka] [to] [come] [(postpositional particle) indicates a question] [?] [Tasty] [udon] [,] [as you like] [let you eat] [!] [Tokyo] [of] [topic marker particle] [taste] [(postpositional particle) indicates sentence subject] [thick] [can’t stand with] [. . .]

Agency changes in manga translation  39

TT BT

Macam mana, bila datang ke Osaka, aku belanja kau makan mi sotong, sedap tau? How was it? When you come to Osaka, I will treat you to mi sotong, do you know it is delicious?

名探偵コナン 19 (1998, p. 50); Detektif Conan 19 (2001, p. 50) The image mode of Example 1 depicts Conan answering a phone call. The mode of writing interacts with the mode of imaging to inform the reader that the person calling Conan asks Conan to visit Osaka where he will delight Conan with delicious udon noodles. In the target text, the Japanese う ど ん (udon) is replaced by mi sotong, a term that literally denotes squid noodles. Mi sotong is a famous Malaysia dish of fried noodles with spicy squid. Although the image mode of the panel does not illustrate the udon, a reduction of meaning occurs because a Japanese cultural element presented only through the mode of writing is omitted from the target text. Thus, the translation enforces a partial transformation of meaning as messages in the source text are not fully transferred to the target text. Nevertheless, the agency of substituting a source cultural element with a target cultural feature has changed in manga published in the 2010s. Example 2 represents this change. Example 2 ST English gloss TT BT

[なんで] [うちの] [ご神体] [は] [こんなに] [遠い] [の] [？] [Why] [our] [the object of worship in a Shinto shrine] [topic marker particle] [so] [far away] [(postpositional particle, women’s language) indicates question] [?] Kenapa goshintai* jauh sangat? *objek pemujaan tempat roh atau dewa menghuni Why goshintai* is so far away? *object of worship where spirit or deity reside

君の名は01 (2016, p. 138); NAMAMU . . . 01 (2016, p. 138) The image mode of Example 2 portrays Mitsuha, her younger sister and her grandmother walking towards a place. The mode of writing interacts with the mode of image to inform readers that the characters are on their way to worship ご神体 (goshitai). In Shinto religion, ご神体 denotes the object of worship in the Shinto shrine. Transformation occurs when ご神体 is retained through its Japanese pronunciation as goshintai. Transduction is accomplished when the additional note *objek pemujaan tempat roh atau dewa menghuni’ (* objects of worship where spirits or deity reside) is appended to the gutter under the panel.

40  Yean Fun Chow and Hasuria Che Omar

The gutter (a semiotic resource of the layout mode) is utilised to clarify a message conveyed through the mode of writing. This change of procedures between the 1990s and 2010s reflects a significant change in the agency of the Malaysian publishers. These Japanese-specific cultural elements were considered inappropriate for retention in the target texts in the 1990s and 2000s but were preserved in the target texts published in the 2010s. In other words, the social acceptance of Japanese-specific cultural elements in Malaysia has increased. This social change is advantageous for the target reader, who can learn Japanese culture through translated manga. This change in agency also reflects the change in demand and reflects that readers now read manga not only for entertainment but also to learn about Japanese culture.

Ateji The Japanese writing system incorporates two syllabaries (hiragana and katakana) as well as kanji, which indicates Chinese characters. Ateji (当て字) comprises kanji and smaller sized hiragana or katakana above or beside kanji (Lewis, 2010, p. 28). The smaller sized hiragana or katakana is also known as furigana. Kanji conveys a meaning or a concept, while furigana illustrates the author’s pronunciation of the kanji (Lewis, 2010). The use of ateji in the corpus of the studied manga can be traced to the 1990s. However, only a few ateji entities of meaning were translated into the target language in the translated texts published in the 1990s and 2000s. The importance of translating all ateji meanings only began to be reflected in the target manga published in the 2010s. Example 3, which was published in the 2000s, and Example 4, which was published in the 2010s, prove this point. Example 3 ST English gloss TT BT

“空軍(アルメ・ド・レール)” [Air force (kanji)] [air force in French (furigana)] “Arume・Do・Real”!! “Arume・Do・Real”!!

ワンピース巻四十九 (2008, p. 39); Budak Getah 49 (2008, p. 39) The image mode of Example 3 shows a character called Sanji using a fighting tactic against an enemy. The jagged speech balloon depicts that Sanji is shouting out the name of the fighting tactic. 空軍(アルメ・ド・レール) is an ateji in the name, formed from the kanji 空軍 (kūgun) and the furigana アルメ・ド・レー ル (arume do rē ru). The kanji 空軍 denotes “air force”. The furigana アルメ・ ド・レール was borrowed into Japanese from the French word Armée de l’Air, which also signifies “air force”. In this instance, the ateji 空軍(アルメ・ド・

Agency changes in manga translation  41

レール) in the source text conveys four layers of meaning: (1) the name of the fighting tactic; (2) the meaning of the term “air force”; (3) the pronunciation of the fighting tactic in French; and (4) the character’s French origin. In the translation, the furigana アルメ・ド・レール was converted to Arume・Do・Real, adjusting the spelling. The kanji 空軍 (kūgun) was omitted through detraction. Thus, the semiotic change from the source to the target text represented a partial transformation because the meaning of 空軍 (kūgun) could only be conveyed through the writing mode and it was omitted. The image mode could not adequately replace this meaning. Further, the origin of the character and the meaning of the furigana could not be conveyed because the adapted spelling used in the target text did not reflect the original French word. However, the translation agency did not fully utilise multimodal resources to reconstruct the meaning of the ateji changes in the 2010s, as demonstrated by Example 4. Example 4 ST English gloss TT BT

焼鉄鍋 (ポアル・ア・フリール) [Burn iron pan (kanji)] [frying pan in French (furigana)] Berjalan menghentakkan kaki di udara, “Poêle à Frire” (Kuali Penggoreng) . . . Walking while stomping feet in the air, “Poêle à Frire” (Frying Pan) . . .

ワンピース巻ハ十一 (2016, p. 16); Budak Getah 81 (2016, p. 16) The image of Example 4 portrays Sanji is fighting. The name of the fighting tactic is represented by the kanji 焼鉄鍋 (yaki tetsu nabe), which literally means “burn iron pan”. It is given the furigana ポアル・ア・フリール (poaru. a. furī ru), which is borrowed from the French term Poêle à Frire, or “frying pan”. Here the ateji in the source text transmits four layers of meaning: (1) the name of the fighting tactic: (2) the meaning of “burn iron pan”: (3) the pronunciation of the fighting tactic in French; and (4) Sanji’s French origin. The image mode depicts Sanji flying in air with speed lines near his feet to illustrate the stomping movement. This ateji was translated as Berjalan menghentakkan kaki di udara, “Poêle à Frire” (Kuali Penggoreng) . . . (walking while stomping feet in the air, “Poêle à Frire” (Frying pan) . . .). The translator probably generated the additional explanation berjalan menghentakkan kaki di udara based on the interaction between the writing mode (ateji) and image mode. Further, substitution was used to replace ポアル・ア・フリール (poaru. a. furī ru) with the original French word Poêle à Frire. Literal translation was used to convert the kanji 焼鉄鍋 (yaki tetsu nabe) as kuali penggorang (frying pan). One implication of using this triplet of procedures was that the resulting translation was longer than the source text. Hence, the publisher used a smaller font size (semiotic

42  Yean Fun Chow and Hasuria Che Omar

resource of the mode of typography) in the translation. These procedures reflect the occurrence of transformation and transduction in the course of the translation. Transformation may be observed through the translation of the meaning of the kanji and the pronunciation of the furigana into the target language. Transduction is evident through the changes of utilising the modes of image and writing in the target text in the tactical movement conveyed solely through the image in the source text. The comparison between Examples 3 and 4, which were published by the same company but at different times, evinces that the agency of Comics House Sdn. Bhd. changed from not re-forming the complex meanings of ateji in the 1990s and 2000s to re-forming the complex meanings of ateji in the 2010s. These examples also reveal that translators or publishing companies are beginning to realise the need to convey complex meanings through complex multimodal ensembles that must be redefined in the target social and cultural context. However, the findings of the present study indicate that the complex meanings conveyed through the ateji are not fully translated into the target texts published by the other two publishers. In general, the agency of Malaysian publishers/ translators in utilising multimodal resources to translate ateji does not include the expansion of the modal affordances of the writing mode to cater to the needs of conveying complex meaning.

Giongo/gitaigo Giongo are terms that look like and characterise sounds. Gitaigo represent action, movement or position. In manga, giongo/gitaigo are presented as illustrations accomplished through creative design or typeface manipulation. They function to symbolise sound, depict the mood, or transmit the psychological or emotional state of the character. Hence, the mimetic giongo/gitaigo in manga allow the transformation of aural elements into visual features or help textual elements become illustrative to convey acoustic, action or emotion-related messages (Natsume, 1997, p. 115–8). According to Natsume (1997, p. 109–11), the creative design of giongo/gitaigo without speech balloon is part of illustrations. Therefore, giongo/ gitaigo without speech balloon should not be deleted during the translation task. The outcomes of the present study reveal that the giongo/gitaigo in manga published by Penerbit Tora Aman and Comic House Sdn. Bhd. in the 1990s and 2000s were largely retained in Japanese in the target text. Thus, the translation only conferred a partial transformation, causing readers to understand the mimetic and acoustic features through the giongo/gitaigo designs without fully grasping the meaning or pronunciation of the giongo/gitaigo inscribed in Japanese. Moreover, all three publishers frequently used substitutions with verbs, adjectives, interjections or created onomatopoeia generated by the translators to translate giongo/gitaigo in the three different decades. In such translation procedures, the Japanese giongo/gitaigo was deleted and the Malay translation was replaced using typeface resembling the original.

Agency changes in manga translation  43

Manga published by Art Square Group in the 2000s and by Penerbit Tora Aman and Kadokawa Gempak Starz Sdn. Bhd. in the 2010s show the use of the gutter and the image mode to convey a more complete message. Examples 5 and 6 from publications in the 2010s prove this point. Example 5 ST English gloss TT BT

ヒュオオオ To describe the wind blows ヒュオオオ *Hiuuu To describe the wind blows *To describe the wind blows

君の名は01 (2016, p. 143); NAMAMU . . . 01 (2016, p. 143) In Example 5, ヒュオオオ (hyuō) is a giongo/gitaigo created with straight lines and tapered ends in a manga panel to illustrate blowing wind. In the target text, ヒュオオオ is retained and the additional note Hiuuu is appended to the image. The translation Hiuuu was probably added by the translator based on the interactions between the modes, and the pronunciation was adjusted to the Malay speech pattern. The couplet procedures “repetition of giongo/gitaigo with addition of notes on the image” are adopted. The original design of the giongo/ gitaigo is retained and the sound features conveyed by the source text are better preserved. The pronunciation of the source text can also be conveyed through the notes that supplement the image. Example 6 ST English gloss TT BT

[サササ] [ . . . ] [To describe movement without sound] [. . .] サササ . . . *Berundur ke belakang To describe movement without sound . . . *Step back

名探偵コナン 83 (2014, p. 28); Detektif Conan 83 (2017, p. 28) The image in Example 6 portrays Conan and a character talking to a female inspector. The giongo/gitaigo サササ . . . (sasasā) of the source text interacts with the image to accord a clearer vision of the female inspector moving backwards as she is frightened by the prank. The target text retains サササ . . . adding the phrase, Berundur ke belakang (step back). This explanation appears to have been generated on the basis of the modal interactions and is inserted as a gutter note

44  Yean Fun Chow and Hasuria Che Omar

that complements the conveyed meaning. The semiotic changes of transformation and transduction may be noted in the target text. Transduction occurs because the gutter, a semiotic resource for the layout mode, is used to convey a more complete meaning through the mode of writing. Transformation occurs because the message conveyed throughサササ . . . is explicated via the supplementary note. Examples 5 and 6 clearly illuminate the awareness of Kadokawa Gempak Starz and Penerbit Tora Aman vis-à-vis the need to use semiotic resources of the image and layout modes to deliver messages that are more all-embracing. However, this agency is not demonstrated in the translated manga published by Comics House Sdn. Bhd. The application of the two procedures outlined previously also demonstrates the increasing awareness of Malaysian publishers with regard to the significance of using multimodal resources in translations.

Inscription In general, Japanese inscriptions were retained in manga converted into Malay in the 1990s and 2000s, although a few inscriptions were translated. This agency began to change in the 2010s when the procedure of duplicating the Japanese inscription with a supplementary note began to be utilised for the translated manga published by Kadokawa Gempak Starz. Example 7 is an example of this procedure: Example 7 ST English gloss TT BT

[バニラ]; [チョコ] [Vanilla]; [Chocolate (choko is the short form of chocolate)] バニラ; チョコ *Vanila; Coklat Vanilla; Chocolate (choko is the short form of chocolate) *Vanilla; Chocolate

式の前日 (2012, p. 25); Raikan Cinta (2016, p. 25) The image mode of Example 7 displays close-ups of two cups of ice cream received by the protagonist. The inscriptions バニラ (banira) and チョコ (choco) on the lids interact with the image to inform the reader about the flavours of the ice creams in the cups. The creative typefaces of the inscriptions become part of the product design or illustration, making the translation task difficult because they hold artistic value along with the transmission of meaning. Although the source text was just lexical in form, a combination of procedures were applied to overcome the complexities in the target manga: the Japanese inscriptions were retained in the target text, and Malay translations were inserted into the image. This process enabled the transformation of the conveyed messages into Malay

Agency changes in manga translation  45

and allowed the modal interactions between the image, text and typography (the inscription design) to continue in a complementary manner. This example also highlights the importance of the application of multimodality to overcome translation challenges. It is noteworthy that the outcomes of the analyses conducted for this study disclose that only some inscriptions were translated. Hence, the decision-making about whether to translate an inscription depended on its importance to the plot in the estimation of the translator/publisher of the target manga.

Concluding remarks This chapter focused on changes in agency in the utilisation of multimodality in manga translation in Malaysia. In doing so, it revealed that the textual messages of source manga were generally converted using the same mode of writing. Nevertheless, the changes in agency can be traced through the translation procedures employed in the rendering of Japanese-specific cultural elements, ateji, giongo/ gitaigo without speech balloons and inscriptions. The results of the analyses performed in this chapter reveal that translators and publishers utilised the modes of typography and layout to complement the writing mode in translations published in the 2010s. This change in agency reflects the increased awareness of the usage of semiotic resources of other modes to deliver written messages in manga translations published in Malaysia in the 2010s. Additionally, the translators/publishers prioritise separate preferences or discrete semiotic resources of the writing mode. Hence, inscriptions are often retained in the target texts without translation. This finding leads to the deduction that texts inside speech balloons were often paid more attention than the writing outside speech balloons, regardless of the shapes of the speech balloons. Further, the modal affordances of the writing mode of the target language were rarely expanded to convey more comprehensive meaning in the translations. When a combination of procedures was employed to convey a more inclusive meaning, the resulting translations tended to become much longer. Thus, the translated manga applied smaller font sizes to ensure that all the words could be inserted into the speech balloon. It is suggested that the phonetic guide in MS Word could be employed to expand the meaning potential of the existing semiotic resources of the writing mode. For example, 空軍(アルメ・ド・レール) could be translated with the phonetic letters into Tentera(Armée) udara(de l'Air). This would suffice to convey a more comprehensive meaning of the source text. The preceding examination also evidences that the domain of translation studies can apply a combination of theories such as the social semiotic multimodal approach and theories from relevant disciplines to diachronically explore agency in multimodal texts. Focusing on qualitative content analysis, changes in agency can only be explained with significant examples. Prospective studies should involve manga translators and publishers to explore the factors that prompt changes in agency over time.

46  Yean Fun Chow and Hasuria Che Omar

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———. (2016b). 君の名は 01. Tokyo: Kadokawa Corporation. Taamo. (2008). 恋月夜のひめごと. Tokyo: Shogakukan Inc. ———. (2009). Rahsia cinta malam purnama (Rajihah Hashim, Trans.). Kuala Lumpur: Art Square Creation Sdn. Bhd. Toriyama, A. (1995). ドラゴンボール 巻43 バイバイドラゴンワールド. Tokyo: Shueisha Inc. ———. (1998). Dragon Ball Mutiara Naga 43 jumpa lagi mutiara naga. Selangor: Comics House Sdn. Bhd.

4 TRANSLATION Reinforcing or challenging hegemony? Reflections on a structurationist approach to power and hegemony Shabnam Saadat

Introduction The nexus between translation and power has increasingly attracted scholarly attention, and a plethora of literature has highlighted translation as an influential factor in socio-political changes (Baumgarten  & Cornellà-Detrell, 2018, Rundle  & Sturge, 2010, Tymoczko  & Gentzler, 2002). Given their potential to shape worldviews, textual practices have been controlled, banned or exploited by hegemonic groups throughout history, from ancient times when Persian kings forced non-conformist writers to lick off the ink from the pages of their writings (Milani, 1985) to the present day, when dominant groups resort to various prohibitive and prescriptive measures to block incongruent ideas and to promulgate hegemonic norms and values. Power is not always conceived as a top-down relation to impose constraints and repression. The very concept of action is “logically tied to that of power” and refers to the ability of agents to mobilise resources to achieve desired outcomes (Giddens, 1979, p. 88). Thus, the conception of a “dialectic of control” (Giddens, 1984, p.  14) that allows translators to break away from hegemonic normative discourse derives from understanding power as “the transformative capacity of agency” (Giddens, 1979, p. 88). Yet the amount of power involved is bound to the resources available to agents, and it is agents’ asymmetrical access to resources that maintains the hierarchy of power and directs agents’ decisions and actions (Giddens, 1993). In the age of globalisation, the internet has provided a site of resistance against top-down restrictions. Cyberspace has become an effective resource to empower those in the lower levels of the hierarchy of power and has caused greater difficulty for dominant groups in the 21st century to limit and control the dissemination of discourse deemed subversive, despite dominant groups’ access to allocative and

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authoritative—namely, technological and legislative—resources. The structurationist conceptual model accommodates both dominant and dominated groups as agents with power. Both can reflexively monitor power relations vis-à-vis their own actions: one group intends to implement power and the other either complies or resists. Adopting a structurationist framework, this article follows a sociological strand of translation studies research. A sociological approach to translation studies opens up avenues to move from texts to agents, from textual elements to societal interlacements and from linguistics to sociology. Various analytical concepts and procedures have been employed to theorise the social nature of translation (Angelelli, 2014, Milton  & Bandia, 2009, Tyulenev, 2014, Vorderobermeier, 2014, Wolf & Fukari, 2007). By shifting the focus from texts to contextualised agents and their interaction with social structures, this article positions translation as a structurally informed constant process of decision-making and addresses questions about decision-making processes, the motivations informing translators’ decisions and the various factors affecting their actions in the context within which they function. Via the application of structuration theory to explicate the causes and consequences of translators’ actions and decisions in the Iranian context, this article sheds light on the question of the extent to which structuration theory lends itself to developing a framework for the study of translational actions in general and the analysis of power in particular. This article conceptualises “power” in a stucturationist framework and seeks to find out (1) to what extent do rules and resources constrain or enable translational actions and decisions? (2) how do instances of resistance manifest themselves against constraints? (3) to what extent does structuration theory lend itself to developing a framework for the study of translational actions and decisions?

Structuration theory: exposition, implications and analysis In the late 1970s, structuration theory emerged as a significant development to transcend one of the prevalent dichotomies in sociology. However, the origins of the theory can be traced to Berger and Luckmann’s (1967) concept of the mutual constitution of society and individuals, and there are strands of structurational analysis in the work of Bourdieu (1977) and Bhaskar (1979). Addressing the dualism inherent in the voluntaristic aspects of structural functionalism and the deterministic implications of orthodox Marxism, Giddens gives an a priori primacy neither to structures nor to agents. He replaces the traditional systems of contrasts such as individual/society, structure/agency and objectivism/subjectivism with the duality of structures, framing structures as “both the medium and the outcome of the practices which constitute social systems” (Giddens, 1981, p. 27). The term “structuration” appears as a neologism, combining “structure” and “action”, and signifies that they “are not separate entities, but in fact elements of

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Structure

signification

domination

legitimation

(Modality)

interpretive scheme

facility

norm

Interaction

one single process” (Inglis & Thorpe, 2012, p. 209). Structuration thus refers to the dynamic process whereby structures are either reproduced or altered through the structurally driven actions of knowledgeable agents with certain intentions and interests (Giddens, 1977). This duality of structures suggests that social structures are both produced by human agents and are simultaneously the very medium of its production. The structuration of every social action presupposes three elements: “the communication of meaning, the exercise of power, and the evaluation and judgement of conduct” (Giddens, 1977, pp. 132–3), that is, social actions are produced as meaningful, as a moral order and as the functioning of power relations. As Figure 4.1 illustrates, structures fall into three categories. Structure as signification involves semantic rules; structure as domination involves the asymmetrical distribution of resources; and structure as legitimation involves moral or normative rules. Structures, as rules and resources, are translated into action by means of knowledge and capabilities that agents draw upon in the process of social interaction. Structural elements may be separated analytically but in social life they are integrated. The analytically distinguishable aspects of structures not only enable us to have a more precise account of the social but also allow us to focus on any structure and analyse a specific aspect of action, its causes and consequences. However, any aspect of action also embodies the other two structural elements, that is, sanctioned conduct is inevitably meaningful and linked to power transactions which, in turn, enact sanctioning process. All these structures exist in agents’ memory traces and instantiate in their actions and decisions. In this sense, communication encompasses agents’ knowledge of the structural context and condition. It also involves the constant process of consulting previous experiences, configurations of power, norms and the meaning inherent in every social action.

communication

power

sanction

FIGURE 4.1 

The dimensions of the duality of structures

Source: (Giddens, 1984, p. 29)

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Translation, as a socially situated activity, is not an exception and can be approached from the same threefold perspective accordingly. Translators are always positioned in a structural context, and inevitably draw on their knowledge of that structural context and its conditions. They constantly incorporate previous experiences and potential consequences to sustain the reflexive monitoring of their actions. Translators’ knowledgeability encompasses the configurations of power, meanings and norms within their field of activity. In this sense, translation is the rationalised act of translators and their intentional choices are self-reflexively deployed against rules and resources. These intentional choices can be subsumed under the rubric of discursive consciousness and translators can provide reasons for their decisions in the process of selection and production of translations if asked for them. Conceptualising translation through this theory of action and consequences addresses not only the sociology of translation, but also the sociology of translators and the potential social effects of their actions. Accounting for the major forces at play in the social context, structuration theory utilises ontological concepts to analyse the mechanisms underlying translators’ decisions and actions.

Data and methodology From a structurationist perspective, human agents are able to act reflexively and provide reasons for their conduct if asked for them. Thus, in analyses of translation agents’ decisions, one way of collecting data is to ask agents for their rationalisations of decisions. Iranian translators, as the agents involved in the process of actualising the norms and values set by norm-authorities, have internalised structural constraints and are appropriate candidates to impart information about the monitoring apparatus of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (MCIG), whose files are neither public nor accessible. The data elicited through interviews that would take the reader behind the scenes of a wholly controlled publishing industry and show how the translation process, from selection to publication, is conditioned by structural rules and resources. To elaborate on the scope of translators’ dialectic of control within Iranian official circles, 15 semi-structured interviews with Iranian translators were conducted from a phenomenological approach focusing on their personal experiences in the Iranian publishing industry. Since this study does not aim to make statistical generalisations, a small group of subjects should be sufficient to reach a point of saturation, beyond which new interviews would yield little new knowledge. The interview questions mainly covered the following themes: • • •

The general outline of process of translation from selection to publication The parameters to define books as appropriate for translation The strategies to deal with “problematic” concepts

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• •

The destiny of translations that fail to be published The online translations that have not been commissioned by publishing houses

The interviews started with the introductory question and, from there, proceeded by following up the participant’s answers and probing them further. Investigating the main dimensions of the translation process, the opening question aimed to yield descriptions where participants themselves would provide their experiences, consulting their stocks of knowledge and memory traces. As participants revealed information about the translation and publication process, the follow-up questions picked up on key issues relevant to the study and asked for more details or examples. The data collected from the last two questions gave impetus for further investigation about prosumer translation as an instance of resistance against topdown constraints within official circles. Given that in Iran, cultural activities are controlled by agents invested with state power, having a slight political orientation or being vocal in criticising the procedures of cultural production would be enough to be accused of what is labelled “propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran”. The works of the writers and translators placed on the blacklist would not be accepted into the pre-publication review process, and consequently, would be barred from being published. Therefore, the translators’ reluctance to participate in interviews was predictable. They were assured that the confidentiality of the data would be protected and that their identities, or any information that might result in identifying them, would not be revealed. They are therefore given fictitious names wherever they are quoted in this article. In the following sections a structurationist conceptualisation of power will be explained and the data collected through interviews will be narratively presented to further illustrate the discussion.

A structurationist account of power Structuration theory expands the concept of power to encompass definitions of power as a both productive and enabling force and classifies “power over” as one of its subcategories (Stones, 2009). This notion of power also responds to a Foucauldian conception of productive power which “cannot be assigned simply to relations of superordination and subordination” (Turner, 2016, p. 47). In a structurationist conceptualisation of power, the focus is placed more squarely on resources; it offers distinctive insights into different aspects of agents’ power and the dialectics of control, which does not necessarily involve conflict and is not inherently oppressive. As Giddens puts it, “the existence of power presumes structures of domination whereby power that ‘flows smoothly’ in the processes of social reproduction (and is, as it were, unseen) operates” (Giddens, 1984, p. 257). All interactions are located in intersecting sets of allocative and authoritative resources and socially formulated rules.

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Before moving on to elaborate on different aspects of power, a brief description of rules and resources is useful. The distinction between communication and sanction, as properties of structures of signification and legitimation, arises from the constitutive properties of semantic rules and the regulative implications of moral rules. Giddens (1979) prefers to consider rules in two senses rather than in two types and points out that all rules have both interpretive and normative aspects but in different degrees. Taking Iran as an example, publishing books in Iran entails observing the “Objectives, Policies and Conditions of Publishing Books” issued by the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution. This resolution is the codified rules delineating the institutional red lines of the MCIG, and translators need to abide by them, should they wish to receive publication permission. But besides being regulative, this resolution is constitutive as well. It reflects the ideological values which underpin the political system. However, the codified rules, in other words, formal norms, lay down regulations for the conduct of people and do not bear truth-value (Wright, 1963). They are acknowledged as obligatory, not because of agents’ moral commitment to them, but because of their intent to avoid the sanctions which would follow non-compliance. Iranian translators consult their stocks of knowledge to evaluate the legitimation of their actions against the yardstick of the MCIG (Saadat, 2020). It is this knowledgeability and self-reflexivity which prompts them to predict the consequences of their compliance or non-compliance with the normative discourse imposed by the MCIG. This governmental body drives translators to follow the codified rules and reproduce the sanctioned discourse and, thus, reinforce the very structures which constrained their action. Translators do not endorse every action and decision they take, yet their actions are intertwined with a variety of constraints, and they make compromises dependent upon their situation and envisioned consequences. There is a symmetrical relationship between this “actualisation of rights and enactment of obligations” in constituting translation as a moral order (Giddens, 1993, p. 114). Simply put, structures function as both constraints and enablers; what is the right of one agent in an interaction may appear as a constraint to another one. The formal norms which secure the interests of the hegemonic group and preserve order are imposed as constraints on translators. Intentionally or unintentionally, translators become actively involved in promulgating and, thus, reinforcing the norms and values intended by the agents invested with state power. The link between power and sanction should not be overlooked. Sanctions are produced by the mobilisation of resources. These resources can be internal, pertaining to the elements of agents’ personalities, or external, involving the context of actions (Giddens, 1993). Each of the resources mobilised by sanctioning agents can be further classified as positive or negative. Internal sanctions may be actualised in the form of the “positive moral commitment” of the agent or in negative feelings of anxiety, fear or guilt. External sanctions may be actualised in the form of rewards or advantages, or threats of force (Ibid.). In real situations of

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interaction, several of these internal and external sanctions are in interplay; external sanctions are not effective unless they draw upon internal ones. The resources mobilised to enact the sanctioning process can be either in the form of “allocative” resources (domination over material facilities, objects and goods) or “authoritative” resources (control over people). The power brought about may take different forms such as economic, political, social or cultural. Although the storage of allocative resources may seem more obvious and tangible due to their material nature, it is the storage of authoritative resources that is more “significant as a whole” since it entails “the retention and control of information or knowledge” (Giddens, 1981, p. 94). Positioned in a hierarchical power relation in the Iranian publishing industry, the MCIG, translators and publishers deploy their decisions and actions on the grounds of their access to allocative and authoritative resources. Political authoritative resources and institutional allocative resources are accumulated and stored in the MCIG and reified in the form of the agents involved in pre-publication vetting procedures, issuing licences, permits, prizes and funds, and the bulk purchase of books from publishers who fall into line with the hegemonic group’s policies. Thereby, the MCIG’s power can be manifested in different forms, including economic, political, social and cultural. The MCIG exerts its power to influence others to meet its interests and maintain the existing order of power. The MCIG is an example of the tangible form of an institutional structure, which seems to stand independently from publishers and translators. Yet when publishers and translators abide by the rules set by the MCIG and practise within the delineated boundaries, they contribute to validating and reinforcing the sanctioning power of those rules and the ideology which propelled their formulation in the first place. The rules and sanctions attached to them, along with resources whose unequal distribution defines power relations, are used to mobilise the structure of signification to secure the interests of the hegemonic group, to promote the production of a certain normative discourse and consequently shape the worldview of the readership. This mobilisation informs the action conventionally known as “censorship”.

Structurally informed censorship The most prominent form of controlling translators’ agency is censorship, a powerful measure imposed by the dominant group to preserve all elements consonant with their ideology and impede incongruent ideas. Drawing on Giddens’ reflections, ideology refers to the asymmetries of resources which “connect signification to the legitimation of sectional interests of hegemonic groups” (Giddens, 1984, p. 33). From this perspective, textual manipulations can be explained as actions conditioned by the ways in which dominant groups control and use resources to produce and reproduce the hegemonic discourse. This allows us to adopt a dynamic view of censorship as operating in conjunction with other modalities to reinforce structures of power.

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As a structurally driven practice, censorship is supported by rules and resources to secure the interests of those in power and to reproduce and reinforce the structures of domination and legitimation. By blocking presumably harmful content, power agents aim to influence the way readers may interpret books and ultimately the world to impose their own worldview. Readers’ looking at the world through the lens of dominant ideology strengthens the regime’s pillars of power (Billiani, 2007, Rundle & Sturge, 2010). Censorship and manipulatory procedures are performed to consolidate regimes’ power, exalt their values and protect their culture from foreign influences. Translation, despite (or because of) its key role in the importation of novel ideas and literary models, has not always been viewed as a favourable textual activity. It has been also seen as the potential transporter of the seeds of corruption and rebellion and sometimes as “a sign of decadence that would endanger the indigenous literature with its publication” (Arronte, 2010, p. 202). In Iran, this fierce stance against imported literature is self-evident in the plunge in the percentage of books translated (e.g. from 83% in 1969 and 73% in 1976 to the low of 22% in 1979) the year of the Revolution (Gharashi, 2006, Ghasemi, 2013, Rahgozar, 1987). This might reflect the fact that the agents invested with power in this evolving Islamic state considered translation as an instance of cultural onslaught. The Islamic authorities, by and large, identified the prevalence of translation as the result of the “covert and overt support of the Pahlavi regime and the menials of freemasonry and westoxified currents of thought”, and also “Iranians’ low self-esteem against the West due to westerners’ constant cultural propaganda” (Rahgozar, 1987, p. 25). The fusion of these factors turned translation in the eyes of the revolutionary zealots to “an effective instrument of the imperialistic countries to promote the culture of nudity and compliance, and to prompt the sense of national inferiority and de-Islamisation” (Ibid., p. 25). However, censorship in Iran pre-dates the 1979 revolution. The first “office of domestic censorship” was founded in 1885 (Karimi-Hakkak, 1990: unpaginated) and during the Pahlavi dynasty (1925–1979), a censorship apparatus was in place. The system of pre-publication scrutiny was established in 1965, by which “the publisher was required to submit two copies of the unpublished manuscript to the Ministry of Information” (Ibid.). After the Revolution, the publishing industry experienced temporary freedom, but shortly after the Cultural Revolution, in summer 1980, censorship came back into force by the decree of the Islamic Revolutionary Court. By this decree, the government ensured that no printing house would print any texts which had not been examined by the Ministry in advance. The external supervision was legitimised by Article 24 of the constitution, which declares, “publications and the press have freedom of expression except when there is infringement of the basic tenets of Islam or public rights” (Constitution, 1979). Perhaps what differentiates post-Revolution censorship from its predecessor is the shift in emphasis from prohibitive to prescriptive censorship. Whereas the censorship enforced in the 1930s and the early 1970s “tended to stifle expression and

Translation  57

impose silence”, the post-revolutionary monitoring system “aims at dictating what ideas ought to be propagated and how” (Karimi-Hakkak, 1990: unpaginated). Thus, under the controlling apparatus of the MCIG, translations which reach the market can be described as the metonymic evocations of the ideals and values propagated by the ruling system and its institutional structure. Published translations are instrumentalised to disseminate the boundaries of appropriateness from the hegemonic group’s viewpoint. The behaviour and traits of characters in translated fiction are domesticated, not in the conventional sense applied in translation studies (Venuti, 1995) but in the sense of being based on the norms and values reflected in the “Objectives, Policies and Regulations of Publishing Books”, to prevent them from promoting profanity, renouncing the fundamentals of Islam and propagating prostitution and moral corruption (Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution, 1988). The translated text is the site where structure and agency interplay and the agents who have access to more resources exert more power. In the MCIG’s diktat certain parts of translated texts submitted for prepublication review are underlined as inappropriate; translators are then required to make these elements implicit, replace them with safe substitutes, delete them or add some non-inferable information either to avoid further deletions or maintain the coherence of the narration (Saadat, 2020). However, textual interventions are not always aligned with the MCIG’s intentions. Translators implement the modifications specified in the diktats but might resort to atypical choices and linguistic acrobatics to communicate the prohibited concepts, even obliquely. This would imply translators’ dialectic of control, albeit to a quite limited extent, which allows them to leave traces for the readership to “read between the lines” and causes slight ripples of disturbance on the surface of sanctioned discourse. A number of translators who participated in the interviews conducted for this study mention that they feel the scrutiny system in the MCIG acts like a machine to trap words. Ali Behzadi has found a possible explanation for it and has devised a countermeasure. He says that the MCIG accepts the file of the submitted work only in Microsoft Word format, as the scrutinisers carry out an initial quick search for specific words. If the occurrences of those words exceed a certain number, the book will be decreed unpublishable without being read. So Behzadi tries to pass problematic words through this filter by inserting spaces between letters, or by stretching words by applying the shift+hyphen keys. In a later stage, when the book has passed the word search filter, although a limited number of words might have been flagged up, he occasionally attempts to confound censors by making use of their lack of knowledge and applies words they might have rarely heard; for instance, in the case of alcoholic drinks, he replaces the problematic words with the names of lesser-known brands, thus obscuring to what these words refer. The sensitivity of the MCIG to specific words drives translators to resort to strategies which aim to garble the text and mislead the censors. Some translators,

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such as Bita Najafi, take advantage of the Persian language system’s lack of gender indicators. In one of the diktats she received, a specific scene was highlighted in which a girl and a boy take each other’s hands and escape from a danger. She was advised against any physical contact between characters of the opposite sex, so she covered it up by either using the third person pronoun, which is gender-neutral in Persian, or not using a personal pronoun at all, as Persian is a null-subject language. Experience has proved to her that this strategy is effective enough to outwit censors. Mina Arman adopts a different strategy exemplified in one of her translations in which characters are students attending a mixed-gender school. The MCIG marked this point and asked her to segregate the school. She was perplexed as to how to implement this but decided to replace the gender-indicating words such as “boy” and “girl” with names and leave it to readers to recognise them as boys’ or girls’ names. This implication of gender allows the text to circumvent censors’ sensitivity towards what is an inseparable part of quotidian social life but imposes itself as a predicament on Iranian translators. Deploying reflexively monitored strategies, translators constantly draw upon resources available to them to cope with the constraints imposed, although the extent of their capacity to exert power is restricted by the asymmetries in their access to resources. Despite the top-down restraints implemented by the ruling system, the internet has also proved itself as an emancipatory tool that enables Iranians express opinions with a freedom that is not available within officially-sanctioned circles. In addition to the ways in which translators flout official structures and engage in a dialectic of control, the internet provides space to challenge the constraints, formal norms and values imposed. In the following section, I will discuss how constraints have turned cyberspace into a resource and enabler.

Domination, resistance, unintended outcomes Over the last decade, the internet has become a platform for the publication of books that are unpublishable according to the norms and values of the MCIG, be they domestic literature or translated. As Iranian migrant literature has thrived after the 1979 revolution, the number of Iranian publishers based outside Iran has increased; among them are publishers such as Naakojaa in France, Gardoon Verlag in Germany, and Nogaam in the United Kingdom, which publish electronic books for Iranians across the world. Electronic publication has become an option for books which are not publishable in Iran due to their content, the author’s profile, their failure to obtain publication permission or their post-publication ban. An example of the latter group is Who is a Dictator, an illustrated book explaining the characteristics of a dictator for children and adolescents. The book was published in 1999 and its first print run was sold out within a week, but it was later banned. Electronic copies of it have been widely circulated in cyberspace.

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Aside from the effects on the works of official translators and writers, which are occasionally published on the web, the imposition of constraints has engendered unintended outcomes on the part of the target group for whose “moral health” extensive institutional rules and resources are mobilised. Fitting within the boundaries of appropriateness on the basis of top-down, dictated state values, the books passed through the MCIG’s filter have failed to meet the expectations of readers. As a number of participants admitted, readers’ trust has diminished, and they suspect all content that reaches the market through the channel of the MCIG has been bowdlerised. In reaction to this, end consumers (i.e. readers) turn into the producers of what they consume. Virtual communities of consumer-producers, or “prosumers” in Cronin’s coinage (2012, p. 100), use their linguistic ability and technical facility to conduct collaborative volunteer translation projects. They mainly translate books that cannot be published within official circles, as well as those which are published but in expurgated versions. Thus, the audience not only produces “its own self-representation as a target audience” (Ibid.), but also delineates the expectations that have not been met by the MCIG-approved translation. One of these prosumers implies those unfulfilled expectations in a rule-like preface to her translation of A Game of Thrones (Saadat, 2017). It is a form of declaration against censorship and establishes the position of this version as a response to top-down interventions and as an instance of discourse that breaks away from the state-sanctioned normative discourse. Using a relatively humorous tone, it reads: Oh, rules! In front of seven witnesses, seven camels were sacrificed: 1. There is no objection to reproduction and dissemination of this file. In all and any formats, including: circulation on the internet, uploading onto websites, copying on CDs and DVDs, printing, converting to audio books . . . or any forms of more advanced technology in the future, or in case of the destruction of civilisation, carving onto stone slates. 2. Avoid any form of deletion, addition, or distortion (censorship). It is for your own good. The content of this file has a curse on it, which would afflict you and your descendants for seven generations. The curse is highly effective but excludes the following points: Summarising, provided that it is not for circumventing the curse. Excerpting. Editing, proofreading, or any attempt to improve the quality of the translation . . . these are approved and appreciated.1 Prosumers circumvent constraints by drawing upon cyberspace as a modality which brings about enabling opportunities to smuggle in impermissible content

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under the watchful eyes of the MCIG. Thus, the resources which carry an enabling function for prosumers are imposed as constraints on the state monitoring apparatus. Prosumers not only empower translations to reach a wider readership but also, in turn, are empowered by the translations to improve their skills, ascend in the hierarchy of power in the web community and in some cases gain economic profit. Within a structurationist framework, translation can be seen as a double-edged sword, either manipulated to promulgate hegemonic values or made available in cyberspace through volunteer collaborative translation to break away from normative discourse. The internet, as an efficient resource, has accommodated a unique space for prosumers to take control of discourse and open a gateway to new ideas. Translation thus contributes to social structuration from both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic perspectives, but the consequences at the macro level are contingent upon the effectiveness of the resources available.

Toward a structurationist approach In the last two decades, a growing number of studies concerning sociological approaches to translation have mobilised the social theories of Pierre Bourdieu, Bruno Latour and Niklas Luhmann to analyse elements that underlie translation activity. Along with this trend, various Bourdieusian concepts, including “habitus”, “field” and “capital” have inspired extensive research in analysing individual translators’ practices and have been particularly drawn upon to study translation within specific historical and sociocultural contexts (Hanna, 2016, Inghilleri, 2005, Tyulenev, 2012, Vorderobermeier, 2014). Bourdieu’s view of habitus as “structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures” (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 53) shows strands of structuration theory that can be considered as an alternative to Bourdieu’s theory of practice. Both Bourdieu and Giddens sought to overcome ontological dichotomies such as structure/agency and individual/society. Bourdieu and Giddens share a structurationist standpoint in accounting for the reproduction of social order over time in terms of the way agents act within the boundaries of past experiences and the transformation of the social order through agents’ interactions. Their understandings of structuration are, on the other hand, significantly different. Bourdieu places more emphasis on social groups, specifically social classes, and how an individual’s habitus is reflective of the habitus of a broader social class, whereas Giddens focuses more on individual agents and recognises the potential for agency in everyone (Inglis & Thorpe, 2012). This contrast also signifies their divergent conceptualisations of power. While Bourdieu perceives power as the domination of one class over others and as processes through which the dominant group strive to legitimise their power in the eyes of the dominated, Giddens views power as the capacity of individual agents to act otherwise than they might have (Ibid.). Giddens understands power as the

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various ways in which agents draw on resources to follow one system of practices and to refuse another. Although structuration theory may seem abstract at first glance, Giddens believes the theory would not be specifically helpful if it did not contribute to the explication of problems of empirical research (Giddens, 1984, p. xxix). Nevertheless, the excessive concern with “ontology-in-general” rather than “ontology-insitu” has left the theory with a tendency towards what Stones (2009, p. 95) calls “methodological voluntarism”. Stones in Structuration Theory (2005) introduces a stronger version of structuration which pays more attention to questions of epistemology and methodology. Despite structuration’s high level of abstraction, in empirical cases, as Giddens suggests, its concepts can be applied selectively as “sensitising devices” to address research questions and interpret findings (1991, p.  213). Structuration theory has been empirically applied, as Phipps (2001) reviews and classifies 53 empirical applications of structuration theory in geography and social sciences between the years 1982 and 2000. Giddens’ methodological bracketing includes: (1) institutional analysis, which focuses on institutions as chronically reproduced rules and resources over the long term (1984, p. 375); and (2) strategic conduct analysis, which concentrates on how actors reflexively monitor their actions and how they draw upon rules and resources in their interactions (1984, p. 378). Within either methodological bracket, the most popular epistemology in the studies Phipps (2001) reviews is the interpretation of ethnographic data collected from, for example, interviews, written documents, letters or minutes of meetings. In translation studies, both brackets could be employed to investigate the institutionalisation of hegemonic norms and values and translators’ strategic conduct. Structuration theory accommodates an array of motives of human agency to social structures and, if applied in translation studies, would help us to explicate what motivates translators’ actions and decisions and what consequences their agency would engender (Tyulenev, 2014). Giddens’ thoughts on the social conditions that govern interactions may provide a means to foster an integrative approach to translation, whereby translation is viewed as being concomitant with a wide range of internal and external factors. A structurationist framework would also allow us to focus not only on the constraints and motives that underlie translators’ agency but also on translators’ dynamic roles in reproducing and thus reinforcing the same norms and values that restrict and direct their actions. Hence, it may be instrumental in explaining the factors contributing to the establishment and reproduction of the norms and values intended by power agents. It could also be applied to highlight the agency of translators and publishers in perpetuation and recreation of the same systematic limiting patterns, as well as the transformations that their actions can bring about if they flout norms and values. In other words, translators and publishers can either assume a norm-enforcing role and be instrumental in promoting values, or they can act otherwise and bring about change.

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Concluding remarks and suggestions for further research Capturing the interplay between top-down institutional interventions and bottom-up agency, this article aimed to show the potential of structuration theory to expand the notion of power beyond a top-down model and indicate how agents at different levels of the hierarchy of power could exert power, depending on the resources at their disposal. Structuration theory defines power in terms of resources and facilitates approaching it as either productive and enabling or restrictive and controlling. This might add another angle to the study of power relations in translation studies. This article also proposed to view censorship as an action in the range of actions informed by the mobilisation of rules and resources. It is an effective apparatus of preserving the order of power by means of either prohibition or prescription. As an inseparable part of the translation profession in Iran, censorship drives translators to reproduce discourse that promulgates the values of the regime, or at least, would not clash with the ideological tenets of the ruling system. Translators’ compliance with normative discourse results in the reproduction and thus reinforcement of the very rules that impose constraints on their actions and decisions. This article illustrates only one way of approaching structuration theory in a context with prominent asymmetries of power. Structuration theory can be applied to a wide spectrum of research, encompassing both macro analysis of institutions and micro study of praxis. This element of structuration theory not only aids the study of translational actions and decisions in specific contexts but also brings to the fore the historical, political, or ideological patterns which stretch across time and space. A potential area for further research would involve examining translation procedures and the constraints to which the production of translation is exposed, but not necessarily in political contexts or explicitly top-down relations. Such research would study translators’ interaction with the system within which they function, be it workplace or society. In the same vein, translators’ interactions with translation technology could also be approached from a structurationist perspective, more or less similarly to the way the notion of a “duality of technology” (Orlikowski, 1992) developed from structuration theory, to gauge the extent to which translators’ actions are shaped by translation technology and how translation tools are shaped by their application. We have yet to see how structuration theory will develop and change over time through its application, or more precisely structuration, in the domain of translation studies, and it definitely merits further explorations.

Note 1 The translation is my own.

Bibliography Angelelli, C. V. (2014). The Sociological Turn in Translation and Interpreting Studies. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.

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Arronte, M. E. P. (2010). Spanish Romanticism and the struggle for legitimation: Translation, censorship and the development of the movement. In D. Merkle, C. O’Sullivan, L. Doorslaer & M. Wolf (Eds.), The Power of the Pen: Translation & Censorship in Nineteenth-Century Europe (pp. 191–212). Berlin: Lit. Baumgarten, S., & Cornellà-Detrell, J. (2018). Translation and Global Spaces of Power. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1967). The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Allen Lane. Bhaskar, R. (1979). The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Billiani, F. (2007). Modes of Censorship and Translation: National Contexts and Diverse Media. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing. Bourdieu, P. (1990). The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P., & Nice, R. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cronin, M. (2012). Translation in the Digital Age. London: Routledge. Gharashi, M. H. (2006).‫“ بررسی مشکالت ترجمه ادبیات کودکان‬An Investigation into the Problems of Children’s Literature Translation”. Tehran: Sanam. Ghasemi, N. (2013). ‫“ ترجمه و دوره‌های ترجمه در ادبیات کودکان و نوجوانان ایران‬Translation of children and adolescents’ literature in Iran”. Retrieved from http://www2.atfmag. info/1392/06/13. Giddens, A. (1977). Studies in Social and Political Theory. London: Hutchinson. ———. (1979). Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. (1981). A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. (1984). The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press. ______. (1991). Structuration theory: Past, present and future. In C. G. A. Bryant  & D. Jary (Eds.), Giddens’ Theory of Structuration: A Critical Appreciation (pp. 201–221). London: Routledge. ———. (1993). New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretative Sociologies. Oxford: Polity Press. Hanna, S. (2016). Bourdieu in Translation Studies: The Socio-Cultural Dynamics of Shakespeare Translation in Egypt. London: Routledge. Inghilleri, M. (2005). The sociology of Bourdieu and the construction of the “object” in translation and interpreting studies. The Translator, 11(2), 125–46. Inglis, D., & Thorpe. C. (2012). An Invitation to Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press. Karimi-Hakkak, A. (1990). Censorship. In Encyclopedia Iranica. Retrieved from www. iranicaonline.org/articles/censorship-sansur-in-persia. Milani, F. (1985). Power, prudence, and print: Censorship and Simin Danashvar. Iranian Studies, 18(2–4), 325–47. Milton, J.,  & Bandia, P. (2009). Agents of Translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Orlikowski, W. J. (1992). The duality of technology: Rethinking the concept of technology in organizations. Organization Science, 3(3), 398–427. Phipps, A. (2001). Empirical applications of structuration theory. Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography, 83(4), 189–204. Rahgozar, R. (1987). ‫“ ادبیات کودکان قبل و بعد از انقالب‬Children’s literature before and after Revolution”, ‫“ کیهان فرهنگی‬Cultural Keyhan”, 4(8), 24–8.

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Rundle, C.,  & Sturge, K. (2010). Translation under Fascism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Saadat, S. (2017). Translaboration: Collaborative translation to challenge hegemony. Translation & Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts, 3(3), 349–69. ———. (2020). Translational reconstruction of realities: A  structurationist approach. In A. Almanna  & J. J. Martínez Sierra (Eds.), Reframing Realities through Translation (pp. 185–210). Oxford: Peter Lang. Stones, R. (2005). Structuration Theory. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Stones, R. (2009). Power and structuration theory. In S. R. Clegg & M. Haugaard (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Power (pp. 89–107). London: Sage Publications. Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution. (1988). ‫“ اهداف و سیاست‌هاضوابط نشر کتاب‬Objectives, Policies and Regulations for Publishing Books”. Retrieved from https://ketab. farhang.gov.ir/fa/principles/bookprinciples67 The Constitution of Islamic Republic of Iran. (1979). Retrieved from www.iranchamber. com/government/laws/constitution.php Turner, B. S. (2016). The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory. Chichester: Wiley. Tymoczko, M.,  & Gentzler, E. (2002). Translation and Power. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Tyulenev, S. (2012). Applying Luhmann to Translation Studies: Translation in Society. London: Routledge. ———. (2014). Translation and Society: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Venuti, L. (1995). The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London: Routledge. Vorderobermeier, G. (2014). Remapping Habitus in Translation Studies. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Wolf, M., & Fukari, A. (2007). Constructing a Sociology of Translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Wright, G. H. (1963). Norm and Action. A Logical Enquiry. London: Routledge.

5 TRANSLATING NIGERIA Reconceptualising Nigerian fiction in French translations Ifeoluwa Oloruntoba

Introduction The cultural gap between a Nigerian work of literature that is translated into a European language and the target audience is enormously wide due to the specificity of the literature. Nigerian literature is generally written in English, but the language is often adapted to reflect the way of life in Nigeria, resulting in a piece of work that is penned in English (a colonial language) but rooted in Nigerian oral traditions. Such literature appears unusual to a non-Nigerian English speaker and even more so to a target reader when it is rendered into another language, since its specificity is usually preserved in the target text (Bandia, 1993; Gyasi, 1999; Lindfors, 2015). However, publishers and other human agents (editors, translators and illustrators) involved in the publication of these works in other languages, such as French, employ the peritext (features that envelop the translations) to guide the target reader through their readings. In other words, they act as intermediaries (mediators), “hommes-ponts” (human-bridges) (Pageaux, 2009), between the foreign fiction and the target audience. The overriding objective of mediators’ intervention is to generate sales, and thus they present foreign texts in a way that will trigger the interest of potential readers. This article investigates the peritexts of Nigerian prose written in English and translated into French between 1953 and 2013 to determine how the works are constructed by mediators. Bourdieu (2002) discusses the processes involved in the publication of foreign works: the selection process, which is the choice of what to translate, what to publish, who translates and who publishes; and the marking process, which refers to the construction of a literary work by the publishing company, translator and preface author (p. 5). The second process, the marking process, is what this study seeks to examine through the peritexts (cover images, burbs, synopses and prefaces) of

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some French translations of Nigerian prose. It does not deal with target readers and the influence of the construction on their reception of the target texts. Rather, it examines intermediaries’ evaluation of the target texts and the potential effects on the target readers’ reception of the translations. Scholarship on the translation of Nigerian works, which is often examined together with other African works, has generally focused on the main texts with no considerable interest in their peritexts. These studies include investigations on the specificity of Nigerian literature (Bamiro, 1991; Bandia, 1993; Igboanusi, 2006), the difficulties encountered in translating it into other languages and the strategies employed in its translation (Bandia, 1994, 1996; Gyasi, 1999; Fioupou, 2006; Mebitaghan & Mokobia, 2011). This article contributes a new perspective to the research on Nigerian literature by investigating the peritext. In Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (1997), Genette defines paratexts as “productions” that “surround” the text, “extend” it in order to introduce it to readers, and “ensure” its “reception and consumption in the form of a book” (p. 1). He classifies them into peritexts, which are the paratextual elements that accompany a book, such as the title, cover art, author’s name, blurbs, forewords and prefaces; and epitexts; the paratextual elements that are not materially attached to a book, such as interviews and adverts (p. 6). As already stated, this study only engages with peritexts: cover images, synopses, blurbs, biographies and prefaces,1 which Haag rightly considers to be “relatively free of the parameters of the source texts” because they are not rendered directly from the peritexts of the source texts (2010, p. 203). The peritext constitutes the first part of a work that is viewed by potential readers and is therefore a richer source for investigating how the work is presented to an audience. Genette ascertains this fact when he explains that “the epitext—in contrast to the peritext—consists of a group of discourses whose function is not always basically paratextual (that is, to present and comment on the text)” (1997, p. 345) and it should, therefore, be regarded as an element “capable of furnishing us with paratextual scraps” (p. 346). In the sections that follow, the theoretical connections of this chapter with narrative theory and the notion of framing as well as imagology studies will be discussed. Afterward, the article will go on to investigate the construction of French translations of Nigerian works and then draw conclusions on the general patterns shared by the peritexts of most publications.

Theoretical framework, data & methodology In analysing the construction of Nigerian prose in France, this study draws on narrative theory and framing as put forward by Baker (2006) and on imagology studies. Scholars within narrative studies are primarily interested in how narratives construct the world. They view writing as narrative. They argue that translators do not reproduce the same narrative as that of the source text because their activity involves rendering a text into another language in a new cultural context. Baker defines narratives as “public and personal ‘stories’ that we subscribe to and that

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guide our behaviour. They are stories we tell ourselves, not just those we explicitly tell other people, about the world(s) in which we live” (2006, p. 19). When a book is translated into another language, its peritexts are modified for economic and aesthetic reasons (Haag, 2010, Herrero, 2015). As a result, the peritexts of the target text, like the translation, constitute a different narrative. Baker posits that texts and paratexts are sites of framing and describes framing as “an active strategy that implies agency and by means of which we consciously participate in the construction of reality” (2006, p. 106). While framing via translation is limited to the activities of the translator, other agents, such as publishers, editors and illustrators, contribute to the construction of reality through the paratext. Baker discusses ways in which the narratives in a source text are reconstructed via its translation or the paratexts of its translation: through changes in the temporal and spatial contexts of narratives (temporal and spatial framing); realignment of participants in narratives (relationality); reconstitution of narrative elements (causal emplotment); selection, accentuation and downplaying of the events in a narrative (selective appropriation); adaptation of narratives to match a popular notion (particularity); the modification of narrative genres (Genericness); interpretation of narratives in accordance with a general principle (Normativeness/canonicity and breach); the matching of narratives with a recurrent discourse in the society (Narrative accrual); and the attribution of labels to people, places and events in narratives (labelling). National image, which is at the centre of imagology studies, is considered a fundamental factor that influences the framing of reality. Scholars, such as Van Doorslaer et al. (2016), who have adopted the concept of imagology in translation studies argue that translations tend to be constructed in conformity with the existing image of the source country in order to stimulate the interest of potential target readers. Narrative theory and the notion of framing as well as imagology studies are useful for understanding the construction of Nigerian prose translated into French. While the first two serve in examining how the translations are constructed, imagology studies make it possible to determine the role of Nigeria’s image in the conceptualisation of its works in France.

Choice of material A thorough search yielded over 88 Nigerian works2 that are written in English and translated into French. Of these, prose is the most translated genre (70), followed by drama (14), and then poetry (4). This study is limited to prose as it is the most translated genre, and it is comprised of 65 novels and 5 memoirs. Fifty-five books are examined which include the novels and novellas that were published between 1953 and 2013. The year 1953 marks the first translation of a Nigerian literary work from English into French, The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola (1953). This article covers the six decades between 1953 and 2020 in order to have a wide range of materials. Moreover, since this research examines the construction of Nigerian works in France, only literary fiction published

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in France within the 60-year period is considered. Consequently, such a novel as Le démagogue (1977) (A Man of the People by Achebe), published within the examined period is excluded because it was produced not in France but in Senegal. The sum of the selected material (78.6% of the estimated number of prose) makes it possible to determine the trends in the conceptualisation of Nigerian prose in France. Most Nigerian literary works were published abroad. This was due to the lack of standard publishing companies in Nigeria in the past. Nevertheless, with the current rise of some publishing houses, such as Cassava Republic and Kachifo, writers still prefer to get published abroad so that their books will have a greater chance of being recognised worldwide. Of the 55 literary works investigated in this article, which are first editions for the sake of uniformity, only two were published in Nigeria as first editions: The Bottled Leopard (1985) and Basi and Company (1987). The remaining works were published in the United Kingdom and the United States. This implies that the peritexts in the source texts were not produced by Nigerian publishers and do not necessarily represent their views. Although references will be made to source-text peritexts when analysing those of the target texts, the focus of this research is on the peritexts of the target works published in France by reason of the research objective. The method of analysis is rooted in Descriptive Translation Studies. First, the cover images, blurbs, synopses and prefaces of source and target works are extracted. Afterwards, they are compared in order to find correlations and regularity (behavioural pattern). The regularity in the target peritexts serves to determine the most foregrounded aspect of the works and thus the way the literary texts are constructed.

Analysis: the construction of Nigerian prose Forty-three of the 55 works explore social themes (societal problems in Nigeria, such as corruption, child soldiers, migration, poverty and gender imbalance), while 11 belong to the theme of fantasy (involves magic) and one addresses spirituality. The peritexts of the 55 target works reveal that the translations are reconstructed as narrative documentation of Nigerian and African culture, in other words, as ethnographies. Clifford (2010) mentions “participant observation” as the key methodology in ethnographic research. This methodology implies an active involvement of an ethnographer with a group of people in their environment over a length of time in order to collect data and have a deep knowledge of the subject’s culture. Nigerian prose writing cannot fall under the same category as an ethnography since it is not the product of ethnographic research.3 Nevertheless, mediators of the writing assign to themselves the role of ethnographers and present Nigerian authors as insiders who have provided authentic information about Nigerian culture through their works. Such reconstruction functions through emphasis on the particularities of the works and the source audience (selective appropriation), through characterisations and generalisations of the events and

Translating Nigeria  69

characters in the works (labelling) and by descriptions of events recounted in the works as real-life stories (generic shifts). These three strategies overlap; there are no clear divisions between them.

Reconstruction through selective appropriation More often than not, mediators select from narratives elements that are specific to the source audience and accentuate them in the peritexts. Kung (2013) explains that the strategy employed in the peritext of Taiwanese literature translated for the US reader is source-text specific: the peritexts highlight the foreignness of the literature, but the strategy is antithetical to the one employed in the translation in which the specificity of the source text is considerably reduced. This divergence between the strategy adopted in the peritext and text does not apply to Nigerian works translated into French, as they are both foreignised. In other words, the peritexts of the target texts generally reflect the foreignness of the fiction and this is parallel to the translation of Nigerian works in which the cultural specificity of the source text is largely preserved in the target text. The tendency towards foreignisation in the peritexts is evident in each peritextual element. The analysis of the cover image reveals that the visuals on the covers of the target texts (target images) are more culture specific than those on the covers of the source texts (source images). Covers were classified into culture-specific (covers whose images depict elements related to Nigeria) and neutral (covers that present elements which are not specific to Nigeria). Out of the 49 target-text covers with images, 41 (84%) are culture-specific and 8 (16%) are neutral, whereas from the 54 source-text covers with images, 32 (59%) are culture-specific and 22 (41%) are neutral. The cover images of the early works published in French, Le malaise (1974), La flèche de Dieu (1978), La brousse ardente (1978) and Les interprètes (1979), depict a Neolithic rupestrian painting in the Sahara Desert, presenting Africa as a continent with an ancient culture. However, those of subsequent publications portray characters and the setting of the narratives (huts, bushes, dilapidated houses, arid red soil, half-naked or naked figures and barefoot human figures) more than the actions in them. These images depict primitiveness, suggesting stagnation and a lack of development in the source culture. In works whose plots revolve around Nigeria and another country, illustrators often represent the aspects that are related to Nigeria on the cover even if they are minor aspects. For example, In Citoyen de seconde zone (Second-Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta), the source-text image depicts the major character and her children leaving for England with suitcases in tow while the target-text image represents the major character and her children in a village with delipidated houses and roads, presenting a different timeline of the novel. Another example is Le blanc va aux sorcières (White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi), whose setting is foreign and whose major characters are whites. While the source image depicts a white woman, alluding to the major character, the target image shows a black woman, describing a minor character.

70  Ifeoluwa Oloruntoba

Intermediaries also make use of the preface to accentuate the boundaries between source and target audiences. A  preface includes prefaces, forewords, afterwords, introductions, notes and glossaries located before or after a translated text,4 which were not rendered from the source text of the translated work but originally written by mediators in the French translations. Thirteen out of the 55 target works contain prefaces, of which 58% emphasise the cultural specificity of the works. Moreover, they describe the strategies employed in translating the culturespecific terms, revealing the efforts translators have made to ensure the source texts are accessible to the target audience. For instance, the preface to the first novel, The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola, translated into French reads: L’auteur de ce récit, Amos Tutuola, [. . .] a écrit directement en erived The palm-wine erived and his dead palm-wine tapster in the deads’ Town. Un palm-wine tapster est “un tireur de vin de palme”. J’ai traduit cette expression par “malafoutier”, bien que ce mot soit employé au Congo et non en Afrique Occidentale. “Gris-Gris” est pour juju et “féticheur” pour jujuman. La traduction présentait quelques problèmes particuliers. L’auteur, par exemple, utilise les conjonctions de la langue anglaise (notamment but et or) d’une façon inhabituelle qui m’a donné bien du souci. (Tutuola, 1952, 1953, n.p,). The author of this story, Amos Tutuola, wrote The Palm-Wine Drinkard and His dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Deads’ Town directly in English. A palm-wine tapster is a “drawer of palm wine”. I translated this expression as “malfoutier”, even though the word is used in Congo and not in West Africa. “Gris-Gris” is translated as juju and “féticheur” as juju-man. The translation posed some particular problems. For example, the author uses the English language conjunctions (but and or) in an unusual way which caused some problems for me.5 Michel Ligny, the translator of Things Fall Apart (1958), states in his preface that he applied literal translation to render the text into French in order to preserve its specificity and instructs the target reader on how to pronounce the names of some characters in the novel. While the details in the prefaces of these novels are relevant, in that they enhance the comprehension of the works, they highlight the divergence in language between the source and target communities. The back covers of the target works consist of the synopsis, blurb and author’s biography. Authors’ ethnic groups, in addition to their nationality as Nigerians, are often mentioned in their biographies, thereby accentuating their otherness. Amos Tutuola is referred to as “Yorouba de la Nigéria britannique, . . . planton au palais du Gouverneur à Lagos” [a Yoruba of British Nigeria, an orderly of the governor in Lagos] (L’ivrogne dans la brousse, Tutuola, 1952, 1953). Chinua Achebe “est né en 1930, en pays ibo” [was born in 1930, in the Igbo region] (Le malaise, Achebe, 1960/1974); Ken Saro-Wiwa “est né en 1941 à Bori, dans le

Translating Nigeria  71

delta du fleuve Niger” [was born in 1941 in the delta of Niger river] (Sozaboy (pétit minitaire), Saro-Wiwa, 1985/1998). Precision on authors’ origin equally serves as proof to the French reader that the authors’ narratives are credible. On the back cover of Graceland (2008), it is indicated that the writer, Chris Abani, was arrested several times in Nigeria and “on ne saurait saisir plus crûment que lui l’espérance au cœur d’un continent à la erive” [we would not be able to capture the hope at the heart of an adrift continent better than him] (Abani, 2004/2008). That is to say, Abani is perceived as a supreme authority on Nigerian matters because of his origin and experience.

Reconstruction through labelling Nigerian prose is reframed as ethnographies through characterisations and generalisations of events and participants in it. The occurrences in works that explore social themes are often used to label Nigeria and even Africa, and the characters are considered as typical examples of Nigerians. For instance, the novel Efuru by Flora Nwapa recounts the ordeals of a woman (Efuru) in a patriarchal community, but the narrative is framed as a representative of women’s fate in Africa: “Derrière un personnage généreux, sensible et séduisant, l’auteur nous fait saisir ce que peut être le destin d’une femme africaine. La tradition est présente dans chaque fait quotidien et dicte ce qu’il faut faire et ne pas faire” [Through a generous, sensitive and seductive person, the author gives us a glimpse of what can be the fate of an African woman. Tradition is present in each daily activity and dictates what must be done and what must not be done] (Nwapa, 1966/1988, back cover). Such generalisation does not exist on the back cover of the source text; the storyline is only narrated. In a similar way, the back cover of another novel reads: “Le double joug est le portrait brut d’une génération africaine en proie aux doutes et aux contradictions d’un héritage lourd à porter” [Double Yoke is an exact portrait of an African generation, prey to doubts and contradictions of a heritage that is difficult to bear] (Emecheta, 1982/2001, back cover). In the novel, Nko and Ete are a couple who need to strike a balance between traditional culture and Western culture. Nko, the woman, is educated and juggles between being a traditional woman and being a modern (Western). This dilemma is raised on the back cover of the source novel with the question: “Which is the right way for the women of Africa? Which is the right way for us, women of the world?” (Emecheta, 1982). In the source novel, the central issue is portrayed as being one that women in general should ponder, whereas in the target novel, it is presented as a typical example of issues that pertain solely to women in Africa. In the case of Citoyen du seconde zone (Second-Class Citizen), the male protagonist is made to serve as a portrait of African men. The mediator cites a discussion between the heroine and her husband to describe African men: “J’ai réfléchi”, dit Adah tout à coup. “Autrefois je rêvais d’aller au RoyaumeUni. Nous pouvons emmener les enfants avec nous. Tout le monde va

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au Royaume-Uni maintenant. Je serai heureuse de pouvoir y aller aussi. Francis la laissa finir avant de lancer: “Mon père n’est pas partisan que les femmes aillent au Royaume-Uni. Mais, tu comprends, tu paieras pour moi et tu t’occuperas de toi, et d’ici trois ans, je serai de retour. Mon père dit qu’ici tu gagnes plus que la plupart des gens qui ont été en Angleterre. Pourquoi perdre une bonne place juste pour aller à Londres? On dit que ça ressemble tout à fait à Lagos. Francis était un Africain jusqu’à la moelle des os. (Emecheta, 1974/1994, back cover). “I’ve been thinking”, says Adah suddenly. “In the past, I used to dream of travelling to the United Kingdom. We can take the children with us. Everyone is presently going to the United Kingdom. I’ll be happy to go too.” Francis waited for her to finish before replying: “My father does not approve of women going to the United Kingdom.” “But, you know, you’ll pay for me and take care of yourself, and within three years, I’ll be back.” “My father says that you earn more than most of the people who have lived in England. Why lose such a good place for London? People say it’s almost like Lagos.” Francis was an African man to the marrow. The excerpt and sentence: “Francis was an African man to the marrow”, suggest that African men are misogynist and traditionalist like the male character in the novel. However, on the cover of Second-Class Citizen (the source novel), the narrative is commended: “An impressive and moving documentary . . . The author presents her story with total integrity and honesty” (Emecheta, 1974). The narrative revolves around Adah, the difficulties she encounters in her marriage to a misogynist and in England as a foreigner. The author indicates in her note that the events in the books are her personal experience and only the names of the characters changed. While the back cover of the source text does not reveal any information about the source audience and considers the narrative to be the author’s story, that of the target text alludes to the social problem explored in the narrative and construes the male character as a typical example of African men. This example echoes the remarks of the anthropologist, James Clifford, on Marjorie Shostak’s ethnographic writing, Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman: “An insistent tug toward the general is felt throughout Nisa, and it is not without pain that we find Nisa generalised, tied to an “interpretation of !Kung life” (Clifford, 2010 p. 105). Clifford judges that the report of the insider, Nisa, influenced the cultural representation of the !Kung people, albeit an ethnography. Francis is labelled and generalised in Le double joug which is merely the author’s experience. Not only as a Nigerian man but also as a typical African man. In works that integrate social themes with fantasy, events that deal with the social themes are highlighted and characterised in their descriptions. For example, Stars of the New Curfew by Ben Okri includes different short stories that address

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the themes of fantasy, war and other social problems in Nigeria. On the back cover of the target text (Etoiles d’un nouveau couvre-feu), the mediator urges the French audience to discover a different world: Cessons d’être confortables et quiets dans un vieux monde éteint! Pénétrer dans l’univers des histoires de Ben Okri, c’est souscrire à une autre réalité. Fouler les rues de Lagos à l’entremêlant chaotique—chaleur et poussière— ou s’enfoncer dans la jungle profonde du Nigéria, c’est accéder à la touffeur impeccable d’un pays où la vie des plus démunis tourne au cauchemar. C’est accepter la quotidienneté de la violence avec une logique qui appartient à un rêve. C’est affronter la loi du couvre-feu, la brutalité inique des militaires. C’est rencontrer des innocents, des corrompus, des passionnés, des fous, et admettre que chacun d’entre eux puisse suivre sa propre voie pour survivre. . . . voici l’Afrique comme personne n’a su l’écrire jusqu’à présent” (Okri 1988/1993, back cover). Let us stop being comfortable and quiet in an old extinct world! Penetrating into Ben Okri’s universe entails subscribing to another reality. Treading on the chaotic mix of Lagos’ streets—heat and dust—or going deep into the deep jungle of Nigeria involves experiencing the perfect stifling climate of a country where the life of the bereft turns into nightmare. It implies accepting the daily violence with unrealistic logic. It means facing curfews, the unjust brutality of soldiers. It involves meeting the innocent, the corrupt, the passionate, the insane and admitting that each of them can follow their ways to survive. Here is Africa like no one has ever written until now. This interpretation of the novel reveals the employment of social issues in marketing the literary text. Target readers are invited to discover Africa through different labels: heat, dust, violence, curfews, soldier’s brutality, corruption and so forth. Yet, in the source synopsis and blurb, there are no allusions to the social problems raised in the text. Rather, the blurb highlights the fantastic aspect of the text and commends the literary quality: “Okri’s work is obsessive and compelling, spangled with a sense of exotic magic and haunted by shadows . . . Reality re-dreamt with great convictions” (Okri, 1988, back cover).

Reconstruction through generic shifts (Genericness) The third way mediators have reconstructed Nigerian prose texts as ethnographies is by describing occurrences in them as constant situations in Nigeria, general truths about Nigeria or real-life stories, thereby inducing the target reader to receive them as non-fictional works. This trend is palpable right in the peritext of the first novel translated into French, L’ivrogne dans la brousse (1953), when Nigeria was not yet an independent country: “cette oeuvre prend une valeur

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de document et jette une lueur singulière sur un monde qui demeure fermé à la plupart des Européens” [this work is the same as a document and offers insights into a world that is still unknown to many Europeans] (Tutuola, 1952/1953). The narrative is believed to depict the source community and this interpretation inescapably presents the events of the novel as true. This fashion of perceiving Nigerian works persisted in the descriptions of subsequent publications: “Achebe . . . décrit le malaise d’un monde déchiré” [Achebe  .  .  . describes the unease of a broken world] (Achebe 1960/1974, back cover). “Un amour dangereux est une épopée de la vie quotidienne dans le Nigéria d’aujourd’hui, monde d’une extrême violence, pays de tous les dangers” [Dangerous Love is an epic of the everyday life in the present Nigeria, an extremely violent country, a country of all danger] (Okri, 1996/1997, back cover). “Avec ce premier roman, Helon Habila plonge dans le quotidien de la terreur et du chaos nigérian” [With this first novel, Helon Habila dives into the daily terror and chaos in Nigeria] (Habila, 2002/2004, back cover). The synopsis comparably communicates the consideration of the action in a novel to be general happenings in Nigeria. La dot (The Bride Price) is a case in point. On the back cover, the mediator narrates that Aku-nna, a young girl, lives in Lagos with her father and brother while her mother is in a village receiving treatment for infertility because “ce n’est pas avec seulement deux enfants qu’on constitue une famille africaine digne de ce nom” [an African family, worthy of the name, is not formed with only two children] (Emecheta, 1976/1998). The mediator further reveals that Aku-nna and her brother lose their father in Lagos and are constrained by the loss to return to the village as “on ne survit pas à Lagos sans les revenus d’un père” [it is impossible to live in Lagos without a father’s income] (Emecheta, 1976/1998). The publisher depicts these occurrences in the novel as regular situations in Nigeria: a Nigerian family consists of more than two children (unlike in the West where a family of two children is quite common); children cannot survive in Lagos without the financial support of their father (Lagos is expensive and only a father’s income is sufficient to live there). The employment of selective appropriation, labelling and generic shifts in reconceptualising the French translations of Nigerian prose writing indicates that the translations are imagined as the cultural picture of the country.

Reflections and concluding remarks This chapter has shown that mediators of the French translations of Nigerian works published between 1953 and 2013 often frame them as documentation of Nigerian culture. Regarding the translation of African works into French, scholars like Bandia (1993) and Gyasi (1999) assert that translators generally retain the cultural specificity of African literature in the target text in order to preserve the local colour of the literature. The framing of Nigerian works as ethnographies suggests that the preservation of the cultural specificity of Nigerian works when translated into French may also be driven by the need to preserve the writing

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within the frame of ethnography. Neutralising or blurring the cultural specificity of the texts or peritexts would prevent the works from serving this purpose. The reconstruction of these works as insights into Nigerian culture can be partly attributed to the fact that mediators perceive the French as having rudimentary knowledge about Nigeria. As mentioned earlier, the blurb of the first translation promotes it as a document that can enhance understanding about an unknown territory (Nigeria). This consideration of Nigeria to be an unfamiliar country to the French audience remained, as can be observed in the peritexts of subsequent translations examined previously. The translations are intended to serve as repositories of information about Nigeria and Nigerians to the French people. Consequently, the peritexts accentuate the thematic aspects which are woven around the events, the characters and the cultural specificity of the works. The literary or aesthetic aspect is less emphasised and the emphasis is often in the peritexts of the few books that involve fantasy. Furthermore, the re-conceptualisation of the novels as ethnographies can be explained by the correspondence between the social themes explored in the majority of the works and the conception of the French about the African continent. Although Nigeria is believed to be largely unknown to the French reader, it is presumed that the latter have some general knowledge about the African continent. Lewandowski (2011) investigates the representations of Africa in France through the history and geography textbooks published between 1945 and 1998. She argues that “globalement . . . la notion de ‘sauvage’ est l’une des plus présentes dans les manuels scolaires” [in general, primitive notion is the most represented in the textbooks] (p. 208). Similarly, Dinaux (2015) makes comparisons between the representations of Africa in the secondary schools’ geography textbooks and the perceptions of Africa by secondary school pupils in the country. According to him, there is a relationship between the two, as the questionnaires filled by the secondary school pupils portray images—poverty, heat, desert, savannah, primitiveness, famine, Ebola, large family war, among others—that correspond with the representations in the textbooks (pp. 49–51). These representations have developed into what Baker describes as “skeletal storyline”, in other words, a framework for constructing Africa in France (2006, pp. 78–85). Since the themes mostly explored in Nigerian texts correlate with the existing beliefs about Africa, mediators assert them and reconstruct the works as realities so as to attract the interest of the target audience. This skeletal storyline appears to be controlling the choice of works translated into French. As previously mentioned, 43 of the 55 texts examine the social issues in Nigeria. Social themes appear to have formed a motif and a selection criterion when choosing Nigerian works to render into French. Nigerian publications consist of other genres, such as romance6 and thrillers7 which have not yet been published in French. The interpretation of Nigerian prose as ethnographies undermines its literary qualities and reduces it to a single story about the nation. In an interview of the

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Nigerian author Adichie by the journalist Caroline Broué in January 2018, the latter exposes the probable effect of the single story about the nation. She remarks: “En France on parle très peu, sûrement pas assez, d’un pays comme le Nigéria. Quand on parle du Nigéria, on parle de Boko Haram, quand on parle du Nigéria, on parle des problems de violence, de sécurité” [In France, we talk very little, certainly not much, about a country like Nigeria. When we talk about Nigeria, we talk about Boko Haram, when we talk about Nigeria, we talk about violence, about security] (Capronnier, 2018). While these narratives may be true to Nigerian realities, they are not a complete picture of Nigerian culture and identity. As such, the strategies of selective appropriation, labelling and generic shifts within the peritexts of French translations of Nigerian literature serve to provide a narrow, and often colonial, interpretation of Nigeria and Africa—an interpretation that does not reflect the full and nuanced reality of Nigerian life. Yet how are these portrayals received by the readers? As Dinaux’s study on textbook representations and children’s perception reveals, works are received in the same manner as they are conceptualised. However, such may not always be the case. A follow-up study will be required to determine whether the French audience received these works as envisaged and to verify the extent to which the target peritexts shaped the reception of the target texts.

Notes 1 The title is not included as, unlike other peritexts, it is contingent on the source titles to some extent. Nord (1995) explains that in order to fulfil the function of a translation, translators examine “any particular referential intention expressed” in source titles (p. 275). 2 Eighty-eight works were discovered after checking on different sites (Wikipedia, National University Catalogue Sudoc). However, this number is inconclusive as of yet; there are possibly more. There is no definite information on the total number of Nigerian works translated into French, even on sites such as Index Translationum or BnF (the National French Library). 3 Some scholars (Lovesey 2006; Snyder 2008; Borman 2015) have likened early Nigerian authors’ publications, such as Things Fall Apart (1958) by Achebe, to ethnography because they broaden readers’ understanding of the colonial era and are described as the “authentic African” writing by their authors who are insiders (Nigerians). However, it is important to note that Things Fall Apart and other works written at the time were published immediately before or after Nigeria’s independence from Great Britain in 1960. The writers of the period explored colonialism in their works to counter the misrepresentations of the country by some Westerners, such as Joyce Cary, Rider Haggard and Joseph Conrad. The majority of Nigerian works that were written later did not necessarily examine colonialism, neither did their authors suggest that they are true-life stories. 4 This is based on Genette’s definition: “I will use the word preface to designate every type of introductory (preludial or postludial) text, authorial or allographic, consisting of a discourse produced on the subject of the text that follows or precedes it” (1997, p. 161). 5 Unless otherwise noted, all translations are the author’s. 6 Taiye Kiru and Lara Daniels only explore this theme in their works. 7 See works by Deji Olukotun and C.M. Okonkwo, RÉMÉLICE, Université d’Orléans.

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Bibliography Abani, C. (2008). Graceland (M. A. Maatsch, Trans.). Paris: Albin Michel. (Original work published in 2004). Achebe, C. (1958). Things Fall Apart. London: Heinemann. ———. (1966). A Man of the People. London: Heinemann. ———. (1974). Le malaise. (J. Robert, Trans.). Paris: Présence Africaine. (Original work published in 1960). ———. (1977). Le démagogue (A. Diop, Trans.). Dakar: Les Nouvelles Éditions Africaines. (Original work published in 1966). Baker, M. (2006). Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account. London: Routledge. Bamiro, E. (1991). Nigerian Englishes in Nigerian English literature. World Englishes, 10(1), 7–17. Bandia, P. (1993). Translation as culture transfer: Evidence from African creative writing. TTR: Traduction, terminologie, rédaction, 6(2), 55–78. ———. (1994). On translating pidgins and creoles in African literature. TTR: traduction, terminologie, rédaction, 7(2), 93–114. ———. (1996). Code-switching and code-mixing in African creative writing: Some insights for translation studies. TTR: Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction, 9(1), 139–153. Borman, D. (2015). Playful Ethnography: Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Nigerian Education. ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, 46(3), 91–112. Bourdieu, P. (2002). Les conditions sociales de la circulation internationale des idées. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 5, 3–8. Capronnier, M. (2018, January 28). La question affligeante d’une journaliste française à une auteure. Aufeminin. Retrieved from www.aufeminin.com/news-societe/il-y-a-t-ildes-librairies-au-nige0ria-question-affligeante-journaliste-francaise-a-chimamandangozi-adichie-caroline-broue-france-culture-s2476180.html Clifford, J. (2010). On ethnographic allegory. In J. Clifford & G. E Marcus (Eds.), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (2nd ed., pp. 98–121). Berkeley: University of California Press. Dinaux, A. (2015). L’Afrique dans la géographie du secondaire (Unpublished master’s thesis). École supérieure du professorat et de l’éducation, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès. Ekwensi, C. (1978). La brousse ardente (F. Balogun, Trans.). Paris: Présence Africaine (Original work published in 1961). Emecheta, B. (1974). Second-class citizen. London: Allison and Busby. ———. (1982). Double yoke. New York: George Braziller. ———. (1994). Citoyen de seconde zone (M. Pagnoux, Trans.). Montfort-en-Chalosse: Gaïa. (Original work published in 1974). ———. (1998). La dot. (M. Pagnoux, Trans.). Montfort-en-Chalosse: Gaïa. (Original work published in 1976). ———. (2001). Le double joug (M. Pagnoux, Trans.). Montfort-en-Chalosse: Gaïa. (Original work published in 1982). Fioupou, C. (2006). Translating pidgin English, rotten English and ubuesque English into French. In G. Raoul (Ed.), Writing Back in/and Translation (pp. 75–90). Oxford: Peter Lang. Genette, G. (1997). Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (J. Lewin  & R. Macksey, Trans.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Original work published in 1989).

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Gyasi, K. A. (1999). Writing as translation: African literature and the challenges of translation. Research in African Literatures, 30(2), 75–87. Haag, O. (2010). Australia and its German-speaking readers. A study of how German publishers have imagined their readers of Australian literature. In S. Russell (Ed.), Common readers and cultural critics. Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 203–9. Habila, H. (2004). En attendant un ange (E. Argaud, Trans.). Arles: Actes Sud. (Original work published in 2002). Herrero, L. I. (2015). Rewrapping Indianness for Spain: The peritextual representation of native north American identity in literary translations. TTR: traduction, terminologie, rédaction, 28(1–2), 39–64. Igboanusi, H. (2006). Style and meaning in Igbo English novels. Reading, 6(1), 18–24. Ike, C. (1985). The Bottled Leopard. Ibadan: University Press PLC. Kung, S. W. (2013). Paratext, an alternative in boundary crossing: A  complementary approach to translation analysis. In V. Pellatt (Ed.), Text, Extratext, Metatext and Paratext in Translation (pp.  49–68). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Lewandowski, S. (2011). “L’Afrique dans les manuels scolaires français (1945–1998)”. Du colonialisme à l’économisme. Cahiers de la recherche sur l’éducation et les savoirs, 10, 205–18. Lindfors, A. (2015). West African novels in Finnish translation: Strategies for Africanised English [unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Lovesey, O. (2006). Making use of the past in Things Fall Apart. Genre, 39(2), 273–300. Mebitaghan, R., & Mokobia, J. (2011). Une étude de la traduction de l’anglais pidgin dans le roman nigérian. Synergie Afrique Centrale et de l’Ouest”, 4, 101–09. Nord, C. (1995). Text-functions in translation: Titles and headings as a case in point. Target: International Journal of Translation Studies, 7(2), 261–84. Nwapa, F. (1966). Efuru. London: Heinemann African Writers Series. ———. (1988). Efuru. (M. Demoulin-Astre, Trans.). Paris: L’Harmattan. (Original work published in 1966). Okri, B. (1988). Stars of the New Curfew. London: Penguin Books LTD. ———. (1993). Étoiles d’un nouveau couvre-feu (A. Gattegno, Trans.). Paris: Union Générale d’Édition. (Original work published in 1988). ———. (1997). Un amour dangereux (J. Guiloineau, Trans.). Paris: Christian Bourgois. (Original work published in1996). Oyeyemi, H. (2009). White Is for Witching. New York: Doubleday. ———. (2011). Le blanc va aux sorcières (G. Villeneuve. Trans.). Paris: Galaade Éditions. (Original work published in 2009). Pageaux, D. H. (2009). L’œil en main: pour une poétique de la médiation. Paris: Maisonneuve. Saro-wiwa, K. (1987). Basi and Company. Portharcourt: Saros International Company ———. (1998). Sozaboy (Pétit minitaire) (S. Millogo & A. Bissiri, Trans.). Arles: Actes Sud. (Original work published in 1985). Shostak, M. (2000). Nisa: The Life and Words of a! Kung Woman (new ed.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Snyder, C. (2008). The possibilities and pitfalls of ethnographic readings: Narrative complexity in “Things Fall Apart”. College Literature, 35(2), 154–74. https://doi. org/10.1353/lit.2008.0018

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Soyinka, W. (1979). Les interprètes (G. Landré). Paris: Présence Africaine. (Original work published in 1964). Tutuola, A. (1952). The Palm-wine Drinkard. London: Faber and Faber. ———. (1953). L’ivrogne dans la brousse (R. Queneau, Trans.). Paris: Gallimard. (Original work published in 1952). Van Doorslaer, L., Flynn, P.,  & Leerssen, J. (Eds.). (2016). Interconnecting Translation Studies and Imagology (Vol. 119). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

6 TRANSLATION, RESISTANCE AND NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE NIGERIAN POSTCOLONY Francis Ajayi

Introduction This study examines the interplay between translation, resistance and national consciousness by exposing the role of translation in capturing and exposing the Nigerian postcolony’s past struggles for cultural recognition and current yearning for self-purification in view of such contemporaneous social realities as cultural, economic and political inequalities. Through a literary analysis of select postcolonial novels, I attempt to highlight the ideological undercurrents behind Nigerian Europhone writers’ use of writing strategies that are fashioned to bring the English and indigenous language cultures to the same “level of representation, dialogue and contestation”1, whilst simultaneously fashioning a narrative that accounts for the challenges of postcoloniality, such as the decolonisation process as well as the forging of a home-grown national consciousness. To expose the afore-mentioned dynamics, this study asks: in what ways has translation fostered resistance to Western cultural hegemony in the Nigerian postcolony? What are the implications of postcolonial translation for national consciousness? The current study depends on an identifiable legacy of thought from such thematic concerns as ethnographic representation and the interplay between literature and the struggle for liberation. While Achilles Mbembe (2001) has laid much of the foundation for our understanding of the negative stereotyping and representation of African civilisation in contemporary Western discourse, Chidi Amuta (1995) has opened our eyes to African writers’ struggles for cultural emancipation from the strangleholds of Western hegemony. The dynamics of ethnographic (mis) representation and the idea of literature as a driving force for resistance therefore constitute the key thematic elements upon which this study rests. In his exploration of the politics of ethnographic representation, Mbembe (2001) exposes the (mis)representation of the African human experience in

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Western political and cultural discourse and seeks to upturn Western theoretical approaches that claim to have the perfect solution to Africa’s sociopolitical and economic challenges. Mbembe further argues that Western rejection of the apparent similarities between the corporeal and psychological appearance of the African and the European led to the idea of Africa becoming “a polemical argument for the West’s desperate desire to assert its difference from the rest of the World” (2001, p. 2). To counter Western colonial (mis)representations of African civility, African thinkers of the time sought to create an emancipatory platform to facilitate the promotion of an African “historical destiny that is dense with meaning” (Ibid., p. 12). This initiative led to the development of a discourse that was geared towards exposing the philosophy intrinsic to sub-Saharan African cultures as well as the native cultural aesthetics on which the peoples of Africa pride themselves. The euphoria associated with the emergence of this new consciousness would soon fade as subaltern thinkers increasingly began to come to terms with the fact that the psyche of the average African citizen had undergone some form of mutation over the colonial years. As for the possibility of achieving a truly African modernity, the real problem for the African subject seemed to lie in their allegiance to the rural African life and the consequences of immersing their local cultural sensibilities in the European modernity that had since become an integral part of the modern African worldview. This dilemma re-echoes Mbembe’s argument that the “tension inherent in the twin project of emancipation and assimilation has resulted in the “acceptance of a tragic duality and an inner twoness . . . or an extraordinary sensitivity about identity” (Ibid., p. 12). The foregoing discussions on the politics of ethnographic representation highlight the ideological convictions that underpinned the demonisation of African civility which, for all intents and purposes, helped to reinforce Eurocentric narratives that falsify and misreport the historical and cultural achievements of African peoples, cultures and societies. African responses and resistance to these stereotypes, however, derived for the most part from an anti-imperialist nationalist ideology, which ultimately gave rise to the emergence of postcolonial translation practices. These responses form the bulk of Amuta’s (1995) musings on the notion of literature as a tool for cultural emancipation and national liberation. Amuta describes Frantz Fanon Wretched of the Earth as the most orchestrated articulation of the cultural ramifications of colonialism and anti-colonialism. Fanon, Amuta opines, is renowned for pioneering the evolutionary schema in the development of subaltern cultural sensibilities, which derive from an almost exclusive focus on the “national dimension of the anti-colonial consciousness” as opposed to the “racial emphasis of his contemporaries” (1995, p. 158). In The Wretched of the Earth (1968), Fanon argues that the development of subaltern cultural sensibilities occurred in three phases. The first stage (the assimilationist phase) is one in which the native intellectual’s desire to demonstrate their ability to imbibe the hegemonic culture comes to the fore. Further evidence of this assimilation can be seen in the literary productions of the time which were remarkably similar in style, form and content to the literary tradition of the imperial centre.

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Fanon describes the second phase in the development of subaltern nationalist discourse as the cultural nationalist phase, given that it allows for some degree of cultural reaffirmation through a process whereby the native intellectual remembers their authentic/original identity and refuses to assimilate to the imperial centre. This stage, however, involves some degree of cultural alienation on the part of the native intellectual, which in turn creates an impetus for the latter to depend on the philosophical traditions and canons of the coloniser for the inspiration and literary aesthetics required to create a native-culture literary consciousness. The third phase, described as the revolutionary and nationalist phase, is particularly marked off by the exposure of the native intellectual to the realities of colonial oppression. This sudden realisation of the negative impact of colonialism sparked a renewed determination in the consciousness of the native intellectual to right the wrongs of the colonial past through recourse to literary modes of expression. The second major attribute of this phase is the return to a form of cultural reaffirmation that draws from a mythical pre-colonial past and its accompanying oral tradition and practices in a bid to restore the core of African humanity to its rightful place in the subaltern subject’s consciousness. This re-orientation towards the African mythical past should create the much-needed incentive to resist the pressures of colonialism and the presence of its alluring cultural sensibilities. For Fanon, the native intellectual who attempts to undo the wrongs of the colonial past should be seen as a national hero whose labour must not be in vain. Fanon cautions, however, that cultural reaffirmation—the type espoused in the third phase—must not be promoted over and above national culture lest it lose its relevance. The native intellectual-cum-nationalist writer must therefore endeavour to engage with the past only as a means of “opening the future as an invitation to action and a basis for hope” (1968, p. 232). The texts discussed heretofore tell a compelling story about the African experience of resistance and emancipation by exploring ways in which thinkers and writers of Africanist persuasion have resisted those imperialist ideological positions that relegate African cultures to the backseat of human civilisation. Mbembe particularly exposes the origins of the negative stereotypes about African cultures, which have been perpetuated in Western discourses since the advent of colonialism. To counter these negative stereotypes, literary-minded Africans have sought to re-create the African story by presenting narratives that project a more authentic and positive image about African civilisation. The consciousness that derived from this new emancipatory platform was initially fraught with an identity crisis that derived from the sociocultural and psychological displacement that colonialism had triggered in the minds of African peoples. This psycho-social shift in the African cultural identity readily explains Mbembe’s reference to the recognition of a tragic duality and an “inner twoness” in the African cultural space. This, for all intents and purposes, created a launching pad for postcolonial translation practices—a topic to which I shall soon turn. In the sections that follow, I  discuss the methodology that underpins this research, the role of postcolonial translation in emancipating the Nigerian

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sociocultural and literary landscape from the stranglehold of Western hegemony, and the implications for national consciousness in the postcolonial nation-space.

Methodology The research upon which this socio-historical study rests makes use of two major data sources: primary and secondary sources. The primary data sources include Nigerian Europhone novels while the secondary sources consist of the interpretations by well-established scholars of select relevant topics, which come in the form of books and/or scholarly articles. To achieve the main objective of this study, I perform a close reading of these data sources/texts using pragmatic and socio-historical approaches. The benefit of the pragmatic approach to data extraction is that it helps to engage more realistically with crucial points in our research in a way that is based more on practical than theoretical considerations. The sociohistorical approach to data collection is equally very crucial to this research as it provides a framework that helps to grapple with ways through which a phenomenon came about in light of the social and political variables at play during a given period. This approach helps to critically examine select translations within pre-determined sociocultural and political contexts with a view to identifying ways in which the latter has shaped the contents and production of the former. This approach therefore enables us to re-evaluate postcolonial Europhone novels, for example, as texts or translations produced within the socio-political contexts of Postmodernism and Resistance. The combination of the pragmatic and sociohistorical approaches procures for us the liberty to collect evidence, make inferences, draw conclusions and record these conclusions in a meaningful narrative (Busha & Harter, 1980). This study is not definitive. As the socio-historical analyses presented will cover the post-independence era, I will attempt to present as comprehensive an account as possible of the postcolonial Nigerian experience of translation, resistance and national consciousness. I acknowledge that not all occurrences of translation will be captured, neither will all perspectives on the contact points between postcolonial translation and resistance be covered. It is hoped, however, that this study will provide a framework for further research into the role of translation in the construction of postcolonial emancipatory platforms as well as nationbuilding in the contemporary nation-space. Before I examine the dynamics of postcolonial translation in Africa, it behoves me to reiterate the fact that the African experience of decolonisation involves a gradual transition from the rejection of imperialist ideologies to the consolidation of efforts geared towards emancipating African hearts and minds from the stranglehold of Western hegemonic practices as well as the asymmetrical power relations that belie them. More to the point, the recognition and acceptance of the “tragic duality and inner twoness” described in Mbembe’s compendium or, better still, the hybrid cultural identity that emanated from the colonial encounter has foreclosed the possibility of a return to the “pristine” precolonial past. This, for

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all intents and purposes, has led to the creation of a space that lends itself to new postcolonial encounters and possibilities.

Postcolonial translation in Africa Numerous resources abound that deal with the notion of postcolonial translation, and our objective is not to rehash a fairly robust scholarly debate.2 It must be stressed, however, that the need to resist the dominant Western canons, prejudices and negative stereotypes about African cultures formed the basis of most postcolonial African writings. Also referred to as African Europhone literature, African postcolonial translations draw immensely from African oral traditions for their literary aesthetics and cultural content (Chinweizu & Ihechukwu, 1980). The use of orality in the writing of African Europhone fiction by bilingual and bicultural African writers is dealt with extensively in Bandia’s Translation as Reparation (2008). In this seminal book, Bandia argues that the representation of African oral texts, such as religious poetry, praise poems and elegies, in African Europhone literature occurs either through a process of literal translation or as “creative renditions” in the European medium of writing (2008, p. 3). The representation of orality in fiction, Bandia argues, involves a “double movement from an oral tradition to a writing culture and from a peripheral colonized language to an imperial or colonial language” (Ibid., p. 3), which process imposes translation-related traits on postcolonial intercultural writing. For African postcolonial writers, the literary language that emanated from this linguistic and cultural experiment has no doubt provided a tool for the expression and projection of the African identity and experience on the world stage. The development of an Africanised variety of the languages of colonialist imposition recalls Bhabha’s (2004) notion of the formation of “hybrid” or “in-between” languages in culturally heterogeneous decolonizing nations, which transcend fixed polarities of Self/Other, colonised/coloniser, and occupy a space “in-between” (Mehrez, 1992), thereby making the expression of the subaltern world view in global languages continually possible. Following Bandia, I argue that this creative adaptation of colonial languages to express African sociocultural reality derives from the quest for a middle position between African and European language cultures that blends “source and target language strategies” and is “fine-tuned and adapted to deal with the linguistic and cultural hybridity . . . characteristic of the postcolonial text” (2008, p. 5). This form of postcolonial writing no doubt goes against the grain of dominant discourse in that it defies conventional notions of translation that are grounded in the logic of translation as textual transfer between two different language systems. Rather than reify the idea of translation as transfer between single language systems, postcolonial translation strategies reiterate the hybrid nature of literary texts as well as the heterogeneous character of their original sociopolitical and geographical domains or contexts. Besides highlighting the heterogeneity of the contexts from which postcolonial texts emanate, postcolonial translations also engage with the notion of asymmetrical power relations between hegemonic and subaltern cultures. The

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role of language and translation in resisting imperialist notions of African primitiveness as well as imperialist attempts at keeping African nations in a perpetual state of servitude and dependency is particularly telling. These unequal power relations and the accompanying resistance and counter-hegemonic narratives are mostly captured and reflected in African Europhone writings. African postcolonial texts are therefore fashioned in such a way that they force colonial languages to “perform the work of indigenous language cultures through the representation of African orature in European language fiction” (Ibid., p. 7). African postcolonial texts are therefore inspired for the most part by the need to resist imperialist notions of African primitiveness and rid African societies of the shackles of conformity to imperialist norms as well as by the desire to promote an authentic African identity on the world stage. These motivating factors have in turn spurred an in-between language-culture that reflects the sociocultural and political realities of the African postcolony. These realities include but are not limited to the postcolony’s plurilingual, multicultural existence, which is structured along such bipolar lines as us/them, colonised/coloniser, as well as the pressure that these impose on the African subject to choose between their native tongue and the language of colonialist imposition. The onus to initiate and implement these tasks no doubt falls on African writers whose literary works are undeniably underlain by a rich and elaborate oral tradition. As Bandia has taught us, African writers have sought to “emphasize their identities by creating or simply asserting marked differences in language usage and pronunciation, in some cases exaggerating these differences by instituting deliberately incorrect usage” (2008, pp. 9–10). The encoding or writing of orality, Bandia adds, “results in the translation of identity through the transmutation of language” (Ibid., p. 10). The creation of this third code or in-between language for all intents and purposes highlights the attempts made by African Europhone writers to navigate the linguistic and ideological challenges imposed by the multicultural, hybrid nature of their postcolonial existence. African postcolonial societies, it must be stressed, are inherently hybrid on account of their well-established pre-colonial history of migration, trade and imperial domination and are therefore far from being situated in a mono-cultural, unilingual space.

Orality and creativity in postcolonial Nigerian fiction Drawing from a large repository of oral forms and spurred on by the perceived benefits of writing in a language with global literary capital, Nigerian Europhone writers have developed a linguistic system through which to appropriate the language of colonialist imposition in an attempt to emancipate their respective cultures from the stranglehold of Western imperialism and create for the citizenry a language that resonates with their sociocultural and political realities. The English language therefore continues to be appropriated to capture local realities and express local thought, religion, folklore and imagery. Nigerian literary craftspeople have, for instance, since taken solace in and resorted to a variety

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of exciting strategies and innovative writing practices that draw on Nigerian orality for their form and content. These creative writing strategies self-reveal in texts that are not only faithful to the Nigerian oral tradition and popular discourse but also tell the story of the nation’s postcolonial struggles and realities in a sophisticated narrative prose that defies well-established Anglo-European literary paradigms. Zabus (1990) describes this approach to fiction writing as a process of indigenisation.3 Indigenisation strategies are robust and diverse, and the approaches discussed in Zabus’ article are by no means exhaustive. If anything, they should be seen in the light of catch-all concepts that encapsulate several other sub-approaches to creative writing in African Europhone literature. Two of these strategies (vernacularisation and idiomatisation) will now be examined very briefly against the backdrop of their use in two novels authored by literary craftsmen of Nigerian extraction: Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God (1964) and Wole Soyinka’s Collected Plays 2 (1973).4 Vernacularisation entails the transplantation of African words and expressions into European language texts in order to give the text a distinct local flavour, thereby ensuring authenticity (Ashcroft et  al., 2002). More often than not, the indigenous words are transplanted in such a way that they sit in perfectly with the syntactic characteristics and grammatical structures of the receiving European language (Bandia, 2008). Speaking specifically about the wholesome injection of untranslated indigenous words into European language texts, Ashcroft et  al. argue that vernacularised postcolonial texts are designed to force “the reader into an active engagement with the horizons of the culture in which these terms have meaning” (2002, p. 65). The following excerpt from Arrow of God showcases a deliberate injection of an Igbo word within a larger English context in a bid to give the text a more exotic feel: He checked the remaining ones again and went back to his obi, shutting the door of the barn carefully after him. (1964, p. 3, emphasis added) In this phrase, the Igbo word obi is transplanted in a way that aligns with the grammatical structure of the English language. Judging from the context in which it is used, especially the accompanying clause “shutting the door”, it becomes evident that obi refers to an abode or a place of dwelling. Obi is, however, not an ordinary place of abode; it is one of many buildings that make up a family compound in traditional Igbo society. Traditional Igbo chiefs are known to have large families comprising a few wives and children. The family lives in a large compound comprising several huts that are customised to fit the needs of each sub-component of the household. The father of the home has a hut to himself while each wife is provided with a hut, the size of which depends on the number of children she has been blessed with. Achebe uses the word obi in several other instances in the

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novel in a bid to draw attention to this specific sociocultural reality while also reinforcing the patriarchal concept of family in traditional Igbo society. On a similar note, Soyinka’s The Trials of Brother Jero details an extensive and deliberate use of Yoruba words carefully embedded within English sentences in such a way that the grammatical structures remain undisrupted: (Towards the end of this speech, the sound of “gangan” drums is heard, coming from the side opposite the hut. A  boy enters carrying a drum on each shoulder. He walks towards her, drumming. She turns almost at once.) (1973, p. 152, emphasis added) The use of the Yoruba word gangan in the preceding phrase serves two main purposes. First, Soyinka successfully draws his readers closer to the source culture in such a way that the meaning of the Yoruba word is not lost on them. He does this with the help of the cushioning technique, which allows for the English explanatory word drum to be tagged to the Yoruba gangan in a way that guarantees a smooth, free-flowing delivery of the plot. Second, the word gangan does more than provide a foreignising effect on the English text. Gangan is not the run-ofthe-mill drum that is beaten willy-nilly. In traditional Yoruba society, it is not to be used out-of-season and must be beaten only in specific circumstances and under specific conditions by pre-ordained drummers to pass across specific spiritual messages to the “initiated ones” who are trained to decode them. The deliberate use of gangan in the phrase therefore serves a cultural and religious purpose in that it attempts to rally Soyinka’s readers around a certain religious concept that is intricately woven around the Yoruba oral tradition. It goes without saying that a deliberate omission of the Yoruba word would have left the phrase grammatically correct and readable but bereft of the cultural nuances that bestow upon the story its distinct Yoruba identity. Besides vernacularisation, Nigerian literary craftspeople are also known to have “bent” the English language to capture Nigerian idiomatic expressions. While some of these expressions are obvious transliterations, others seem to sit in much better with Western literary and linguistic conventions. The following excerpt from Arrow of God showcases Achebe’s mastery of Igbo proverbs and idioms as well as the abundant use of these expressions in the rendition of his narratives: If a man of Okperi says to you come, he means run away with all your strength. If you are not used to their ways you may sit with them from now cock-crow until roosting time and join in their talk and their food, but all the while you will be floating on the surface of the water. So leave them to me because when a man of cunning dies a man of cunning buries him. (p. 20, emphasis added) Meaning: They cannot outsmart me.

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The phrase “when a man of cunning dies, a man of cunning buries him” derives from the original Igbo expression “Onye aghugho nwuru; onye aghugho enie ya”. The expression makes for a particularly interesting example given that it has, in the aftermath of its appearance in Arrow of God, crept surreptitiously into the national consciousness and is now a common feature in political and cultural discourses in the country. It is therefore not unusual to find the Pidgin English equivalent “cunning man die, cunning man bury am” in written and verbal narratives attributable to politicians, celebrities, entertainers, writers and other Nigerians from all walks of life. The appropriation of the English language to express indigenous thought and idioms also features prominently in Soyinka’s The Trial of Brother Jero, as demonstrated in the following excerpt, which details an early-morning conversation between a street hawker and a potential customer: AMOPE: 

Isn’t it money you are going to the market for, and isn’t it money I’m going to pay you? TRADER:  [as Amope gets up and unloads her.] Well, just remember it is early in the morning. Don’t start me off by haggling. AMOPE:  All right, all right. [looks at the fish.] How much a dozen? TRADER:  One and three, and I’m not taking a penny less. AMOPE:  It is last week’s, isn’t it? TRADER:  I’ve told you, you’re my first customer, so don’t ruin my trade with the ill-luck of the morning (p. 151, emphasis added) The italicised expressions in the preceding excerpt are transliterations of their Yoruba original. It is early in the morning is a direct translation of O saaro o while don’t ruin my trade with the ill-luck of the morning back-translated into Yoruba sounds something like ma fi nkan buruku se mi l’owo l’aaro kutukutu. According to Yoruba ontological and cosmological beliefs, the morning signifies a new beginning, a fresh start. Whatever happens to an individual in the early hours of the day, good or bad, is generally taken to be an indication of the fate that awaits them throughout the course of the day. The trader cited in the preceding dialogue, like any other itinerant hawker, sets out in the wee hours of the day with her merchandise neatly arranged on a wooden tray sitting comfortably on her head, expecting to make huge sales and a decent profit. Operating from a mythicoreligious mindset that dictates that the morning is precious and a harbinger of good tidings, she is quick to remind a potentially cantankerous first client of the importance of the time of the day and the need to start off on a positive note in anticipation that the rest of the day will be kind to her. By resorting to these idiomatic expressions, Soyinka not only draws attention to his sociocultural experience but also brings an entire belief system into the limelight. The techniques and writing strategies employed in the production of postcolonial translations or literatures are too numerous to be discussed in a single

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compendium. Important for this research, however, is the knowledge that the use of these techniques in the writing of African Europhone fiction demonstrates ways in which the languages of Europe (in the case of Nigeria, English) are appropriated in such a way as to resist the ideological assumptions that underpin Eurocentric negative stereotyping of African cultures and civility. The postcolonial novels discussed so far not only celebrate Nigerian humanity, but also showcase ways in which Nigerian literary craftspeople have circumvented European linguistic and literary paradigms in a bid to resist Western cultural and political hegemony. There is therefore no gainsaying that Nigerian Europhone novels showcase the role of translation and orality in the eradication of the unsavoury legacies of colonialism in the postcolonial nation-space, while simultaneously creating a space for the Nigerian and larger African worldview in the global literary sphere. Several decades after independence, anti-colonial nationalist sentiments have waned significantly and the focus has since shifted from the obliteration of the unsavoury legacies of colonialism to the need to confront the disenfranchisement of the masses by the ruthless, corrupt and oppressive ruling elite.5 There has also been renewed literary focus on such other social realities as poverty, multiculturalism and, most importantly, the need to forge a national consciousness in a nation that is beset with a crisis of citizenship due in part to the incessant social unrests associated with its chaotically pluralistic ethno-cultural landscape and the presumed absence of a national culture resulting from a historical experience of cultural “othering”.6 Within this context, the English language is no longer seen as a language of colonialist imposition that must be tamed and indigenised. Rather, the language has become a means of intercultural communication and a tool in the hands of Nigerian creative writers in their quest to resist the oppressive ruling elite, make greater sense of the nation’s sociocultural and political challenges, and forge a national imagination in the contemporary nation-space. This shift in social realities birthed a new ideology in Nigerian literary circles and triggered a change of ideological focus and thematic concerns among the older generation of literary artists7 as well as the emergence of a younger generation of talented literary craftspeople, such as Ben Okri, Chimamanda Adichie, Chris Abani to mention but a few. Like their predecessors, many of the new generation of artists have given free rein to their imagination by opening up their creative minds to the influence of orality in the pursuit of a new literary movement and nationalist discourse that seeks to analyse and expose both the malignant and benign social realities that animate the contemporary nation-space. Ben Okri’s The Famished Road readily comes to mind here on account of the fascinating ways in which the author draws from a variety of indigenous systems and rhetorical practices in his exposition of religious, political and cultural phenomena in a contemporary phantom African community. Through the struggles and experiences of the narrator-protagonist (Azaro), Okri presents a satire of the realities of an unnamed postcolonial African community that is beset by political instability and economic difficulties. The story is told of a community where violence, corruption and poverty abound and the powerful elite rides roughshod

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over the powerless, impoverished masses. On the surface, life appears rosy, but behind this disguise lies a community afflicted with political strife and a comatose economy. All hope is not lost, however, as the novel showcases ways in which a sense of common purpose and communal consciousness can suddenly build up and coalesce in the face of existential threats to the community. Okri delivers his plot in a language that is simple, yet highly imbued with African mythological reflections and imagery. His style is based on the urban narrative technique and his work thrives on a conscious criticism of the government’s shortcomings, while also drawing copiously from the magical realism and fantasy that animate his worldview (Moh, 2001). Akin to his literary predecessors, Okri uses a variety of writing techniques to capture and express those cultural concepts that find little or no expression in Western varieties of the English language. The following excerpt demonstrates the author’s mastery of indigenous cultural concepts and magical realism as well as the strategic ways in which African oral devices are deployed in the description of various sociocultural phenomena: Ours too is an abiku nation, a spirit-child nation that keeps being reborn. (p. 498, emphasis added) Abiku is not a run-of-the-mill term that can be used in a nondescript manner in banal conversations. According to Yoruba cosmology, it is a mythical concept that describes children who go through a never-ending cycle of death and rebirth (Mobolade, 1973). The main character, Azaro, is depicted as an abiku, a spiritchild who keeps oscillating between life and death. In keeping with the satirical nature of the novel, Okri transplants the abiku concept onto the postcolonial nation-space and uses it in a symbolic way to describe the struggles and challenges of contemporary African societies, especially the one-step-forward-twostep-back dynamic that personifies the political and economic landscape. The novel is no doubt riddled with several other fascinating expressions that derive from a conscious and strategic dependence on various Nigerian oral forms. The excerpt discussed heretofore is testament to the omnipresent influence of orality in the production of contemporary Nigerian fiction.

Implications for national consciousness Postcolonial Nigerian fiction has contributed to the forging of a national consciousness in the Nigerian nation-space in a variety of ways. The Achebe-Soyinka generation of literary artists forged an anti-imperialist consciousness for the Nigeria peoples by publishing works of fiction that undermined British sociocultural and literary paradigms and defied the asymmetrical power relations that were the brainchild of Western ideological traditions. These novels shaped and took shape within the anti-imperialist nationalist sentiments that prevailed in the pre- and post-independence nation-space and were mainly pre-occupied with the idea of fashioning an authentic Pan-Nigerian story and projecting a postcolonial identity

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that resonated across all Nigerian cultures and peoples. Building on the thematic and stylistic achievements of the older generation, the new generation of contemporary literary artists (the Okri-Abani-Adichie group) has elected to produce novels that attempt to rally the citizenry around the contemporary challenges, struggles and realities of the postcolony. By narrating the story of the contemporary nation in a language that synchronises with its realities, this new generation of writers has created a resonance among the nation’s diverse inhabitants that puts the universality of their postcolonial experiences and struggles on the front burner of social discourse. This resonance, for all intents and purposes, reinforces Benedict Anderson’s (2016) notion of the nation as an imagined community in the sense that it fosters a sense of belonging among the nation’s diverse cultures to a common cause and also inspires a collective attachment to a shared destiny and a collective future. What is striking about the Nigerian experience is the fact that Northern Nigerian communities have been excluded from much of the nation-building initiatives forged by postcolonial Nigerian novels due to a historical legacy of cultural and religious conservatism that ensured that the North was able to retain much of its religious and linguistic traditions during the colonial era and beyond. Much unlike the South which accepted British rule and welcomed the language and religion of the colonisers, the arrival of the British authorities would do little to change the status quo in the North whose local elite was more predisposed to closing the region’s doors to the religion and language of the European invaders. The idea that English was the language of the colonisers who were bent on Christianising the majority Muslim North fuelled the decision to negotiate nominal British rule over the territory and extract a promise from the British colonialists that the religion of the North and the languages of its expression (Arabic and Hausa) would be left untouched (Adegbija, 2004). The disparity in the linguistic profiles of the two regions has meant that while the South8 has largely benefitted from the unifying role of English as official language as well as its status as language of literary expression—and by extension, conveyor of the national imagination—the North has remained largely excluded from the national consciousness forged by Southern postcolonial novels.9 The quest to bring the Northern agenda to the limelight and create a space for the region’s realities and experiences in the canon of Nigerian literatures fuelled the writing of what is arguably the region’s most popular contemporary Europhone novels—Abubakar Ibrahim’s award-winning Season of Crimson Blossoms (2015) and Elnathan John’s Born on a Tuesday (2015). The fact that the North’s first Europhone novels were produced almost six decades after Southern Europhone writers broke into print speaks volumes about the disparity between the sociocultural imaginations intrinsic to the two regions, not leaving out the implications for national consciousness. The two novels tell a compelling story about the Northern legacy of Islamic fundamentalism as well as the socio-religious and political conflicts that have ravaged the region over the past several decades—conflicts that derive mostly from a

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legacy of religious othering, intolerance and disenfranchisement in which NorthernMuslim majority groups and the Southern and/or Christian minorities who live among them often collide and attempt to delegitimise one another on the basis of their religious and cultural alterity. What’s more, akin to the postcolonial novels that came before them, Season of Crimson Blossoms and Born on a Tuesday are interspersed with oral aesthetics and imagery intrinsic to the Hausa-Islamic culture as well as an array of other literary devices that impose a distinct local flavour and grant visibility to the realities of the North. The novels therefore speak to the sociocultural and political realities of the North in a variety of the national language that has been re-appropriated through various translation strategies to capture the sub-region’s experiences and secure for its people a place in the canon of Nigerian literatures. However, much unlike the novels produced in the South (which take the whole nation for their province), the postcolonial Northern novel, though written in the national language, addresses the specific concerns of the North, invariably creating for its inhabitants a sub-regional cultural imagination that not only derives from the logic of cultural othering, but is also underpinned by a historical legacy of Islamic orthodoxy in the region. In other words, while the contemporary Northern Europhone novel attempts to legitimise the Northern agenda by evoking the social, religious and political climate of the region, it does so—wittingly or unwittingly—through a process that undermines the universal imagination inspired by the postcolonial literatures produced by Southern writers. Although the contextual otherness of the contemporary Northern novel raises important arguments in favour of the possibility of a system of multicultural nationalism,10 it remains to be seen how this has played out in a fractured nation whose major composing sub-regional/ethnic units have remained divided based on conflicting socio-religious allegiances and ideological commitments. The challenges emanating from these regional differences, it must be stressed, are exacerbated by a postcolonial quandary that is defined by the literary philosophies of both Southern and Northern writers. While Southern writers have found a voice in nationalist discourses that are, on an ideological plane, largely devoid of ethnoreligious allegiances, their Northern counterparts have elected to tell the story of a region that has created for itself a socio-religious sub-culture that is tied to supranational Islamic movements with roots in the Arabian Peninsula. In other words, while the South has resorted to anti-imperialist discourses geared towards creating a postcolonial national imagination, allegiance on the part of the majority Muslim Northern population to Islamic ideals that are shaped by supranational forces as well as the role of these supranational forces in the creation of a Northern sub-culture have both prevented the inhabitants of the Nigerian nation from imagining themselves as members of the same community.

Concluding remarks The discussion so far leads us to think of translation as an agent of change in the Nigerian postcolony. At the onset of the postcolonial era, the notion of resistance was conceived in relation to various attempts at liberating Nigerian civilisation from

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the stranglehold of Western hegemony. The focus shifted in the late ’80s and ’90s to liberatory efforts geared towards emancipating the masses from the contemporary challenges of the decolonisation process. There has also been a renewed focus on the North-South divide, especially the perceived need to emancipate Northern Europhone literatures from the supposed hegemonic tendencies of Southern literary narratives, which purport to speak to the realities of the whole nation. Postcolonial translation has become a double-edged sword in that it facilitates nation-building by providing creative writers with the linguistic and cultural wherewithal with which to express the national agenda, while simultaneously undermining the national configuration by allowing sub-regional cultural imaginations to thrive at the expense of national consciousness. Translation has therefore facilitated a conflicting experience of nationhood in the contemporary Nigerian nation-space that is deeply rooted in a historical legacy of religious and cultural alterity. This paper has certainly not addressed all the issues that the Nigerian experience of postcolonial translation, resistance and nation-building raises. It is hoped, however, that the theoretical and pragmatic insights raised herein will open pathways for future academic inquisitions into this subject-matter.

Notes 1 Gikandi (2003, p. 11) 2 The dynamics of postcolonial translation in Africa has been well documented by Africanist scholars, such as Bandia (2008) and Zabus (1991). This study takes the existing research further by advocating a methodical unbundling of the African experience in a bid to capture and expose the distinctive historical trajectories of the continent’s composing national units. The current study therefore differs from its forerunners in that it not only focuses on the Nigerian postcolonial translation experience but also discusses the nation’s postcoloniality in relation to the role of translation in nation-building. 3 That is, the othering of European languages. 4 Collected Plays 2 is a collection of Soyinka’s plays, comprising The trials of brother Jero and a couple of others. 5 This argument was inspired by Fanon’s (1968) musings on literature and national culture in the chapter entitled “On National Culture” and Bandia’s (2009) deliberations on the African writer as translator. 6 See Grillo (1998). 7 By older generation, allusion is made to the forerunners of Nigerian literary production, such as Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka. 8 The South comprises two of the country’s largest three ethno-linguistic groups, a sizeable Muslim population as well as hundreds of other minority groups. 9 Emma Shercliff, “Q&A with author and Africa Writes guest: Abubakar Adam Ibrahim,” Africa Writes, June  18, 2015, https://africainwords.com/2015/06/18/qa-withauthor-and-africa-writes-guest-abubakar-adam-ibrahim/ (accessed July 1, 2017). 10 Multicultural nationalism refers to a system that allows for manifestations of religious and cultural otherness within the national configuration.

Bibliography Adegbija, E. (2004). Multilingualism: A Nigerian Case Study. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Achebe, C. (1964). Arrow of God. London: Heinemann.

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Amuta, C. (1995). Fanon, Cabral and Ngugi on National Liberation. In B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths, & H. Tiffin (Eds.), The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (pp. 158–63). London: Routledge. Anderson, B. R. O. G. (2016). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Revised ed.). London: Verso. Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (2002). The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures (2nd ed., New accents). London: Routledge. Bandia, P. (2008). Translation as Reparation: Writing and Translation in Postcolonial Africa. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing. ———. (2009). Translation matters. In Judith Inggs, & Libby Meintjes (Eds.), Translation Studies in Africa. London and New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. Bhabha, H. (2004). The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Busha, C.,  & Harter, S. P. (1980). Research Methods in Librarianship: Techniques and Interpretations. New York: Academic Press. Chinweizu, J., & Ihechukwu, M. (1980). Toward the Decolonization of African Literature: African Fiction and Poetry and their Critics. London: Routledge. Fanon, F. (1968). The Wretched of the Earth (C. Farrington, Trans.). New York: Grove Press. (Original work published in 1963). Gikandi, S. (2003). Encyclopedia of African Literature. London and New York: Routledge. Grillo, R. (1998). Pluralism and the Politics of Difference. State, Culture, and Ethnicity in Comparative Perspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ibrahim, A. (2015). Season of Crimson Blossoms. London: Cassava Republic. John, E. (2015). Born on a Tuesday. New York: Black Cat. Mbembe, A. (2001). On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mehrez, S. (1992). Translation and the postcolonial experience: The francophone north African text. In L. Venuti (Ed.), Rethinking Translation. Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology (pp. 120–38). London: Routledge. Mobolade, T. (1973). The Concept of Abiku. African Arts, 7(1), 62–4. Retrieved January 16, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/3334754 Moh, F. A. (2001). Ben Okri: An Introduction to his Early Fiction. Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers. Soyinka, W. (1973). Collected Plays 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zabus, C. (1990). Othering the foreign language in West African Europhone novel. In Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue canadienne de la littérature compare, 17(3–4), 348–66. ———. (1991). The African Palimpsest: Indigenization of Language in the West African Europhone Novel (Ser. Cross/cultures, 4). Amsterdam: Ropodi.

7 (UN)BIASED EXEGETES “Moderate Islamism” and the reframing of Islam and the Muslim world in the aftermath of 9/11, 2001 Hajer Ben Hadj Salem

Introduction With the repeal of the National Origins Act of 1924 and the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, a massive influx of Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Muslims immigrated to the United States. Of these faith groups, the Muslims were the most advanced numerically and developed the most sophisticated institutional networks on the eve of 9/11, 2001 (Eck, 2002). It was only a matter of time before adherents of Islam would replace Jews as the largest non-Christian religious group in the United States. To cover this new reality, during the 1990s, American Muslim scholars suggested the “Abrahamic” model as a leading candidate to substitute the consensual Judeo-Christian religious identity of America. The advocates of this model tried to trace Islam, Judaism and Christianity back to their origin: Abraham. However, these developments did not emanate from spontaneous longing and consensus on the part of the immigrant Muslim leadership to carve a space for Islam and Muslims on the American religious tapestry. On the contrary, the leaders of the American Muslim organisations and scholars of the 1980s used to believe that the democratic ideals upon which the American political system rests were not consonant with the teachings of Islam and considered it a breach of the tenets of Islam to meddle with American politics and society (Khan, 2002). The tide reversed toward political involvement by the late ’80s with the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the rise of Islamic extremism as America’s number-one global threat. Indeed, the present most active network of national American Muslim public advocacy organisations was brought into prominence by landmark conflicts between the United States and the Muslim world (Ben Hadj Salem, 2010). These include the Iranian Hostage crisis (1979–81), the Second Gulf War (1990), the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the bombing of American embassies in 1998, and the hijacking of American planes (the TWA

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Flight 847 in 1985). The ensuing flow of anti-Americanism in the Muslim world and ebb of anti-Islamism in the West gave fodder to American Orientalism. Like its time-honoured Western predecessor which had provided the ideological arsenal of Western imperialism and conquest of the “uncivilised” Middle East since the late 18th century (Said, 1978), American Orientalism is located within the general Project for the New American Century (PNAC),1 aiming to promote American global hegemony. With the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, the foreign evil number one of the United States following WWII through 1990, the emerging new world order was founded on a tendency to consider the whole world as one country’s imperium led by the United States, the “last remaining superpower”. A corps of neoconservative geopolitical strategists and liberal intellectuals had been bent on delineating the outlines of the post-red menace world order. Filling in a supposed intellectual vacuum, the theories they had proffered revived prevalent age-old views of Islam as an acceptable competitor to the Christian West. As was the case in pre-Crusades Europe, Islam was singled out as the new foreign devil (Fukuyama, 1992, Huntington, 1996). An efflorescence of “experts”, newspapermen, government officials, academic Middle East experts, individuals connected to corporate or quasi-governmental institutions, Middle Easterners known for their essentially antagonistic positions to anti-Western regimes in the Muslim world and a whole battery of Israeli academics had been leading a campaign of cultural war between Islam and the West. In a victory of ideology over facts, the complexity and diversity of the Muslim world was reduced to political Islam. “The Roots of Muslim Rage”, Bernard Lewis’ 1990 essay from which Huntington borrowed the title of his essay, and later book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), excoriates Islam for its violence, despotism and terror. No wonder, then, if Islam emerges as an imminent threat that is as disproportionately frightening as was the red menace. For obvious reasons, in a post-communist supposed-threat vacuum, a battery of such academics as Bernard Lewis, Judith Miller, Samuel Huntington, Daniel Pipes, Fouad Ajami, Martin Kramer and other Orientalists had become omnipresent, if not fully accredited consultants for a gigantic military establishment badly in need of a new enemy to maintain its might and thinly disguised plans for global dominance and conquest. For obvious reasons, also, the first Bush administration (2000–2004) included such a cluster of neoconservative hawks and signatories of the PNAC statement of principles as Dick Cheney (Vice President), Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defense) and Donald Rumsfeld (secretary of Defense), who geared up for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 under the thinly disguised cloak of America’s war on terrorism. Even more disturbing is how the American film industry lent invaluable support to this thesis through an avalanche of movies that made an already indifferent and poorly informed American clientele visualise the Islamic threat at home (Shaheen, 2001). Since films are considered powerful conveyors of ideology and ethics (Bryant  & Zillmann, 1986), within these films, the cinematic representations of Islam and Muslims show how they were situated in the mindset of

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Americans: the Islamic faith was linked with male supremacy, holy war and acts of terror (Noor, 1997; Esposito, 1999, 2002). Muslims were depicted as lunatic alien intruders, conspiring to use nuclear weapons to destroy the United States (Emerson, 2002). Arabic phrases, such as “Allah Akbar”, and Arabic Quranic recitation (usually translated in English subtitles) became preludes to terrorist acts perpetrated on US soil, leaving no doubt that terrorism is dictated by an Islamic faith that instructs its followers to die for their god. On September 11, 2001, the lines between imagination and reality and between ideology and fact were blurred as media channels brought live to goggle-eyed Americans the scenes of the fall of the symbols of American global economic and political might. The deeply entrenched mental schemata that came crushing upon the efflorescent American Muslim communities were those of Orientalism. Despite their astounding organisational growth across the United States (Nimer, 2002), American Muslims failed to invest in media outreach and develop a public relations policy aiming to mount a countervailing discourse to American Orientalism. As they owned no nationwide media channel to make their voice heard to the wider public, they found themselves facing a sheer public relations crisis on 9/11 (Ben Hadj Salem, 2015). It was President George W. Bush’s first-ever visit by an American president to the Islamic Center of Washington, DC, six days after the attacks, that catapulted the American Muslim communities from the margins of their self-inflicted ghettoisation (Eck, 2002) to the centre of the public arena through the mainstream media. While much ink has been spilled on the controversy that his declaration “Islam is peace” generated among his neo-conservative, Christian Right and pro-Israel loyal constituencies and on the importance of Biblical quotes in President Bush’s discourse after 9/11 (Coe & Domke, 2006), little has been said about the importance of the Bush-translated Quranic quote and his exercise of Quranic exegesis, on behalf of the inarticulate Muslim world and immigrant American Muslim leadership in providing the ideological arsenal for America’s war on terrorism, which is a war for global dominance. This chapter argues that President Bush’s invocation of a translated Quranic verse, exercise of Quranic exegesis and subsequent edict “Islam is peace” not only provided the Bush administration with Islam-sanctioned, necessary evil and mission, but also represented a turning point in Orientalist discourse, which had for centuries provided Western powers with the ideological arsenal to conquer the Muslim world. It set the foundations of what will be defined heuristically in the first part of this work as a neo-Orientalist (ideological) discourse for American global dominance that rests on locking Islam and Muslims within two antithetical poles of “moderates” and “terrorists”. Accordingly, the second part of this chapter will demonstrate how the “echoing media’s” (Domke, 2004) rush to immigrant Americans as sources of information, for the first time in US history, was meant to reinforce American neo-Orientalism (the line of the administration) rather than help mount a countervailing discourse to the Orientalist discourse championed by their well-established partners in the mass-mediated debates.

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To substantiate these arguments, the chapter presents a sketch of the historical and geopolitical foundations of American neo-Orientalism as the ideological arsenal for American expansionist vision in the 21st century which, unlike the Orientalism that was founded on the silence of “the other” and the monolithic fixation of Islam and Muslims, it gave “the other” a voice and locked it in two antithetical poles. Then, it analyses the content of CNN and Fox News and the New York Times transcripts, where the new spokespeople for Islam and the wellestablished Islam-bashing experts discussed the Bush edict and translated versions of bin Laden’s tapes which were released by the Pentagon to the American public. These debates were selected on the grounds that they would offer the new spokespeople for Islam a golden opportunity to formulate, following the lead of President Bush, a competing discourse well-grounded in Quranic exegesis and in direct translations and interpretations of the Quranic text which take into account changing cultural and historical contexts in a diverse Muslim world.

Methodology Two methods were used to gather data for this study. The first is content analysis of two years of coverage following the attacks by CNN, Fox News, the New York Times. Second, primary sources, including books, magazines, internet websites and literature produced by American Muslim organisations and Islam-bashing experts, American think tanks and geostrategic experts were also used as supplementary sources. The two networks were selected because of their dominant status in television news coverage in the United States. On the other hand, the New York Times is among the top ten newspapers in terms of readership and is geographically linked to the cite of the attacks. The news and newspaper transcripts were acquired through LexisNexis academic and cover two years of media reporting (9/11, 2001–9/11, 2003). The key words that were used for the search were “Arab Americans” and “American Muslims”, “moderate Muslim” and “Quran”. The search rendered a total of 131 stories from CNN, 100 stories from Fox News, and 334 stories from the New York Times. Only the content of 15 of these transcripts, which included debates about translated controversial Quranic verses, was analysed meticulously and coded according to the variables specified subsequently. The content of the news and newspaper transcripts was classified thematically. The unit of analysis was the news story. The study units of the content analysis included words, phrases, sentences and themes identified for measuring attributes in the coverage. Stories were classified according to five variables. First, the content orientation of the story helps determine whether the story is mainly episodic or factual—that is, focusing on the event itself or providing the reader with background information, manipulating facts or overlooking the general context. Second, loyalty, as a variable, helps look for statements about American Muslim loyalty to the United States (patriotism). Third, the values that are emphasised, as the Quran was translated and interpreted by the two camps, are also measured by

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looking for expressions that are associated with the values of tolerance, understanding and respect for others, and human rights, including the right to life. Fourth, the key issue of the story was defined by looking for controversial questions that are of special importance and discussed in the news coverage. Some of the key issues are the causes of terrorism, Jihad and the roots of extremism in the Muslim world. The last variable is the news sources and focuses on the names of the persons or organisations associated with the direct or indirect quotes, translations and interpretations of Islamic teachings in the story. Double sourcing or multiple sourcing was singled out for all pertinent information in the stories. Content analysis offers a foundation for a multidimensional look at the news coverage and for further qualitative analysis of the role of television and newspapers in shaping the American public perception of Islam and Muslims in the United States. As such, other sources will also be used to supplement the media findings and help interpret them within the general ideological framework of neoOrientalism. These include publications by American centres of strategic studies, think tanks and geopolitical experts and literature produced equally by Islambashing experts and accommodationists. By merging qualitative and quantitative approaches, this study aims to develop a richer understanding of both the meaning of media messages and their effects. This study seeks to answer the following research questions about ideology, media coverage and attitudes about Islam and Muslims in the United States after 9/11 in light of the expected exegetic role to be played by the newly included spokespeople for Islam: were the media debates of translated Quranic texts, involving American Muslims as “exegetes” and sources of information, grounded in meticulous analysis and careful explanations of the complex context of these verses? Did the media provide a forum for the scientific system (scholars of Islam) and the political system to fruitfully exchange information on Islam and the Muslim world to mount a countervailing discourse to Orientalism that might help decision makers and average Americans understand the nature of international terrorism, its means, its goals and formulate an effective counterterrorism policy? This poses a central media ethical question: how can the media hold true to their search for truth and critical approach to governmental action while a spirit of conformity and war consensus were being manufactured nationwide to advance the Bush Administration’s plans for global dominance?

President Bush as a Quranic exegete: the Islamic foundations of “neo-Orientalism” On September 17th, six days after the attacks, President Bush caught the attention of the American public and the world as he visited the Islamic Center of Washington, DC. Like a Muslim Imam, he used the bully pulpit in the strongest possible way to give a notably compassionate speech with a group of American Muslim leaders and scholars standing behind him. Bush, who did not know

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Arabic, surprised his audience as he praised the beauty of Quranic Arabic and quoted directly a translated passage from the Quran: The English translation is not as eloquent as the original Arabic, but let me quote from the Koran, itself: “In the long run, evil in the extreme will be the end of those who do evil. For that they rejected the signs of Allah and held them up to ridicule”. (The White House, 2001) Taken literally and out of context (in an Orientalist fashion), the Quranic verse seems to endow Bush with a much needed “evil” to hold responsible for the 9/11 attacks and a mission for the gigantic, yet redundant, military establishment. Indeed, the “evil” of the verse is the same concept of “evil” that Bush would keep invoking in his rhetoric. It is consistent with American principles, its discursive war traditions and its concomitant providential sense of mission. Indeed, behind President Bush’s invocation of the Quranic concept of “evil” rests an unexpressed reliance on “manifest destiny”, a central theme in presidential discourses on war throughout US history. The discursive framework of manifest destiny, a 19th Century political doctrine, is aptly equipped for conflict. Drawing on themes of American civil religion, it has proffered America’s superior and chosen nature and its duty to redeem the continent. In its 21st century version, in light of the empirebuilding goals advanced by the neoconservative signatories of the PNAC within the Bush administration, manifest destiny was upgraded to justify America’s shift from a republic to the world’s imperium, following the model of Ancient Rome (Taylor, 2003). In the early days of the American republic, Rome, as a republic (not as an empire), along with biblical imagery played a pivotal role in helping Americans weave the mythic tapestry of America’s civil religion by providing a structure of mythic meaning for the founding events of the American republic (Bellah, 1975). It is little wonder then that, in light of the Bush administration’s unilateral and pre-emptive war plans to rewrite the map of the world and to implement his hawkish advisors’ millennial hegemonic vision for America, President Bush relied on manifest destiny as a civil-religious theme. However, considered in the larger context of all the occupants of the Oval Office, he was the first-ever president to broaden the mythological repertoire of American civil religion by weaving the war on terrorism and America’s 21st century version of manifest destiny for empire-building into the historical and mythological tapestries of Islam and the Muslim world. But what magic hypnotised President Bush’s speech writer and advisors into choosing that particular Quranic verse? The essence of President Bush’s Quranic quote lies less in its ensuing surface edict, than in the carefully embedded and manipulated ideological messages it sends. Taking off the Orientalist lens, a closer look at the historical and discursive context of the translated Quranic verse shows that beneath the aura of “Islam is peace” and the Quranic notion of “evil in the extreme” lies an ideological arsenal

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for bellicosity, expansionism and empire-building that may confer Islamic blessings on the Bush administration’s plans to facilitate US mutation from a republic to an empire/imperium following the model of Ancient Rome. Indeed, the translated verse quoted by Bush was taken from Ar-Rum—The Romans—30:10 (Sura: 30, Verse: 10). The surah begins by referring to the defeat of the Byzantines by the Persians. It was a response to the ensuing theological and sociological problem for the early Muslim community posed by the defeat because the Byzantines were Christians and considered monotheists while the Persians were not. In the third and fourth verses, the Muslim community is promised that the Byzantines (Rome) will reverse their defeat into a victory. The Surah starts as follows: “Alif. Lam. Mim (1) The Romans have been defeated (2) in the neighboring land;1 but after their defeat they shall gain (3)” (The Noble Quran, n.d.). The Quranic prediction of Rome’s victory over the Persians is a living proof of the miraculous nature of the Quran. Translated in light of the PNAC and the ideological polarisation of “us” versus “them”, upon which rested the Bush administration’s so-called war on terrorism, and the post-9/11 analogies between the Roman Empire (no longer the Roman republic) and the “American Empire” that permeated the media and strategic literature, it does not really require mental gymnastics to decipher the rationale behind Bush’s Quranic quote and the ensuing edict “Islam is peace”. What Bush defined as the “true face of Islam” is that face which accepts and coexists with the Christian Empire (Rome/ America), does not challenge its supremacy and consecrates its hegemonic expansion. This is the Islam that stands for the same principles as those preached by the United States. It is “moderate Islam”. The other face, according to Bush, the Quranic exegete, is an evil ideology whose disciples “rejected the signs of Allah and held them up to ridicule”. No doubt, the signs of Allah, read in light of America’s manifest destiny, may refer to the belief that is held by a wider section of Christian Americans, including the born-again Bush, that America is preordained to lead the world. Accordingly, the terrorists who attacked the United States and those who share their ideology in the Muslim world are in reality challenging God’s plans for America; they are “evil”, and it is America’s mission and the mission of all of those who believe in the same God, who is on the side of the Empire, to fight evil and to bring it to its extreme evil end as Allah ordained in the Quran. As such, the authoritative exegete set new boundaries within Islam, placing a category of Muslims within the realm of peaceful/moderate Islam and another category outside the realm of peaceful Islam. With the same authority, Bush would later give Muslims around the world a choice to make: either they are with America or they are with the terrorists. So authoritative was the outcome of Bush’s Quranic exegesis that, as he concluded his speech, a representative of the peaceful category he had just introduced to the American viewers was given the floor to speak directly to the American public for the first time in US history. It was a short confirmation speech. Rather than using Islamic authoritative sources to show the shaky theological foundations of the Islamic extremists, Mr. Yusef Saleem of the Muslim American Society (the

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largest indigenous Sunni African-American Muslim organisation) explored Arabic to support Bush’s ground-breaking edict “Islam is Peace”. He tried to translate into English the etymological root of the word Islam in Arabic, silm which means peace, and also the Muslim daily greeting alsalamu aleikom, or “peace be upon you”, which is a message of peace. As such, the “other”/native was given a voice to speak after the president in a globally televised visit to give epistemological strength to Bush’s claims about Islam and Muslims, including the categorisation of Muslims into “moderates” and “terrorists”. These claims were maintained as the United States pursued its war plans in the Muslim world unilaterally through the unabated support of the “echoing media” that, following the president’s lead, kept looking for “the Muslim moderates” to cast an Islamic halo on US empirebuilding ventures in the Muslim world, giving rise to a neo-Orientalist media discourse that is worth broaching.

Unbiased exegetes: “moderate Muslims” and the post-9/11 neo-Orientalist media lens The embers of Ground Zero had hardly settled when a feverish search began throughout the United States and the Muslim world for “moderate Muslims”, a minority of “good guys”, similar to those standing behind President Bush at the Islamic Center of Washington, DC, who would provide answers, condemn and distance themselves from the violent acts of the opposite camp, the “Muslim extremists”. Borrowing President Bush’s neo-Orientalist lens, two distinct categories of Muslims rapidly emerged in the mainstream media and within academic circles: the “moderates” and “non-moderates”. Indeed, the new lens that President Bush provided to the Western world and media to perceive Islam and Muslims was a new standardised double-dimensional lens, which was slightly different from the one that Edward Said defined as “Orientalism” (Said, 1978). While the contemporary version of the latter lumped up all Muslims in one category and presented them as “raging terrorists” bent on plotting to threaten the security of the United States, the new lens—neo-Orientalism—distinguished a minority of “moderates” from the rest who are not. Like Orientalism, “neo-Orientalism” must be analysed within the historical, cultural and institutional context in which it was constructed to provide the ideological frame that defines the United States’ new role in the world. Indeed, in their attempts to bolster the foundations of the post-Cold War world order as one country’s imperium led by the United States, a corps of geopolitical strategists and liberal analysts had been bent, since the 1980s, on delineating the outlines of America’s new role in the world (Said, 1996). The intellectual debate brought to the surface simmering conflicts between the confrontationalists and the accommodationists who had been competing for the attention of US policy makers for the three decades that preceded 9/11 (Mamdani, 2004). The former, led by Princeton scholar Bernard Lewis and Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington, kept on advocating the clash between Islam and the West and the incompatibility of Islam

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with democracy. They dominated the intellectual debate before 9/11 and during the first Bush administration (2000–2004). The supporters of the latter, led mainly by John Esposito, Robert Heffner and Noah Feldman, considered the Islamic threat a myth and kept on making distinctions between “moderate Muslims”, who want to come to power through democratic elections, and what they considered an extremist minority who are undemocratic and use violent means to reach power. They attributed the rise of Islamic extremism in the Muslim world to the United States’ unconditional support for the secular dictatorships and called upon the US government to give “moderate” Islamists support to reclaim political leadership in the Muslim world. Being important channels of hegemonic communication and consensus engineering (Chomsky, 1998), US media provided a forum for these competing ideologies after 9/11. The content analysis of the news transcripts has shown that with the exception of Fox News, which followed a purely anti-Islamic confrontationalist line of reporting, most of the CNN and the New York Times stories that discussed Islam and the Islamic roots of terrorism as main topics reproduced the same binary lens of the Bush discourse and the vying intellectuals. This was made possible through the multi-thematic framing of the stories and multiple sourcing. The New York Times and CNN transcripts featured highly analytical stories about Ramadan, Prophet Mohammad, the history of Islam and it tenets, and the American Muslim communities, which represent a break with Orientalist media discourse of the pre-9/11 era as they shed a human dimension on Islam and some of its followers—“the moderates”. However, this positive reporting was downgraded by the thematic framing of the stories which was based on embedding other provocative themes and exaggerations about Islam and the Muslim world into these stories. They also used the same polarising type of questions, eliciting the same Orientalist half-truths of the pre-9/11 coverage. What was special about this type of media coverage was that it allowed these media channels to push the government’s expansionist agenda in the Muslim world and manufacture consensus in a very subtle way (Norris & Just, 2003), convincing the viewers that America was not at war with Islam but with a category of bad Muslims who used Islam ideologically to wage a holy war on the United States. Examples abound in the media transcripts to substantiate this ideological line. On Saturday, October 13, 2001, at 23:00, CNN broadcast a long report titled “an in-depth look at Islam: the realities and the rhetoric”, presented by its chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour as part of “CNN Presents” series. The channel made a gesture of responsible reporting by airing live testimonies given by Muslims inside the Unites States and in the Muslim world about their experience with Islam as a religion of peace; they condemned Islamic extremism and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The story was analytical as American professor of religion and international affairs at Georgetown University John Esposito, who represents the accommodationist camp, and likeminded British scholar of Islam and comparative religions Karen Armstrong explained at length the tenets of Islam and tried to define in a clear English what the Quran says about Jihad.

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Even the CNN anchor showed proof of scholarship as all her statements about Islam’s tenets and history reflected responsible research and investigation. However, a thematic shift in the story line occurred as Amanpour, probably inspired by Bernard Lewis’ Islam-bashing “The Roots of Muslim Rage” (1990), asked the two Western accommodationist intellectuals and Abdullahi An’naim, who was introduced as an American Muslim scholar, to explain why Muslim streets are “enraged” about US policies in the region. In doing so, she harped on a nobler version of a daunting public question that the American government was faced with: “Why do they hate us?” President Bush’s answer in the Washington, DC, speech and subsequent speeches was that the terrorists attacked America simply because they envy Americans their freedom and democracy. The scholars of Islam interviewed by Amanpour reinforced the line of the government by providing factual evidence that builds on the binary lens of neoOrientalism. They argued that terrorists hate Americans for their freedom and technological development, and warned this feeling was gaining ground in the Muslim streets. The latter, as Esposito bluntly put it, “basically say the following. Our regimes are authoritarian and corrupt. Therefore, they’re part of the problem, not the solution”. Abdullah An’naim, speaking after Esposito, confirmed the same idea, adding with a Middle Eastern accent that: “It is the rhetoric of being the beacon of freedom. But the practice of suppressing democratic regimes and supporting authoritarian, despotic regime”. Through “democratic regimes” he was referring to the electoral victories of branches of the Universal Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Algeria and Palestine (Hamas) in the 1990s that were frowned upon by the United States as it maintained its support for the secular dictatorships. Armstrong carried this logic further, so far as to warn the US authorities that the 1979 Iran scenario would spread mushroom-like throughout the Middle East, bringing anti-American, anti-Israel and Khomeini-like leadership if the staunch zeal for Islamism that haunts the angry Muslim streets was not channelled by the US government towards producing an Islamist power elite who would substitute the worn out and increasingly unpopular secular dictatorships. These fears were compounded as translators popped up to decipher messages broadcast live from a madrassa in Pakistan where little kids, says the CNN translator, harbour the same ideas preached by bin Laden. “On the walls inside the mosque, ‘a poster that said, Afghanistan equals American graveyard’. Also, support for Osama bin Laden himself”, translated Amanpour (not the translator). Having the authoritative support of Karen Armstrong, who added that “the madrassas in Pakistan tend to be rather narrow, and it’s from this, in fact, that many of the Taliban were trained”, Amanpour concluded this section of the story by asserting that “the sense that Islam is under siege is quite widespread, even among moderate Muslims who have condemned the recent terrorism”. This threat was made real through a conflation of consecutive translations of videotaped statements made by Hizbollah suicide bombers’ mates and relatives. The latter featured a suicide bomber’s widow, who made it clear that suicide bombing is dictated by religion. The climax came when the CNN anchor asked the son of

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a suicide bomber, who we were informed knew little English, if he wanted to become a martyr. The unidentifiable boy answered: “Yes”. When asked: “Why are you so willing to do that? You’re just a little boy”. He answered (through a translator) “To kill our Zionist enemy and drive them out of our land”. He concluded that he would meet his father in “Jana”, which the anchor translated to the uninformed American viewers as “Heaven”. Facts were also provided about martyrdom/suicide bombers’ charitable associations administered by Hizbollah in Lebanon. Yet, in a manipulative blurring of historical facts and ideological differences between Hizbollah and Al Qaeda, a videotaped bin Laden popped up in the midst of this cacophony of extremist voices from Lebanon. Following a Bush precedent, he divided the Muslim world into two camps, the native translator informs the American viewer. “I say these events have split the whole world into two camps”, says the translator, “a camp of belief and a camp of disbelief, so that every Muslim should come out to fight for his religion”. In translated videotape after translated video tape, bin Laden would invoke the “sword verses” of the Quran, which stipulate unprovoked attacks on infidels. As usual, accommodationist American intellectuals and American Muslim scholars, who were invited in droves to help American viewers and the Pentagon decipher the content of the bin Laden tapes, would insist that bin Laden was making a selective reading of the Quran and that these verses were taken out of context as Islam is not inherently a violent faith. This apologetic discourse could have sent positive messages to the American viewers. However, the media’s reliance on multiple sourcing, the content analysis has shown, was pivotal in locking the debate over the violent nature of Islam into the twin antithetical poles of neoOrientalism, tilting the balance towards the confrontationalist camp by the end of the story. The latter was led for the most part by the well-established Orientalist media experts and a rising Christian Right that represents President Bush’s main constituency which was outraged by his edict, “Islam is peace”, and his declaration, in the same speech, that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. They capitalised on bin Laden’s translated tapes which were replete with Quranic verses and references to Hadith (Prophet Muhammad’s sayings) to confer much needed “authentic” exegetic proof on their time-honoured Orientalist discourse (Lewis, 2002), which had been founded on the silence of the native. They used bin Laden’s translated Quranic quotes to counter any possible challenge put forward by the rising competing spokespeople for Islam who were introduced to the massmediated public forum by the president after 9/11. The central argument of the confrontationlist camp, as reflected in the media transcripts discussing mainly the bin Laden translated tapes, is that Islam is a fount of belligerence and that it was cleverly used by 20th-century ideologues as a response to Western encroachment on Muslim lands. As self-appointed Quranic exegetes, both bin Laden and the confrontationalists would invoke the “sword verse” (ayat as-sayf) in the Quran, which is the fifth verse of the nineth surahAt-Tawba, to suggest that the faith promotes violence against the infidels. The verse reads: “When the forbidden months are past, then kill the idolaters wherever

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you find them, take them captive, and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every stratagem” (The Noble Quran, n.d.). As Muslims believe that these are the words of God, these verses pose a serious challenge for the new spokespersons of Islam, especially American Muslim scholars and leaders of mainstream Muslim organisations who had been blaming the persistence of the reductive Orientalist clichés on a media and an administration that had shut their doors to Muslim voices for decades prior to 9/11. As such, by becoming media sources of information and partners in the mass-mediated public debates, they were given a golden opportunity to mount a countervailing discourse to Orientalism and bin Ladenism, a discourse that is supposed to be equally grounded in Quranic exegesis and comparative religious analogies and that proves efficient in hunting down timehonoured stereotypes about Islam and Muslims. Were they equal to the occasion? Did they manage rise to the height of the opportunity? The analysis of the news transcripts has shown that they had only scratched the surface of Orientalism. Most of the news channels and newspapers covered the translated version of bin Laden’s videotape, which was released by the Pentagon on December 13, 2001, to justify American military mass bombing of Afghanistan, ironically, after the military campaign was brought to an unhappy conclusion as the villain was not caught. The American people were informed by the media that the reason behind the Pentagon’s delayed release of the tape was that they had to rely on a battery of professional translators to translate only part of the original Arabic version of the tape released by Aljazeera earlier that month. The translated tape, in which the “villain” claimed full responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, was garnered with Quranic verses and passages from Prophet Muhammad’s sayings, harping on what Orientalist exegetes called the “sword verse”. Surprisingly, in none of the stories analysed in this study, including those covering this tape, did the spokespersons for “moderate Islam” directly quote the Quran to provide counter examples to the “sword verse”, nor did they even place it within its discursive context. Indeed, often excluded from quotes, the next verse (9:6) presents a conditional reprieve. It reads: if one amongst the pagans ask thee for asylum, grant I to him, so that he may hear the word of Allah; and then escort him to where he can be secure. That is because they are men without knowledge. (The Holy Quran, n.d.) This verse would have been epistemically more convincing than simply arguing that the Quranic exegetes explain that the sword verse refers to those pagan Arabs who violated their peace treaties by waging war against the Muslims. Because these were the words of God and apply to all times, and new perils require new precedents, it was easy for the detractors of Islam to debunk this counterargument. It did not also occur to the new spokespeople for Islam to explore the equivalent of these verses in the Judeo-Christian tradition. American Muslim scholars and leaders of American Muslim organisations may not have among their ranks experts

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in comparative religions. Yet, some of the accommodationist media sources, such as John Esposito, could have shared their long expertise in the Washington-based Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Indeed, the so-called sword verse echo bloodcurdling passages in the Jewish Old Testament and could act as a mission statement for the Christian crusaders, hence Bush’s reference to the war on terrorism as a crusade.

Concluding remarks This chapter studied the role played by leaders of American Muslim organisations, American Muslim scholars and accommodationist intellectuals as representatives of a suspect community, in translating and interpreting Islamic teachings to the uninformed American audience through the mainstream media for the first time in US history after 9/11. It sought to investigate the extent to which their translations and interpretations of the Islamic canon reinforced the neo-Orientalist discourse for global hegemony adopted by the Bush administration and to gauge how efficient they were, as “unbiased” exegetes, in mounting a countervailing discourse to the time-honoured Orientalist discourse on Islam and Muslims in the West, which had been founded on the silence of the native and the interpretation and translation of the Western exegete-expert. The research findings of the analysed media transcripts of the New York Times, CNN and Fox News, which have been used as main sources to answer these research queries, have shown that the 9/11 events ended years of Muslim isolation from American society and established Islam as an American religion. President Bush’s visit to the Islamic Center of Washington, DC, his reading of a rendition of a translated Quranic verse, for the first time in the history of the American presidency, awakened the American public to the reality of a Muslim presence in their midst, but also contributed to weave Islamic teaching into the mythological tapestry of American civil religion and the 21st century version of American expansionist doctrine known as manifest destiny. In doing so, the chapter argued, President Bush sought to confer the blessings of Islam on America’s rise from a Republic to the world’s Imperium—as was the case with ancient Rome—as the examination of the historical context of the translated Quranic verse indicates. Performing the role of a Quranic exegete, he declared Islam a “religion of peace”, while fixing Muslims into two reductive categories of “moderates”, referring to those who bless America’s ordained missions in the (Muslim) world, and “the extremists,” referring to those who reject God’s signs and act to obstruct His plans for America in the 21st century. The binary lens which President Bush offered to the (Western) American public and “echoing media” lays the foundations for a neo-Orientalist ideological arsenal for conquest. The content analysis of the news transcripts discussing the bin Laden tapes and the origins of extremism in the Muslim world has shown that in approaching Islam and the Muslim world, both the American Muslim spokespeople of Middle Eastern origin and the more articulate American accommodationists adopted the

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oscillating binary lens conferred on them by the government. As such, they failed to mount an equally powerful countervailing discourse to that of their Orientalist interlocutors. The translated discourse of the Islamic extremists, which was deeply grounded in Quranic exegesis and Islamic canon, gave them an invaluable Islamic canopy while casting opprobrium on the hobbling discourse of the “moderates”. Backed by an avalanche of bestseller books recycling the Orientalist clichés that their authors had put forth for decades prior to 9/11, these “extremists” filled a need felt by many Americans who had it confirmed for them why “Islam” attacked them so violently, a need felt by the hawkish Bush administration who had it made clear for them why they should conquer Iraq and Muslim lands, and, when least expected, a need felt by the “moderate” spokespeople for Islam and their accommodationist Western intellectuals so wantonly bent on marketing their brand of Islam as an alternative candidate to the worn-out secular dictatorships that American decision makers should overturn peacefully while conceiving a non-confrontationalist counterterrorism policy. This lurking ideological motif featured prominently in the speeches of all the new spokespeople for Islam in the analysed stories. Their message fell on the deaf ears of the hawkish first Bush administration and their confrontationalist advisors who believed that the Iraqi military mission would be a short excursion for a gigantic military. However, as the Bush administration awoke to the nightmare of the Iraqi conundrum and as angry American taxpayers turned famous American beaches into graveyards where hundreds of symbolic military coffins and grave markers were established to draw public attention and open a public debate about the military and financial losses of the Iraqi war, the tide reversed towards nonconfrontationalist approaches to help implement US hegemonic plans under the disguised ideological cloak of the so-called “Arab Spring”. This ideological shift invites further multidisciplinary research.

Note 1 PNAC refers to a Washington, DC-based neoconservative think tank. It was established in 1997 by neoconservatives, William Kristol and Robert Kagan. It played a pivotal role in shaping the foreign policy of the Bush administration.

Bibliography Bellah, R. N. (1975). The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ben Hadj Salem, H. (2010). A golden opportunity: Religious pluralism and American Muslim strategies of integration in the US after 9/11, 2001. Journal for the Study of Religion and Ideologies, 9(27), 246–60. ———. (2015). American orientalism: How the media define what average Americans know about Islam and Muslims in the US. International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies, 2(3), 156–72. http://media.wix.com/ugd/886719_bec4b42a78a0440d 81d05ed220df5821.pdf

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Bryant, J., & Zillmann, D. (Eds.). (1986). Perspectives on Media Effects. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Chomsky, N., & Herman, E. S. (1998). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books. Coe, K., & Domke, D. (2006). Petitioners or prophets? Presidential discourse, god, and the ascendancy of religious conservatives. Journal of Communication, 56(2), 309–30. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.00021 Domke, D. (2004). God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the “War on Terror”, and the Echoing Press. London and Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press. Eck, D. (2002). A New Religious America: How a “Christian Country” Has Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation. New York: Harper Collins. Emerson, S. (2002). American Jihad: The Terrorists Living among Us. New York: The Free Press. Esposito, J. L. (1999). The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? New York: Oxford University Press. ———. (2002). Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fukuyama, F. (1992). The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press. Huntington, S. P. (1996). The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Touchstone. Khan, M. A. (2002). American Muslims: Bridging Faith and Freedom. Beltsville: Amana Publications. Lewis, B. (1990). The roots of Muslim rage. The Atlantic, 266(3), 47–60. ———. (2002). What Went Wrong? New York: Oxford University Press. Mamdani, M. (2004). Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror. New York: Pantheon Books. Nimer, M. (2002). The North American Muslim Resource Guide: Muslim Community Guide in the United States and Canada. New York: Routledge. Noor, F. A. (1997). Terrorizing the Truth: The Shaping of Contemporary Images of Islam and Muslims in Media, Politics and Culture. Penang: Just World Trust. Norris, P. K., & Just, M. (2003). Framing Terrorism: The News Media, the Government and the Public. New York: Routledge. Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. ———. (1996). Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. New York: Vintage Books. Shaheen, J. G. (1997). Arab and Muslim Stereotyping in American Popular Culture. Washington, DC: Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding: Georgetown University. ———. (2001). Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. Brooklyn, NY: Olive Branch Press. Taylor, M. L. (2003). Religion, Politics, and the Christian Right: Post-9/11 Powers and American Empire. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. The Noble Quran. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://quran.com/?local=En The White House. (2001). “Islam is peace” says the president. Retrieved from https:// georgebush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010917-11.html

8 “DOMESTICATING” SAUDI ARABIA News “transediting”, representations and power negotiation Asma Alqunayir

Introduction This study is a part of a larger research study that views translations as sites of power negotiation between the source text (ST) and the target text (TT) (Venuti, 1995). It draws on the social representation theory (Moscovici, 2000) and the rewriting theory (Lefevere, 1992), and integrates corpora and critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine the BBC Monitoring Middle East Service (hereinafter BBCM-M) coverage on Saudi Arabia in the light of the appointment of 30 Saudi women, for the first time in the country’s history, to the formerly all-male majlis al-shūrā, or advisory council, by the late King Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Aziz Al Saʿud on January 11, 2013 (Arabian Business/Global, 2019). This research examines the following: the themes that the BBCM-M tends to select when reporting on Saudi Arabia using Arabic news outlet sources, the representations of Saudi Arabia in the BBCM-M’s coverage in relation to those in other UK news sources reporting in English, the forms of “rewriting” via transediting and the dynamics of power between the Arabic STs and the English TTs during March 2013–March 2015.1 The study reveals four main representations of Saudi Arabia. However, the discussion in this chapter is limited to one, which is related to gender, authority and agency.

Transediting as communication & apparatus of Anglo-American cultural hegemony In any communicative event, Moscovici (1973) argues that a certain system of values, ideas, beliefs and practices has to be shared between those involved in that event. This system is referred to as “social representations”, which have two

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main functions. These are: (1) to enable individuals to “master” and “orientate” themselves with the social and material world in which they live; and (2) to provide members of a community with “a code” for communication and naming and classifying aspects of their world (Moscovici, 1973, p. xiii). According to Moscovici, “representations” are intended to “make something unfamiliar, or unfamiliarity itself, familiar” (Moscovici, 1984, p. 24). In translation, familiarising the ST can be through “domestication”, which Venuti (1995) argues to appeal to “narcissistic” cultural and “aggressively” monolingual readers. Aiming at unveiling the ideological aspects of translation practices, Venuti (1998, p. 48) argues that publishers in the United Kingdom and United States tend to select works that easily assimilated into the target culture. Thus, both a cultural and a political hegemony of the Anglo-American culture, which Venuti never clearly defined, were achieved. He claimed that selecting a specific translation strategy highlights an attitude towards the source language and culture for “domestication” involves an “ethnocentric violence”. Although Venuti attempted to raise awareness of the power play hidden in “domestication”, the term itself failed to demonstrate this. Nonetheless, the notion sheds light on the potential cultural and political hegemony of any target language and culture over any source language and culture, especially in the case of translating into English, “the one master-language of our post-colonial world” (Bassnett & Trivedi, 1999, p. 13). Today, “coloniality of power” is the heritage of the colonial project (Quijano, 2000). Just like colonisation, it is linked to the concept of modernity and is operated on the basis of an inferior-superior relationship. It has various forms, one of which is the epistemological colonisation through which the construction of knowledge on a certain group as inferiors is achieved, which is more or less what Said (1978) refers to in the partial and selective knowledge on the orient. In newsrooms, translators construct knowledge. They regularly apply “absolute domestication” in their construction (Bielsa & Bassnett, 2009, p. 10). This involves not only getting the message across to the target readers while considering the target situation but also moving beyond this to adding parts that feature their own interpretations for easy reading. Consequently, newsroom translators are no longer translators in the classical sense; they play a far greater role that transcends the traditional role of the translator to the role of an editor, or a “transeditor” (Stetting, 1989, pp. 371–82) or even a “rewriter” in the service of power (Lefevere, 1992, p. 13). Thus, news translators are “transeditors” who “transedit” STs and produce “transedited texts” (TETs) for communication. Scholars such as Lefevere, Bassnett and Hermans collaborated with the polysystemists and brought to the fore the concepts of manipulation (see Hermans, 1985; Bassnett & Lefevere, 1990). Lefevere continued to develop his ideas in his widely quoted Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame (1992), in which he adopted the Russian formalists’ notion of systems to define culture, as “a complex system of systems composed of various subsystems such as literature, science and technology” (Steiner, 1984, p. 112).

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According to Lefevere (1992), the main factors that control the logic of the culture are either inherent in the literary system, in professional/s such as “critics, reviewers . . . [and] translators”, or are external to that system, that is, patronage or patrons, who can be a person or a group of persons, such as “members of a political party, publishers or the media”. “The patron delegates authority, a power, to the professional where poetics is concerned . . . the patrons count on these professionals to bring the literary system in line with their own ideology” (Lefevere, 1992, pp. 11–12). This power invested in the role of the transeditor can be hazardous, because image transmission is inevitable in “every act of information distribution” (Van Doorslaer, 2012, pp. 122–27). Thus, such power can lead to many consequences, including a false projection, whether in favour of or against, a writer’s, culture’s or nation’s image or representation (Lefevere, 1992, p. xii).

Methodology & data This research adopts the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA; Wodak & Meyer, 2016, p. 18) and combines it with corpus tools. CDA can be described as a committed analysis that aims to investigate texts for the purpose of political and social change (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997, p. 258). This overt commitment to political and social change caused CDA to be criticised for a lack of objectivity; it has been argued that CDA practitioners conduct their research with a predetermined political or social stance. In addition, partiality, vagueness of key terms and overinterpretation are all major pitfalls of CDA (see Blommaert, 2005, p. 31; Widdowson, 1995, p. 512; Widdowson, 1998, p. 148). The DHA tries to mitigate the key drawbacks of CDA approaches by calling for triangulation through which researchers increase the validity of their research and achieve more rigour through the fusion of qualitative and quantitative paradigms at both the theoretical and methodological levels. Combining corpus tools to the DHA increases the control on subjectivity. With the aid of the software, enormous amounts of linguistic data can be examined for “collocations, keyness, semantic preference and semantic prosody” (Mautner, 2009, p. 37), thus, obtaining quantitative proof to guide and support qualitative findings. For this research, three sets of corpora were built: the study corpus (SC), the reference corpus (RC) and the Arabic news items corpus (STs). The SC is 101 news articles, comprising 118,444 words. To examine the BBCM-M’s coverage on Saudi Arabia against other UK news sources reporting in English, the RC was built from two sources that are commonly identified in relation to the spectrum of political stances as centre-right, The Daily Telegraph and The Times, and from two identified as centre-left, The Guardian and The Observer, so they are reasonably representative of mainstream UK news. It included 1,300 news articles, comprising 949,336 words and interchangeably referred to here as “4UKBS” and RC. Also, as the data under examination is transedited, the DHA analytical framework is developed to include a ST-TET comparative analysis in both the contextual and

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linguistic triangulations. The STs corpus includes nine STs in total. They are in Arabic and make up the third corpus explored in this research.

Analysis Firstly, an examination of the patrons responsible for the creation and dissemination of the body of knowledge on Saudi Arabia to the English reader is conducted. Secondly, a corpus inquiry, using WordSmith7 tools (Lexical Analysis Software, 2017), of themes and representations is conducted at two levels: categorisation and interpretation. Thirdly, the CDA analysis is conducted in three case studies comprising three analytical levels, as shall be explained in the CDA analysis.

Patrons When the BBCM-M’s staff (editors or publishers) selected news items on Saudi Arabia from the Arabic literary system to construct knowledge for the English literary system, they became a second patron group, responsible for controlling the ideology of that literary system, while the transeditors who work at the BBCM-M are the professionals responsible for ensuring the poetics of that English literature and the ideology meet the parameters set by their patron: the BBCM-M. Together, the Arabic news sources and the BBCM-M constitute the control factors in the knowledge on Saudi Arabia constructed by the BBCM-M for the English reader in 2013–2015.

The 20 Arabic news sources: the first patron The data collected from the BBCM-M’s 2013–2015 coverage of Saudi Arabia from Arabic news outlets came from 20 news sources, which represent the first patron group. Sixteen of these news sources are daily newspapers and four are television channels. Of the dailies, six are located in the United Kingdom and seven in the Arab world, while only three are located in Saudi Arabia, as indicated in Tables 8.1–8.3. As Tables 8.1–8.3 indicate, 66 news items in the BBCM-M’s coverage on Saudi Arabia from Arabic new output come from UK-based dailies, three of which— al-Quds al-Arabi, Raʾy al-Yawm and Elaph—are banned in Saudi Arabia. Interestingly, al-Quds al-Arabi is the most reported daily by the BBCM-M as 31 news items come from that source.

BBC monitoring service: the second patron The BBC Monitoring Service was established in 1939 by the BBC as a part of the World Service group; it observes foreign news, analyses and translates them into English for local and international consumption. It “covers 150 countries” and is “available in 100 languages” (BBC Monitoring, 2019). The focus of this

114  Asma Alqunayir TABLE 8.1  UK-based dailies

Name

Location

Reported articles

Status in Saudi Arabia

Al-Quds Al-Arabi website Raʾy Al-Yawm Elaph website

London London London

31 5 10

Al-Hayat website Al-Sharq Al-Awsat website Middle East Arabic press review from BBC Monitoring

London London Reading

10 9 1

Banned Banned Banned (2006–2009, 2010—present) Permitted Permitted Permitted

TABLE 8.2  Dailies based in Arab countries

Name

Location

Reported articles

Status in Saudi Arabia

Akhbar Al-Khalij website Al-Ayyam Al-Dustur website Al-Jazeera.net website Al-Safir website Al-Siyasah website Tishrin website

Manama Khartoum Amman Doha Beirut Kuwait Damascus

1 1 2 1 1 1 1

Permitted Permitted Permitted Permitted Permitted Permitted Permitted

TABLE 8.3  Saudi Arabia-based dailies

Name

Location

Reported articles

Status in Saudi Arabia

Al-Jazirah website Al-Watan website SPA news agency website

Riyadh Abha Riyadh

1 1 1

Permitted Permitted Permitted

study is the BBCM-M, which covers the Middle East and functions as the second patron in this study.

Corpus inquiry of themes and representations Drawing the “semantic fields”, which can be defined as the “potential meanings” carried in any word in any language that are “partly governed by a social code and partly individualized by the unique features of whoever utters or interprets the word” (Scholes, 1980, p. 207), led to manually categorise the top 115 word types on the wordlist into three main overarching themes. These are: (1) identity; (2) action and status; and (3) relations. Tables 8.4–8.6 present the subthemes of each overarching theme, the word types and their frequencies as identified on the wordlist.

“Domesticating” Saudi Arabia  115 TABLE 8.4  The identity subthemes

Personal

Geographical

Cultural

Corporate

“he” (613) “its” (555) “they” (352) “their” (344) “we” (335) “us” (304) “his” (288) “I” (240) “them” (234) “bin” (213) “people” (171) “minister” (153) “president” (151) “prince” (144) “abd” (128) -

“Arabia” (773) “Syria” (314) “Iran” (286) “Arab” (282) “Gulf” (266) “countries” (263) “states” (255) “kingdom” (218) “state” (205) “region” (174) “Yemen” (155) “Riyadh” (155) “country” (154) “Qatar” (151) “Middle” (135) “East” (131) “London” (130)

“Saudi” (1,881) “Syrians” (314) “British” (207) “Iranian” (178) “Arabic” (164) “Muslim” (128) -

“corporation” (202) “Qa’idah” (184) “source” (162) “website” (141) “government” (136) -

TABLE 8.5  The action and status subthemes

Present Past action action

“says” (314) “visit” (137) “do” (130) -

Continuous action

Perfect Present action status

“said” “broadcasting” “been” “is” (1,530) (261) (202) (236) “reserved” “are” (647) (228) “has” (631) -

-

-

Past status

Future status

Possible vs certain action and status

“was” “new” “will” (442) (156) (468) “were” “may” (157) (174) -

“be” (558) “have” (482) -

-

-

TABLE 8.6  The relations subthemes

Aligned

Unaligned

Other

“with” (1,005) “for” (788) “against” (227) “but” (208) -

“and” (3,683) “between” (261) “relations” (145)

“by” (830) “from” (532) “or” (389) “about” (246) “after” (157) “if” (141) “because” (133)

-

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As Tables 8.4–8.6 show, 64%,2 of the examined word types revolve around, in descending order of frequency and thus salience, identity (37% of the top 115 word types on the wordlist), action and status (15%) and relations (12%).3 Comparing the SC against the 4UKBS, the keyword list contains 461 keywords. According to the semantic field-based categorisation, 42% of keywords were related to the identity theme, 22% to the action and status theme and 7.8% to the relations theme. This means that 71.8% of the keywords referred to these three themes, which confirms their salience in the SC; the highest frequency is associated with identity, followed by action and status and, lastly, relations. The second level of corpus inquiry, interpretation, shows that there are three linguistic mechanisms that represent the image of Saudi Arabia in the BBCM-M’s coverage in relation to gender, authority and agency. These are: (1) unusually infrequent reporting on women; (2) presenting women as acted upon and men of authority as acting; and (3) systematically othering women and self-ing men of authority.

Unusually infrequent reporting on women On the keywords list, the category of proper names is the largest in terms of number of keywords. Male names dominate the category, such as “Abdallah” (Log-L, 398.43) and “Mahmud” (26.36), and have high positive keyness values while the word types related to the female gender are clustered at the bottom of the keyword list and hold relatively high negative keyness values: “woman” (-38.41), “women” (-39.29) and “her” (-246.36). Moreover, the male pronoun “he” appeared in the 23rd position of the SC wordlist, with a frequency of 613. However, the female pronoun “she” is overlooked in the SC; it was found on the keyword list with a negative value (-202.76), meaning its appearance is unusually infrequent compared to 4UKBS. Remarkably, most (73.17%) of the few mentions of “women” or “woman” in the data were found in al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper.4 As noted in Table 8.1, this news source is banned in Saudi Arabia. This is because it was established by Palestinian expatriate, ʿAṭwān, who has a candidly critical view of Saudi Arabian policies especially regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He resigned after the newspaper was sold to the Qatari government, which has an ongoing political conflict with Saudi Arabia. Thus, a continued critical stance against the Kingdom remains possible in al-Quds al-Arabi’s reporting, and as a result, it remains banned in Saudi Arabia. This shows that the little attention given to Saudi women by the BBCM-M is taken from a critical news source that is banned in Saudi Arabia.

Women as acted upon and men of authority as acting An examination of the sparse coverage of Saudi women reveals that the concordance lines generally show Saudi women as being acted upon, although there are a few instances that show women as full-fledged agents: “Al-Walid bin Talal remarks that ‘women started flying planes a while ago’ ” “he pointed out that ‘Saudi women driving cars will lead to’ ”

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“the entry of 30 women as members of the Shura Council . . . by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques for scholarships abroad” “the Amnesty International’s report came on the eve of preparations by Saudi women to break the law that bans women from driving” Nonetheless, the larger context shows that these instances are reported by men of authority and/or the actions are permitted by men of authority. The only item from the SC that ascribes genuine agency to Saudi women comes from an editorial that focuses on Saudi Arabia’s national and international human rights violations rather than discussing Saudi women’s actions or achievements as it may sound from that instance. To understand the bias in the representations of Saudi women, a collocation analysis of “women” was conducted (see Table 8.7). As Table 8.7 shows, the strongest collocation of “women” is “of”. Examining the concordance lines of this collocation relationship shows “women” in three main patterns. Firstly, as objects of verbs, such as “protect”, “release” and “save”, representing women as vulnerable citizens. Secondly, as being topics of “importance”, “dilemma” and “issue”; men discuss these topics. Thirdly, “women” in relation to parts, “rights” and “honour”, and these are the head of the phrase, signalling their importance in the representations of women in the corpus. A larger context of “rights” is “the United States ‘supports the universal right of women in Saudi Arabia to drive cars’ ”. This means that when covering Saudi women’s actions or rights, the BBCM-M reports on the authoritative voices of Saudi Arabian men and globally powerful voices like the United States, not those of Saudi women. This focus on the agency of Saudi men of authority is evident in the collocation analyses of the action keywords “says” and “adds”, which show that they strongly collocate with proper nouns referring to men enjoying authority, such as the male religious figure Dr al-Sa’idi’, and the male pronoun “he”. That pronoun is the seventh strongest collocation of “says” and the first strongest of “adds”, as Tables 8.8 and 8.9 show. A broader look at all 45 collocations of “says” and all 9 collocations of “adds” shows that no collocates refer to a female proper noun or to the female pronoun “she”, which empirically shows how passive Saudi women are in the SC. TABLE 8.7  “Women” collocation relationship

N

Word

MI

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

OF SAUDI # TO AND IN THE

4.30 4.25 4.19 3.74 3.52 3.45 3.31

118  Asma Alqunayir TABLE 8.8  “Says” collocation relationship

N

Word

MI

1 2 3 4 5 6 7*

SA’IDI HARAMI ZU’BI QARADAWI RESPONDING QUESTION HE

8.03 7.77 7.55 7.36 6.69 6.52 6.25

*The list includes 45 collocates

TABLE 8.9  “Adds” collocation relationship

N

Word

MI

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

HE THAT # IS AL THE TO OF

7.18 4.87 4.42 3.82 3.05 2.92 2.10 1.97

Systematically othering women and self-ing men of authority A wordlist-based analysis of the personal identity subtheme highlights an othering process that exists in the SC; the majority of word types that signify that subtheme appear in the form of the “self” versus “the other” (see Table 8.10). Examining the top three-word clusters of the pronoun “I” shows that all instances that specifically refer to the Saudi self are restricted to men, with 19 of the 45 instances of the pronoun “I” referring to Saudi Arabian men. “Dr alSa’idi”, has the highest frequency in the SC. Remarkably, all instances of the Saudi self, when examined in their larger linguistic co-context, refer to men of authority whether royal, religious or political. Similarly, occurrences of the Saudi “we” illustrate that it is mainly used in relation to men of authority, except for two instances that refer to Dr al-Rashīd but spelled al-Rashid by the BBCM-M. Although she was born in Saudi Arabia to the al-Rashīd dynasty who ruled parts of modern Saudi Arabia, she is not a Saudi citizen despite once having had a Saudi passport (BBC News, 2018). She is currently a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences Middle East Centre (Al-Rasheed, 2018). Thus, the systematic othering of Saudi women that is maintained for Dr. al-Rashīd is not representative of the common Saudi women.

“Domesticating” Saudi Arabia  119 TABLE 8.10  The self and the other most frequent pronouns

The Self Word types

The Other Word types

“we” (335) “I” (240) -

“they” (352) “them” (234) “their” (344)

The three linguistic mechanisms show that in the BBCM-M’s coverage on Saudi Arabia, men of religious, royal or political authority are focused on while women are given little attention. Moreover, these mechanisms not only push away women from the projected image of Saudi Arabia via othering them but also by reporting on women from a news source that is based in the UK and is critical of kingdom. Coupled with the agency and voice that men of authority clearly enjoy and women lack, this presents an image of Saudi Arabia as filled with men of authority, who are unlike women, with real agency.

Critical discourse analysis: investigating translations and ST-TET power relations In the SC, 59 news items were identified as linguistically constructing the image of Saudi Arabia in relation to gender, authority and agency. These items came from 16 news sources, with al-Quds al-Arabi being the most frequent news source (14 articles). Thus, for case study 1, which is the first level of CDA analysis, a news item is selected from al-Quds al-Arabi for an in-depth analysis. For case study 2, three news items were selected to test the consistency of the findings within the limits of al-Quds al-Arabi. Aiming at investigating the consistency of the findings beyond al-Quds al-Arabi daily, in case study 3, two news items were selected from al-Jazeera and two from al-Arabiyah.

Power imbalance prior to transediting The linguistic triangulation in case study 1 shows that Saudi Arabia’s representation as a country filled with men of authority, who, unlike women, have real agency, is constructed by the ways in which Saudi men and Saudi women are referred to and qualified in the text. For example, the main social actor in case study 1, Saudi “Prince al-Walid”, is qualified via the use of adjectives and adjectival phrases in relation to his nationality (“Saudi”), age (“young Prince”), wealth (“billionaire” and “richest non-ruling Arab”), authority (“Prince”) and investments (“owns a media and investment empire”). By contrast, the second social actor of focus, “Saudi women/woman”, is qualified via the noun “woman”, which reflects gender, and the adjective that denotes their nationality, “Saudi”. Thus, ascribing will, agency and authority to the male Saudi Prince while depriving Saudi women of the same.

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Moreover, “Prince al-Walid” is nominated, that is, referred to by name in the text and, thus, personalised and brought closer to the reader (Machin & Mayr, 2012, pp.  81–2), while Saudi “women” and “woman” are functionalised in the TET; they are referred to by their roles (Machin & Mayr, 2012, pp. 81–2) “pilot” and “employee” and, thus, presented as faceless to the reader. This is especially striking because the interdiscursive analysis empirically shows that women-related topics are at the core of the text in question, as shall be explained, but not a single woman’s name is used in the text. Rather third-person pronouns, “she” and “they”, are used, which shows that unlike men of authority, women are talked about in the text but not talked to, and thus, in addition to not being seen, they are also not heard. The contextual triangulation analysis shows that the ST, in case study 1, has been created by selectively merging two STs (a news item by al-Masri of al-Quds al-Arabi and a news item by AFP). The intertextual and interdiscursive analysis shows that via this merger, six voices and texts have been evoked and five discourses linked through topics or subtopics coming from the AFP’s ST. The linked discourses are on reforms, journalism, politics, religion and economy. The imported texts and voices revolve around the teachings of Islam and women’s progress, the issue of women’s driving and the wealth of the male Saudi Prince Al-Walid bin Talal. Strikingly, none of the imported voices is a genuine voice of a Saudi woman. Saudi men of authority were given the opportunity to speak by the BBCM-M professionals on topics that concern Saudi women, such as “progress for women” and “women’s driving”, while Saudi women were not afforded that same privilege. This highlights the extent of the power delegated by the patron to the professionals as the BBCM-M’s professionals did not only make up STs but also falsely reproduced a year-old event as a current one in case study 3. To clarify, the BBCM-M cited the original broadcasting date as July  18, 2014, while the original broadcasting date, from the ST’s official webpage, was November  30, 2013, and the BBC’s publishing date was July 22, 2014. The date change could not have been an error, given the BBCM-M’s focus on this event in two additional separate reportings, on November 19, 2013, and December 1, 2013, under different headings. Also, in case study 3, it became clear that the BBCM-M partially transcribed the audio-visuals prior to transediting, as large-scale omissions took place. This, of course, may be due to limited space. However, in relation to gender, the transcribed texts mostly include voices and texts related to men of authority, whether religious or governmental. By contrast, the only Saudi woman who was referred to expressed an alien reaction of “joy” and “pride” in response to her 15-year-old son’s joining a terrorist group, which brings us briefly to terrorism. The omissions also reflected a resistance to acknowledging a change in Saudi Arabia’s relation to terrorism as the examination of al-Arabiyah audio-visuals shows that there are aspects in the Saudi society’s relation to terrorism that were taken out while others were not, thus placing emphasis on the latter. Some of the themes that were identified as being removed are: there is an “evolution” in

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daʿwah, “Islamic preaching”; there is a decrease in the number of Saudis joining al-Qaʿida; Saudi Arabian youth learnt lessons from joining terrorist groups; and, finally, Saudi Arabian society expresses a familiar reaction towards terrorism, that is to say “shock” and “pain”. The selective merger, reframing of old events and ideological partial transcription are all forms of power exercise over the Arabic STs that led to invasive changes to those STs. Hence, assigning the Arabic STs’ and their culture a lower position when compared to their English TETs via means of transediting.

Text selection in the service of power The contextual triangulation in case study 2, however, shows that the three STs were not created by the BBCM-M; rather, they were selected. Nonetheless, as the linguistic triangulation shows, the selected STs already keep Saudi women out of the communicated image of Saudi Arabia, while bringing in Saudi men of authority through three linguistic mechanisms. Firstly, silencing women while citing the voices of men of authority discussing women’s related topics. For example, ST:

‫ من موضوع تعليم النساء في فترة الستينيات‬. . . ‫ويبدو فيها الملك االصالحي متقدما على مجتمعه‬ ‫الى تعيين المرأة‬ ‫كعضو في مجلس الشورى السعودي او السماح لها بالمشاركة في االنتخابات المحدودة‬. TET: “[this image] shows the reformist king ahead of his society, . . . starting from the issue of women’s education in the 1960s, to the appointment of women as members of the Shura Council, and allowing women to participate in limited elections”. Secondly, depriving women of agency while giving it to men of religious, royal and governmental authority, as the following examples show: ST1:

‫افكار عالم سعودي حول قضية قيادة المرأة للسيارة‬ TET1: “the ideas of a Saudi cleric on the issue of women driving cars”, ST2:

‫تخليص المرأة االخرى المسلمة من قبضة الرجل المسلم‬ TET2: “salvaging the Muslim ‘other’ woman from the grip of the Muslim man”, ST3:

‫وأصدر العاهل السعودي الملك عبدهللا‬

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TET3: “the Saudi monarch, King Abdallah, issued a royal order”. Thirdly, a closer examination of the rare instances in which Saudi women were active in the three examined texts in case study 2 shows that they always functionalised in the first and second texts, thus, in a similar manner to the other case studies, pushed away from the reader. To exemplify, ST1:

‫كمخلص للمرأة من براثن‬ TET1: “saviour of women from the claws”, ST2:

‫مبايض المرأة‬ TET2: “for the women’s ovaries”, ST3:

‫وتريدها ان تبقى للمرأة وحدها‬ TET3: “wants them for women alone”. This shows that there is a consistency of the findings related to voice, agency and distance across the three case studies, which shows that simply selecting certain STs was sufficient to serve the purpose of constructing stereotypical images of Saudi Arabia in relation to agency, gender and authority.

Power imbalance during transediting In the three case studies, the linguistic triangulation analyses have unveiled the form of rewriting applied by the BBCM-M’s professionals during the transediting process, which is mainly “domestication” at the expense of the STs as both translation losses and gains (Hervey & Higgins, 1992, p. 22) were evident. Importantly, these, which were caused in an apparent attempt to familiarise the ST to the English reader, led to stereotypically representing Saudi Arabia in several areas. In relation to gender, authority and agency, Saudi religious scholars were presented as misogynistic fundamentalists who are behind the times and irrational by amplifying certain images. For example, in case study 2, the BBCM-M systematically pluralised a lone case of the Saudi religious scholar who was ridiculed—internationally and even nationally—for arguing against “women’s driving” for fear of “harming” their ovaries, projecting this lone case as a sort of consensus or norm in Saudi Arabia’s social reality. Thus, presenting an image of Saudi religious scholars that is likely to assimilate easily in the target culture, as the examples show:

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ST1:

‫رغم مواقف الفقيه الرجعي ومن يتبعه‬.

Literal meaning ST1: “despite the positions of reactionary scholar and his followers. TET1: “despite the positions of reactionary scholars and their followers. ST2:

‫وال الفقيه يرضى به كبديل آلرائه الموغلة في أزليتها‬

Literal meaning ST2: “nor does the religious scholar accept it as an alternative to his views that are soaked in their oldness”. TET2: “nor do the scholars accept it as an alternative to their opinions so deeply entrenched due to their oldness”. Moreover, equivalences with stronger illocutionary force are used and qualifiers are added to “domesticate” the STs, leading to recycling stereotypical imagery of Saudi Arabia in relation to wealth and human rights. For example, in case study 2, the ST’s meaning was systematically intensified from “bad records of human rights” in Saudi Arabia into “dire records of human rights”; although “dire” is a synonym of “bad”, it has a vastly more powerful illocutionary force. Similarly, the “wealth” of Saudi Arabia, as stated in the ST, was amplified through the addition of the qualifier “enormous” to ‫“ ىنغ‬wealth”, which, indeed, recycles the stereotype of the enormous wealth of Saudi Arabia. This portrays an image of Saudi Arabia as an “enormously” rich, and thus powerful, potential “dire” threat to the so-called “Western values” of human rights, especially related to women. In case study 3, “domestication” caused various omissions on a small scale. Notably, these omissions are in line with the large-scale omissions that were carried out prior to transediting; they serve to resist acknowledging a change in Saudi Arabia’s relation to terrorism, which shows the BBCM-M making deliberate omissions. For example, ST1:

‫كيف تمكن هؤالء (المجاهدون السعوديون) وان كنت أشرت الى انهم تقريبا وصلوا الى الربع‬ ‫مقارنة بدول أخرى‬ Literal translation ST1: “how did they (Saudi jihadists), whose number you pointed out is nearly a quarter compared to other countries,” TET1: “asked how Saudi citizens have reached Syria,” Via this omission, the precise decrease in the number of Saudis joining jihad to “a quarter” is eliminated. Also, an emphasis on the nationality of those jihadists is added via the addition of “citizens” to describe those jihadists.

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ST2:

‫ شخص‬600 ‫السعوديين الذين توجهوا إلى سوريا في مجملهم نحو‬، Literal translation ST2: “the Saudis who went to Syria in total are around 600 people”. TET2: “he says that around 600 Saudis have gone to Syria”. Omitting “in total” removes the crucial fact that the entire number of Saudis who joined jihad in Syria is 600. Coupled with keeping “around”, this makes the statement less certain than it is in the ST, which shows how small-scale omissions serve to stereotypically project the image of Saudi Arabia to the English reader. Another example of “domestication” at the expense of the ST  that clearly shows the inferior position of the STs’ culture compared to that of the TETs is the “domestication” of the well-known term “hijab” that refers to the Islamic garment Muslim women wear into “headdress”, which is more generic and can refer to a garment worn by women or men of any other religion (iWeb, 2019). Similarly, the term “awakening”, which reflects the status of women in Saudi Arabia, in the Saudi Prince’s argument for the awakening of Saudi women “within the teaching of Islam” was “domesticated” via the use of a more familiar term “progress” to refer to the status of Saudi women. However, “progress” to the English reader is a concept, in this context, that is established in Western feminist rhetoric and has specific aims and standards that cannot be limited within the “teaching of Islam” or any other religion for that matter. Thus, the TET on Saudi women’s status is presented, and is expected to be judged, in terms of Western standards. In a similar manner to the forms of rewriting prior to transediting, this shows that the form of rewriting chosen by the BBCM-M’s professionals during transediting stage, which is “domestication” at the expense of the STs, has positioned the Arabic STs and culture, in a lower position compared to the English TETs and their respective culture, highlighting a power imbalance in favour of English in the BBCM-M’s transediting practice.

Discussion and concluding remarks In this research, the analysis of the forms of rewriting (Lefevere, 1992) that the BBCM-M’s transeditors selected when reporting on Saudi Arabia from Arabic news output, during 2013–2015, shows that there is a power imbalance between the Arabic ST and the English TET both prior to and during transediting. Importantly, this power imbalance, firstly, positions the Arabic ST and culture in an inferior position compared to the English TET and its culture, which, as seen in the examples, inevitably has led to Anglo-American hegemony over the STs and their culture. Secondly, this power imbalance has permitted the BBCM-M’s professionals to actively contribute, at contextual and linguistic levels, to the discursive stereotypical construction of Saudi Arabia as filled with men of authority, who are unlike women, with real agency.

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As a result, coloniality of power (Quijano, 2000) took place and led to the creation and transmission of an epistemologically colonised knowledge of Saudi Arabia that is stereotypical and reductionist to the English reader by the BBCMM. This phenomenon, which can hardly be accidental, is consistent across news sources during the two-year study period. This is because the identified representation of Saudi Arabia is “anchored” to “social representations” (Moscovici, 2000) that recycle the reductionist and stereotypical images of Arabs and Muslims in general and Saudi Arabia in particular as marked by misogyny, belatedness, wealth, anti-democracy and, finally, as a powerful potential threat to the West (see Said, 1978; Kamalipour & Gerbner, 1995; Shaheen, 2003; Mendelson & DarlingWolf, 2009; Koors, 2014). Therefore, communication between the English reader, and the patron and professional, which functions to enable the reader to take a stance on the social reality communicated to him or her (Moscovici, 2000), is more or less controlled, or at the very least influenced, by that epistemologically colonised knowledge. Thus, it can be said that the comparatively innocuous term “domestication” does not fully capture this potential for power imbalance or even abuse, as Venuti (1995) argued, between the source and target languages and, by extension, cultures. One potential alternative to “domestication” that this study can suggest is “domination”, because this practice would inevitably lead the translator, in Schleiermacher’s terms, to “leav[e] the reader in peace, as much as possible, and mov[e] the author towards him” (Lefevere, 1977, p. 74). As the direction of movement is towards the reader, it is the ST that is being moved; the reader’s language and culture thus “dominate” those of the ST. Conversely, and focusing on the target reader, “foreignisation” could be called “compliance”, as the target reader’s language and culture are forced to comply with the source language and culture. Also, future studies could collect a larger and more recent data in the light of the changes in Saudi Arabia motivated by 2030 Saudi vision to see whether such changes invite a shift in the BBCM-M’s coverage or not. Moreover, data from other English news sources, including conducting interviews and making observations, could be collected to understand more about who does what in the process of transediting as practised in newsrooms, such as whether the transediting takes place at various stages, whether it is conducted by several transeditors, or even if the transediting is computer-aided. All this can help understand the role of ideology more in news transediting.

Notes 1 Considering the possible accumulation of news coverage immediately following this event, i.e. in January and February, the data collection period of March 1, 2013–March 1, 2015, was selected for the study. 2 Adding the total number of identity-related word types (43) to those of the action and status (17) and relations (14) makes 74. Dividing this figure by the total number of the examined word types, 115, multiplied by 100 equals 64%, as follows: (74) ÷ 115 X 100 = 64%.

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3 The equation used to produce the percentages is the total number of word types related to each theme, 43 for example in the case of identity theme, divided by the total number of the examined word types, 115, multiplied by 100, as follows: (43) ÷ 115 X 100 = 37%. 4 The number of occurrences of “women” and “woman” from al-Quds al-Arabi divided by the total number of occurrences of the same keywords multiplied by 100, as follows: 30 ÷ 41 X 100 = 73.17%

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9 RUSSIA AND VLADIMIR PUTIN FRAMED ON CHINA’S VIDEOSHARING PLATFORM BILIBILI An analysis of strategic audio-visual narrative Wang Rui

Introduction Back in 2000, when Putin had just assumed the Russian presidency, the goal of forming a positive image of Russia abroad, and thus a friendlier attitude towards it, was explicitly stated in Russian foreign policy (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, 2000). Contemporary Russian leaders have come to consider the ability to project narratives “a matter of national security” (Hutchings & Szostek, 2015, p. 184) and to recognise the pervasive power of information access and the media as a crucial arena for politics in which to win the narrative battle. This mindset has led to the creation of instruments whose aim is to influence how Russia is perceived by the world at large. Russian television channels have been used tactically to generate support and legitimacy both domestically and abroad. Many television broadcasters are under direct or indirect control of the state (Oates, 2007) and their editorial policies are closely overseen by Kremlin officials (Loshak, 2015). National television stations like Pervyy Kanal and Rossiya 1 are the Russian leadership’s principal domestic narrative-projection tools. International broadcasters, such as RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik, are increasing their presence in the global media sphere, seeking to advance the Kremlin’s narratives about the cause, nature and resolution of international affairs to targeted audiences (Schenk, 2012; Cooley  & Stokes, 2018). However, due to advances in communication technologies, audio-visual content produced and distributed by Kremlin-led broadcast channels is now freely available to be archived, annotated, appropriated and recirculated (Jenkins, 2004) by various professional and amateur agents on the internet. No longer restricted to targeted audiences, the Kremlin’s narratives can be dispersed worldwide as long as there is interest in them, and in this respect, one fact stands out: Putin is a

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well-known figure in China. Putin’s constructed political persona as an intelligent, reserved and patriotic leader with strong will and physical prowess has been welcomed among the Chinese public. In a news article from news.qq.com it is even joked that if he were to participate in the Chinese presidential election, he would win with a high approval rating. Indeed, surveys conducted from 2008 to 2014 about Putin by news.qq.com show that he has received stable approval ratings throughout these years—more than 90% (Tengxun Pinglun, 2014). The public interest in Putin drives Chinese participatory media agents to collect, translate and recirculate relevant videos on Chinese websites. In this way, the Kremlin’s audiovisual narratives are reaching a Chinese audience, which was not their original target. This chapter offers a case study of this phenomenon by examining videos about Putin which were originally produced by the Russian international broadcaster RT but have been re-narrated by a Chinese state-aligned video uploader, the Observer, then published on a major video website, Bilibili. As Putin is the top leader of Russia, elements of the Observer’s image of Russia are also inevitably interwoven into the content of these videos. The rationale for specifying RT as producer of the source videos is that, as a tool for Russian public diplomacy, this television channel aims to promote a Russian government-preferred interpretation of international politics and Russia’s image abroad to mitigate against the dominance of Western media outlets, especially US ones (Yablokov, 2015). For Chinese-speaking audiences, a Chinese-language RT channel was launched on YouTube on May 15, 2015, but has performed poorly since then: as of November 1, 2019, RT had attracted only 8200 subscribers and 947,307 views, probably since YouTube has been blocked in China. The Chinese video uploader, the Observer, is an online news provider that exclusively targets Chinese internet users and actively participates in the rapid exchange of information in the virtual world by running its official website and official accounts on mainstream social platforms, including Bilibili, a Chinese version of YouTube. As of November 1, 2019, its Bilibili channel had generated 1.08 billion views, attracted 1.95 million subscribers and uploaded 4874 videos, in sharp contrast with the figures achieved by the RT Chinese-language channel on YouTube. Using the conceptual framework of strategic narrative (Miskimmon et al., 2014, 2017), this chapter assumes that political actors work to frame their self-image, that of other actors, and of the world by promoting a set of preferred narratives aiming to gain strategic advantages for themselves, such as policy-legitimacy and public diplomacy. This study explores how the uploader orients its Chinese audiences towards particular views of Putin and Russia through audio-visual translation strategies, especially video clip selection; addition of titles and descriptions; editing and subtitling videos. Furthermore, the media platform itself requires changes to be made to the source videos to secure resonance with viewers on Bilibili, which is becoming a hub for young Chinese internet users, in order to reflect trending popular cultural themes and topics. This paper thus also investigates the

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sacrifices and gains that the Observer has made in attempting to retain its political narrative standpoint about Putin and Russia, while at the same time adapting to entertainment trends in the quest for new audiences on Bilibili.

Data, theoretical framework and research method The data collected for the purposes of this case study are somewhat unusual. In this section, I explain the particular features of these data, theoretical considerations upon analysing such data and the method designed for conducting this study.

Data analysed The main aim of this study is to examine the translation strategies deployed by the Observer to frame Russia and Putin by re-uploading RT-sourced videos, which are influenced by its own narrative understanding of the two and its intention to adapt to the local media environment on Bilibili. Therefore, the Observer’s official news website and its Bilibili channel are the two main data sources from which three sets of data were selected for this study. A thematic page entitled “Putin” on the Observer’s official website was the resource chosen for selecting the first dataset examined in this chapter to identify the Observer’s narrative location in relation to Russia and Putin. Three hundred articles chosen by editors of the Observer as belonging under the subheading “Putin” are grouped on this page. To make this study manageable, only the articles’ titles are included in the first dataset. A short description of the subheading is placed below the search bar (circled in Figure 9.1) enabling readers to quickly understand the theme of the page. Three banner articles are also manually placed horizontally at the top of this thematic page (circled in Figure  9.1), which had remained unchanged for a long time when I began my investigation on November  1, 2019. The banner location on the home page of this thematic section is clearly of great importance, indicating the most salient news the Observer intends to convey to its audience. In sum, the first dataset consists of 300 titles of articles; the description of the thematic page “Putin”; and three banner articles. It is argued that the narrative location of the Observer in relation to Russia and Putin will influence the Observer’s translation strategies. The remaining two datasets were collected from the Observer’s official channel on Bilibili. Seventy videos about Putin were chosen; titles and descriptions of these videos are included in the second dataset. Many of these videos are sourced from Russian media outlets, such as, RT, TASS, the Kremlin’s official website, Pervyy Kanal, Rossiya 1 and Rossiya 24 (the source is cited at the end of each video clip). To stand out for audiences amid fierce competition and win more followers, the Observer must adapt its content production to suit the micro media environment on Bilibili. Hence, because the website is more entertainmentoriented and the majority of its users are high school and college students, its output can be expected to emphasise the affective and playful dimensions of this

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FIGURE 9.1 “The

Observer • Putin” thematic page from the Observer website (produced by kind permission of the Observer).

Source: guancha.cn

content. In terms of the editorial principles adopted by the Observer, this adaptation influences its translation strategies, which are identified through a comparative analysis of the overarching images about Putin and Russia from the first and second datasets. The findings from this comparison guide my analysis of the translation strategies deployed by the Observer in the third dataset, comprising 12 videos sourced from RT.

Theoretical framework The data were examined qualitatively at a textual level according to the theory of strategic narrative. Miskimmon et  al. (2014) describe strategic narratives as “representations of a sequence of events and identities . . . through which political actors . . . attempt to give determined meaning to past, present, and future in

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order to achieve political objectives” (p. 7). Hence strategic narratives not only contain actors, events and settings, they emphatically require and exhibit the temporality and causality—that is, beginning, middle and end—dimensions of narrative emplotment. Narratives showcasing the preceding structural features can be deployed to set constraints on the imaginable and actionable and to shape perceived interests. A coherent and convincing strategic narrative effectively carries the narrator’s suggested meanings and evaluations about the political issues and national leaders of the nation state it portrays and the state’s place in the world order. In this respect, strategic narrative reflects the premise of this analysis, that is, that RT and the Observer both strive to promote their own beliefs about Russia and Putin and to which they suggest their targeted audiences subscribe. The key to understanding strategic narratives is in seeing how states are characterised in issue-specific narratives. Due to the central positions of states in the field of International Relations, Miskimmon et al. have paid them particular attention; they list the apparent narrative tendencies in how states characterise themselves or others as acting in the international community: as a great power, a rising power, a normal, weak or rogue power (2014). Although these categories describe what the state is and the attributes it possesses, they are too simplistic to fully capture a desired image of a particular state or the world order in the mind of an audience. A  state’s self-image is constructed from various factors, including the material strength it possesses, mainstream historic accounts of its foundation, the cultural norms, symbols, myths and so forth commonly held by citizens of that nation, and the position it occupies in the international community. In analysing the United States’ great power narrative, Miskimmon et al. observe that “characteristics associated with a great power within this narrative include an emphasis on sovereignty (independence of action), leadership (structuring the system), and responsibility (to others)” without explicitly stressing the diverse aspects in characterising a state (2014, p. 52). This could be regarded as an admission of the importance of the various measures by which the character of states and the world order can be evaluated. To identify the most salient characteristics of Russia and Putin that the Observer promotes among its Bilibili users, I borrowed methods used by scholars from the field of frame analysis to identify news frames. It is worth noting here that the aim of this study is not to extract news frames, but once again to identify key components of the characterisations of Putin and Russia that the Observer constructs for its Chinese speaking Bilibili audiences. Nonetheless, news frames are regarded as “patterns . . . of presentation, of selection, emphasis, and exclusion” (Gitlin, 2003, p. 7). The Observer’s characterisations of Putin and Russia are consistent with such patterns in terms of which facets it selects and highlights. Therefore, the methods that frame analysts commonly use are also useful for analysing the data collected for this study. Scholars contend that a variety of devices can be observed in news reports, such as keywords, catchphrases, metaphors, concepts and symbols, which identify problems, diagnose causes, make judgements and suggest remedies (Entman, 1993; Cappella et  al., 1997). Similarly, images of Putin and Russia foregrounded by the Observer for its Chinese audiences are

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constructed from and embedded in the consistent use of keywords, catchphrases, metaphors, concepts, symbols and so forth. Scholars also argue that news frames can be planted in news reports by deciding which issue to cover (MacKuen, 1983; McCombs, 1981; Iyengar & Kinder, 2010); by putting forth a particular interpretation; by simplifying events or stories; by allocating more coverage to one issue over another, and so forth. Similarly, characterisations of Putin and Russia can be identified from any one of these various strategies that serve to distinguish the salience or importance of certain facets over others, activating schemas that encourage Bilibili users to think and feel in a particular way. The methods described previously are certainly helpful in identifying the Observer’s characterisations of Putin and Russia expressed in written form, such as titles of articles, titles and descriptions of videos, and subtitles superimposed on the videos. In contrast, characterisations of Putin and Russia embedded in the audio-visual texts are more difficult to pin down, since the reality represented visually on the screen is a differently constructed reality than that which is represented in printed media (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 1996). Some scholars consider the soundtrack and the visual track of a video to be two separate components, each of which tells its own story (see Dunn, 2005). Indeed, the visual, audio and linguistic components of an audio-visual text lend themselves to different forms of meaning-making. Furthermore, each semiotic mode, whether visual, audio or linguistic, has its own limitations. However, the interaction between them is always artfully designed by the video producer to work in concert, inviting audiences to adopt a particular interpretation of that audio-visual product. A  key premise of this chapter is that the Observer delivers its strategic messages by integrating different semiotic modes. For example, without the dialogue to support the visual images, a video may be incomplete or unappealing to audiences and may lead them to misunderstand the video producer’s intended meaning. The Observer has a variety of devices at its disposal: editing techniques, sharpness of focus, visual structures, audio or visual cues, background music, subtitles and so forth. Due to space limitations I do not explain each of these devices in detail, but I demonstrate how they are used through the examples presented in data analysis. Although the information contained in individual titles of articles, titles and descriptions of videos, and twelve short video clips is necessarily limited, characterisations of Putin and Russia are available to be detected in the devices the Observer deploys to promote its specific viewpoints or mindset regarding Russia and Putin. In persistently presenting particular aspects of the latter in its written and audio-visual reportage on a variety of issues, the Observer is trying to frame particular images of Putin and Russia for Chinese audiences to subscribe to, benefiting its political and marketing ends.

Research method To assess the strategic narrative standpoint of the Observer, the three hundred article titles in the first dataset were read closely by the author several times in order

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to observe and record patterns present in the text. Notes were taken regarding the focus of each article, its thematic tendencies, language use, repeated words, the way problems are defined, causal interpretations, moral evaluations and/or treatment recommended for problems described. To analyse the second dataset—videos relevant to Putin taken from the Observer’s official channel on Bilibili—I took the same approach of examining and manually recording key patterns of image characterisation as mentioned previously. Having analysed the first two sets of data, I then compared the findings to examine similarities and differences between the overarching characterisations of Russia and Putin, the reporting style and the selection of videos on the Observer’s official news website and its Bilibili channel. This comparative exercise provides insight into the Observer’s adaptation of its narratives about Putin and Russia for the Bilibili platform and the factors that influence its translation strategies on RT videos. As for the third set of data, I used the software programme, MAXQDA, for coding and organising the video files. This software is an application for marking and comparing the audio and visual elements of the edited audio-visual texts, the subtitles and any editing that the Russian source text producer, RT, and the Chinese video uploader, the Observer, have made. In the remainder of this chapter, I discuss the findings from the data analyses described previously.

Data analysis: selecting and titling videos about Putin The differences in the Observer’s characterisations of Putin and Russia on its official website and its Bilibili channel signal a shift in the editorial principles prioritised by the Observer from politically oriented to entertainment oriented. The most salient difference is the decreased focus on political issues of importance and the increased space dedicated to a more tabloid-style of journalism that focuses on Putin’s personality. Comparative analysis of the first and second datasets shows that videos related to Putin convey considerably fewer political stories in comparison with the written news selected for its official website. In general, the news reports on the Observer’s official website are heavily oriented towards politics, with a focus on Putin’s behaviour as Russian leader. For example, the Observer allocates a large amount of coverage to Putin’s diplomatic activities with counterparts from other states, especially China and the United States, and stresses Russia’s friendly attitude towards China in such articles. Putin’s support for China is explicitly demonstrated in one banner article which is placed in the very centre of the webpage, entitled “Putin: China cannot be restrained, and those who want to do so will only harm themselves”.1 The strong support of a tough leader like Putin serves to boost national pride among the Chinese populace. Additionally, 49 articles describe state visits or phone calls between Putin and Xi, reflecting the closeness between Russia and China.

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Readers can easily sense Putin’s supreme authority in Russia in the titles of articles from the Observer, such as “Top 100 Russian politicians selected by Russian media: Putin continues to rank first”,2 indicating that Putin is the strongest leader in Russian history. Putin’s governing style is portrayed as autocratic: he is the sole ruler and answers only to himself. His administrative decisions are in line with his preferences, as indicated by the title “Putin orders the removal of nine generals”.3 The implications of such titles are in line with accusations of Western liberals that he is a dictator; but Putin’s exertion of control does not significantly damage his reputation in China because these articles only account for a small share of the reports. Putin’s hard line on various occasions also stands out in the Observer’s reportage on its official website, repeatedly shown in the first dataset, mainly in defending Russian national interests. Putin emphasises Russian military strength, stating that “Russia is not afraid of an interception because it possesses nuclear-powered cruise missiles”, and dismisses the imposition of sanctions by the West as “harming others without benefiting themselves”. Such reports about assertive diplomatic rhetoric are similar to China’s current diplomatic rhetoric (Poh & Li, 2017), serving as a reminder that Russia is a powerful country that is not prepared to tolerate any action that threatens its sovereignty, security or ideological legitimacy. These characterisations go hand in hand with Putin’s tough image, pitching to the Chinese public the message that Russia is a powerful and aggressive country. He also takes a hard line in non-political scenarios, as shown in one banner article titled “Putin questioned Sweden’s ‘environmental princess’: Africans also want to live like Swedes, how can this be achieved?”4 The image projected by such assertiveness is sometimes one of rationality and honesty; elsewhere, however, it leaves an impression of rudeness or speaking out of line. With the reports portraying different aspects of Putin’s activities, an overarching image about Putin can be extracted: He is a leader who enjoys unparalleled power in a big country, Russia; assertive to the West, but friendly to China. As primarily an entertainment platform, Putin’s image as an upgraded version of zhandou minzu (a fighting ethnic group) is judged to be more “newsworthy” than serious political news on the Observer’s Bilibili channel. In China, Russians are often stereotypically referred to as zhandou minzu, akin to a Super Saiyan capable of doing things that ordinary people cannot. Putin’s personal strength is closely associated with his KGB background. In the Chinese context, or even globally, a secret agent stereotypically possesses three groups of characteristics, as typified in the James Bond series and other heroic movies: (1) archetypically masculine (e.g. strong, coldblooded, sober); (2) intellectually strong (e.g. decisive, rational, professionally skilled); and (3) personally charming, (e.g. with good speaking and interpersonal skills). Hence an association with the KGB has positive and romantic connotations, which has become one of Putin’s greatest assets and advantages. The agency he worked for and once headed exudes an aura of strength.

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Masculinity is one of the best-known features of Putin’s self-image, and the Observer promotes his machismo in five videos. These include “Putin: my qilin arm is out of control!”5 The qilin (麒麟 in Chinese) is a powerful creature in Chinese mythology with the head of a dragon, the hooves of a horse, the body of a deer and the tail of an ox. Traditionally, the qilin symbolises luck, longevity and prosperity. The slang phrase “qilin arm” refers to bulging biceps. Here, the phrase is used metaphorically to emphasise Putin’s physical power. Putin’s intellectual capabilities are invoked in videos such as “Putin: we almost shot down a passenger plane during the opening ceremony of the Sochi Olympics”.6 This incident occurred when Putin received an erroneous report that a group of terrorists had kidnapped and controlled a plane with the intention of causing a disturbance during the opening ceremony of the Sochi Olympics, where a large number of spectators from around the world were present. The title of this video demonstrates Putin’s decisiveness at critical moments, in this case by his choice, after careful consideration, to save the thousands of people in the audience on the ground. By contrast, his willingness to sacrifice the passengers on board the supposed plane shows the cold-bloodedness for which a secret agent is usually known. Also, as a former secret agent, Putin’s personal appeal is manifest in his versatility and interpersonal skills; for example, the Observer has reported to Chinese audiences on Putin’s surprising piano-playing skills, as shown in the title of a video “Waiting for Xi whilst playing “Moscow Windows”, what to play while waiting for Trump?”7 Putin’s growing symbolic prominence also stems from his ability to speak in a variety of contexts. He is capable of giving formal verbal responses to sensitive issues using compelling arguments supported by evidence. For instance, the uploader characterises the video “Putin responds to Olympic ban on Russia”8 as a tutorial in which Putin teaches viewers how to speak. Viewers can also appreciate Putin’s sense of humour in titles of videos such as “When asked what Russia will look like after his retirement, Putin’s answer amused the audience”.9 The description of this video discloses his answer as “What’s the hurry? I don’t plan to go anywhere”. Gorham describes Putin’s versatility in speaking as the ability to “shift in and out of language registers or speech styles to reflect the broader ideological and political sentiments of his immediate interlocutors and broader listening and viewing audience” (2013). Additionally, Putin interweaves some “soft” traits into his image to characterise himself as a warm-hearted former agent. The Observer encourages its audiences to pay attention to this aspect in five of the dataset videos, such as showing Putin’s affection for animals and Mother Nature. From a video titled “New members of Putin’s dog family”,10 viewers can deduce that he has a particular affection for dogs. He is also portrayed as having minor defects like ordinary people. For example, a video title shows that he frowns and laughs at his own barely recognisable handwriting. This relatable detail shows him to be a real flesh-and-blood human being. Innocuous small problems such as this not only amuse Chinese audiences but also project an image of Putin as lifelike and attractive.

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The fact that the majority of Putin-related videos uploaded on Bilibili have this tabloid quality indicates the enormous pressure that the Observer is under to increase viewing figures and collect followers on Bilibili. The more it adheres to sensationalist news values, the less it adheres to official government news values. The relaxed atmosphere on Bilibili is responsible for such changes, at least in part. On a video-sharing platform like Bilibili, user-generated content dominates the website. The rise of “people” changes the relationship between the producers of news and their audiences. The Observer’s close adherence to the government line on its official website puts it in a position slightly above its audience by foregrounding the authority and credibility of its news products. By contrast, on Bilibili, the viewers, as consumers, have the advantage of selecting to view the videos that most interest them. According to Sparks, tabloid-style news is so popular in part because it addresses issues that directly concern people, rather than dwelling on the un-relatable “deeds of the leaders of politics and business” (2000, p. 27). Moreover, in contrast to the stilted, formulaic language of the Observer’s official website, the language used on its Bilibili channel also reflects the tabloid trend of being lively and colloquial. It uses slang, such as the previously mentioned “zhandou minzu” and “qilin arm” in its titles, and even incorporates the sound of laughter in Chinese (the equivalent of “hahaha”) to attract viewers’ attention. The language of everyday speech, puns, slang and similar features make the titles of the videos sound snappy. The changes the Observer has made in selecting and titling news for its Bilibili channel suggest an intention to adapt its content to the competitive market on Bilibili. It tries to strike a balance between reflecting its own narrative understanding about Putin and Russia and meeting its viewers’ entertainment needs. It is arguably due to the inclusion of tabloid-style news that the Observer has managed to build a large group of followers. The high number of subscribers (1.95 million) to its Bilibili channel suggests that its translation strategies, in particular video selection and titling, are succeeding. With the adaptation to Bilibili audiences discussed previously, that is, introducing more tabloid-style news and using lively language in article titling, the editorial principles that guide the Observer’s selection and titling of videos about Putin have concomitantly altered. This change is the basis for my analysis in the following section of the selected videos in the third dataset, which were originally produced by RT and then subtitled in Chinese by the Observer.

Data analysis: editing and subtitling videos sourced from RT The Observer’s approach to framing the images of Putin and Russia on Bilibili differs notably from that of RT’s Chinese-language channel on YouTube. Among the twelve videos sourced from RT, only one, titled “Putin taking an Akita dog gifted by Shinzo Abe when being interviewed by a Japanese media outlet; the Japanese journalists smiled awkwardly”,11 can be traced back to RT’s Chinese-language

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Channel on YouTube. The Russians gave it the title “Putin’s ‘serious dog’ whose name is Dream barks loudly when meeting with Japanese journalists”.12 This indicates that, rather than simply reposting the ready-made material that RT intended for its Chinese audiences, the Observer has its own agenda for selecting and uploading source videos, which is reflected in how they are characterised. Furthermore, in this small group of examples, the Observer on Bilibili also offers a higher percentage of tabloid-style audio-visual narratives about Putin’s personality than does RT on YouTube, while paying less attention to Russian politics. In this section, I  explore the Observer’s two other translation strategies— editing and subtitling—as evidenced by the characterisations of Putin and Russia in the target videos. It is important to bear in mind that the changes made by the Observer to the Russian source videos serve to frame Putin and Russia on Bilibili in a certain way, as discussed in the previous section. My analysis reveals that editors of the Observer exploit a variety of editing and subtitling strategies to express their strategic narrative meaning. These strategies are implemented upon the Russian source audio-visual narratives along with the new titles and descriptions assigned to them, reinforcing the overarching characteristics through which the Observer wishes to characterise Putin and Russia. To illustrate their usage, some key examples follow which are repeatedly used across the dataset. As regards subtitling, a few minor inaccuracies are evident in the translation of speech and dialogue. For example, in the video titled “A  grand presidential inauguration has taken place in the Kremlin, opening Putin’s fourth term”,13 Constitutional Court President Valery Zorkin addresses Putin by his full name when asking him to take the presidential oath, whereas the Observer refers in the subtitle to President Putin (普京总统 in Chinese), although technically he had not yet taken up the position (Figure 9.2). Such mistranslations are often so small they go unnoticed by Chinese audiences whose focus is on reading the audio-visual narrative as a whole. It is also clear that editors of the Observer have established no formatting conventions with regard to subtitles. Some videos are subtitled in Chinese only; in others, a subtitle in Chinese appears above a subtitle in Russian; some even include English subtitles. Also, the colour, font and size of subtitles, and the punctuation used vary from one video to another. Despite these formatting variations, the Chinese translations are essentially correct and faithful to the source text, guiding the audience to interpret the audio-visual narratives in a particular way. However, the Observer purposefully leaves some speeches untranslated. These speeches are delivered by persons who the Observer regards as less important than Putin. For example, in the video about Putin’s fourth-term presidential inauguration discussed previously, the TV hosts’ words describing the ceremonial process are left unsubtitled. It is possible that the Observer prefers viewers to enjoy the spectacle of the grand ceremony itself rather than be distracted by descriptive information. Indeed, it is a full 10 minutes into this 13-minute video before viewers can read the Chinese subtitles of Putin’s presidential oath and the Constitutional Court President’s announcement of Putin as the new president. Emotion

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FIGURE 9.2 Screenshot

from the video, “A grand presidential inauguration has taken place in the Kremlin, opening Putin’s fourth term”. The subtitle is a mistranslation (produced by kind permission of the Observer).

Source: Bilibili.com

builds in the viewers in anticipation of this moment, spurring their awe towards Putin’s supreme authority in Russia. The Observer superimposes titles in a number of videos to explain the activities in which Putin is engaged when there is no speech or when the Observer prefers not to translate. For instance, there is no speech in a video titled “Seeing a veteran pushed away by a security guard, Putin walks directly over to him”.14 The Observer adds two sentences on the screen to demonstrate an aspect of Putin’s personality: as a top leader, he respects those who contributed to the country during the Second World War and represents high moral standards and social equality (Figure 9.3). As regards the editing of the RT videos, the Observer directs how viewers should interpret the characters of Putin and Russia by adding words, punctuation, photos, or special effects. A video titled “High five! Putin and Saudi crown prince interacted enthusiastically at the G20 Summit”15 is a prime illustration of the Observer’s editing. The opening of this wordless video shows Putin and the Saudi crown prince greeting each other with a mixture of a handshake and a high five. The Observer replays this part of the video in slow motion, foregrounding the familiarity and friendly relationship between these two national leaders and, by extension, between Russia and Saudi Arabia. While this greeting is in process, US President Donald Trump walks into the frame and appears surprised at their intimacy. The Observer firstly adds three question marks just above the image of Trump’s head and then draws attention to Trump’s facial expression by applying a special effect that magnifies his image (Figure 9.4). At the same time, the Observer adds a male voice making the sound “emm?” to suggest the inner voice

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FIGURE 9.3 Screenshots

from “Seeing a veteran pushed away by a security guard, Putin walks directly over to him”. The title explains the content of the video (produced by kind permission of the Observer).

Source: Bilibili.com

of Trump at that moment. The overlapping of these editing techniques and the visual representation of this video and the interaction between them playfully demonstrate Trump’s reaction to this scene in an exaggerated way. At the end of the video clip, the Observer adds two more photos that capture a moment of eye contact and an exchange of smiles between Putin and the Saudi Crown Prince (Figure  9.5). This type of editing serves three purposes: firstly, it demonstrates the complex relationship between three major powers, namely Russia, the United States and Saudi Arabia. Secondly, it shows Putin’s highly developed interpersonal skills. Lastly and most importantly, it makes a video containing no spoken

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FIGURE 9.4 Screenshots

from the video titled “High five! Putin and Saudi crown prince interacted enthusiastically at the G20 Summit”, illustrating the addition of punctuation and special effects to Russian source videos (produced by kind permission of the Observer).

Source: Bilibili.com

words interesting and appealing to users of Bilibili. The editing strategies used here may exist in tension with the original political aims of the Observer identifiable on its official website. This mediated video attempts to amuse Bilibili users by exaggerating the humorous interactions between Putin, Trump, and the Saudi crown prince. This may detract from efforts to convey an image of Putin as a serious and powerful leader to be respected and admired. Ultimately, the aim of the translation strategies the Observer applies to its Russian source videos is not merely to frame Putin and Russia in its preferred way or

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FIGURE 9.5 Screenshots

from the video titled “High five! Putin and Saudi crown prince interacted enthusiastically at the G20 Summit”, illustrating the addition of photos to Russian source videos (produced by kind permission of the Observer).

Source: Bilibili.com

attract the attention of Chinese audiences. The primary objective of the Observer is to distinguish itself from among the countless video uploaders on Bilibili. Hence, the Observer superimposes its logo (a Chinese character “观”, meaning “to observe”) in bright blue at the top left corner of the screen in all of its videos. The desired identity of the Observer as a professional news provider which operates its own official news website drives it to claim authority by adding a mosaic of the RT logo, the names of the news source and editors, and a short animation of its logo at the end of each video (Figure 9.6).

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FIGURE 9.6 Screenshots

from the video titled “The emperor is angry! Putin responds harshly to new sanctions against Russia”,16 illustrating the addition of the RT logo, the names of the news source and editors, and a short animation to Russian source videos (produced by kind permission of the Observer).

Source: Bilibili.com

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Video uploading on Bilibili is a competitive industry; uploaders survive only if they can attract and retain viewers. A  powerful way of holding the attention of Chinese audiences is to employ translation strategies such as those discussed previously to tell a good story about Putin and Russia. In an effort to capture an ever-greater number of users, the Observer has made translation decisions in relation to the Russian source videos that reflect the challenge the Observer faces to both keep its uploads politically oriented and increase its reputation among Bilibili users. This increases the possibility of converting its subscribers on Bilibili to audiences for its official website, which is a difficult task. For mainstream users who are expecting to be entertained, the news on the Observer’s official website, although comparatively enlightening, may seem dull and disconnected from their online information consumption habits.

Concluding remarks Scholars in audio-visual translation studies have paid great attention to the “narrative location” of video uploaders or translators, and its influence on their translated output in shaping the reality perceived by their audiences. They are often referred to as amateur translators or political activist translators (Pérez-González, 2012; Baker, 2018). This chapter calls scholarly attention to the importance of videosharing platforms which may force video uploaders or translators to adjust their translation strategies significantly when rendering target texts, as shown in this case study. The methods evaluated in this chapter that the Observer uses to promote itself and disseminate mediated audio-visual strategic narratives fall broadly into four categories: selecting, titling, editing and subtitling. Although these and the translation strategies discussed previously do not constitute an exhaustive list of the choices available to editors, they at least provide a basis for future researchers interested in exploring strategies for framing political actors deployed when translating audio-visual narratives. Furthermore, this chapter offers a means to analyse how narratives are constructed in such audio-visual products and how they can be strategic, which remains an underexplored area in strategic narrative theory.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Chinese title “普京: 中国无法被遏制, 想这么做的人只会损害自己” Chinese title “俄媒评选俄罗斯政治人物百强: 普京继续排第一” Chinese title “普京下令解除9名将军的职务” Chinese title “普京质疑瑞典 “环保公主”: 非洲人也想过瑞典人的好日子, 该如何 实现?” Chinese title “普京: 我的麒麟臂不受控制啊!” Chinese title “普京: 索契冬奥会开幕式闹乌龙, 差点打下一架客机” Chinese title “等习大大时弹了《莫斯科之窗》, 等特朗普时要弹啥?” Chinese title “普京回应奥委会禁赛” Chinese title “被问 “下台” 后俄罗斯是什么样,普京的回答把观众都逗乐了” Chinese title “普京家的狗狗大家族又添加新成员了”

Russia and Vladimir Putin on Bilibili  145

1 1 12 13 14 15 16

Chinese title “普京接受日媒采访带着安倍送的秋田犬 日本记者呵呵呵” Chinese title “普京的那条 “严肃的狗”梦见到日本记者后狂吠” Chinese title “大克里姆林宫举行盛大总统就职典礼 普京开启第四任期” Chinese title “看到老兵被保安推开, 普京直接迎了上去” Chinese title “击掌!普京和沙特王储在G20峰会上热情互动” Chinese title “大帝很生气！普京严厉回应对美国对俄制裁新法案”

Bibliography Baker, M. (2018). Audiovisual translation and activism. In L. Pérez-González (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Audiovisual Translation (pp. 453–67). London and New York: Routledge. Cappella, J. N., Joseph, N., Jamieson, K. H., & Hall, K. (1997). Spiral of Cynicism: The Press and the Public Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cooley, S. C.,  & Stokes, E. C. (2018). Manufacturing resilience: An analysis of broadcast and Web-based news presentations of the 2014–2015 Russian economic downturn. Global Media and Communication, 14(1), 123–39. Dunn, A. (2005). Television news as narrative. In H. Fulton, R. Huisman, J. Murphet, & A. Dunn (Eds.), Narrative and Media (pp. 140–52). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–8. Gitlin, T. (2003). The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Gorham, M. (2013). Putin’s language. In H. Goscilo (Ed.), Putin as Celebrity and Cultural Icon (pp. 133–59). London and New York: Routledge. Hutchings, S., & Szostek, J. (2015). Dominant narratives in Russian political and media discourse during the Ukraine crisis. In P. W. Agnieszka & S. Richard (Eds.), Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives (pp.  173–85). Bristol: E-International Relations Publishing. Iyengar, S., & Kinder, D. R. (2010). News That Matters: Television and American Opinion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jenkins, H. (2004). The cultural logic of media convergence. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 7(1), 33–43. Kress, G. R., & Van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London and New York: Routledge. Loshak, A. (2015, June  11). Ya nauchilsya dogovarivatsya s soboy. Meduza. https:// meduza.io/feature/2015/06/11/ya-nauchilsya-dogovarivatsya-s-soboy MacKuen, M. B. (1983). Political drama, economic conditions, and the dynamics of presidential popularity. American Journal of Political Science, 27(2), 165–92. McCombs, M. E. (1981). The agenda-setting approach. In D. D. Nimmo & K. R. Sanders (Eds.), Handbook of Political Communication (pp. 121–40). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. (2000, July 11). Kontseptsiya vneshney politiki Rossiyskoy Federatsii. Retrieved from www.ng.ru/ world/2000–07–11/1_ concept.html Miskimmon, A., O’Loughlin, B., & Roselle, L. (2014). Strategic Narratives: Communication Power and the New World Order. London and New York: Routledge. ———. (2017). Forging the world: Strategic Narratives and International Relations. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

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Oates, S. (2007). The neo-Soviet model of the media. Europe-Asia Studies, 59(8), 1279–97. Pérez-González, L. (2012). Amateur subtitling and the pragmatics of spectatorial subjectivity. Language and Intercultural Communication, 12(4), 335–52. Poh, A., & Li, M. (2017). A China in transition: The rhetoric and substance of Chinese foreign policy under Xi Jinping. Asian Security, 13(2), 84–97. Schenk, C. (2012). Nationalism in the Russian media: Content analysis of newspaper coverage surrounding conflict in Stavropol, 24 May—7 June 2007. Nationalities Papers, 40(5), 783–805. Sparks, C. (2000). Introduction: The panic over tabloid news. In B. Zelizer, S. E. Bird, R. Brookes, A. Calabrese, P. Golding, J. Gripsrud, Á. Gulyás, D. C. Hallin, K. Hayashi, U. Klein, & M. Macdonald (Eds.), Tabloid Tales: Global Debates over Media Standards (pp. 1–40). Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Tengxun Pinglun. (2014 March 22). Chinese people love Putin? Retrieved from https:// view.news.qq.com/original/intouchtoday/n2740.html Yablokov, I. (2015). Conspiracy theories as a Russian public diplomacy tool: The case of Russia Today (RT). Politics, 35(3–4), 301–15.

10 HEDGING IN INTERPRETED SPEECH Cognitive hedges in English and Hungarian interpreting Andrea Götz

Introduction Interpreters are professional linguistic mediators whose linguistic behaviour is governed by certain expectations. First and foremost, they are expected to provide an interpretation that is faithful to the original speech, but equally importantly, they are also expected to remain neutral. Interpreters are thus “conceptualized as a ‘non-person’ in a neutral position between the interlocutors” who deliver an “accurate, complete, and faithful rendition” of the original speech (Pöchhacker, 2006, p. 147). However, these two expectations can be at cross purposes. Interpreting prejudiced or impolite language faithfully, for example, would require interpreters to compromise their neutral stance. Neutrality itself is, of course, a stance (Jaffe, 2009, p.  3), meaning that speakers have to actively “position themselves with respect to the form or content of their utterances” in order to be and remain neutral (Bonnin, 2019, p. 360). As a result, interpreters can face difficult choices as they navigate their role as mediators, being forced at times to perform certain interventions. These issues are particularly poignant in institutional settings where institutional norms of conduct apply to interpreters and guide their linguistic behaviour. Enforcing such institutional discourse norms, however, can be inconsistent. Interpreters at the European Parliament (EP), for example, have been found to use both more neutral, less politically charged terms in their interpreting, but also more ideologically coloured language in comparison to original speakers (Beaton, 2013). While interpreters can mitigate the speakers’ ideological stances, they can also reinforce the EU’s institutional frames of reference by inserting, for example, institutionally propagated metaphors into their discourse, replace informal terms with EU jargon, or deploy in-house acronyms and contractions (Beaton, 2007). Such linguistic interventions reveal a “struggle

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between competing ideologies, in particular between EU institutional hegemony and interpreter axiology” (Beaton, 2007, p. 292). When it comes to more complex discourse patterns, such as racist language, EP interpreters show a similarly inconsistent picture. Although EP interpreters mostly downtone offensive terms, they can also accurately convey them, or occasionally even explicate implied meaning, producing more charged language (Bartłomiejczyk, 2020). On a related note, EP interpreters also tend to mitigate generally impolite language by downtoning or omitting face attacks (Bartłomiejczyk, 2019, 2016; Magnifico & Defrancq, 2016). It should be noted, however, that dealing with—and accurately rendering—offensive language requires special skills. It has been found in police interviews that substantial pragmatic competence is needed to render offensive utterances appropriately, including correctly interpreting profanity (Hale et al., 2020). The behaviour of interpreters can be further influenced by the extent to which they are expected to identify with and be in line with the views of their institutions. At one end of the spectrum, EP interpreting is not acknowledged as “authentic” or valid on its own right,1 suggesting a sense of separation between official EU discourse and the discourse output of interpreters. Furthermore, EP interpreters themselves are not treated as completely invisible either, as their presence is at times explicitly recognised and remarked upon by speakers and chairs at plenary debates (Bartłomiejczyk, 2017). In stark contrast, Chinese interpreters working at government press conferences can be quoted verbatim, acting as stand-ins for the premier, representing the official discourse of the country (Gu, 2018). In this context, interpreters are expected to show full commitment to official messaging (Gu, 2019) and form a part of diplomatic efforts as the “voice” of their institution (Gu, 2018, p. 245). Amongst others, this identification can be achieved by replacing first person singular self-references of the speaker with first person plural pronouns (Gu & Tipton, 2020). Even though the latter represents an extreme case of institutional alignment, evidence from diverse interpreting environments suggests that interpreters frequently transcend their role as mediators and act as mitigators. One way this is frequently done is by inserting hedges (cf. Magnifico & Defrancq, 2017; Pan & Zheng, 2017; Hu & Meng, 2018). Hedges, such as I think, kind of, you see are pragmatic markers and expressions that are mostly used to downtone statements. With their insertion, utterances can be made less assertive or certain. Hedging as a discourse strategy allows speakers to withdraw their “full commitment” either from the content or the pragmatic force of their utterance (Fraser, 2010, p. 201). Hedges, such as I think, are one of the main devices for navigating epistemic stance (Kaltenböck, 2010), that is, the way in which speakers frame their “judgments and degree of commitment” to their utterances (González et al., 2017, p. 69). Hedges are also frequently linked to politeness due to their mitigating function. By weakening illocutionary force, hedges can facilitate the distance and lack of assertiveness that negative face norms require (Handford, 2010, p. 266). Since interpreters have been observed to mitigate impolite language, it is plausible that they would make frequent use

Hedging in interpreted speech  149

of hedges as well (cf. Magnifico & Defrancq, 2016, 2017). This way, the hedging behaviour of interpreters could reveal how they perform and negotiate their roles in a more narrow, institutional, or a more broad, social context. This study investigates the use of English and Hungarian cognitive hedges in EP speeches. Since hedges play such a fundamental role in how speakers frame their utterances, there is evidence that interpreters’ hedge use differs from that of original speakers (Magnifico  & Defrancq, 2017) and that hedging patterns are also impacted by gender (Magnifico & Defrancq, 2017; Pan & Zheng, 2017; Hu & Meng, 2018) as well as cross-linguistic differences (Magnifico & Defrancq, 2017), this study investigates these aspects as well in relation to hedging in English and Hungarian interpreting. A  further, less-researched aspect concerns the first language of interpreters. Since English interpreting from small languages, such as Hungarian, is frequently provided by non-native speakers of the target language, this study investigates this issue as well. In the following, this paper provides a brief overview of research in corpusbased interpreting studies on hedges (Sections 2), the functions of I think as hedge and its Hungarian counterparts (Section 3), then describes the data and methodology of this study (Section 4), after which it introduces its results (Section 4) and, finally, its conclusion (Section 5).

Hedging in interpreted speech To date, relatively few studies have been dedicated to hedging in interpreting. Although the use of hedges—and other pragmatic items—has been long studied in the practice of interpreting (e.g. Hale, 1999, 2010), the systematic exploration of their use has only recently began in corpus-based interpreting studies (e.g. Magnifico & Defrancq, 2017). Nevertheless, as interpreted utterances are attributed to the speakers and not to the interpreters who actually produce them, including all pragmatic items added or omitted by interpreters (Blakemore  & Gallai, 2014), it is vital to understand better how interpreters use them. This is especially true for hedges, as these items can potentially damage the credibility of speakers. In courtroom interpreting, for example, it has long been noted that certain pragmatic items expressing uncertainty, such as hedges, reflect badly on speakers, even though the items stem from the interpreters, not the speakers (Hale, 1999, 2010). “Polished” versions of interpreted testimonies that are edited to remove hedges and fillers are evaluated as significantly more competent, credible and intelligent than the unedited versions which still contain pragmatic markers (Hale, 2010, pp. 153–4). A potential reason for neglecting the study of pragmatic items in interpreting is that they are usually not expected to be preserved in the process of interpreting due to their non-propositional meaning. Particularly in the high-pressure environment of simultaneous interpreting, pragmatic items of various kinds are expected to be omitted. In great contrast, empirical research has found that pragmatic items, including hedges, are present in interpreted discourse at higher frequencies than

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in original speech (Defrancq et al., 2015; Magnifico & Defrancq, 2017; Defrancq, 2018). This increased frequency could be explained by the spoken nature of interpreted discourse, the impact of re-creating discourse cohesion by interpreters or the face-work with which interpreters mitigate potential face-threats (cf. Defrancq et al., 2015; Magnifico & Defrancq, 2016, 2017). According to the findings of Magnifico and Defrancq (2017), EP interpreters working from French to English and Dutch use hedges significantly more frequently than original speakers, with female interpreters adding more hedges in both interpreting directions than men. These gender-based results are, nevertheless, only significant in French to Dutch interpreting. While female and male interpreters translate roughly the same percentage of source-language hedges at 71.6% and 68.5%, respectively, women add substantially more hedges than men, inserting altogether 64.4% of all added hedge tokens. Added items make up 75.3% of all hedges in the discourse of female Dutch interpreters, as opposed to 40.91% among men. However, these findings could be influenced by cross-linguistic differences as well since Dutch is rich in hedging items which are absent from English (e.g. modal particles). The importance of gender over target-language-influences in shaping interpreted discourse has therefore not yet been resolved. Nevertheless, Magnifico and Defrancq (2017, p. 43) identify two reason why interpreters add hedges: (1) to downtone face-threats made by speakers, these are categorised as “source text-oriented” hedges, and (2) to save face themselves when they are unsure about their own linguistic formulations, which can be labelled as “target text-oriented” hedges. Since certain norm-related differences have emerged between the discourse of female and male EP interpreters, such norms could potentially be behind these observed discrepancies as well. Studies on politeness in the EP have pinpointed gender as a decisive factor in shaping the discourse of female and male interpreters (Magnifico  & Defrancq, 2016, 2019). Surprisingly, female interpreters have been found to leave more face-threats unmitigated than male interpreters, leading to the conclusion that intervening for the sake of saving face “appears to be primarily a male strategy” (Magnifico  & Defrancq, 2016, p.  43). Female interpreters are also observed to produce more self-repairs than their male counterparts (Magnifico & Defrancq, 2019). These findings could mean that the EP interpreting community is gendered (Magnifico & Defrancq, 2016, p. 43), with women and men adhering to norms of discourse (e.g. neutrality) to a varying extent. Gender differences emerge in other context as well, for example in Chinese government press conferences. Studies on Chinese to English interpreting have managed to find tangible differences between the discourse of female and male interpreters, with male interpreters showing not only higher hedge frequencies but also deploying hedges for different discursive purposes than women (Pan & Zheng, 2017; Hu  & Meng, 2018). While Hu and Meng (2018) did not specifically investigate hedging, their data on Chinese to English interpreted press conferences comprise many hedging items, including cognitive verbs which are of

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particular interest to the present study. Male interpreters are observed to use these items more frequently than women, although not significantly. This is in line with the study’s overarching observation that male interpreters intervene more, possibly due to expectations rooted in their larger social setting in which the gendered social roles of women and men differ (Hu & Meng, 2018, p. 132). Pan and Zheng (2017) investigated hedges in Chinese to English interpreting, and similarly find that male interpreters hedge more than their female counterparts. However, Pan and Zheng (2017) attribute these results to the specific type of interpreting they examined (consecutive) and the potentially better verbal memory of women. Furthermore, the study revealed that female and male interpreters also prefer different kinds of hedges, with the latter group using more accuracy-oriented and speakeroriented hedges, while women deploy audience-oriented hedges.

I think, gondolom (“I think”) and hiszem (“I believe”) as hedges I think has been variably described as a pragmatic marker (Aijmer, 2015), a mental predicate (Van Bogaert, 2010), an epistemic stance marker or epistemic phrase (Kärkkäinen, 2003), a stance marker (Baumgarten  & House, 2010), an epistemic parenthetical (Fetzer & Johansson, 2010; Hedberg & Elouazizi, 2015), a cognitive-verb-anchored syntagmatic configuration (Fetzer, 2014) or a hedge representing propositional attitude (Liu & Fox Tree, 2012). Regardless of terminology, it is generally agreed that I think, in its pragmaticalised use, expresses an attitude towards a proposition, rather than the speaker’s cognitive disposition (Fetzer, 2014). As an interpersonal item, the functions of I think are localised, acting in an “orchestrated interplay with other expressions of vagueness or fuzziness” (Fetzer, 2014, p. 90), in which the interpretation and effect of I think depends on many factors. Depending on context (conversation, talk shows, etc.), I think can have a variety of strategic discourse functions, ranging from manipulation and hesitation (word-search, self-repair) to politeness (Aijmer, 2015). Despite being frequently linked to uncertainty through its hedging function in which it can mitigate face-threats (cf. Aijmer, 2015), I think can have both “a boosting or deliberative function, and an attenuating or tentative function” as well (Fetzer, 2014, p. 90). Accordingly, it can co-occur with expressions of certainty or uncertainty, respectively (Fetzer, 2014). The latter case is analogous to how well, a discourse marker normally signalling politeness, can have the opposite effect when it introduces an understatement (Holtgraves & Bonnefon, 2017). The Hungarian parallel expressions, gondolom (“I  think”) and hiszem (“I believe”) both frame a statement as the knowledge or opinion of the speaker, indicating possibility. It navigates the same functional spectrum as I think, ranging from epistemic certainty to tentativeness (Kugler, 2015). By profiling a mental relation, constructions such as azt/úgy gondolom and hiszem (“I think/ believe that/so”) do not introduce statements of fact, but rather the processes of

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evaluating experiences and knowledge from which a conclusion can be derived (see Kugler, 2015, p. 195).

Methodology Corpus The data of this study is sourced from the Hungarian European Parliamentary Intermodal Corpus (HEPIC). In the vein of various other interpreting corpora (EPIC, EPICG), this corpus is compiled from European Parliamentary speeches as well. Tables 10.1 and 10.2 show the properties of the HEPIC and its English interpreting subcorpus. English speeches were originally delivered from 2010 to 2011, Hungarian speeches from 2008 to 2012. The overall size of the corpus is 126,262 words.

Research goals, questions and hypotheses The purpose of this paper is to investigate the frequency of cognitive hedges (I think, gondolom “I think”, hiszem “I believe”) in interpreted English and Hungarian discourse as well as the prevalence of source- and target-oriented use of these hedges. For this end, this study investigates the following properties: • • • •

absolute frequency normalised frequency per 1000 words linguistic motivation (i.e. the presence of absence of parallel items in the source text) function (source or target oriented).

TABLE 10.1  The properties of the corpus and its subcorpora

Word count Female Male

Original English

Interpreted English

Original Hungarian

Interpreted Hungarian

32,656 13,175 19,481

37,356 18,449 18,907

33,031 11,500 21,531

23,219 9,943 13,276

TABLE 10.2  The properties of the interpreted English subcorpus by type of interpreting

English native Hungarian native

Female interpreters

Male interpreters

Total

15742 2707

9567 9340

25309 12047

Hedging in interpreted speech  153

Frequency data is compared between: • • • •

original and interpreted speeches interpreted English and Hungarian speeches native-speaking and non-native English interpreters female and male interpreters.

On the basis of findings in the literature, this study seeks to answer the following research questions and tests the following hypotheses: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

Do interpreters hedge more than speakers? Are most hedges the result of addition? Does the first language of interpreters influence their hedge use? Do source-oriented hedges outnumber target-oriented hedges? Do women hedge more than men?

(1) Interpreters use more hedges than speakers. (2) Most hedges are the result of addition. (3) Non-native English interpreters use fewer hedges than native English-speaking interpreters. (4) Source-oriented hedges outnumber target-oriented hedges. (5) Female interpreters use hedges more frequently than male interpreters. To test these hypotheses, statistically significance is probed by t-tests and the Mann-Whitney test.

Results and discussion Hedge frequency in interpreted and original discourse Table 10.3 shows the absolute (#) and normalised frequency (/1000 words) of I think in original and interpreted English discourse, as well as the combined frequency of gondolom and hiszem (“I think”; “I believe”) in original and interpreted Hungarian discourse. TABLE 10.3  The frequency of hedges in English and Hungarian discourse

Original English Interpreted English Original Hungarian Interpreted Hungarian

#

/1000 words

42 128 48 26

1.29 3.43 1.45 1.12

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Interpreted English discourse contains approximately two and a half times as many I think tokens per 1000 words than do original English EP speeches. However, this difference is not statistically significant (t = 0.12; p = 0.45). Conversely, interpreted Hungarian discourse contains fewer hedges than original speeches, but not significantly (t = 0.402; p = 0.345). Notwithstanding this result, the high frequency of I think in interpreted English discourse indicates that this marker in particular is relevant to interpreters. In interpreted Hungarian discourse, on the other hand, this type of hedging seems to be less utilised. This suggests that despite the functional correspondence of these hedges, they are deployed differently by English and Hungarian interpreters. On the basis of these findings, it can be said that hedges are more frequent in interpreted than in original discourse, at least when it comes to English interpreting. While the frequency of the Hungarian hedges investigated here does not increase in interpreting, this does not necessarily mean that hedging itself would not be prevalent or important in Hungarian interpreting, although these Hungarian hedging expressions do not appear to be central in this corpus.

Additions Tables  10.4 and 10.5 show the number and ratio of linguistically motivated and unmotivated hedge tokens in interpreted English and Hungarian discourse. In interpreted English, most tokens of I think are the result of addition, hedges without parallel source items being over twice as frequent. In contrast, most hedge tokens in interpreted Hungarian have parallel items in their English source speeches. Despite the difference between the number of motivated and unmotivated tokens being substantial in English, it hovers just around the level of statistical significance (t = -1.65; p = 0.05) but reaches significance in Hungarian (t = -2.41; p = 0.01). TABLE 10.4  The linguistic motivation of I think

Motivated Unmotivated

#

% (all tokens)

41 87

32.03 67.97

TABLE 10.5  The linguistic motivation of gondolom and hiszem

Motivated Unmotivated

#

% (all tokens)

18 8

69.23 30.77

Hedging in interpreted speech  155

Table 10.6 presents the number and frequency of unmotivated hedge tokens in interpreted English and Hungarian speeches. The frequency of unmotivated English hedges alone is higher than that in original speeches, while the frequency of Hungarian added hedges is lower than in original discourse. On the basis of these results, it can be concluded that I think hedges are mostly the result of addition in this corpus, which is the main reason for their high frequency in interpreted English speeches. Most Hungarian hedges, on the other hand, have parallel source items. This suggests that I think fulfils an important function in how interpreters frame their discourse in English interpreting. The Hungarian parallels of this item, however, do not appear to play a similar role.

First languages Table 10.7 shows the frequency data on I think across the two interpreter groups speaking English and Hungarian as a first language. Hedge frequency is higher among native English-speakers than Hungarian-speakers, but not significantly (t = 0.73; p = 0.23). Table 10.8 demonstrates the absolute and normalised frequency of motivated and unmotivated I think tokens in the discourse output of the two English interpreting groups. Both motivated and unmotivated hedge tokens are more frequent in the discourse of native English speakers. The difference is, however, not significant (t = 1.58; p = 0.06).

TABLE 10.6  The frequency of unmotivated hedges

Interpreted English Interpreted Hungarian

#

/1000 words

87 8

2.33 0.34

TABLE 10.7  The frequency of I think by the first language of interpreters

Native English Native Hungarian

#

/1000 words

98 30

3.87 2.49

TABLE 10.8  The frequency of motivated and unmotivated I think tokens

Native English Native Hungarian

# Motivated

/1000 words

# Unmotivated

/1000 words

32 9

1.26 0.75

66 21

2.61 1.74

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These findings suggest that while English-speakers use I think more frequently, their discourse output is largely comparable to the discourse of Hungarianspeaking interpreters.

Functions Table 10.9 presents the absolute frequency and percentage of added source- and target-oriented hedge tokens in English and Hungarian interpreting. In English interpreting, source-oriented hedges significantly outnumber target-oriented ones (t = 4.13; p = < 0.00). In Hungarian interpreting, the opposite is true (t = -0.4; p = 0.34). However, the very low number of added Hungarian hedges cautions against generalisations. Source-oriented hedges in this corpus relate to politeness by addressing modality. Target-oriented hedges, on the other hand, aid cohesion and reduce hesitation. Examples (1) and (2) demonstrate the source-oriented use of I think. With the insertion of this marker, the unequivocal tone of these statements is mitigated and subjectivised. (1) A felhasználások késedelmében mindenkinek megvan a maga hibája. “in delaying the payments everybody has their fault” (Surján_László_20110421_HU) I think everyone shares responsibility for those delays. (Surján_László_20110421_EN) (2) A szerződéseket be kell tartani “Treaties must be enforced” (Csaba_Őry_20120524_HU) I think any pact must be observed (Csaba_Őry_20120524_EN) In Example (3), the interpreter inserted I think before making a factual error. In Magnifico and Defrancq’s (2017) analysis, target-text-oriented hedges help interpreters to save face when they are unsure about their interpretation. The insertion in (3) could also be a result of the desire to avoid hesitation brought on by cognitive overload. The latter option would be in line with the hesitation-related uses of I think, namely its use in supporting word-search and self-repair (Aijmer, 2015). This, however, does not exclude its function as a face-saving tool.

TABLE 10.9 The absolute frequency of source- and target-oriented hedges in interpreted

English and Hungarian

Interpreted English Interpreted Hungarian

Source-oriented (#)

%

Target-oriented (#)

%

63 3

72.41 37.5

21 5

24.14 62.5

Hedging in interpreted speech  157

(3) de a megkérdezettek 84%-a mondja ma azt, hogy a rossz irányba mennek a dolgok az országban “but 84% of the surveyed say today that things are going in the wrong direct in the country” (Göncz_Kinga_20120118_HU) but when you look at surveys, I think, 98% of people are saying Hungary is going in the wrong direction (Göncz_Kinga_20120118_EN) Despite the low frequency of Hungarian hedges in the corpus, they fulfil the same functions as I think hedges. In (4) and (5), the addition of azt gondolom (“I think that”) and azt hiszem (“I believe that”) tones down the original statements. (4) new jurisprudence internationally is now needed to address this (Tannock_Charles_20110609_EN) azt gondolom, hogy új nemzetközi jogi keretet kell kialakítani “I think that a new international legal framework needs to be established” (Tannock_Charles_20110609_HU) (5) The results of these omissions are at the root of this debate today. (Watson_Graham_20110608_EN) Ugyanakkor ezek nem valósultak meg és azt hiszem, ebben gyökereznek a mostani problémák. “However, these were not implemented, and I think this is the root of the current problems.” (Ford_Vicky_20110622_HU) While the English and Hungarian hedges investigated here show strikingly different frequencies in this corpus, this is most likely not because Hungarian interpreting refrains from using hedges. As gondolom and hiszem are more frequent in original Hungarian EP speeches than I think is in original English speeches, the low frequency of the Hungarian items in interpreting is not the result of Hungarian itself not utilising these hedges as much as English does I think. Nevertheless, Hungarian interpreting seems to use these cognitive hedges less. Instead, Hungarian interpreters might turn to different means and linguistic items to mitigate modality and maintain cohesion in interpreting.

Gender differences Table 10.10 demonstrates the frequency of I think hedges broken down by gender in interpreted English. Female interpreters make use of this item more frequently than men. Nevertheless, this discrepancy between female and male speakers is not significant (z = -0.07; p = 0.94). Table 10.11 presents the frequency of Hungarian hedges according to gender. Similarly to English, female interpreters use hedges

158  Andrea Götz TABLE 10.10  The frequency of I think by gender in interpreted English

Women Men

#

/1000 words

82 46

8.25 3.43

TABLE 10.11 The frequency of gondolom (“I think”) and hiszem (“I believe”) by gender in

interpreted Hungarian

Women Men

#

/1000 words

17 9

1.71 0.68

more frequently in Hungarian as well, but the difference is not significant in Hungarian either (z = -0.78, p = 0.22). Tables 10.12 and 10.13 show the ratio of motivated and unmotivated hedge tokens in English and Hungarian interpreting. In both cases, women are responsible for the vast majority of added tokens. Tables  10.14 and 10.15 show the frequency of motivated and unmotivated hedge tokens in English and Hungarian interpreted discourse. In every category and both languages, female interpreters produce higher frequencies than men. In spite of this fact, the frequency of unmotivated hedges does not differ statistically significantly in either English (z = -0.38; p = 0.7) or Hungarian interpreting (z = 0.35; p = 0.97). As discussed before, English interpreters in this corpus speak both Hungarian and English as a first language. Table 10.16 breaks down the frequency of added I think hedges by gender and first-language groups. Women in both groups add more hedges than men, but not significantly so (t = 0.73; p = 0.23). Tables 10.17 and 10.18 show the frequency of target-oriented (TO) and sourceoriented (SO) hedges added by English and Hungarian interpreters by gender. Female interpreters add most tokens of both types of hedges in English interpreting. However, the frequency difference is not statistically significant as compared to male interpreters either in terms of source-oriented (z  =  1.06; p  =  0.29), or target-oriented hedges (z = 1.72; p = 0.09). In comparison to women, male interpreters not only add fewer source-oriented hedges but insert only a single target-oriented hedge. This raises the question whether male interpreters resort to other means to maintain cohesion and manage hesitation. Unfortunately, the number of added Hungarian hedges is too small to be tested. In light of these findings, it can be said that female interpreters use hedges more frequently than men. Since these findings are congruent across both English and Hungarian interpreting, these results may indicate a gender difference.

Hedging in interpreted speech  159 TABLE 10.12 The linguistic motivation of hedges in interpreted English discourse by

gender

Women Men

Motivated #

%

# Unmotivated

%

21 20

51.22 48.78

61 26

70.11 29.89

TABLE 10.13 The linguistic motivation of hedges in interpreted Hungarian discourse by

gender

Women Men

# Motivated

%

# Unmotivated

%

11 7

61.11 38.89

6 2

75 25

TABLE 10.14 The frequency of motivated and unmotivated I think tokens in interpreted

English

Motivated tokens Unmotivated tokens

Women (#)

Women (/1000 words)

Men (#)

Men (/1000 words)

21 61

1.14 3.31

20 26

1.06 1.38

TABLE 10.15 The frequency of motivated and unmotivated gondolom (“I  think”) and

hiszem (“I believe”) tokens in interpreted English

Motivated tokens Unmotivated tokens

Women (#) Women (/1000 words) Men (#)

Men (/1000 words)

11 6

0.53 0.15

1.11 0.60

7 2

TABLE 10.16 The frequency of unmotivated I think tokens across native English and

Hungarian speaking interpreters by gender

Native English Native Hungarian

Women (#)

Women (/1000 words)

Men (#)

Men (/1000 words)

48 13

3.05 4.80

18 8

1.88 0.86

TABLE 10.17 The frequency of source- (SO) and target-oriented (TO) hedges in interpreted

English by gender

Women Men

SO (#)

%

/1000 words

TO (#)

%

/1000 words

38 25

60.32 39.68

2.06 0.13

20 1

95.24 4.76

1.08 0.05

160  Andrea Götz TABLE 10.18 The frequency of source- (SO) and target-oriented (TO) hedges in interpreted

Hungarian by gender

Women Men

SO (#)

%

/1000 words

TO (#)

%

/1000 words

2 1

66.67 33.33

0.2 0.08

4 1

80 20

0.4 0.08

Additionally, differences emerge in the type of hedges as well: male interpreters in English use target-oriented hedges much less frequently than women.

Concluding remarks This paper examined the frequency of hedges in interpreted English and Hungarian discourse, namely the frequency of I think, and its Hungarian parallels, gondolom “I think” and hiszem “I believe”. This investigation produced the following results (1) hedging is more frequent in English interpreted than in original discourse, but not in Hungarian; (2) most English hedges are additions, but most Hungarian hedges have parallel items; (3) non-native English interpreters use fewer hedges than native-speaking English interpreters; (4) source-oriented hedges outnumber target-oriented hedges in English, but not in Hungarian; (5) female interpreters use more hedges and more source-oriented hedges than male interpreters in both languages. The first hypothesis is thus not fully supported by the results of this study since hedges are only more frequent in interpreted English discourse and not significantly. Similarly, the second hypothesis cannot be confirmed either as most hedges are the result of addition only in English, although the results were close to the level of statistical significance. Meanwhile, in Hungarian, the number of translated hedges with parallel source items significantly exceeds the number of additions. The third hypothesis is confirmed as interpreters who are native speakers of English hedge more frequently than Hungarian speakers. Nevertheless, the results are not statistically significant, and among the various groups of interpreters, Hungarian-speaking female interpreters produced the highest normalised frequency of I think. The fourth hypothesis can only be confirmed for English interpreting in which there are significantly more added tokens of source-oriented hedges than target-oriented ones. In Hungarian interpreting, the opposite pattern is observed. Finally, the fifth hypothesis can be confirmed. Although the results

Hedging in interpreted speech  161

are not statistically significant, female interpreters hedge more frequently than male interpreters in both English and Hungarian. It can be concluded that these findings support both the existence of genderbased and cross-linguistic differences, calling attention to certain inconsistencies and trends emerging in other corpus-based empirical studies. In the literature, variably women (Magnifico & Defrancq, 2017) or men are found to hedge more (Pan & Zheng, 2017; see cognitive verbs in Hu & Meng, 2018), while the impact of language pairs is undoubtedly important (see Dutch modal particles in Magnifico & Defrancq, 2017). Additionally, similarly to Chinese to English interpreting (cf. Pan & Zheng, 2017), Hungarian to English interpreters’ preferences diverged between the sexes in terms of hedge type: women in this study added more source-oriented hedges than men and added fewer target than source-oriented tokens. Since the concept of source-oriented hedges (cf. Magnifico & Defrancq, 2017) in this study is broadly in line with Pan and Zheng’s audience-oriented category (2017, p. 181) (which includes markers such as I think/believe), this finding can be considered similar across Hungarian to English and Chinese to English interpreting. In stark contrast, however, the frequency of I think is much higher among male interpreters at 2.6 per 1000 words than women with 0.84 in Pan and Zheng (2017, p. 182), as well as in Hu and Meng (2018, p. 127), with 0.90 among female interpreters and 2.58 among men. These findings show the opposite pattern to this study with regard to hedge frequency and gender. Contrary to previous studies, this examination also contrasted the hedging patterns of native and non-native interpreters. Although this variable does have an impact on hedge frequency, its effect is not significant and did not apply for both sexes equally. While the availability of native speaking interpreters in certain language pairs in EP-based studies is unlikely to pose a problem, in other language pairs, however, it might be revealing to examine this aspect as well. It must also be emphasised that the fact that this corpus is derived from EP speeches poses its own limitations with regard to generalisation. Although it is not clear yet whether female and male interpreters adhere to institutional discourse norms differently in the EP (cf. Magnifico & Defrancq, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020), male and female interpreters do show diverging patterns with respect to some discourse properties. Whether the finding that female interpreters of English hedge more frequently and show a preference for source-oriented hedges proves their greater willingness to frame their discourse in accordance with the institutional norms of the EP requires further research.

Note 1 The European Parliament’s (EP) website displays the following disclaimer: The interpretation does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. The simultaneous interpretation of debates provided by the European Parliament serves only

162  Andrea Götz

to facilitate communication amongst the participants in the meeting. It does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation of that speech is authentic. Where there is any difference between the simultaneous interpretation and the original speech (or the revised written translation of the speech), the original speech (or the revised written translation) takes precedence. Unless expressly authorised by the European Parliament, the use of the recorded interpretation for any purpose other than that mentioned above is strictly prohibited.

Bibliography Aijmer, K. (2015). Pragmatic markers. In K. Aijmer  & C. Rühlemann (Eds.), Corpus pragmatics (pp.  195–218). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ CBO9781139057493.011 Bartłomiejczyk, M. (2016). Face Threats in Interpreting: A Pragmatic Study of Plenary Debates in the European Parliament. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego. ———. (2017). The interpreter’s visibility in the European Parliament. Interpreting, 19(2), 159–85. https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.19.2.01bar ———. (2019). Parliamentary impoliteness and the interpreter’s gender. Pragmatics. https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.18064.bar ———. (2020). How much noise can you make through an interpreter?: A  case study on racist discourse in the European Parliament. Interpreting. https://doi.org/10.1075/ intp.00042.bar Baumgarten, N., & House, J. (2010). I think and I don’t know in English as lingua franca and native English discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(5), 1184–200. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.pragma.2009.09.018 Beaton, M. (2007). Interpreted ideologies in institutional discourse: The case of the European Parliament. The Translator, 13(2), 271–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.20 07.10799241 ———. (2013). What’s in a word? Your enemy combatant is my refugee: The role of simultaneous interpreters in negotiating the lexis of Guantánamo in the European Parliament. Journal of Language and Politics, 12(3), 378–99. https://doi.org/10.1075/ jlp.12.3.04bea Blakemore, D.,  & Gallai, F. (2014). Discourse markers in free indirect style and interpreting. Journal of Pragmatics, 60, 106–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2013. 11.003 Bonnin, J. E. (2019). Double stance discourse: Managing social and personal identity at work. Discourse & Society, 30(4), 359–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926519 837393 Defrancq, B. (2018). The European Parliament as a discourse community: Its role in comparable analyses of data drawn from parallel interpreting corpora. The Interpreters’ Newsletter, 23, 115–32. https://doi.org/10.13137/2421-714x/22401 Defrancq, B., Plevoets, K., & Magnifico, C. (2015). Connective items in interpreting and translation: Where do they come from? In J. Romero-Trillo (Ed.), Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics 2015 (Vol. 3, pp. 195–222). Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17948-3_9 EP (European Parliament). Debates and Videos | Plenary | European Parliament. Retrieved May 2, 2020, from www.europarl.europa.eu/plenary/en/debates-video.html

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Fetzer, A. (2014). I  think, I  mean and I  believe in political discourse: Collocates, functions and distribution. Functions of Language, 21(1), 67–94. https://doi.org/10.1075/ fol.21.1.05fet Fetzer, A., & Johansson, M. (2010). Cognitive verbs in context: A contrastive analysis of English and French argumentative discourse. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 15(2), 240–66. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.15.2.05fet Fraser, B. (2010). Hedging in political discourse. In U. Okulska & P. Cap (Eds.), Perspectives in Politics and Discourse (Vol. 8, pp. 201–13). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. González, M. Roseano, P. Borràs-Comes, J., & Prieto, P. (2017). Epistemic and evidential marking in discourse: Effects of register and debatability. Lingua, 186–187, 68–87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2014.11.008 Gu, C. (2018). Towards a re-definition of government interpreters’ agency against a backdrop of sociopolitical and cultural evolution: A  case of premier’s press conferences in China. In O. I. Seel (Ed.), Redefining Translation and Interpretation in Cultural Evolution (pp. 238–57). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-52252832-6 ———. (2019). Interpreters caught up in an ideological tug-of-war? A CDA and Bakhtinian analysis of interpreters’ ideological positioning and alignment at government press conferences. Translation and Interpreting Studies, 14(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1075/ tis.00027.gu Gu, C., & Tipton, R. (2020). (Re-)voicing Beijing’s discourse through self-referentiality: A corpus-based CDA analysis of government interpreters’ discursive mediation at China’s political press conferences (1998–2017). Perspectives, 28(3), 406–23. https://doi. org/10.1080/0907676X.2020.1717558 Hale, S. B. (1999). Interpreters’ treatment of discourse markers in courtroom questions. Forensic Linguistics, 6(1), 57–82. https://doi.org/10.1558/sll.1999.6.1.57 ———. (2010). The Discourse of Court Interpreting: Discourse Practices of the Law, the Witness, and the Interpreter (Pbk. edn with corrections). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Hale, S., Martschuk, N., Goodman-Delahunty, J., Taibi, M., & Xu, H. (2020). Interpreting profanity in police interviews. Multilingua. https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-2019-0065 Handford, M. (2010). What can a corpus tell us about specialist genres? In A. O’Keeffe & M. McCarthy (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics. London and New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203856949.ch19 Hedberg, N.,  & Elouazizi, N. (2015). Epistemic parenthetical verb phrases: Command, semantic scope and prosodic phrasing. In S. Schneider, J. Glikman  & M. Avanzi (Eds.), Parenthetical Verbs (pp. 225–56). Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. https://doi. org/10.1515/9783110376142-010 Holtgraves, T.,  & Bonnefon, J.-F. (2017). Experimental approaches to linguistic (im) politeness. In J. Culpeper, M. Haugh & D. Z. Kádár (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness (pp. 381–401). London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1057/978-1-137-37508-7_15 Hu, K., & Meng, L. (2018). Gender differences in Chinese-English press conference interpreting. Perspectives, 26(1), 117–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2017.1337209 Jaffe, A. M. (Ed.). (2009). Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kaltenböck, G. (2010). Pragmatic functions of parenthetical I think. In G. Kaltenböck, W. Mihatsch, & S. Schneider (Eds.), New Approaches to Hedging (pp. 237–66). Bingley, UK: Emerald.

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Kärkkäinen, E. (2003). Epistemic Stance in English Conversation: A Description of its Interactional Functions, with a Focus on I think. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Kugler, N. (2015). Megfigyelés és következtetés a nyelvi tevékenységben [Observation and Inference in Linguistic Activity]. Budapest: Tinta Könyvkiadó. Liu, K., & Fox Tree, J. E. (2012). Hedges enhance memory but inhibit retelling. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19(5), 892–8. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-012-0275-1 Magnifico, C., & Defrancq, B. (2016). Impoliteness in interpreting: A question of gender? Translation and Interpreting, 8(2), 26–45. https://doi.org/10.12807/ti.108202.2016.a0 ———. (2017). Hedges in conference interpreting: The role of gender. Interpreting, 19(1), 21–46. https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.19.1.02mag ———. (2019). Self-repair as a norm-related strategy in simultaneous interpreting and its implications for gendered approaches to interpreting. Target, 31(3), 352–77. https://doi. org/10.1075/target.18076.mag ———. (2020). Norms and gender in simultaneous interpreting: A  study of connective markers. Translation & Interpreting, 12(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.12807/ ti.112201.2020.a01 Pan, F.,  & Zheng, B. (2017). Gender difference of hedging in interpreting for Chinese government press conferences: A corpus-based study. Across Languages and Cultures, 18(2), 171–93. https://doi.org/10.1556/084.2017.18.2.1 Pöchhacker, F. (2006). Introducing Interpreting Studies. London and New York: Routledge. Van Bogaert, J. (2010). A  constructional taxonomy of I think and related expressions: Accounting for the variability of complement-taking mental predicates. English Language and Linguistics, 14(3), 399–427. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1360674310000134

11 REFRAMING ARABIC METAPHORICAL EXPRESSIONS IN ENGLISH SUBTITLES The case of Noom El Talat Amer Al-Adwan and Mohammed Ahmed Thawabteh

Introduction The current state of the world and its rapid advancement in all sectors would have never been possible without the prominent role that technology and translation constantly play. These continually evolving fields of knowledge have helped to foster and spread communication among different cultures. Yet, some evolving mediums of translation such as audiovisual translation (AVT), are still striving to attract adequate attention in academia, especially in the Arab world (Al-Adwan & Yahiaoui, 2018). According to Thawabteh (2011b) and Iranmanesh (2014), the scholarly endeavour in the Arab world relating to AVT is still modest in comparison with what is published in English and other European languages. Thawabteh (2011a, p. 208), for instance, points out that a search in the Translation Studies Bibliography yields “only 4 hits for Arabic and subtitling in the Title Field”. Nowadays the situation is very much unchanged. A search in the same database, for example, has displayed a very similar return: six hits (Translation Studies Bibliography, 2020). Therefore, it goes without saying that many challenging issues associated with Arabic AVT, including the subtitling of figurative expressions, are still under-researched. With the vast expansion of the film industry worldwide, there is an increasing need for AVT. Díaz Cintas and Remael (2007, p. 200) point out that “films are distributed worldwide and through so many different media that some of them reach an enormous and extremely diverse audience within the very first months after their release”. The dynamic role of subtitling, which is highly conducive to creating such a wide audience, is undoubtedly attracting increasing attention across the globe, including the Arab world, where subtitling is the most dominant medium of AVT (Al-Adwan, 2019). In this regard, Bannon (2010) argues: Subtitlers are part of global cinema. They dare to cross linguistic, cultural and media barriers in ways different from any other form of translation.

166  Amer Al-Adwan and Mohammed Ahmed Thawabteh

Good subtitles don’t just transfer words from one language to another. They are as funny, scary, witty and compelling as the original. Success is measured by how little viewers notice them. That is the goal—to be completely transparent. It therefore follows that, should these aforementioned qualities be achieved, more research in this field is desperately needed. In this regard, Al-Adwan (2019) points out that many fundamental aspects of Arabic AVT have not been addressed and investigated adequately, such as the absence of published Arabic subtitling conventions (perhaps with the exception of a very few studies including Junaidi [2012], Thawabteh [2013] and Saleh [2017]), the working conditions of subtitlers in the film industry and the lack of synergy between academic institutions and the industry. One of the difficulties that subtitlers frequently face when translating figures of speech, including Arabic metaphorical expressions into English, is the fact that there are no comprehensive rules that govern and regulate this process. It is often repeated truism that metaphors constitute important aspects of interlocutors’ daily lives and are purposely used to achieve various communicative thrusts. Iranmanesh (2014, p. 61) explains that metaphors do “not only make our thoughts more clear and appealing but actually structure our perception and intake forms”. Therefore, given the importance of metaphors in communication and in the characterisation in audiovisual material, this chapter aims to fill this gap in the literature relating to Arabic subtitling and to tackle the main difficulties that Arab subtitlers encounter in subtitling a particular figure of speech and the main strategies they frequently adopt as a consequence.

Translating metaphorical expressions Many translation scholars and researchers have studied the linguistic phenomenon of metaphorisation (Newmark, 1988; Dickins, 2005; Pedersen, 2017, 2018; Farghal & Mansour, 2020). Pedersen (2015, p. 164), for instance, argues that a metaphor is a figure of speech where the link between topic and vehicle is implicit. This means that we understand the formula “X IS Y” as X IS (in some salient sense similar too) Y, and the salient part is the grounds. Metaphors are used in several senses and have variations related to different agendas and assumptions. They are often used by interlocutors mainly because “they communicate meaning efficiently and they create new linguistic possibilities” (Jalali, 2015, p.  55). Definitionally, a metaphor refers to “the application of a name or descriptive term or phrase to an object or action to which it is imaginatively but not literally applicable” (Thompson, 1995, p. 856). In other words, it is “a group of words that has a special meaning that is different from the ordinary

Reframing Arabic metaphorical expressions  167

meaning of each separate word” (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 2014). Needless to say, culture plays a pivotal role in shaping the form of metaphors, determining their exact meanings in a given context and determining how they might be translated into other languages. According to Mohammed (2017, p. 3), “translation requires exquisite lingual and cultural skills to decode the meaning often couched in certain words that vary in their meaning regionally and culturally, both synchronically and diachronically”. In this regard, Pedersen (2005, p. 1) refers to cultural references as “crises points”, which “present translation problems; they constitute turning points, at which the translators have to make active decisions, and these points are thus indicative of overall strategy and to what norms the translator professes”. Pedersen (2018) discusses the difficulties of translating embedded cultural metaphors in the area of AVT. More specifically, he analyses the subtitling of metaphors in the British sitcom, Yes, Prime Minister, pointing out that it is difficult to translate metaphors due to their relatively complex linguistic and cultural components. As hard as translating metaphors can be in a written language, translating them in a multimodal setting (i.e. audiovisual material) is likely to be even more complicated due to the polysemiotic nature of such material. He further explains that subtitling, as a main branch of AVT, poses additional challenges when it comes to the conventions that have to be respected, including the temporal and spatial constraints of the medium. He identifies five subtitling strategies that are adopted by subtitlers when dealing with metaphors, namely image transfer, image substitution, reduction to sense, omission and compensation. Several other AVT scholars (e.g. Schmidt, 2014) have proposed other sets of taxonomies that could be used in translating metaphors (on written translation, see also Newmark, 1981). Some of these strategies appear to be similar to Pedersen’s (2018), while others overlap with the strategies he proposed but are labelled differently. Putri and Martha (2019, p.  68) stress this point, arguing that “[m]etaphor translation is absolutely complex and needs detailed translation strategies to handle it.” According to Pedersen (2018, p. 37), the choice of strategies used to render metaphors in subtitling depends on “how entrenched the ST [source text] metaphor is and . . . how transcultural it is”. In comparison to idioms, Gibbs (1992) argues that metaphors are considered to be alive, creative and complex aspects of language that cannot be literally paraphrased. On the other hand, idioms are commonly perceived as being dead metaphors, and therefore their meaning can be expressed using simple definitions (Cruse, 1986; Palmer, 1976). Since metaphors naturally age, then “the line between literal and metaphorical language [can become unclear] since some metaphors are in the process of dying and becoming part of common language” (Alvarez, 1993, p. 479). Although Gibbs (1992) argues that idioms are perceived as a complex figurative feature of language, he explains that some idioms can be viewed as dead expressions, bearing in mind that their roots are not known to contemporary speakers. Similarly, fixed expressions coincide with idioms in that

168  Amer Al-Adwan and Mohammed Ahmed Thawabteh

they are both considered “frozen patterns of language” (Baker, 1992, p. 63) which are not flexible when it comes to changing form and grammar (Shojaei, 2012). Obviously, if people in monolingual societies encounter difficulties understanding some figurative language due to changes in time and use, then it is hardly surprising that this would probably cause more trouble and confusion when communication occurs between two distinct languages. By the same token, Jalali (2015, p. 15) claims that “[s]ince metaphors originate in their respective societies, only a limited number of them are likely to show any similarity between languages”.

Frame semantics Frame semantics is one of the most influential theories of linguistic semantics, developed by Fillmore (1977; 1982). It is unique in that “it builds on common backgrounds of knowledge (semantic frames) against which the meanings of words are interpreted” (Boas, 2013, p. 126). In other words, the main thrust of the theory is that interlocutors cannot understand the actual meaning of a word without being aware of its context and the basic information related to it. This implies that a linguistic unit would activate a frame semantic that is essential when it comes to identifying the intended meaning. In his theory, Fillmore (1977, p. 63) defines frame as “any system of linguistics choices of grammatical rules or grammatical categories that can get associated with prototypical instances of scenes”. Needless to say, these representations “provide a foundation for meaningful interaction in a given speech community” (Fillmore et al., 2003, p. 235). Few scholars have drawn on the theory of frame semantics in the field of translation. López (2002), for instance, has proposed a typology of frames that is used to analyse how various cultural references have been translated into Spanish. These include translation units, equivalence, context and the translator’s role. She (Ibid., p. 312) defines frames as structures of knowledge that represent the world view of a particular society, that is, its beliefs, values and emotions, its prototypes of people and things, of sequences of situations and events, its social scenarios and the metaphorical and metonymical structure of thought. Against this background, the concept of frames will be adopted in this study as a tool for structuring the linguistic analysis of the strategies used to subtitle various Arabic metaphorical expressions into English.

Egyptian cinema The case study selected for analysis in this chapter is the Egyptian comedy film Noom El Talat, subtitled into English and shown on Netflix. In recent years, the Egyptian cinema has dominated the film industry in the Arab world, attracting considerable audiences, mainly in the Middle East and North Africa. In this regard,

Reframing Arabic metaphorical expressions  169

Shafik (2007, p. 4) points out that despite the competition that the Egyptian film industry faces from that of neighbouring countries such as Syria and Lebanon, it still holds the biggest share of the entertainment industry in the region. Gaffney (1987) argues that this industry’s development is mainly the result of the various transformations that impacted on the social fabric of Egypt during the British occupation in 1882. Since the establishment of its first cinema in early 1907, Egypt has strived to reach a more global audience, not only through films, but also through aspirations derived from Hollywood as a successful model in the film industry. Thus, “the Egyptian studio was essentially a “dream factory” to satisfy the tastes of an everincreasing population of urban cinemagoers with entertainment that evoked both their fantasies and social aspirations” (Gaffney, 1987, p. 57). It is true that Egyptian cinema has played a significant role in addressing various aspects related to the region, providing solutions to social, economic and religious issues and, most importantly, empowering the Egyptian dialect. Gamal (2013, p. 139) aptly remarks that the “Egyptian vernacular also embodies references to regional dialects, literary or religious quotations, jokes, and the sarcastic use of foreign words”, which would complicate the task of subtitlers who have to be, for instance, aware of various figurative expressions and how they could be effectively transferred to the target viewers. Comedy, as a popular genre in the Egyptian cinema, in particular has attracted millions of viewers, especially during Ramadan, when comedies are seen as a “staple diet on Arab television” (Gamal, 2008, p.  8). Therefore, this dominant industry that has emerged with such strength and influence, has certainly been shaping the AVT scene in Egypt and in the Arab world as a whole.

The case study: Noom El Talat The audiovisual material chosen for analysis in this chapter is the famous Egyptian comedy film Noom El Talat, which was directed by Ihab Lam’i and released in 2015. Starring the Egyptian comedy actor Hanny Ramzi as Mutaz, it has gained considerable attention and has been subtitled and distributed by many DVD companies, being fansubbed on online websites and by Netflix. The film revolves around the life of Mutaz, an employee in a notary registry office, a government office that is concerned with public records especially those related to real estate ownership. He is single and lives alone. After experiencing some unexpected events, Mutaz discovers a peculiar aspect of this behaviour. One day, for instance, he wakes up in a different house and when he goes to work finds the police searching for him as his company had been robbed the previous night. Later on, he finds out that he had missed work on Tuesday, not only once, but on every Tuesday since he had started working there. After realising his condition, he starts to notice that when he goes to sleep on Monday, he wakes up on Wednesday. This odd condition leads him to consult a psychologist to seek mental help and try to find an explanation for what he is experiencing. His friend (Hisham Ismail)

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and the girl he loves (Iman AlAsi) also try to help him to overcome this unusual condition. This film delivers action and humour that would appeal to different age groups, though audiences may not find it suitable for young children as some scenes depict women with socially-distasteful manners and the script contains some sexual references and hints. As mentioned earlier, Noom El Talat is broadcast on Netflix, which is considered to be the world’s leading online entertainment service. It is “a streaming service that offers a wide variety of award-winning TV shows, movies, anime, documentaries, and more on thousands of internet-connected devices” (Netflix, 2019). By offering such a service, subscribers have the flexibility to watch shows anytime, anywhere and on different devices, without any commercials or restrictions. This might include films that contain strong language and/or sexual scenes, which would have been censored if broadcast on Arab state-run television or satellite channels. Technology has certainly promoted and enhanced the consuming habits of viewers worldwide, and online audiovisual material and translation services have paved the way for corporations such as Netflix and YouTube to grow and develop. Recently, Netflix has started to produce its own films entitled “Netflix Originals”. This new step has secured a prestigious position for Netflix compared with other production companies. Various original films and TV shows have been nominated including Emmy and Academy Awards. In the latter case, its film Icarus won an Oscar for best documentary feature at the 90th Academy Awards in 2018.

Methodology As mentioned earlier, the present study comprises a translation extracted from the Egyptian comic film Noom El Talat, subtitled in English and shown online on Netflix. For the purpose of this study, a comparative linguistic analysis of the dialogue and the English subtitles has been utilised in order to identify all metaphorical expressions that would likely pose difficulties when subtitled into English. Moreover, Pedersen’s (2018) taxonomy of strategies has been adopted in order to categorise the identified strategies, and consequently diversify and corroborate our argument. Finally, the main concepts associated with the theory of frame semantics have been employed as an analytical tool in approaching and scrutinising the various examples of metaphorical expressions.

Results & discussion Drawing on Pedersen’s (2018) taxonomy with regard to investigating the subtitling of metaphors in the film Noom El Talat proves useful in identifying the strategies adopted by subtitlers and their frequency, as can be seen in Table 11.1. However, unlike the approach adopted by Pedersen (2018) who only investigated stock metaphors, the current chapter scrutinises all types of metaphors (i.e.

Reframing Arabic metaphorical expressions  171 TABLE 11.1  Strategies for subtitling metaphors and their frequency

1 2 3 4 Total

Subtitling Strategy

Number of instances

Reduction to sense Image transfer Image substitution Omission

64 18 7 2 91

lexicalised and non-lexicalised metaphors) due to the major differences between Arabic and English. In the following subsections, each strategy will be explained and illustrated by relevant examples extracted from the film Noom El Talat. These examples will be provided with contextual information as well as an English translation of the original dialogues. This will help non-Arabic speakers to identify the strategies adopted and their impact on the construction of meaning.

Reduction to sense As can be seen from Table 11.1, reduction to sense is the most commonly used strategy by subtitlers with regard to this film, constituting about 70% of the total. In this process, the vehicle (image) presented in the original metaphor is sacrificed, and only the intended meaning is communicated in the English subtitles. In other words, “a metaphorical expression is translated by a non-metaphorical expression with a similar meaning” (Schmidt, 2014, p. 833). The analysis reveals that this “interventional” strategy is mainly used in subtitling monocultural metaphors that could cause serious comprehension issues if translated literally into the target language. The following table includes representive examples of this strategy:

Source text

Literal translation of ST

Target text

1

‫والبنت غشيمة مش عارفة‬ .‫تشربه الشاي‬ ّ ,

The woman is naïve. She’s not bribing him,

2

.‫بس أيه؟ قمر‬

3

.‫أنت هاتقولي؟ دي‬ ‫صاروخ‬

The girl is naïve; she does not know how to offer him tea. You know what? She’s a moon. You’re telling me! She’s a rocket.

She’s beautiful. You’ve got that right. She’s gorgeous.

In example (1), Serage, Mutaz’s best friend, asks him about the beautiful girl, Nada, who comes to the office everyday, and Mutaz responds that the employee she goes to is intentionally making her life difficult because she does not know

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how things are run there, commenting that: ‫تشربه الشاي‬ ‫( مش عارفة‬lit. “She does not ّ know how to offer him tea”). This metaphorical expression, which communicates the implict meaning (bribing him) has been sacrificed in the English subtitles. Needless to say, literally subtitling this Arabic metaphor would not activate the required frame (i.e. a bribery-frame), which is nessessary to extract its connotative meaning and consequently would mislead the target viewers, who might erroneously think that Nada should have asked the employee out for a cup of tea in order to speed up the processing of her documents. Therefore, choosing to reduce this culture-specific metaphor to its basic meaning would be deemed suitable here, preventing any major misinterpretation, stemming from evoking a frame that is not shared by the target viewer. In examples (2) and (3), Serage and Mutaz are talking about the same girl and expressing how beautiful she is. Mutaz appears to be totally in love with her, which can be easily observed from his words, facial expressions and body language when describing her beauty or even when interacting with her. Both words ‫( قمر‬lit. “moon”) and ‫( صاروخ‬lit. “rocket”) are used in Arabic in some countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon for flirtation purposes to refer to a beautiful or gorgeous girl, but in different degrees. Although these two words, ‫( قمر‬moon) and ‫( صاروخ‬rocket), refer to two different physical referents in the real world (denotation), they are regarded as synonyms as they evoke in the mind of the reader/listener the same idea, she is beautiful (connotation). Approached from a semiotic perspective, “the relationship between the denotative meaning and the connotative one is what Peirce calls ‘interpretant’ that works as a sign” (Almanna, 2016, p. 154). Approached from a frame semantic perspective, hearing or reading these lexical items in such a context evokes a particular frame in our mind, which is that of a beauty-frame. Such a frame provides a background of beliefs, practices, assumptions and so forth against which the contextual meaning of the lexical item is captured. The subtitler has opted for the strategy of reduction to sense by resorting to certain lexical items that evoke a similar frame, that is, a beautyframe. It is worth mentioning that beauty is expressed differently across different cultures and societies; therefore, adhering to the denotative meanings of these words without any attempt to evoke a beauty-frame in the mind of the targetlanguage viewers will not only strike the target-language viewers as unusal, but the message itself will not be transmitted. Added to the beauty-frame that both words evoke in our mind, the lexical item ‫( صاروخ‬rocket), activates another frame against which the intended meaning can be captured, which in this case is a seduction-frame. Actually, various synonyms exist for the word “beautiful” and they have different connotations in English. In the third example, the metaphor ‫( خوراص‬rocket) carries a sexual connotation; it is often used to refer to a girl who is voluptuous and strikingly attractive. Although translating this metaphor as “gorgeous” in the English subtitles reflects the lady as being sexually attractive, some connotative meanings are missing and consequently does not represent Mutaz’s character and

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his true intentions as depicted in the original film. It could be argued that using adjectives, such “sexy” or “hot”, would better convey the vehicle of the original metaphor.

Image transfer This strategy, which involves translating metaphors by retaining their original image in the target text, has been proposed by many researchers (Toury, 1995; Newmark, 1981; Schmidt, 2014). In other words, “the vehicle of the metaphor is kept in the translation, regardless of whether it is entrenched in the TL or not” (Pedersen, 2017, p. 424). In this regard, Pedersen (2018, p. 40) argues that this strategy is commonly used as “there is no translational reason for rendering a transcultural stock metaphor using a different image”. Yet, there are some cases where subtitlers may not opt for using the same image, mainly due to the time and space conventions that govern the subtitling process. The following two examples from the film illustrate the use of this strategy, which constitutes 20% of the total, but not necessarily its success in transferring the intended meaning:

6 7

Source text

Target text

‫على فكرة أنا ما افتريتش عليك لما قلت إنك‬ ‫ديل معزة‬. . . . ‫ بس الحقيقة‬،‫آه الورق؟ آه طبعا ً خلصته‬ ‫ ونسيت الورق‬،‫أهتميت بالقطة‬.

I wasn’t wrong when I compared you to a goat’s tail. The papers, of course! I’ve finalised them. But to tell you the truth, I took care of the cat and I forgot the papers.

In example (6), Mutaz and Serage are on the street trying to catch a cat to take it as a birthday gift to Nada. Mutaz calls his friend ‫( ديل معزة‬lit. “goat’s tail”) after he failed to help him catch the cat. After uttering this offensive metaphorical expression, Mutaz explained to his friend that a goat’s tail is short and cannot be used to warm itself in winter or even protect itself from rams. Given this contextual information, the subtitler has opted to preserve the vehicle and the grounds of the original metaphor in the English subtitles. Despite the fact that this metaphor is not universal, it could be argued that its intended connotative meaning would most probably be accessible, especially when the viewer relies on the visual channel—Serag’s failure to catch the cat, and Mutaz’s explanation of why he compared him to a goat’s tail. In this regard, López (2002, p. 315) states that “the cognitive context includes information from the physical environment, information that can be retrieved from our mental stores and information that we can infer from the two previous sources”. Therefore, this strategy would prob­ ably evoke a specific mental construct, an incompetence-frame, that is similar to the one depicted in the original dialogue and would consequently help the target viewer grasp the comic side of Mutaz’s character, which is mainly characterised by the heavy use of figurative language, especially metaphors.

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The sentence in example (7) is uttered when Mutaz finally arrives at Nada’s birthday party. He hands her the cat and then she asks him about the documents that he promised to finalise and deliver to her personally. In a whisper he says: ‫ ونسيت الورق‬،‫( أهتميت بالقطة‬lit. “I took care of the cat and I forgot the papers”). Though he actually brought her a cat and had been busy throughout the day chasing stray cats, the viewer can tell from his facial expressions, the way he moves his eyes and gazes at her and the tone of his voice that he is flirting with Nada, when he uttered the metaphor “the cat”. In this context, the metaphor activates a beauty-frame in the mind of many Arabs, implying that the addressee is cute, beautiful and attractive. In contrast, this lexical item does not evoke a similar cultural frame in English as it does not trigger this specific connotative meaning. Therefore, literally transferring this metaphor into English would give the target viewers the impression that Mutaz is referring to the cat he has gifted Nada and therefore will certainly miss Mutaz’s implicit comparison between Nada (topic) and the cat (vehicle). It could be argued that the subtitler has assumed that this cat-related metaphor is a universal one (i.e. a shared frame) and therefore has decided to render it literally into English or that he/she has not been aware of this metaphor in the first place.

Image substitution In terms of this strategy, the vehicle of the original metaphor is replaced by a different one in the target language. According to Pedersen (2018), most of the cases where image substitution is used stems from the subtitler’s choice to draw on an image that is particularly common in the target culture, even though the original one is transcultural. In this regard, Newmark (1981, p. 88) presents two similar strategies with regard to image substitution in translating metaphors: (1) the ST image is replaced with a standard target language image or (2) the metaphor is translated using a simile. By the same token, Schmidt’s (2014, p. 833) taxonomy includes a similar strategy to Pedersen's (2018), stating that the original metaphor is “translated by a metaphorical expression of a different conceptual metaphor with a different mapping and a similar meaning.” The following examples, extracted from the film, demonstrate the use of this strategy, which makes up 8% of the total. Source text

Literal translation

Target text

4

‫هذا الشبل من ذاك األسد‬.

Like father like son.

5

ّ ‫أنت من يومك كده‬ ‫مطلع عيني‬ ‫ خد ياض أنت هنا تعال‬،‫معاك‬.

This cub is from that lion. You are always like this, making my eye bulge, hey you come here.

You’re making my life hell. Come back here!

In example (4), Mutaz finally decides to visit a doctor to find out what is happening to him. The doctor, trying to comfort him, assures Mutaz that he will be in

Reframing Arabic metaphorical expressions  175

good hands in that he has a good reputation and was born to one of the most successful psychologists in the country. Mutaz responds saying: ‫هذا الشبل من ذاك األسد‬ (lit. “This cub is from that lion”). As illustrated in the preceding table, the Arabic metaphor denotatively communicates the intended meaning using the image of a strong and fierce animal, activating a similarity-frame between a lion and its cub. If the subtitler had chosen to incorporate the same image, the phrase would be awkward in the target language and also might not be understood by the target audience who may not be familiar with this specific animal-related metaphor. Obviously, the subtitler transferred this metaphor by replacing it with a corresponding English metaphorical expression that would evoke the same implied meaning. In other words, the subtitler was aware of the original metaphor and its denotative meaning, and consequently he/she resorted to a corresponding one with a different vehicle to communicate the same meaning. However, it could be argued that the target audience could possibly work out the intended meaning by deducing the link between this fierce animal and its cub (i.e. they should naturally share the same characteristics) and the fact that the psychologist would most probably resemble his reputable father. If successful, this would serve as a window through which other cultures might have a taste of Arabic culture and its figurative linguistic manifestation. In example (5), the doctor hypnotises Mutaz in an attempt to collect information that would explain why he transforms into another person on Tuesdays. When asked to go back in memory to his childhood, Mutaz sees himself with his father in the living room being asked about his grades. When the father finds out that his son got very bad grades in six subjects, he becomes angry and says: ‫( أنت من يومك كده مطلّع عيني معاك‬lit. “You always make my eye bulge out”). The father here appears to be fed up with his son’s carelessness, telling Mutaz that he is always causing trouble to the extent that he figuratively causes his father’s eye to bulge out of place. Since the literal transferring of this agony-frame into English would probably perplex the viewers, the subtitler has opted for substituting it with a different lexical item, “making my life hell”, which would activate a similar frame against which the intended meaning could be retrieved. Clearly, the substitution of this figurative expression reflects the intensity of the father’s feelings but has certainly sacrificed the Arabic cultural attribute.

Omission The analysis reveals that omission is the least commonly used strategy in handling metaphorical expressions in the film, constituting around 2% of the total. With regard to this strategy, both the topic and the vehicle are deleted altogether in the English subtitles. According to Pedersen (2018, p. 41), the metaphors that are often omitted in subtitling are monocultural stock metaphors when compared to transcultural ones. This means that “subtitlers have a significantly higher propensity for omitting the more problematic monocultural metaphors”. In the same vein, Schmidt (2014, p.  833) includes omission as a strategy in his typology,

176  Amer Al-Adwan and Mohammed Ahmed Thawabteh

labelling it as zero translation where the “metaphorical expression is translated by a zero-element”. On the other hand, it is worth mentioning that Pedersen (2018) presents another strategy in his taxonomy that is totally the opposite of omission, in which a zeroelement is transferred into a metaphorical counterpart in the target text. In other words, the translator inserts a metaphorical expression in the translation which does not exist in the source text, neither in form nor in meaning. Source text

Literal translation

Target text

8

‫ أنا‬،‫إنت يا زفت تعالي‬ ‫!ماسكه بالعافية‬

Come here. I can hardly hang on to him.

9

- ،‫في ساعة صفا كده‬ ‫كتبتلك أغنية كلها طلعت‬ ‫من بناتي‬. —‫بنات مين؟‬ —‫بنات أفكاري‬.

Come here you Asphalt. I can hardly hang on to him. - In a moment of clarity, I wrote you a song that came from my daughters. —Whose daughters? —My thoughts’ daughters.

- In a moment of clarity, I wrote you a song that came from within. —From within? —My thoughts.

In example (8), Mutaz suddenly wakes up and finds himself to be the groom at a wedding. Full of panic, he tries to run away and almost falls off the balcony, but the bride’s father catches him at the right moment. He calls his daughter to help him control Mutaz saying: ‫( إنت يا زفت تعالي‬lit. “Come here you Asphalt”). The Arabic metaphor ‫( زفت‬lit. “asphalt” or “tar”) activates an insult-frame that is used in a state of anger or aggravation to refer to someone who is awful and terrible. The subtitler decides here to sacrifice this offensive metaphor without replacing it with any equivalent words, as literally transferring it does not communicate that specific connotative meaning in English. In other words, in order to successfully decode the intended meaning of the original metaphor, the interlocutors involved in the conversation are expected to “share the requisite frames” (Fillmore, 1976, p. 27). This omission would affect the representation of the character and how he is perceived by the target audience. In the original film, the father’s character as a tough person is achieved through his physical actions (beating up Serage twice) and through his offensive language (e.g. swearing and using offensive words). Evidently, omitting the latter element, which complements the visual channel, would drastically affect the seriousness of the situation. Moreover, the actual interpersonal relationship between the father and his daughter in this emergency situation has not been accurately rendered into English, resulting in increasing the social distance between the two characters. In example (9), Mutaz invites Nada to a restaurant and tells her that he has written song lyrics specifically for her. He also plays on words and uses metaphorical expressions in highlighting the fact that these lyrics are his own creative work, stating that they are his own thoughts: ‫( بنات أفكاري‬lit. “my thoughts’ daughters”). Literally translating this image, which is outlined by these semantically-related

Reframing Arabic metaphorical expressions  177

words, would certainly sound very strange to non-Arabic speakers. In Arabic, the image is often used by intellectuals and educated people. Taking his cue from those, Mutaz is clearly trying to dazzle Nada. In this instance, the subtitler has decided to omit this monocultural metaphor and communicate a basic sentence that does not reflect Mutaz’s witty style of communication and sense of humour to the target audience. In this regard, Jalali (2015, p. 55) argues that it is hard to separate language from culture because “cultures, like metaphors, reflect cognitive frameworks of reference, the implication seems to be that metaphors are only comprehensible by people of closely related languages and cultures”.

Concluding remarks This chapter has addressed an under-researched area in AVT, namely subtitling Arabic metaphorical expressions into English. The analysis revealed that the subtitlers have adopted four main strategies in translating the metaphorical expressions identified in the comic film Noom El Talat: reduction to sense, image substitution, image transfer and omission. It was also evident that most of the metaphorical expressions have been sacrificed and only the intended meaning has been translated into English. By relying heavily on the first strategy, that is, reduction to sense, the subtitler has generated a translation that would affect the viewers’ perception of the film’s characters, more specifically, their attributes and interpersonal relationships with other interlocutors. With this semantic and stylistic loss, the sense of humour in many instances has been sacrificed, presenting to the target viewers a more neutral version of the original work. The study has also revealed that by drawing on image transfer the subtitlers have sometimes mistranslated the original metaphorical expressions by using the same vehicle in the English subtitles. The analysis shows that the subtitler has conducted transcultural appraisal when subtitling Arabic metaphorical expressions into English, supporting Pedersen’s (2018, p. 43) claim that subtitlers handle metaphors “differently, depending on whether they are trans- or monocultural, as indicated by their choice of translation solution”. Finally, it is essential that the subtitler thoroughly studies the context in which Arabic metaphorical expressions exist. This would determine the exact frames that are activated in the English subtitles and consequently shape the relevant images that are conjured up in the mind of the target viewer. With this in mind, it goes without saying that “the translator becomes a kind of bilingual and bicultural ‘mediator’ between two different conceptual systems” (López, 2002, p. 315).

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Netflix. (2019). Retrieved from www.netflix.com/om-en/. Retrived on July 5, 2020. Newmark, P. (1981). Approaches to translation. Oxford: Pergamon Press. ———. (1988). A Text book of translation. New York: Prentice Hall. Palmer, F. R. (1976). Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pedersen, J. (2005). How is culture rendered in subtitles. In MuTra 2005—Challenges of Multidimensional Translation (pp. 1–18). Conference Proceedings‫‏‬. ———. (2015). On the subtitling of visualised metaphors. Journal of Specialized Translation, 23. Retrieved March 26, 2020, from www.jostrans.org/issue23/art_pedersen.php ———. (2017). How metaphors are rendered in subtitles. Target, 29(3), 416–39.‫‏‬ ———. (2018). Transcultural images: Subtitling culture-specific audiovisual metaphors. In Linguistic and Cultural Representation in Audiovisual Translation (pp. 31–45). London: Routledge.‫‏‬ Putri, S., & Martha, S. (2019). An analysis of metaphor translation in the subtitle of Sherlock Holmes 2: A game of shadows (2011) Movie. Lire Journal: Journal of Linguistics and Literature, 3(1), 66–75. Saleh, N. (2017). Towards Segmentation Norms in Arabic Subtitling (Unpublished MA thesis). Doha: Hamad bin Khalifa University. Schmidt, G. (2014). Metaphor ranslation in subtitling. In A. Akbarov (Ed.), Linguistics, Culture and Identity in Foreign Language Education (pp. 831–40). Sarajevo: International Burch University. Shafik, V. (2007). Egyptian Cinema: Gender, Class, and Nation. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press. Shojaei, A. (2012). Translation of idioms and fixed expressions: Strategies and difficulties. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2(6), 1220–9. Thawabteh, M. (2011a). Linguistic, cultural and technical problems in English-Arabic subtitling. SKASE Journal of Translation and Interpretation, 5(1), 24–43. ———. (2011b). The translatability of gestures: A case study of Arabic-English subtitling. Journal of International Translation, 23(2), 147–59. ———. (2013). Analysis of technical foul-ups: With particular reference to Arabic-English subtitling. Studies of Science and Culture, 9(4), 77–90. Thompson, D. (Ed.). (1995). The concise Oxford Dictionary (9th ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Toury, G. (1995). Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins. Translation Studies Bibliography. (2020). Retreived from www.benjamins.com/online/tsb/

12 CELESTIAL BODIES A case of reframing Omani realities through translation Musallam Al-Ma’ani and Areej Al Jamaei

Introduction As a practice, translation historically dates back centuries, but as an academic discipline it is a success story of a few decades ago when translation studies was able to stand on its own academic foundation, free of attachment to other disciplines such as language, linguistics or literature under which translation has usually been examined and studied. Additionally, it is still common that translators tend to come from other areas that are distant from translation itself, taking translation as either a pursuit outside their regular occupations or a source of income, and even if translators “do more than translate; their multidiscursive status could only contradict any membership exclusive to translators” (Pym, 2017, p. 40). But, and as Gambier and Doorslaer (2016) argue, the practice has witnessed an increase in mono-professionalism. Translation is an interdisciplinary field. Although the concept of interdisciplinarity seems to be free from evasiveness or obscurity, McCarty (1999) notes that a real interdiscipline is not easily intelligible because disciplines tend to have a graded series. So, it is not possible to avoid a relationship, primary or secondary, between traditional disciplines and a new interdiscipline. However, translation studies (TS) acts as “the Phoenician trader among longer-established disciplines” such as, cultural studies, philosophy, linguistics and modern languages (Munday, 2012, p. 24). Moreover, some theories, such as Even-Zohar’s polysystem, emphasise the concept of the interdisciplinarity of TS since it investigates the position of translated literature in the literary system of the target culture (TC) by analysing the interaction between source and host cultures. Using a descriptive methodology, this chapter examines the translation of the novel, ‫ سيدات القمر‬by the Omani author Jokha Alharthi (2010) from Arabic into English as Celestial Bodies

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by Marilyn Booth in 2019 to assess how rewriting affects the source text as it manipulates it for the benefit of the target receivers.

Rewriting and literary translation The term “rewriting” was first suggested by Lefevere as “refraction” in the early 1980s (Jin et al., 2014). Lefevere (1992) sees “refracted texts” as they are written for a certain audience (children, for example) or acclimated to a new environment that involves certain poetics or a certain ideology (Gentzler, 2001). Within a literary system, translation is treated as one type of rewriting, that is, a rewriting of the source text (ST), with the other type found in other forms of editing, criticisms, historiography, and so forth (Munday, 2012). The idea of considering the other writings within a literary work can be linked to Gerard Genette’s paratexts with two paratextual elements: peritexts and epitexts (1997). Paratextual elements are particularly considered of importance to translation, especially if detailed examination of the complex nature of translation is carried out in order to understand its nature and determine its essential features. According to Munday (2012, p. 233) a peritext comprises the writings, by authors or publishers, which supplement the main text, such as prefaces, dedications and forewords. Epitexts, on the other hand, include the paratextual materials that do not occupy the same position in the original text, such as reviews or any other type of material written about the text or its author. Within the context of rewriting, Lefevere (1992, p.  9) states that translation has the power to cause an effect in intangible ways since “it is able to project the image of an author and/or those works beyond boundaries of their culture of origin”. Bassnett and Lefevere (1990) provide a clear image of what rewriting is by pointing out that rewriting has a readily discernible ideology and poetics that direct literature to function in a given society in a given way. Rewriting is manipulation undertaken in the service of power and, in its positive aspect, can help in the process of change in literature and society. However, Faiq (2004, p. 4) argues that manipulation through translation influences “the target readers and their views of the source culture and its people. This manipulation ultimately leads to subversion of texts through translation and/or other discourses at all levels”. The factors that strongly influence rewriting in translation are twofold: “patronage” and “professionals”. The former covers ideology and power, including both individuals and institutions, whereas the latter covers translators, reviewers and critics. Although professionals try to control the literary system from inside, they are compelled by power to be ceremoniously courteous with their ideology. Such factors create submissive professionals and shape how translation is assimilated in the TC (Munday, 2012). Williams mentions that the heuristic concept of “systems”, which Lefevere uses, is influenced by Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory, which stipulates that a literary work may occupy a primary or a secondary position in the TC literary system (Lefevere, 2016). Some texts can be recognised as

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supreme intellectual masterpiece in the SC, yet for ideological reasons such texts may face total TC rejection. For example, when Mahmoud Darwish’s poems were selected to be part of Israeli high school curriculum, the Israeli public refused to accept these poems, a matter that forced Ehud Barak, the then Israeli Prime Minister, to say that “Israeli society is not ripe to study Darwish” (Snaije, 2011). On the other hand, there was widespread public interest in the Omani novel Celestial Bodies in the West, occupying a primary position due to the fact that it won the International Man Booker Prize in 2019. Another control factor Lefevere suggests for rewriting is the Universe of Discourse, which he defines as “the whole complex of concepts, ideologies, persons, and objects belonging to a particular culture” (Lefevere, 1992, p. 35). Translators serve as an equipoise between their own Universe of Discourse which is acceptable and familiar to them and their target readers and the Universe of Discourse that is considered as acceptable by the original author. To achieve this balance, translators tend to rewrite what is unfamiliar instead of refusing to accept it immediately. In other words, they tend to assimilate the author’s Universe of Discourse to their own familiar Universe of Discourse by resorting to rewriting on the levels of content and style. Patronage is also proposed by Lefevere as an important factor that influences translation. Patronage is identified by three components: ideological, economic and status (Munday, 2012). The first, ideological, holds down the choice of content and the way it is presented. The second component concerns the payment writers and rewriters (i.e. professionals) receive from patrons, such as institutions or the State. The last one is the recognition given to writers and translators and what they are expected to give in return to benefactors. For example, if writers or rewriters were paid for their work, they are expected to conform to the patron’s ideology and expectations (Munday, 2012, p. 195). In addition, patronage can be either undifferentiated or differentiated. If all the three components are offered by the same patron (i.e., an individual, institution or a group), then patronage is undifferentiated. On the other hand, patronage is differentiated when the components show difference and are not linked to each other (Munday, 2012). Patrons tend to enforce ideology, since they exercise direct influence over commissioning or publishing of translations. According to Lefevere (1992, p. 19), translations are published if accepted and encouraged by patrons who may “also quite effectively prevent the publication of translation they do not consider so”. In this regard, Faiq (2004) gives an example of Peter Clark who wanted to translate a volume of contemporary Syrian literature, the work of ‘Abd al-Salam al-’Ujaili who is a doctor in his seventies with an outstanding record of writing in poetry, criticism, novels and short stories. When he proposed to his British publisher a volume of ‘Ujaili’s short stories, the editor said, “There are three things wrong with the idea. He’s male. He’s old and he writes short stories. Can you find a young female novelist?” (Cited in Faiq, 2004, p. 5). Nevertheless, the influence of professionals, including translators, reviewers, critics and academics, influence the type of prevailing poetics. Poetics can

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be analysed in two elements: “literary devices” (i.e. the formalisation of genres, plots, characters and symbols in a given society) and “the concept of the role of literature” (i.e. literature’s relation to the literary system of a given society) (Munday, 2012, p. 196). Jin et al. (2014) note that professionals play a significant role in repressing certain literary texts or rewriting them following the dictated ideology in a specific culture. Gentzler (2001) perceives Lefevere’s theory of rewriting as just an extension of Even-Zohar’s polysystem model. However, Lefevere, among other scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States, distanced himself from the polysystem theory and adopted a deductive cultural studies model to avoid restrictions and formalism of the former theory. Lefevere’s model focuses on the influence of power structures on literary translation in a certain culture. Within this context, Lefevere (1992, p. 14) argues that “translations are not made in a vacuum”. The way translators understand themselves and the culture which they function in influence the way they translate. The general definition of ideology that Lefevere provides, according to Munday (2012, p. 195), is that it is a “grillwork of form, convention, and belief which orders our actions”. It is usually exercised by patrons over people or institutions who are responsible for commissioning or publishing translations (Lefevere, 1992). Caldaza-Pérez (2016, p. 4) points out the imposition of ideology happens “surreptitiously” until the imposed ideology becomes the normal thinking of people and, as Williams notes, the “ideology of a given place and time in which the rewriting occurs combines with the dominant poetological conceptions to determine the image of a work of literature that a translation projects” (cited in Lefevere, 2016, p. ix). However, this does not mean that in their translations, translators are at all times submissive to these factors. Translators can accord little attention to these constraints or stay within them while adopting adaptation strategies through which they can introduce adjustments. In view of this, both forces: patronage as well as professionals are essential in shaping a TC literary system and even influencing the rules and criteria of international prizes. Although the term “international” alludes to heterogeneity of ideologies, it is quite impossible that people worldwide would reach a consensus about the criteria upon which rewritings are judged. Faiq (2004, p. 6) gives an example of Arabic literary works translated into English and how the translator “assumes total ignorance on the part of his reading constituencies, and proceeds to guide them through assumed authoritative knowledge of an unfathomable world where backwardness and the assassination of peacemakers are the norms”. About literary prizes, Mendelsohn and Szalai (2013) examine the judges’ decisions, the purpose and the values that these prizes. According to Mendelsohn and Szalai (2013), there is not an established standard which can be taken as a model to judge aesthetic matters when such awards are conferred. Jonathan Barnes, a critic and a science-fiction novelist, believes that the Booker tends to overlook science-fiction books, and Cain (2019) points out that the 2019 Man Booker

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International Prize shortlist is dominated by females. All shortlisted authors are women except one, so are the translators. The lack of clear criteria of the International Booker Prize, for example, is manifest in the booklet of rules and entry form provided by Booker Prize Foundation. In the booklet, there is no mention of aesthetic standards of literary works to qualify for the prize. Thus, questioning the process of forming an opinion by judges and wondering to what extent patronage and professionals influence them sounds very rational.

Data and methodology The novel, ‫ سيدات القمر‬by the Omani Jokha Alharthi, was first published in Arabic in 2010, and later translated in 2019 by Marilyn Booth into English, titled Celestial Bodies. The novel discusses historical and social events across four generations in Oman. The events took place while Oman was evolving from a traditional, slave-owning country into a complex state. Through characters, such as Ankabuta and her daughter Zarifa, the novelist explores questions of persons who are chattels of others and the sexual use of women who are completely subservient to their chattels. Additionally, the novel centres on the practice of witchcraft as socially resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown and trust in magic due to stereotyped behaviour and fixation of habits among illiterate people. The differences in the way of thinking across generations is also evident in the novel. Both the author and the translator of ‫—سيدات القمر‬Celestial Bodies—are highly educated women, who have achieved literary accomplishments and won prizes. Alharthi is a young female Omani writer and a faculty member of the Arabic Department at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU). She earned her PhD with a thesis on classical Arabic literature, from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. She has written three novels, three collections of short stories and some other academic research related to her profession. In 2016, she won the Sultan Qaboos Award for Culture, Arts and Literature for her novel Narinjah (Bitter Orange). Similarly, Marilyn Booth is an author, scholar and translator of Arabic literature. She is a professor of the contemporary Arab world at the University of Oxford. One of her major translation works besides Celestial Bodies is the translation of Rajaa Alsanea’s (2007) bestseller, Girls of Riyadh. Celestial Bodies serves as a great example of Lefevere’s saying: “certain works of literature will be elevated to the level of ‘classics’ within a relatively short time after publication” (Munday, 2012, p. 196) since it was only just published in 2019. The novel has not gained recognition to write home about, so to speak, in the Arab world compared with the international attention. The only acknowledgment in the Arab World was its placement on the longlist for the Sheikh Zaid Book Award, with an article written about it for Alhayat, a Lebanese Arabic newspaper. On the other hand, its English translation, Celestial Bodies, was celebrated internationally: it won the 2019 International Man Booker Prize. The popularity of both

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novel and author has put Oman on the global map of literature and pushed the novel to become a best seller in Oman. To explore rewriting in the English translation, the analysis of selected excerpts adopts a descriptive methodology based on Toury’s (2012) descriptive translation studies (DTS). DTS is a framework that lays down how translation should be (Pym, 2009). DTS does not merely examine the ST and the TT in order to discover resemblances or differences or view the ST in relation to the TT, but DTS investigates the position translated literature occupies within TT systems, while taking the TC into account. In addition, it aims “to identify the patterns of behavior in the translation and thereby to ‘reconstruct’ the norms at work in the translation process” (Munday, 2012, p. 189). The significance of DTS is manifest in freeing translation from its traditional bondage that falls within the confines of linguistic bosom, serving as a channel of the study of translation in relation to culture and sociocultural analysis. Faiq (2004, p. 4) succinctly says that cultural and translation studies are concerned with “the conditions of knowledge production in one culture, and the way this knowledge is interpreted and relocated according to knowledge production in another culture”. The major idea here is that translation works through rewriting to fit the demands of the norms and practices of the members of the target culture— demands that they originally apply to the production of their native texts.

Data analysis and discussion In order to investigate the extent of rewriting in Celestial Bodies, a preliminary comparison is made to examine similarities and differences between the ST and TT, including the title, publisher, length, division, preface, footnotes, glossary and list of the main characters. The aim is to show how that such rewriting confirms to the prevalent ideological view of Arab culture and its associated literature in the West, which may have paved the way for the novel to win the prize and gain the fame it has achieved. The Man Booker International Prize for the best book translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland was launched in 2005. The fact TABLE 12.1  Comparison between ST and TT

Title Publisher Length Titles Family trees of the characters

The Arabic Novel

The English Translation

ُ َ ّ َ (Ladies of the Moon) ‫القمر‬ َ َ ‫سيدات‬ Dar Aladab for publishing and dissemination 58 chapters, 223 pages Untitled chapters No family trees

Celestial Bodies Sandstone Press 57 chapters, 243 Titled chapters Includes family trees

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that this separate prize for literary works written originally in other languages exists stresses the notion of encouraging diversity. Thus, that Alharthi became the first author from an Arab country to win the prize for her second novel, ‫سيّدَاتُ القَ َمر‬ َ (Celestial Bodies) does not seem to have happened by accident but seems to have some context. The CEO of Man Group, Luke Ellis, in his comment on Alharthi’s winning, highlighted the role that the Man Booker International Prize plays “in encouraging a diversity of voice in fiction worldwide” (The Man Booker Prizes, 2019). He further argues that: “Diversity will remain an important area of focus for Man Group as we concentrate more of our resources on our Paving the Way campaign, which aims to enhance diversity and inclusion at the firm and across the investment industry” (The Man Booker Prizes, 2019). Thus, the Man Booker International Prize is a patron but perhaps with less power. The role of patronage can be seen here in the ideology of the target culture as a major reason for‫سيّدَاتُ القَ َمر‬ َ to be translated and published in the United Kingdom under the title Celestial Bodies. This paved the way for the novel to win the prize. Another factor that may have attracted attention to Celestial Bodies is that the West is generally interested in Arabic literature that fits the stereotypes it has about Arab culture and people. Such works are usually inscribed with linguistic and cultural values that are intelligible to specific domestic constituencies. This process of inscription operates at every stage in the production, circulation, and reception of the translation. It is initiated by the very choice of a foreign text to translate, always an exclusion of other foreign texts and literatures, which answers to particular domestic interests. (Faiq, 2004, p. 3) So, themes of sex, magic, irrationality and so on are very in demand, irrespective of the artistic value of works chosen for translation. Shamma (2016, p. 7) points out that, although Arabic literature has been accepted as part of world literature, native literature is still seen by most publishers and readers as a way of gathering information about the local culture. Translation, in this respect, is expected to complement the exponential growth in studies on the social, religious, and especially political, life of the Arab World. Moreover, Flood reported to The Guardian, in an interview after the novel was longlisted, that Booth said that there is a tendency that Arabic fiction is seen as “a road map to the Arab world rather than first and foremost as art, as imaginative writing, pushing the boundaries of what can be thought and said” (Flood, 2019). The events of the novel are enough to pique English language readership interest in the Arab world, especially Oman. The words that Publisher and Managing Director of Sandstone Press Robert Davidson gave in an interview with Showcase prove that the West’s desire in the usually expected themes about Arab culture is

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another essential point for publishing Celestial Bodies. But this had to be couched in some universal frame. Robert Davidson pointed this out by saying that the combination of insights into a different and very important world culture together with the storytelling qualities made me believe this is a book we really had to bring to the English language readership, preferably, if possible, of the world, which, I should say, is now happening as we speak this morning. (Showcase, 2019) What Davidson seems to be more concerned with is “the storytelling qualities” of the novel. This brings into focus how “different” and “very important” this “world culture” is to him. As a publisher and a member of the English readership, he was able to discern the interest of those English language readers in reading such a novel because it is set in a remote Arab country that probably most of them have never heard of. To explain, Davidson is a patron who conformed to the dominant ideology of promoting diversity but within the parameters of what is expected and accepted in the West about Arab culture. Within this context, Faiq (2004, p. 5) says that the West needs to satisfy itself that it knows its natives: it’s others who should adapt to its norms in order to be welcomed as members of universalism and world culture and literature. The Western centric assumptions about others—races, nationalities, literatures—have provided the site for critiques of representations, language and ideological control towards writers from places like the Arab world. Translation is affected by market demands, so it provides ordinary Western readers with accounts of issues of life in Middle Eastern countries that mostly fit a certain framing of this part of the world. The issues most in demand are women, sex, homosexuality, magic, and so on. An example of this is the instance where Alharthi (2010, p. 44) talks about sex.

“،‫ي من بنات العبدات في بيت أبي‬ ‫” ولم‬ ِ ّ ‫تمضأيّام حتى كانت ظريفة تحاول دفعي للزنى بأ‬ “Only few days later, Zarifa was trying to push me into having sex with one or another daughter of the slave families that had long inhabited my father’s household” (Alharthi, 2019, p. 48).

In this example, there is mitigation and addition. Booth translated “‫ ”للزنى‬into “having sex” while the direct translation is in fact “fornicate”. Given the fact that the term “fornicate” means “voluntary sexual intercourse between two unmarried persons or two persons not married to each other”, the phrase “having sex” does not give the full and accurate meaning of “‫”زنى‬. Wehr (1974, p. 383), provides “adultery; fornication” as meanings of “‫”زنى‬. In addition, the word “‫ ”زنى‬has a serious religious dimension

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that is clearly outlined in the Qura’an. This dimension is also missing in the translation. The addition of “had long” is perhaps meant to fit a particular textual norm. The ST does not provide any details about how long the slave females had lived in the house. Besides a textual reason, the purpose of this addition here could be to indicate that slavery had started a very long time before he was even born. Such conceptions are as ancient as orientalism, which facilitates and influences the perception of Arabs as backward and uncivilised people. Shusha (2016) reports that Dr Mohammed Adnan, a translator who conducted the project of the Public Authority for Books for translating from Arabic into other languages, said that “the West does not translate us, neither does it offer to the European reader the bright side of the Arabic literature”. Shusha further gives an example of Rifaat Salam, an Egyptian poet and translator, who noticed that Alifa Rifaat was the most translated author into English because she writes stories about women’s oppression in the Arab World. Similarly, in the case of Celestial Bodies, the protagonists are three sisters. Maya and Khawla experienced unrequited love. Maya, however, got married to another man chosen for her by family, whereas Khawla rejected all offers and stayed in expectation of her beloved man to come back from Canada and propose to her. The third sister married because she felt that she had to. Throughout the novel, the sisters go through different challenges as more responsibilities fall on them. For instance, although Maya did what her family expected her to do, she could not forget the man for whom she had strong affection and love; she even named her daughter after the city he was in, London. Moreover, she could not love her husband even after years of marriage: [D]o you love me, Maya? I  asked her, once everyone else was asleep. She was startled, I could see that. She said nothing and then laughed. She laughed out loud, and the tone of it irritated me. Where did you pick up these TV-show words? She asked. Or maybe it’s the satellite dish out there. (Alharthi, 2019, p. 11) On the other hand, Khawla’s character was stronger than Maya’s as she decided eventually to leave her husband, whom she loved very much and had waited for him for years because he had paid little attention to her during the first ten years with him. Themes of women, rape and sex from different cultures are quite interesting to European readers, especially those of the Arab culture. For example, (Alharthi, 2010, p. 25)

“‫ ال يجوز أن تشارك الناس األكل‬.‫ألن فيها نجاسة‬.”

“Because she is unclean inside. It is not proper for people to share her food” (Alharthi, 2019, p. 22). The translator chose to translate the religious term “‫ ”نجاسة‬simply into “unclean inside”. The concept of “‫ ”نجاسة‬is complicated in Islam. When I person is “‫ ”نجس‬it

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ُ ”, means that s/he cannot pray or perform any religious rites before they do “‫غسل‬ in which they have to wash their entire body in a certain way. When a woman bleeds after giving birth or after menstruation, she is excused from performing all ُ ”, cleans herself. religious practices until the blood stops and she does the “‫غسل‬ Some people, and other cultures, mistakenly believe that women in this case cannot even eat with others. The translator could have explained the term to the target readers by adding a footnote or an in-text explanation between brackets. However, the beliefs people hold regrading some religious concepts might not be interesting to the target readers. The phrase “‫ ”ال يجوز‬is also rephrased into “it is not proper”. The reason behind this belief is not because they believe that it is inappropriate, but because they think it is religiously unacceptable to share food with someone in her condition. Another example is where Alharthi talks about an incident of rape (Alharthi, 2010, p. 31):

“‫المدرسات‬ ‫ سكتت حتى عن اغتصاب حنان وزميالتها‬.‫حدث تالعب كبير لكنّ الصحافة سكتت‬ ّ ‫ من اشترى هذا السكوت الباهض؟ ُج ّن جنون لندن والزمت‬. ‫ وسكت األهالي‬.‫في الجنوب‬ ‫صديقتها المنهارة نفسيًّا في المستشفى‬.” “Hanan was teaching at an elementary school way in the south, in Salalah Town, near the border. It was the middle of the night when L ­ ondon phoned us. A gang of teenaged boys had assaulted the teachers’ dormitory, she said. There had been rapes. Hanan—she was raped. And people were silent. Who bought this loud silence? London nearly went mad. She stayed in the hospital with Hanan, her good friend, who had a nervous breakdown” (Alharthi, 2019, pp. 30–31). The translation includes addition of details that do not exist in the ST. The ST does not mention that the incident happened exactly in Salalah. The TT provides some information about the rapists, such as the fact that they are a gang and that they are teenagers. It also includes omission. “‫”تالعب كبير‬, which could be translated into “a huge manipulation”, was left untranslated. The “manipulation” concept is emphasised throughout the Arabic passage by saying that the media did not talk about it “‫”الصحافة سكتت‬, repeating that it did not talk about it “‫ ”سكتت حتى عن‬and saying that families were silent. However, silence is mentioned only once in the TT: “And people were silent”. The TT neglects “the manipulation” and focuses on the “rapes” as the term is repeated twice: “[T]here had been rapes” and “she was raped”. The novel also alludes to some sensitive topics that the English language readers may well find very interesting, or expected about an Arab Muslim country, such as seduction and homosexuality. For example, Alharthi (2010, p. 44),

‫ي‬ ّ ‫ ارتمت عل‬،‫“الحقتني شنة خلف أشجار الليمون في المزرعة وأنا لم أكمل األربعة عشر‬ ّ ‫ مل‬،‫بدون مقدمات فشعرت بالغثيان ودفعتها عنّي‬ ْ ”،‫أقسمتإنّني سأدفع الثمن غاليًا‬ ‫طخةً بالطين‬

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“Shanna chased me behind the lemon trees in the farm when I was barely fourteen and fell on me without any advance warning. Feeling dizzy and slightly sick, I pushed her away. Spattering her with mud as I did so. She swore up and down that I would pay the price for it” (Alharthi, 2019, p. 48). In the novel, this is an example of seduction. The seduction scene in this passage has been somehow rewritten by the translator. Generally, the translation provides some details to show Abdullah’s resistance and defence. The direct translation of “‫ ”بالغثيان‬can be just “feeling sick”, yet the translator chose to add “dizzy”, which ّ exaggerates Abdullah’s state and adds a sense of drama. Also, “‫”ملطخة بالطين‬ is a passive form, however, the translator opted for modulation as the agent “I” is explicitly mentioned. Having an active form highlights the role of the agent (Abdullah) in doing the action (spattering her with mud) which he did to the object (Shanna). This proves even more that Abdullah fought her and that she repulsed him. Homosexuality is another controversial issue that is present in the novel. Abdullah explains that Zarifa enticed him to have sex with her (Alharthi, 2010, p. 45),

‫طار صواب ظريفة وقد رأتني—وحالتي هذه—هدفًا مناسبًا لشذوذ الكبار من الصبية والرجال‬ “She had come to see me and the state she thought I was in as an easy target for men’s wayward desires, not to mention those of boys older than me” (Alharthi, 2019, p. 48).

Again the English translation here includes mitigation and addition. The direct equivalent for “‫ ”شذوذ‬is “irregularity, deviation” and the like (Wehr, 1974, p. 461). Using the term “wayward” instead of “deviation”, which is the intended meaning in Arabic, does not convey the meaning of departing from the accepted norm, which is what the term “‫”شذوذ‬, actually, refers to. Unlike in many Western countries, homosexuality is completely rejected and illegal in Oman. This mitigation could have been pointed out for the English-language readers. Nevertheless, the translator added “not to mention” and to highlight “boys older than me”, although the Arabic does not differentiate between old boys and men as it describes the act of both of them as “a deviation”. Another example (Alharthi, 2010, p. 26) is,

ّ ‫أزوج سنجر‬ “‫ول أحسن أخلّيه ليركبه الرجال؟‬ ّ ‫ وأسألك أحسن‬..“

“And I ask you, anyway, was it better to marry off Sanjar or to leave him to the mercy of all those men who know exactly what they’re after” (Alharthi, 2019, p. 24). This translation includes an omission of an offensive Omani idiom that refers to homosexuality. The translation replaces it by an indirect and neutral sentence “to leave him to the mercy of all those men who know exactly what they’re after”. The offensiveness is not conveyed in the translation because the translator tailored

Celestial bodies  191

the text to the majority of Western target readers who, unlike Omanis, do not consider homosexuality taboo or illegal.

Concluding remarks This chapter has explored translation as rewriting and associated ideology or ideologies, particularly in literary translation from a language and culture considered to be peripheral to those deemed central. Adapting a descriptive methodology, the analysis of some excerpts taken from the novel ‫ سيدات القمر‬by the Omani female author Jokha Alharthi (2010) and its English translation Celestial Bodies (2019) by Marilyn Booth are cases in point. The analysis has shown how rewriting through strategies, such as addition or deletion, rather reinforce existing Western stereotypes that frame Arabs, including Oman, in English translation. A text hailing from the periphery may gain a central position in the centre through translation if it conforms to SC framing. Translation becomes here a kingmaker. Translations are not innocent; instead they are often ideologically or politically goaded, with a wiggle room for negotiation with the culture from which they are carried out and the culture into which they are performed. Within this context, translation is a rewriting process in which ideological or poetological factors motivate why some texts are chosen for translation and the way or ways they translated for the target readers. This notion of rewriting is of primary importance in revealing ideologies translators take up and practice. Celestial Bodies is no exception.

Bibliography Alharthi, J. (2010). ‫“  سيدات القمر‬The Ladies of the Moon”. Beirut: Dar Aladab for Publish­ ing and Dissemination. ———. (2019). Celestial Bodies (M. Booth, Trans.). Inverness: Sandstone Press. Alsanea, R. (2007). Girls of Riyadh: A Novel (M. Booth, Trans.). New York: Penguin Press. Bassnett, S., & Lefevere, A. (Eds.). 1990. Translation, History and Culture. London: Pinter. Cain, S. (2019, April 9). Man Booker International shortlist dominated by female authors and translators. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/09/man booker-international-shortlist-dominated-by-women-authors-and-translators-olga tokarczuk-annie-ernaux. Caldaza-Pérez, M. (2016). Apropos of Ideology: Translation Studies on Ideology-ideologies in Translation Studies. London: Routledge. Faiq, S. (2004). The cultural encounter in translating from Arabic. In S. Faiq (Ed.), Cultural Encounters in Translation from Arabic (pp. 1–13). Clevedon, UK and New York: Multilingual Matters. Flood, A. (2019, May  21). Man Booker international prize: Jokha Alharthi wins for Celestial Bodies. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/21/man booker-international-prize-jokha-alharthi-wins-celestial-bodies-oman Gambier, Y., & Doorslaer, L. van. (2016). Border Crossings: Translation Studies and Other Disciplines. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

192  Musallam Al-Ma’ani and Areej Al Jamaei

Genette, G. (1997). Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (J. Lewin  & R. Macksey, Trans.). New York: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published in 1989). Gentzler, E. (2001). Contemporary Translation Theories. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Jin, Q., Daodan, Q., & Fenggang, D. (2014). Translation as rewriting: A descriptive study of wang Jizhen’s two adapted translations of Hongloumeng. Cross-Cultural Communication, 10(10), 69–78. https://doi.org/10.3968/j.ccc.1923670020141001.4005 Lefevere, A. (1992). Translation/History/Culture: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge. ———. (2016). Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis. McCarty, W. (1999). Humanities Computing as Interdiscipline. Retrieved October 2, 2019, from www.iath.virginia.edu/hcs/mccarty.html Mendelsohn, D., & Szalai, J. (2013, November 19). Whom or What Are Literary Prizes For? Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/books/review/whom-or-what areliterary-prizes-for.html Munday, J. (2012). Introducing Translation Studies Theories and Applications. Abingdon: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Pym, A. (2009). Exploring Translation Theories. London and New York: Routledge. ———. (2017). Humanizing translation history. HERMES—Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 22(42), 23–48. https://doi.org/10.7146/hjlcb.v22i42.96845 Shamma, T. (2016). Arabic literature in translation: Politics and poetics, 2 (June), 7–11. Showcase. (2019, May 23). In The Man Booker International Prize 2019 | Literature |Showcase. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7dp-OOGjDY&t=263s Shusha, Z. (2016, July). 14 ,‫هل يترجم الغرب األدب العربي ليؤكد فكرته عن الشرق المتخلف؟‬. Retrieved from https://raseef22.com/article/28106 Snaije, O. (2011, March  01). Arabic and Hebrew: The Politics of Literary Translation. Retrieved October  2, 2019, from https://publishingperspectives.com/2011/03/arabicand-hebrew-the-politics of literary-translation/ Toury, G. (2012). Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Wehr, H. (1974). A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (Arabic-English) (Cowan, J. M., Eds., Third Edition). London: Macdonald & Evans LTD.

13 TRANSLATING “NATION” IN LATE QING CHINA The discourse and power of nation in the remaking of Chinese society, 1895–1911 Qing Cao

Introduction In the study of the Chinese nation, a crucial problem lies in different understandings of “nation” inside and outside of China.1 Duara (1993, p. 1) summarises it succinctly: most sinologists view the Chinese nation as a relatively recent development . . . this contrasts with the view of Chinese nationalists and the ordinary people of China that their country is an ancient body that has evolved into present times. Crucial in this split understanding is the existence of different conceptual frames applied by those inside and outside of China. In the West, nation is understood as part of a new political structure of nation-state that expresses itself as a sovereign subject of history superseding traditional dynasties. In China, however, people see their nation as an old ethnic body of civilisation dating back to three millennia. The incongruence is created in part by the translation of “nation” as minzu (民族 people’s lineage) into Chinese in late Qing. As a term, “minzu” has never fully conveyed the meaning of nation. As indicated by the semantics of min (民) and zu (族), the Chinese translation points to the “lineage” (zu) of a “people” (min). Joining min and zu as a rendition for “nation”, however, is not of Chinese origin. It is loaned from Japanese as a Japanese translation of “nation”. Rather than seeing minzu as an erroneous translation, this study examines the role that different renditions of nation plays in the social changes of late Qing society. Seeing translation as a conceptual transfer drawing on Melvin Richter (2005), I discuss the political dynamics behind the ascent of minzu as a dominant translation. Moreover, I probe into the crucial, and yet neglected, issue of the impact of the discourse of

194  Qing Cao

nation on the epistemic remapping in late Qing. Key to my analysis is the way in which different renditions are temporally enmeshed with historical semantics but spatially reconfigured from its Western origin. I argue that, far from being a linear linguistic transfer of ideas across civilisational boundaries, the discourse of nation is part and parcel of China’s socio-political struggle to cope with the onset of modernity to survive in the western-dominated “modern” world. Translating “nation” into Chinese illustrates the process of adopting, negotiating and creatively appropriating an alien system of values, institutions and practices to deal with a national crisis triggered by external colonialism and imperialism.

Translating “nation”: the historical conditions Nation is generally understood as a territorial community with a population united by a common history, culture or language. As a modern invention, the concept of nation has been extensively discussed. Hobsbawm highlights the constructive nature of nation: “if the nation had anything in common from the popular-revolutionary point of view, it was not, in any fundamental sense, ethnicity, language and the like, though these could be indications of collective belonging also” (Hobsbawm, 1990, p. 20). Seeing nationalism as a function of modernity, Gellner (2006) argues it is nationalism that produces nations rather than the other way around. For Gellner, nation and nationalism are inevitable consequences of industrialism in Western Europe. The idea of nation as a neologism started to appear in China in the 19th century, but it was used only 13 times before China’s 1895 defeat in the Sino-Japanese War (Jin & Liu, 2009, p. 561).2 However, after 1895, the use of the term minzu as a dominant rendition of nation rose sharply within heated debates about China’s post-war crisis. In 1901, Liang Qichao (1873–1929), arguably the most influential cultural leader at this time, coined the term zhongguo minzu (China nation 中国 民族) in his article “On Chinese history”. A year later he changed it to zhonghua minzu (Chinese nation 中华民族)—a term that has been used to this day. Liang believed that it was critical to build a nation to mount an effective defence against external aggressions. The view was shared by Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925), the father of Chinese revolution, who led a revolutionary republicanism that succeeded in overthrowing the Qing Dynasty and established the Republic of China in 1911. Nation as a translated concept must be understood within this backdrop of rapid, volatile and often violent changes around the turn of the 20th century in the last decade of the Qing Empire. In this context, translation acted primarily as an effective strategy to acquire tools for national salvation. Consequently, this determined the expedient nature of translation that prioritised sociopolitical efficacy over linguistic accuracy. As large quantities of European concepts flowed into China, modern Chinese political discourse was shaped significantly by the terms coined and normalised as translations of Western notions. Kurtz (2001, p. 147) perceptively observes: far from serving as simple equivalents of imported ways of understanding, many terms of foreign origin have unfolded a life of their own in modern

Translating “nation” in late Qing China  195

Chinese contexts. More often than not, they have acquired new meanings that creatively alter, extend, or even undermine established European conceptions. To appreciate the semantic and conceptual differences between the source terms and their Chinese renditions, we need to examine the multilayered process of translation and appropriation from which these terms have emerged. There were two major phases3 of translation in late Qing, paralleling two waves of external conflicts. The first was the 1860–1900 period, in which a total of 555 books were translated—five times more than the first half of the century (Xing, 2011, p. 9). The flurry of translation activities was integral to the 1861–95 SelfStrengthening Movement (洋务ff动) that the government launched in response to two unequal treaties imposed on China—the 1858 Treaty of Tianjin,4 and the 1860 Treaty of Peking.5 The movement introduced European technology, especially the technology of war. Under the mantra of “learning from the barbarians to defeat the barbarians”, many translation agencies sprang to existence, including the renowned government-sponsored Jiangnan Arsenal’s Translation House (江南 制造局翻译馆) in Shanghai which translated the largest number of books during this period, as well as the Jingshi Tongwen Guan6 (京师同文馆) in Peking. As a result of the desire to establish a modern industry and defence force, over 70% of the translations were in the sciences and applied subjects. The second phase of translation occurred during the last decade of the Qing Dynasty, from 1900 to the 1911 Xinhai Revolution. This period parallels the dual political movements of revolutionary republicanism and constitutional monarchism. The upsurge of translation and rise of political movements were prompted by China’s defeat in the 1894–5 Sino-Japanese War, and the 1900 occupation of Peking by the Eight Nation Alliance forces.7 Over this decade, around 1,600 Western books were translated, doubling the total number of the previous 90 years. Significantly, most translations were in the social sciences, humanities and the arts. Compared to the premise of Chinese cultural superiority that underpinned the Self-Strengthening Movement, both republicanism and constitutional monarchism were underpinned by the newly introduced Western assumptions, values and institutions. The second phase falls within the “threshold period” (Sattelzeit) of China’s “conceptual history” (Begriffsgeschichte). Conceptual history, as the study of historical semantics of key social and political terms, examines the paradigmatic shift of ideas and values reflected in the change of language use. Of central importance is the emergence of a “threshold period” in which new concepts arise and create fresh episteme within the social, political and economic language. The threshold period in modern China is broadly believed to have occurred between the military defeat in 1895 and the 1919 May Fourth Movement that inaugurated popular participation of politics in China. During this “threshold period”, a cultural rupture occurred when the elites cast doubts over traditional values and looked to the West for inspiration and intellectual resources to resolve a national crisis (Cao, 2017). Significantly, it is during this period that a large number of neologisms flowed from Japan to China as loanwords. Most of

196  Qing Cao

these neologisms are Japanese translations of Western books. Popular loanwords included the aforementioned “minzu”, along with such concepts as ziyou (自由, liberty), shehui (社会 society), jieji (阶级 class) and zhengfu (政府 government). It is important to note the conceptual transfer from the West to China, however, is different from other Asian countries. Despite an eroded sovereignty, China was never fully colonised and subjugated to foreign rule. Conversion to an alien value system and style of thought was internally driven rather than externally imposed as in the case of the Indian subcontinent. Of equal importance is the strong centralised power that Chinese elites believed was essential for China’s political modernisation. This context gives translation an extra potency as a greater and more complex space existed for conceptual innovation. Traditional China saw itself as the centre of the world in a universalist view of “all-under-heaven” (tianxia 天下). In the Sinocentric world, the centre of huaxia (华夏 China) and its peripheral yi (夷 barbarians) were defined culturally rather than ethnically—peripheral peoples were dealt with by their level of acceptance of Chinese culture. The Chinese empire expanded or contracted in accordance with its cultural influence, though backed by military power. Steeped in European interstate politics, the idea of “nation” encountered immense difficulties in registering in the Chinese mind. For Chinese people, the characters min (民) and zu (族) that comprise minzu conjured up meanings embedded in Chinese tradition. Min referred to an unspecified collective in relation to the emperor and was conventionally understood as containing four social strata—shi (士 scholars), nong (农 farmers), gong (工 artisans) and shang (商 merchants).8 These social strata were arranged in a hierarchy with the shi scholars fulfilling the highest position, followed by the nong peasantry, whilst the gong artisans and shang merchants occupying the bottom. Aware of the challenges of promoting “nation”, Sun Yat-sen lamented: “there is no nationalism in China but familism and clannism. Foreign observers see the Chinese as a heap of loose sand . . . Chinese unity is limited to the clan and has never been extended to the nation”2 (Sun, 1924/2011, p. 5). To build a collective “imagined community” (Anderson, 1983) of Chinese nation, the elites underscored the imperative of collective “national” strength in the fight for the survival of the Chinese civilisation in a Darwinian world. Translation as a conceptual negotiation and reinvention was a crucial site of discursive struggle for competing visions of the world. The task of translating “nation” became a contest between two epistemological traditions where “the irreducible differences between them are fought out, authorities evoked or challenged, ambiguities dissolved or created, and so forth, until new words and meanings emerge in the target language itself” (Liu, 1996, p. 6). Establishing nation as valid concept entails confronting the Chinese jia-guo-tianxia (家国天下 familyimperial court-tianxia) system with the European paradigm of nation-state. The jia-guo-tianxia structure had existed in China since its first unification (221BC) as a fundamental and unified worldview. It is a continuum from the small and specific to the large and abstract in an integrated cultural and political order where people make sense of the world. Family as the core from which the entire world

Translating “nation” in late Qing China  197

was imagined as “all under heaven” provided essential principles of human relationships, morality and power structure. Originally a principality under the feudal system before the 221BC unification, guo has been transformed since then into an entirely different political institution—the imperial court that presided over the Chinese empire as well as the tianxia—the cultural and moral order of the universal world. The introduction of nation meant essentially this long-held worldview had to be radically modified and reconfigured to adjust to the new reality of China being only one country in the world, and a rather weak one. It entails a swift shift in conceptual map from the Sinocentric tianxia to the European Westphalian world of nations.

Negotiating nation: the minzu-guomin-guojia trinity Minzu as “nation” therefore sits uneasily in the juncture between tradition and modernity, China and the West. The intricacy of minzu lies in combining the two characters min and zu—each with its own etymological origin. Though recognised as a foreign neologism, minzu makes sense to the Chinese primarily within its historical semantics embedded in traditional epistemology. Joining two characters in creating a new term was an innovative element of translation. Traditionally, the single-character words min (民), zu (族), and lei (类) were used to indicate social groupings. To express “nation” in Chinese, a plethora of words (see Table 13.1) were employed from the 1850s to the 1910s (Matten, 2012, p. 72) in a wide range of texts and contexts. Eventually minzu gained the dominant usage since 1895 TABLE 13.1  Different translations of “nation”

No.

Translation

Area One—Lineage 1 民族 minzu 2 种类 zhonglei 3 族类 zulei 4 族种 zuzhong 5 民种 minzhong Area Two—State 6 国家 guojia 7 国族 guozu 8 邦 bang 9 国 guo 10 邦国 bangguo Area Three—People 11 国民 guomin 12 民 min 13 一国之人 yiguozhiren 14 百姓 baixing 15 纳慎 naxun

Meaning in English

Historical origins

People’s lineage race people in the same clan race race

southern dynasty (420–589AD) pre-Qin term (221BC) pre-Qin term (221BC) translation (late Qing) translation (late Qing)

state, country state lineage large country small country country

Western Han (206–23BC) pre-Qin term (221BC) pre-Qin term (221BC) pre-Qin term (221BC) pre-Qin term (221BC)

people in a country people people in a country populace nation

pre-Qin term (221BC) pre-Qin term (221BC) translation (late Qing) pre-Qin term (221BC) sound translation (late Qing)

198  Qing Cao

as the standard translation of nation, guozu (国族 state lineage) has nonetheless retained a stable currency to this day, especially in Taiwan. All other translations have long been forgotten. Most of these renditions were double-character words formed by different combinations of single-character words. They are situated in three categories of historical semantics—lineage (Area One), state (Area Two) and People (Area Three). Incidentally, they correspond to what Xu (2017, p. 11) proposes as a tripartite translation of nation—minzu, guojia and guomin. They are also identical to Fang’s (2002, p. 21) conclusion that nation covers three aspects of semantics captured in three single-character words—zu (lineage), guo (state) and min (people). Other scholars came to a similar view. Rei (1972, p. 4) suggests the trinity of minzu, guojia and guozu as an appropriate equivalent to nation. Whilst Lobscheid (1869, p. 1211) translated “nation” with three single-character terms—min, guo, bang (state) in his 1869 English and Chinese Dictionary. In Area One, the five renditions are different combinations of only four characters—zu, zhong, lei and min. Except min, they were used in classical Chinese to refer to ancestral lineage. Zu means kinship of blood relations. Zhong originally indicated seeds of grain and category whilst Lei denoted typology. The term zulei is rooted in etymological origin that connotates an us-versus-them distinction. It suggests an exclusionary nature of group differentiation akin to “nation”. For example, Zuozhuan (左传 The Spring and Autumn Annals, 770–476BC), one of China’s oldest historical chronicles, states: “those from outside our clan must have a different mind (非我族类, 其心必异)”. The terms zhonglei and zuzhong are synonyms to zulei though in much less use. Only minzhong and zuzhong are coined words in late Qing for rendering “nation”, though both point to patrimonial descent. As shown in Table  13.1, most terms existed in pre-Qin (221BC) classics. Hao Shiyuan (2004) postulates that minzu as a double-character word first appeared in the Southern Dynasty (420–502AD) in the book On the Xia-Yi Distinction (Xia means China, and Yi means barbarians) written by a Taoist monk Gu Huan. Since then minzu acquired two areas of meaning—a clan-based community, and the differentiation between China and its peripheries in what is known as peripheral peoples surrounding China—dong yi (东夷 eastern yi), bei di (北狄 northern di), xi rong (西戎 western rong) and nan man (南蛮 southern man). Locating at the centre of tianxia, the term huaxia, the traditional word for China, typifies a collective self-referent that represents an awareness of the Chinese as one cultural group. Primordial clannism and culturalism are therefore inscribed in minzu rooted in traditional epistemology. However, clannism and culturalism embedded in minzu evolved differently in late Qing. Whilst culturalism represented by Confucianism suffered sustained setbacks and remained largely in the background, clannism grew steadily as the primary milieu of ethnic nationalism. The cultural appeal of the term huaxia shifted away from Confucian intellectual traditions to the legendary Huangdi (黄帝 Yellow Emperor, 2717–2599) as the origin of Chinese race in the last decade of Qing Dynasty. Huangdi as a mythical king noted in the Records of the Grand

Translating “nation” in late Qing China  199

Historian (史记, 91BC) was reinstated as the ancestor of Chinese nation, together with another mythical king Yandi (炎帝) of the same period. With declining cultural confidence and growing nationalist sentiment, minzu focused on primordial yanhuang zisun (炎黄子孙 descendants of Huangdi and Yandi) in a genealogical ancestralism. Min in minzu became defined as offspring of yanhuang race; while zu acquired a racial undertone of patrimonial descent. Minzu thus fused popular culture of ethnic descent with an intellectual discourse of quasi-biological lineage. Yanhuang zisun functions as a condensed symbol of a fictive genealogy for late Qing political actions against Manchu rulers in the revolutionary republican movement. Indeed, Sun Yat-sen’s early nationalism was defined largely by an anti-Manchuism that underscored Han ethnicity. Nonetheless he changed this stance immediately after the 1911 Xinhai Revolution for a five-ethnicities republicanism that includes the Hans, Manchus, Mongols, Hui and Tibetans. Minzu thus reconfigured nation into people’s linage comprising ancestry and territory. In Area Two, all five terms point to the notion of guojia. But crucially, they are classical words used in a completely new sense to indicate the newly imported Western concept of “state”. Guo and bang as single-character words are synonyms to guojia. The characters jia (家 family) and zu, when combined with guo (guojia and guozu), produce a specific understanding of the state modelled on familial relationship and moral code. It is significant that all five terms are still in use today, though divorced from the notion of nation except guozu. Guojia has become now the standard translation of “state”. The five terms in Area Three are relatively straightforward. Except naxun as a sound translation of nation, all four terms indicate an unspecified population within a country. But it is the term guomin that has stood out as a significant concept. Though closely associated with nation, it has eventually acquired an independent status as a separate term no longer deemed as a translation of nation, but people in a modern state. The decoupling of guomin with nation represents the full appropriation of nation by minzu. Nonetheless, guomin as new neologism played an essential role in the transformation of Chinese society together with minzu.

Nation as minzu and guomin: the Japanese connections The late Qing understanding of “nation” is intricately linked to Japan. Most scholars believe the usage of the terms minzu and guomin were loaned from Japan in the 1900s (Bastid-Bruguiere, 2004; Wang, 2010). They were brought to China through the writings of such key exponents of nation as Liang Qichao and Wang Jingwei (1883–1944). It is through such writings that the two terms started to take on fresh meanings based on European political theories of nation, and therefore are crucially different from their previous usages (Jin & Liu, 2009) in classical Chinese. Influenced by theories about nation in Japan, Chinese elites living in Japan took minzu and guomin as key conceptual frames in their blueprint to reform the declining empire. The sharp rise of minzu and guomin as popular terms in political discourse paralleled an upsurge of political activities of Chinese

200  Qing Cao

students and scholars in Japan. However, what they took back home is a particular patrimonial-based understanding of nation. This is partly a result of Japanese elites approaching the concept of the “nation” from the perspective of minzu in Japan’s specific historical circumstances. Japan became aware of the idea of “nation” after the arrival of “Perry’s black ships” from the United States during 1853–4. To meet the challenge of Western colonialism, Japanese Meiji reformers strove to transform their feudal shogunate into a modern nation-state. However, at the time, no Japanese word could express nation in both its political and cultural dimensions. Nation was therefore translated into two words—guomin and minzu. However, these two terms are written in Japanese kanji—the Japanese word for Chinese characters (hanzi) that Japan borrowed from China over a thousand years ago. For Chinese living in Japan, these terms in Chinese characters represented no linguistic barrier, though to acquire them conceptually is heavily influenced by the way they were explained in the translated texts, and the texts that were chosen to be translated. As the major books that Chinese elites such as Liang Qichao and Wang Jingwei read about nation and state were written by the Swiss-German jurist Johann Kaspar Bluntschli (1808–81) who was popular in Meiji Japan, the Chinese understanding of minzu and guomin had distinctive German characteristics. In fact, in early Meiji period other renditions of nation existed, such as minzhong, zhongzu and zumin—all in Chinese characters as Japanese kanji. The first two words were exactly the same as the Chinese renditions (see Table 1) though pronounced differently in Japanese. The term guomin designates nation as a political community, emphasising the rights of people in relation to the state—this is entirely different from its classical use in ancient Chinese texts that means “people in a fenjian principality”— whereas minzu expresses nation as a cultural community with a shared ethnic origin, again different from its classical use. The two renditions are linked to two phases of Japanese understanding of nation. The first occurred in the early Meiji period during the liberal civil rights movement (1874–90) that promoted individuals’ rights and popular participation in politics. Nation as guomin was perceived as an effective way of building a modern Japan, inspired by the French Revolution’s sprit of liberty and equality. Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901), a leading Meiji thinker, criticised Japan as having only a government, but no guomin. The Meiji government however emphasised a different dimension of guomin—to build a guomin-state following the German model of accentuating people’s obligations to the state. The second phase began in 1888 during the “national essence” campaign. Intellectuals such as Shiga Shigetaka (1862–1927) and Kuga Katsunan (1857– 1907) advocated the preservation of Japanese cultural identity and national characteristics in opposition to extreme forms of Westernisation. Shigetaka translated “nationality” as guocui, (国粹 national essence) in kanji; this is understood as the history, tradition and culture that underpins a minzu. Such an understanding helped forge the Japanese nation as being synonymous with the Yamato— the dominant ethnic group in Japan. Shifting the focus from guomin to minzu,

Translating “nation” in late Qing China  201

Japanese understanding of nation moved from political community building to cultural community building. However, the popularity of minzu rests primarily upon the notion of a single-ethnicity nation. Significantly, it is the second phase of Japanese nation-building that Chinese elites witnessed in Japan. Key late Qing thinkers on nation-building, including Liang Qichao, Sun Yat-sen, Wang Jingwei and Zhang Taiyan (1869–1936), lived in Japan during this time. It is not surprising that, at the time, all seminal texts about the Chinese nation were written in Japan. Wang (2010) argued that the attraction of minzu to Chinese elites lay in their consonance with Japanese nationalism that underscored the unity of a single ethnicity with a single state. As a racially homogeneous country, with 98% of the population identifying themselves as Yamato, Japan favours and prizes a full identification of the political and ethnocultural community. The single-nation state is embedded in the institution of the Imperial House of Japan, with the Emperor as heir of an unbroken royal lineage, the longest in the world, symbolising the modern state and unity of the people. Reinstated to the centre of Japanese politics during the Meiji Restoration (1868–1912), the Emperor was installed as a centrepiece of Japan’s modern nation-state. By uniting the nation with the state, the Emperor was transformed from representing a regal lineage of a traditional ruling house to a “national” lineage of the modern state. The Japanese imprint of the Chinese understanding of nation is visible in late Qing nation-building campaigns. The drive for a single-nation state was reflected in Sun Yat-sen’s early political discourse of driving out the ethnic Manchus (驱除 鞑虏) who had ruled China since 1644, in order to establish a Chinese republic. Conceived as a political and ethnic revolution, the campaign appealed to Han ethnic nationalism. Thus, minzuzhuyi (民族主义 nationalism) became the first of Sun’s three people’s principles (三民主义). In his cultural discourse of nationbuilding, Liang Qichao strove to build a multi-ethnic nation-state. By coining the term zhong hua min zu (Chinese nation), Liang created a distinctive discourse of a single-nation state. Zhong hua min zu comprises a combination of a territory (zhong as China), culture (hua as Chinese culture), people (min as population) and descent (zu as lineage). It is understandably easier for minzu to represent a Japanese population that is 98% Yamato because ethnicity and nation are broadly aligned. For late Qing China, such an alignment is far more complicated given the existence of more and larger ethnic groups such as the Manchus, Mongols, Hui and Tibetans. Minzu as a Japanese loanword obfuscates the “multi-ethnic state” and “Chinese nation” when minzu can be understood as both ethnicity and nation. The semantic tension within minzu created by its multiple interpretations became magnified in late Qing’s discourse of a multi-ethnic but single-nation in China. It eventually grew into a recurring “nationality issue”—how to align multiple ethnicities with a single nation-state. In the current expression “China is a unified multi-minzu state”, minzu has to be understood as ethnicity; but in the term zhong hua min zu (Chinese nation), minzu has to be understood as a nation. In tracing the migration of “minzu” from Japan to China, Wang (2010) argues that late Qing intellectuals did not fully grasp the notion of minzu. In their efforts to

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develop political consciousness of guomin, they appealed to ethnic minzu nationalism. Consequently, instead of building a guomin-state as intended, they ended up in building a minzu-state because they mistook minzu-building as guominbuilding. However, this argument misses an important point. Equating minzu rather than guomin to nation reflects the priority of late Qing nation-building in China’s unique historical circumstances, rather than the misunderstanding of the term minzu or guomin. As Qin (2015, p. 325) argues, the Meiji Restoration (1868–1912) established the Emperor as a symbol of absolute power to unify a fragmented Japan by abolishing the feudal shogunates, just as the first Chinese Emperor Qin (259–210BC) established an absolute power to unify a warring China (221BC) by abolishing the fenjian (封建9 a system of principalities) system. Meiji reformers reinstated the Emperor for a modern state grounded in a trinity of minzu as a single-ethnic nation, guomin as a politically conscious people and guojia as a constitutional state. But for the late Qing anti-establishment elites, they prioritised the dismantling of the deep-rooted centralised power of the twomillennia Imperial House and shifting the authority and power to the new state. In their efforts to build a modern state, guomin-building became to a large extent a key approach to creating a new centralised authority and power capable of pushing for modernisation programmes effectively.

Re-configuring guomin and minzu in China Late Qing anti-establishment forces did not overlook the idea of guomin. In fact, guomin resonated more prominently than minzu in the political discourse of nation-state building. It is epitomised in the high-profile press debate between two influential newspapers, the constitutional monarchist xinmin congbao (1902–7) and revolutionary republican minbao (1905–10)—both were anti-establishment papers operating in Japan but circulated in China and overseas Chinese communities. In the combined database of the two papers, guomin ranks 5th in a frequency count of concept nouns, while minzu10 ranks only 37th. The difference reflects the roles the two terms played in late Qing nation-building discourse. In Japan, both guomin and minzu were seen as objectives, though the later took a more prominent role. In late Qing, however, guomin was taken primarily as a tool of nationstate building while minzu as a goal in pursuing a single-nation state. Guomin therefore took to centre stage as a people-building campaign, the success of which was believed would lead to the birth of a minzu and state. As the most prolific and consequential writer on the Chinese nation and state, Liang Qichao sees guominbuilding essentially as a transfer of an individual’s loyalty from the family to the state. This is the main thrust of his popular text Xinmin Shuo (新民说 On New People)—a collection of 20 essays published in Xinmin Congbao between 1902 to 1906. Striving to build a new people out of the peasantry he deemed as bumin (部民 clan people), Liang reinterpreted guomin as those who recognise the importance and power of the state. Guomin were portrayed as opposite to bumin who were narrow-minded and fiercely loyal only to a family-based clan

Translating “nation” in late Qing China  203

and indifferent to the larger interests of qun (群 a grouping beyond the face-toface community). For Liang, xinmin (新民 new people) were guomin transformed from being bumin: At the beginning of human society, there existed only bumin, but no guomin. For bumin to evolve into guomin is to transform people from savagery to civilisation. But what distinguishes bumin from guomin? Those living in clans and evolving naturally into their own system of customs are bumin; those versed in state consciousness with political capability of governance are guomin. There does not exist in the world a state that does not have guomin with such a consciousness.11 (Liang, 2013, p. 43) The understanding of guomin resonates with a Bluntschlian interpretation of volk. Bluntschli equates German “volk” to the Anglo-French “nation” as a political idea; while equating German “nation” to the English “people”—both referring to culture and civilisation. In distinguishing cultural and political dimensions of “nation”, Bluntschli (1875/2000, p. 79) argues: The political idea is expressed in English by nation, and in German by volk. Etymology is in favour of German usage, for the word natio (from nasci) points to birth and race, volk and populus rather to the public life of a state. Liang apparently understood minzu in its cultural dimension and guomin in its political dimension. This is where the problem lies—the normative understanding of nation comprises both culture and politics as illustrated by Gellner’s (2006, pp. 6–7) definition of nation: Two men are of the same nation if and only if they share the same culture . . . and if and when the members of the same category firmly recognise certain mutual rights and duties to each other in virtue of their shared membership of it. Relying primarily on the Bluntschli’s state theory, Liang took the political dimension away from minzu in understanding guomin as volk. Nation is left to orient entirely to culture and civilisation. In his 1903 article “Theories of the great political scientist Bluntschli” published in xinmin congbao, Liang (1999, vol 2, pp. 1067–8) defined minzu as having eight characteristics—all orienting toward culture and civilisation: (1) (2) (3) (4)

common land of settlement from the beginning; common bloodline from the beginning; common phenotypical appearance; common language;

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(5) (6) (7) (8)

common written system; common religion; common traditions and customs; common livelihood.

In the same article, guomin is defined in two political dimensions. Firstly, it refers to those who recognise the state as an organic body and are capable of political expression as well as understanding the entitlements of rights. Secondly, they must also see themselves as members of a corporate body of the state. For Liang, minzu had the potential to become a state if only bumin could be turned into guomin. This is why Liang regarded traditional China consisting only of bumin. In other words, turning minzu to a state required the magic bonding agent of guomin. Sharing Bluntschli’s suspicions of the French style of liberty, Liang was keen to underscore state authority and was deeply wary of the liberty of people. Indeed, he regarded individual liberty as a threat to rather than a prerequisite of guominbuilding. Effectively, Liang endeavoured to turn the traditional subject-emperor relationship to a modern guomin-state relationship, though the former is symbolic and culturally defined while the latter is substantive and politically-defined. The ethno-cultural-based understanding of minzu became attractive to Liang as he believed China’s weakness lay in a fragmented, localised identity of patrilineal linage that hindered national unity. Such thinking motivated his people-building campaign to produce modern guomin, emphasising their allegiance to the state, rather than their rights as autonomous individuals. This explains the prevalence of the term guomin over the term minzu in the late Qing. As shown in Figures 1 and 2, guomin has a much higher visibility than minzu in usage. Statistics in Figures 1 and 2 are taken from “The Database for the study of modern Chinese thought and literature, 1830–1930” that consists of 120 million words from newspapers, magazines, books and translations from 1830 to 1930.12 It is significant that the term gongmin (公民 citizen) has an even lower usage (Figure 1). Gongmin as a translation of, and equivalent in semantics to, “citizen” is what was generally understood as the civic dimension of nation. As shown in Figure 1, gongmin never took off as a political term in late Qing. Parallel to gongmin is the low usage of “democracy” (民主 minzu) and “civil rights” (民权 minquan) (see Figure 2). What dominated the late Qing political discourse is a trinity of guojia-guomin-minzu where constitutionalists and republicans gave primacy to the idea of modern state represented by guojia. Constitutionalists emphasised the authority of and people’s allegiance to the state through guomin-building; and republicans emphasised the power of the state representing the Chinese nation through minzu-building. Guomin-building became a battle with traditional bumin mentality rather than for civil rights as assumed in normative theory of nation-building. Both minzu and guomin were reconstituted from the Japanese loanwords as Chinese discourse of state-building.

Translating “nation” in late Qing China  205 5000

4500 4000

4307

guomin 3906

word frequency

3500 3000 2500 2000

2632

2568

minzu 2268 guojia 2070 1471

1000

0

gongmin 49 1903

FIGURE 13.1 

1535

1065

421

500

1676

1601

1551

1500

13

12 128

325 31

1906

1913

1915

345

687 680 15

73

1919

1926

Word frequency of key concepts, 1903–1926

45000 40000

39955 34080

Word Frequency

35000 30000 25000 20000 15000

11915

10000 5482

5000 0 FIGURE 13.2 

2707

guojia (state)

guomin

minzu

Democracy

Word frequency of key concepts, 1830–1930

Civil rights

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The consequences of translating “nation” Richter (2005, p. 16) argues that the understanding of translation as intercultural communication is flawed by inequalities of power in colonial or semi-colonial settings. In late Qing China however, the situation is more complex. Translation played a far greater and active role in generating momentous changes unforeseen by those involved in the process. In identifying with European concepts, the elites were more interested in appropriating those concepts for Chinese nation-state building in ways similar to acquiring Western technology. This is what Liu (1995) emphasises as the creative, even empowering element of translation by native agents who construct new and more effective terms for foreign concepts. The conceptual transfer of “nation” to China as minzu contributed to fundamental alternation of identities. Traditionally, the Chinese self-other distinction was marked by a lifestyle grounded in the mode of production—China as the agrarian centre and the rest as nomadic and hunter-gathering peripheries. The agrarian society was sustained by Confucian tradition that prioritised compromise to minimise disruptions of agricultural production. The huayi zhibian (华夷之辩)—distinction between the Chinese and the “barbarians”—served to reinforce a lifestyle rather than a political identity for external competition or a racial identity for political domination. As no political bond existing among numerous self-sustained farming communities, the collective security was provided by the imperial court that organised military expeditions to push back sporadic nomadic incursions. The imperial court presided over a symbolic tianxia—a set of universalist cultural principles that combined cosmic, political and moral orders. Between the throne presiding over the tianxia and the family commanding people’s loyalty existed a large historical community that did not have a term to designate it. Traditionally, this community was named after the reigning dynasty such as Han (206BC–220), Tang (618–907), Song (960–1279) and Qing (1644–1912). China, as it is known today, only became the official name after the collapse of the dynastic empire in 1911. Traditional China is best described as a cultural entity with a centralised political structure rather than a political entity. All this was changed with the introduction of “nation” from Europe when entirely new relationships were imagined and organised for millions of isolated communities. The idea of “nation” therefore helped transform China from a cultural to a political entity, from a face-to-face local community to a gigantic minzu community of strangers and from a universalist empire to a particularistic nation-state.

Notes 1 The production of this article is supported by the Open World Research Initiative (OWRI) grant of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). 2 The count only includes the dominant translation of nation as minzu. 3 In a major study of the flow of Western ideas into late Qing China, Yuezhi Xing (2011, 6–12) summaries four phases, but it is the last two phases that had a major impact on China that I discuss here.

Translating “nation” in late Qing China  207

4 It includes three separate documents —The Sino-Anglo-French Treaty, The SinoRussian Treaty and the Sino-American Treaty. They were signed as a settlement of the first phase of the Second Opium War (1856–60). 5 The Treaty also consists of three separate documents —“The Sino-British Treaty”, “The Sino-French Treaty” and “The Sino-Russian Treaty” signed when the AngloFrench Expedition to China occupied Peking in October 1860 as the final settlement of the Second Opium War. During the occupation, the Yihe Royal Place was burnt down. The Qing government finally gave in to all demands of the invading powers. 6 It was established as a school to train people with foreign languages skills, in response to the demand in the Treaty of Tianjin that all future official texts of the treaty must be in English and French. 7 The Alliance consists of Germany, Japan, Russia, Britain, France, the United States, Italy and Austria-Hungary. 8 Such social stratification occurred during the Warring States (475–221BC) period as described in the Confucian classic Guliang Zhuan (谷粱传) that chronicled Warring States history, though Guliang Zhuan was written only in East Han dynasty (25–220AD). The explanatory note in the book defines the four social strata as “scholars enjoying high status due to their superior virtues; farmers cultivate and farm the land; artisans making utensils with their ingenuity and hands; and merchants facilitating the flow of finance and goods”. 9 The Chinese fenjian system is different from the European feudal system though it is erroneously translated as “feudal” in English. 10 The full database of the two newspapers amount to six million words. 11 The translation from the Chinese text to English is my own. 12 The data was developed by the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Taiwan National Chengchi University.

Bibliography Anderson, B. (1983). The Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Bastid-Bruguiere, M. (2004). The Japanese-induced German connection of modern Chinese ideas of the state: Liang Qichao and the Guojia Lun of J.K. Bluntschli. In J. A. Fogel (Ed.), The Role of Japan in Liang Qichao’s introduction of Modern Western Civilisation to China (pp. 105–24). Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California. Bluntschli, J. K. (1875/2000). The theory of the state. In Botache Books. Retrieved from https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/bluntschli/TheState.pdf Cao, Q. (2017). Rupture of modernity: A case study of radicalism in the late Qing Chinese press debate. Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies, 31(6), 9–28. Duara, P. (1993). De-constructing the Chinese nation The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, 30, 1–26. Fang, W. G. (方维规) (2002). On nation and China in modern intellectual history (论 近代思想史上的民族、nation 与中国). Twenty-First Century (二十一世纪), 70(4), 33–43. Gellner, E. (2006). Nations and Nationalism (2nd ed.). Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Hao, S. Y. 郝时远 (2004). A study of the origin of the Chinese term “Minzu” (中文“民族” 一词源流考辩). Journal of Ethnicity Studies (民族研究). 2004(6), 60–69. Hobsbawm, E. J. (1990). Nations and Nationalism Since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Jin, G. T., & Liu, Q. F. (金观涛 刘青峰) (2009). A Study of the History of Ideas: The Formation of Important Modern Political Terminologies in China (观念史研究: 中国现代 重要政治术语的形成). Beijing: Falu chubanshe. Kurtz, J. (2001). Coming to terms with logic: The naturalization of an occidental notion in China. In M. Lackner, A. Iwo, & J. Kurtz (Eds.), New Terms for New Ideas: Western Knowledge and Lexical Change in Late Imperial China (pp. 147–75). Leiden: Brill. Liang, Q. C. (梁启超). (1999). The Complete Work of Liang Qichao, Vol 2 (梁启超全集第 二集). Beijing: Beijing chubanshe. ———. (2013). 新民说 (On New People). Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe. Liu, L. (1995). Translingual Practice: Literature, National Character, and Translated Modernity—China 1900–1937. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. (1996). Translingual practice: The discourse of individualism between China and the West. In W. Dissanayake (Ed.), Narratives of Agency: Self-marking in China, India and Japan. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Lobscheid, W. (1869). English and Chinese Dictionary, Part III. Hong Kong: Daily Press Office. Matten, M. (2012). China is the China of the Chinese: The concept of nation and its impact on political thinking in modern China. Oriens Extremus, 51, 63–106. Qin, H. (秦晖) (2015). Out of Imperial System: A Historical Overview from Late Qing to Republic of China (走出帝制:从晚清到民国的历史回望). Beijing: Qunzhong chubanshe. Rei, Y. F. (芮逸夫) (1972). On the Chinese state-nation (中华国族解). In The Chinese Nation and Culture (中华民族及其文化论稿). Taipei: Yiwen Publishing House (艺 文印书馆). Richter, M. (2005). More than a two-way traffic: Analysing, translating, and comparing political concepts from other cultures. Contributions to the History of Concepts, 1(1), 7–20. Sun, Y. S. (孙中山) (1924/2011). Three Peoples’ Principles (三民主义). Beijing: Zhongguo changan chubanshe. Wang, K. (王珂) (2010). Nation: An error of understanding from Japan (民族: 一个来自 日本的误会). Minzuxue yu shehui kexue tongxun (民族学与社会学通讯), 70, 1–12. Xing, Y. Z. (熊月之) (2011). The migration of western learning to China and the late Qing society (西学东渐与晚清社会). Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe. Xu, J. L. (许纪霖) (2017). State-nation, nation and ethnic group: Chinese nation as a statenation (国族、民族与族群：作为国族的中华民族如何可能). Northwest Journal of Ethnicity (西北民族研究), 95(4), 10–20.

14 ELIZA’S TWO VOICES AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF WOMEN’S IDENTITY IN CHINA Yu Jing

Introduction Translation is a site of construction and negotiation of identities. Studies of the relation between translation and identity focus on the individual and collective identities in and around a translation. Research interests in identities constructed within a translation centre on the subjects represented in translated texts to explore the formation, representation and manipulation of their identities in terms of geography, social status, ethnicity, gender, culture and nationality among other things (Espunya  & Pintarić, 2018; Çelik, 2019; Regnoli, 2019). Studies of identities around translation are concerned with subjects such as the author and the translator to shed light on their diasporic, institutional and (non)professional experiences (Setton  & Guo, 2009; Yoo  & Jeong, 2017) as well as their social, ethnic, gender and self-constructed identities (Santaemilia, 2005; Sela-Sheffy, 2014). These studies reveal how identity is created, shaped, constructed and deconstructed in relation to power structures and ideologies as well as social and gender relations in cross-cultural communication. The aim of this chapter is to approach identity translation from the perspective of narrative theory with explorations of how gender identity has been (re)framed in the (re)translation. Studies of identity framing in translation raises the awareness of “the fluidity of meaning(s) and identity(ies)” as well as “the complex workings of language, culture and power” (Santaemilia, 2005, p. 7). This chapter presents a case study of two canonised Chinese translations of Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and describes how the heroine Eliza was given different voices in them. The study draws on the analytical frame work of Baker’s theory of translation as reframing (Baker, 2006, 2007) and Genette’s (1997) theory of paratexts to illustrate how women’s identity in China has been constructed and negotiated in translated texts to promote certain narratives about women. This study provides a

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Chinese perspective to studies of gender politics with insights on how the female identity has been accentuated or erased to accommodate the social and political agendas in different social and historical contexts and to studies of identity translation by illustrating how identity reframing shapes and even reverses the power relation in the source text (ST) for the creation of new narratives in the target text (TT).

Theoretical framework and methodology: framing and paratexts Framing is defined as “an interpretive lens through which people attribute sense to, and make sense of, their world” (Baker, 2008, p. 23). It is “an active strategy that implies agency and by means of which we consciously participate in the construction of reality” (Baker, 2006, p. 106). Baker (2006) adopted the concept as an analytical tool for approaching translation as re-narration. According to Somers and Gibson (1994, p.  59), “it is through narrativity that we come to know, understand and make sense of the social world, and it is through narratives and narrativity that we constitute our social identities”. While narratives are stories people tell to make sense of the reality and shape their identities, framing is the method people use to tell their stories. Identity construction is closely related to narrative as “Identity is that which emerges in and through narrative” (Hinchman & Hinchman, 2001, p. xiv). Narratives construct and negotiate identities and different frames of identities shape and change narratives. Translations are sites of reframing where diverse narratives are created to construct, promote and disseminate ideas about identities. Paratextual devices are found to be powerful in framing and reframing a particular text in a specific context. Paratexts are devices and conventions within the book (peritext) and outside it (epitext), that mediate the book to the reader (Genette, 1997, p. xviii). Peritexts includes texts immediately appended to the body text such as titles, introductions, notes, forewords and appendix, and epitexts those not materially appended to the body text, including interviews and reviews. Paratexts frame the narrative of a book by providing a guiding set of direction for reader’s interpretation (Genette, 1997, p.  2). For example, changing the title of a translated news report can effectively frame the narrative of the events (Baker, 2006, p. 159). Prefaces may try to “consecrate” the translator or to create value for a translated work with their critical appraisals (Tahir-Gürçağlar, 2013, pp. 98–9). Visual means such as colour, images and layout are also quite effective in reframing a narrative in news translation (Baker, 2007, pp. 158–9). Paratextual devices may work independently or in combination with textual strategies including selection, exclusion, elaboration (Hernandez Guerrero, 2010; Károly, 2013). These devices help to construct individual and collective identities, for instance, to frame Iran as an interventionist seeking sectarianism in Bahrain (Shahi & Talebinejad, 2017) or China as an aggressive nation superior to South Korean (Chase, 2019). They may also be employed in literary translation, though

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not as frequently as in media translation, to frame the identities of characters and narrators such as the case with the reframing of the narrator’s voice to reverse the identity of the WWII victims and victimisers in the Korean translation of a fictionalised autobiography (Kim, 2017). The analysis of framing devices is conducted textually and paratextually in this chapter to illustrate how the female identity was constructed in two Chinese translations of Pygmalion. The textual analysis centres on methods used in the translations to differentiate Eliza’s voice from the voices of other characters. The Cockney which Eliza spoke played a central role in the play for the construction and transformation of her social and gender identities. However, it is very difficult to translate it into Chinese since there are no social-status dialects in China equivalent to Cockney. Any attempt to recreate a distinctive voice for Eliza would inevitably involve “selective appropriation” of textual materials “designed to suppress, accentuate or elaborate particular aspects of a narrative encoded in the source text or utterance” (Baker, 2006, p. 114). In this chapter, the analysis includes peritexts, such as the title, preface and notes of the translations, and epitexts, such as essays written by the translator, critical reviews and discussions in textbooks and anthologies about Pygmalion and Shaw. This study also extends the analysis to the intertextuality between the first translation and the retranslation as a framing device. The shared ST suggests some presumed lineage between the first translation and the retranslations as readers normally expect more or less similarities or inheritance between the translations. Readers may understandably “frame” the retranslation based on their experience with the first translation, especially when the first one is canonised and wellknown. The presence or absence of such intertextuality in the text and paratexts of the retranslation may reveal the stance the re-translator takes on or against the first translation, which may have significant influence over the interpretation of the readers. In this sense, the narrative of a retranslation involves double reframing: to reframe the narrative of the ST and that created in first translation. The intertextuality can also provide a perspective to show the genealogy and evolution of the narratives constructed around a specific ST in the target culture.

The multiple themes of Shaw’s Pygmalion and Eliza’s gendered voice Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, first published in 1912, is a story about how a phonetics professor Henry Higgins, to win a bet with his friend, taught a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to speak English like a duchess. The textual and paratextual evidence shows that Pygmalion is imbedded with multiple themes. Shaw claimed in the preface that it was a didactic play about pronunciation of how a phonetician helped a flower girl complete her linguistic transformation. The claim was strengthened by the subtitle of the preface, “the professor of phonetics”, and the working title of the play, which was, at one time, “The Phonetic Play”. Pygmalion was thus framed as a success story about the power of language and education.

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It has also been interpreted as a feminist and socialist play (McGovern, 2011, p. 67), “an Ibsen-inspired tale of a woman’s escape from class and gender oppression to a position of economic and personal freedom” (Conolly, 2008, p. xxxvi). The title “Pygmalion” came from an ancient Greek myth about a sculptor named Pygmalion who fell in love with one of his sculptures, a beautiful woman who then came to life and married him. The insinuation of a romance imbedded in the title was subverted by Eliza’s transformation and awakening and her rejection of a romantic relationship with Higgins, making the play a parody of the myth. The deconstruction of the romantic interpretation of the play was explicated in the sequel with a discussion of Eliza’s marriage to Freddy, orienting the play toward a social satire against gender and social inequality, mid-class morality and superficiality of the upper class. One of the most prominent features of the play is the use of Cockney, a social status dialect used by working-class people in the East End of London. Cockney played a central role in construction of the multiple themes of the play. Its contrast with the Standard English spoken by the upper class symbolised the class barriers in the British society and contributed to the exposure of the hypocrisy of the upper class. The plot evolved around the linguistic education of Eliza and her linguistic, social and identity transformation. By switching from Cockney to Standard English, Eliza had a successful linguistic transformation, but faced a crisis of social identity (Porten, 2006, p. 69–86). Her linguistic transformation also indicated the creation of a woman from a robot-like subject of linguistic experimentation to an independent woman who, with her soul awakened, rebelled against her “creator” (Morikawa, 2010). Eliza’s Cockney was engendered in the ST. Her voice differed from other characters with recurrences of emphatic tags and exclamations such as “Ah—ow— ooh!”. Whenever she found herself in a disadvantageous or distressful situation, she responded by screaming and shouting to protest the unfairness and assert her rights. These screams, while showing her strong personality, also depicted her as a woman who was linguistically incompetent to properly express her anger and objection. Eliza also frequently used emphatic tags, a Cockney syntax in her speech whenever she wanted her voice heard. These features revealed a “uncertainty, combined with an acute sense of failure” in a woman whose voice was constantly ignored by people around her (Hatim & Mason, 1997, p. 89). The gradual elimination of the tags in Eliza’s language also indicated her identity transformation from a flower girl in the gutter to an independent woman who stood up against her misogynist “creator” and demanded equal treatment (Morikawa, 2010, p. 11). Although Alfred, her father, shared the same dialect with her, those tags and exclamations could barely be found in his Cockney. His voice was presented as eloquent, poetic and rhetoric, which helped him successfully get money from Higgins. In other words, Shaw created a variation within Cockney to differentiate the male voice of Alfred’s, which was competent despite the speaker’s low social standing, from the female voice of Eliza’s, which was incompetent and weak, and constantly corrected and ignored.

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Given the central role Cockney plays in Pygmalion, the drama is “not worth translating unless one is going to attempt relay the variation in some way or another” (Alsina, 2012, p.  141). Its social-cultural connotation in the ST  can hardly be captured with the use of any Chinese dialects, which primarily indicate geographical origination rather than social status of the speakers. Although dialects in China may indicate poor education or low social status of the speakers in addition to their geographical location, well-educated characters with high social status may also speak dialects like uneducated rural peasants in Chinese literature and films. Another option for translators to recreate the variation is to take advantage of the linguistic contrast between the elegant and the vulgar styles (“雅俗 对立”)， which has been the most frequently used linguistic variation in speech representation in Chinese literature. This variation is created by contrasting the elegant formal language in high register with the vulgar colloquial variety in low register to indicate different education backgrounds of the characters. However, it does not directly point to the speaker’s social status either although good education has often been associated with high social status in China.

Deforming Eliza, engendering her voice The first translation of Pygmalion was published in China in 1931, followed by a retranslation in 1956. The two translations have both have been produced by a famous translator and celebrated for their faithfulness to the ST. The first translator, Lin Yutang, was one of the most well-known writers in China, who was also a scholar, translator and linguist at the time. The second translator was Yang Xianyi, a prolific professional translator who worked for the Chinese government and was known for his English translation of Chinese classic literature. The two translations were revised and reprinted many times, studied by scholars, anthologised in different book series as “famous translations” and discussed in translation textbooks as canonised translations for decades. After the 1990s, one more full re-translations and two adaptations were published in China, but none of them could come near the first two translations in terms of popularity or canonicity. Discussions and comments in the paratexts of the five translations show that they were all intended for book readers interested in Bernard Shaw’s work. No records can be found on any of them being used for stage performance. The case study is conducted of the 1945 bilingual version of the first translation by Lin (Shaw, 1945). Unlike the 1931 first edition in which the variation between Standard English and Cockney was not translated, a linguistic contrast was created in this version between the elegant, elevated variety for the translation of Standard English and the vulgar variety for Cockney. The elevated variety, mainly used in the speech of Higgins, Pickering and Higgins’s mother, was created with elegant formal lexis and four-letter expressions such as 独断独行 (imperious), 夜郎自大 (conceited), 颐指气使 (domineering), 躬逢其盛 (honoured to be present), 谬承 过奖 (flattering). Eliza also picked up this variety in her speech after her linguistic transformation with the use of expressions like 缱绻缠绵 (romantic) and 平等颉顽

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(equalitarian). This elevated formal variety indicated the characters to be well educated and probably from the upper class, as good education was normally the privilege of the upper class in China especially before 1949, the founding of the People’s Republic of China. They were absent from Eliza’s speech before her transformation as well as from Alfred’s. Their extensive reliance on the vulgar and colloquial features such as 帮衬 (help) and 打秋风 (take advantage) portrayed them as lower-class characters with limited or no education. While the standardCockney contrast in the ST drew readers’ attention to the social hierarchy between the characters, the elegance-vulgarity variation in the TT made the social stratification less confrontational and more implicit and foregrounded the tension about people’s educational background. While Eliza spoke an engendered Cockney in the ST that set her apart from other characters, she was also given a distinctive vulgar voice in Lin’s translation that differentiated her from others. Her speech was loaded with added offensive words. In ACT I, Eliza used a slang word “blooming” in the ST, a euphemism for the offensive word “bloody”. Lin translated it with “他妈的”, which has been the most frequently used swear word in Chinese, something similar to “damn it” or “shit” in English. Interestingly, when the same “blooming” was used by a male bystander, it was rendered as “宝贝” (babe), a word of endearment. The same “blooming” was conveniently erased when uttered from the mouth of Alfred, who also used the vulgar variety. The accentuation of her offensive language was also reflected in the translation of “garn”, Cockney slang for “go on” to express disbelief or mockery which Eliza constantly used as her signature exclamation to express disbelief and mockery. It was translated with dirty and swear words in Chinese such as “滚你的!” (beat it) or “滚蛋!” (fuck off). Dirty and taboo words can considerably lower the social status of the character and gives distinctive personality to the character (Ge, 1997), especially when used against the elegant variety. Eliza was thus depicted as an uneducated woman full of foul language from the bottom of society in the TT. Eliza was also set apart from other characters with her broken Chinese in this TT. Most of the emphatic tag structures in her Cockney were carefully preserved with literal translation, which in most cases led to awkward grammar in Chinese. For example, “I’ll call the police, I will.” was translated as “我要叫巡警了，我真要。” [I will call the patrol, I really will]. The more natural expression requires the omission of the tag “我真要”, or the use of a complete sentence.1 The recurrences of these sentences made Eliza sound as if she were unable to express herself fluently. In addition, most of her exclamations were directly transplanted into the TT without any transliteration or explanation. What’s more, the grammatical deviations in her speech in the ST  were also recreated in the TT. Some of them were grammatical deviations but still understandable, for example, “Fairly blue with it, she was” was translated as “几乎无望了, 她” (almost hopeless, she) or “学话” (learn talk). Others, however, sounded illogical and chaotic. For example, “and you’re nearer my age than what he is” was translated as “你的年龄虽然比他是的年龄 与我相近。” (Although your age is close to me than his is age). Although quite a

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few characters spoke with grammatical deviations in the ST, no one did so in the TT except for Eliza. Even Alfred, who shared Eliza’s vulgar tone in the TT, could speak eloquently and fluently without any grammatical mistakes or deviations. If the offensive words, foreign letters and awkward grammar pointed to her linguistic incompetence, the broken grammar branded her as intellectually inadequate or crazy, as grammatical mistakes in Chinese have rarely indicated the speakers as from a specific region or uneducated, but rather, linguistically damaged or mentally incompetent. With other people all capable of expressing themselves fluently and correctly, whether in an elegant or vulgar tone, the broken voice Eliza was given not only deformed her but also isolated her from other characters. The story of the play was thus reframed as the struggle of a flower girl speaking a broken foul idiolect in a male-dominated world where everyone had a competent and confident voice. The feminist theme was made more explicit with paratextual devices used in the TT. The title, Pygmalion, followed by a subtitle “A romance of five acts” at one time, had contributed to the misinterpretation in European of a romantic story with Higgins and Eliza eventually getting married. It was replaced by “卖花女” (The Flower Girl) in the TT to suggest the story revolved around a woman instead of a man. Eliza became the heroine while Higgins was reduced to the supporting role as the antagonist. The title reframed the play as the success story of a young woman who, despite her misogynistic bullying teacher and irresponsible selfish father, managed to change her fate through hard work and education and became independent enough to find her own place in the world. The preface and the sequel were also deleted from the play in the TT to streamline the various themes imbedded in the play. In the preface, Shaw explained that he had made a phonetician the hero of the play to show the need for language reform in Britain. The theme about a linguistic reform explained in the preface would sound ordinary to Chinese readers since, in the 1910s, China had started a linguistic reform far more radical than the one described by Shaw. The long sequel in which he explained why Eliza was married to Freddy was intended to de-romanticise the play for the audience expecting a marriage between Higgins and Eliza. This explanation was not necessary for Chinese readers who did not have such an expectation in the first place due to their unfamiliarity with the Greek myth. The textual and paratextual devices coherently framed Pygmalion as a feminist play. With the translator’s efforts to shut off the “noises” from the various messages sent by Shaw, the narrative Chinese readers finally received was a unified story. The social satire and other themes were still there in the TT but made implicit, giving way to the narrative of a woman fighting for her independence and equality through education.

Empowering Eliza, dis-engendering her voice The retranslation of Pygmalion was produced by Yang Xianyi, one of the leading institutional translators in China. He was also well-known for his English

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translation of Lu Xun’s works and Cao Xueqin’s Dream of the Red Chamber. Yang’s Pygmalion was published in 1956 in a three-volume anthology of Shaw’s plays by People’s Publishing House (人民文学出版社) (Shaw, 1956), which has been the most influential publisher for literature and literary translation in China since the 1950s. It has been revised and reprinted many times and is still in circulation today. Lin’s and Yang’s translations were celebrated in textbooks and articles as models of adequate translation in that they were of high quality with strenuous efforts to preserve the subtleties of the ST. They were also the only two of all five translations in which Cockney was translated and notes were added to explain the cultural and linguistic obstacles for readers. Similarities between a first translation and a retranslation are quite common in literary translation especially when the first is canonised. Lin’s translation was so popular in the 1930s and 1940s that the book title, The Flower Girl, was adopted unanimously by journalists who introduced the 1938 British movie, Pygmalion, to Chinese audience. This study finds that Yang’s translation in 1956 showed more effort to steer away from the influence of the first translation than to borrow or inherit anything from it. No paratextual reference to Lin’s translation could be found in Yang’s translation. In fact, as Lin had been living abroad from 1936 on in Taiwan, his presence was literally erased from 1949 to the 1970s with no publication or reprints of his books or translations. Discussions of him could barely be found in any publications during that time. Although Shaw was celebrated and widely translated in China as one of the greatest realism dramatists in the 1950s, Lin’s The Flower Girl was apparently deemed unwelcomed and outdated due to Lin’s estrangement with the new China and needed to be replaced by a brand-new translation. Yang’s translation attempted to cut off all ties with Lin’s. Yang chose a different source text and a new title for his translation. Instead of the more popular version of Pygmalion Lin used, Yang chose an earlier one with an extra scene of Higgins teaching Eliza pronunciation. The title for the retranslation was “匹克梅梁”, a transliteration of “Pygmalion”, followed by the subtitle of “五幕传奇剧 1912”, a literal translation of the original subtitle “A five-act romance 1912”. The new exotic title disclaimed any connection with the first translation and exhibited closer ties to the ST. According to the “Description of the volume” added to the translation, the new title indicated the relationship between Higgins and Eliza. With the marriage between the king and his sculpture omitted in the Description, the relationship was presented as unidirectional and unreciprocated, insinuating that the king was not loved by his sculpture. This was understandable in the ideological context in the 1950s in China where every relationship in literature was required to be censored and re-interpreted in terms of social class origination. An interpretation of a mutual romantic relationship between Higgins and Eliza would be deemed toxic: how could Eliza the “oppressed” fall for Higgins the “oppressor”? In a note about the proper name “Park Lane”, the translator even abruptly inserted a criticism against the housing project of the bourgeoisie to make sure

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that the social allegation of class oppression imbedded in the play was clearly delivered to the readers. Epitextual devices also show Yang’s attempts to offer a story different the one told by Lin. The translator claimed in a journal article that Pygmalion was a legend of the flower girl and its primary function was to criticise the hypocrisy of the upper class (Yang, 1956, p. 13). A very influential reference book for textbooks on foreign literature also pointed out that Eliza’s transformation was superficial and only served to bring out her internal merits intrinsic to the working class (Staff, 1958, p. 1022). These epitexts, with their special emphasis on her social identity, turned the play into one about social criticism. It was still the success story of Eliza, not as a woman fighting for gender independence but as a representative of the working class fighting against the upper class. In addition to paratextual strategies, Eliza was also given a new voice different from the one in Lin’s translation. She also spoke a low register vulgar variety in Yang’s translation as she did in Lin’s, but her vulgarity was cleansed from the curses, taboo words and grammatical deviations and mistakes she had in Lin’s. Her vulgar tone had a perfect fluency with almost no grammatical mistakes or deviations. Most of the emphatic tags were removed from her speech. For example, “I washed my face and hands afore I come, I did” was translated with the tag deleted as “咱可是洗了脸又洗了手才来的” [I washed my face and hands, and then I came here]. Her exclamations were translated with natural Chinese interjections as “唉”, “呀”, “唉—呀—呀”. She was also able to use polite lexis, such as “您” (a respectful form of “you”), as proficiently as other characters in Yang’s. To sum up, Eliza was given a linguistic elevation that made her vulgar tone fluent, confident and competent. While Eliza’s broken Chinese was uniquely hers in Lin’s translation, her confident voice in Yang’s was shared by other characters. The low register vulgar features, the polite lexis of “您” and the fluent grammar were also consistently used in the speech of other characters including Alfred and the bystanders in ACT I. In other words, she was given a competent flawless community voice in the retranslation at the cost of the distinctive engendered voice she had in the ST and Lin’s translation. The plot was twisted in the TT by the elevation of Eliza’s linguistic competence and group identity. When Eliza spoke competently like a lot of people around her, Higgin’s charges against her voice seemed groundless and snobbish, turning him into a bully picking on a poor flower girl for no good rea­ son. His transformation of Eliza seemed to be a joke, too. When her language at the tea party was presented as vulgar and colloquial but also correct and perfectly understandable, the upper-class people, who spoke the standard neutral variety, sounded pretentious and stupid because they could not understand her normal language which made perfect sense to readers. They were portrayed as the oppressors and the antagonists. This reversed the power relation in the ST in which Cockney was the foregrounded voice against Standard English, and Eliza’s incompetent female voice against the competent male voices. When the vulgar voice was considered to be the voice of the working class in China who enjoyed

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a political and social elevation after 1949 as the leading class, Eliza, Alfred and other characters in Act I became the mainstream and the powerful, while Higgins and other upper-class characters were positioned as the marginal in Yang’s translation. The conflict symbolised in the contrast of the two voices in the TT was thus reframed as the struggle between two social groups with Eliza and her people gaining the upper hand. The textual and paratextual devices Yang adopted in his translation reframed the narrative of Yang’s The Flower Girl as well as that of Shaw’s Pygmalion. When Eliza joined the chorus of the majority, she was not only given a more confident and competent voice but also empowered morally and socially as the mainstream. The cost of this empowerment, however, was the loss of her female voice as well as her gender identity, which were carefully constructed and foregrounded in Lin’s translation. She was portrayed in Yang’s as a working-class person who did not need to be saved or transformed at all. The play was not about her successful linguistic transformation, because she did not seem to need one in the first place, or about her struggle for gender independence since she no longer needed her female identity. It was reframed as a victory story of one social group against the other.

The paradox of (in)equality and (in)visibility of women in China The two cases discussed in this chapter show that Eliza experienced an identity transformation in China. While she was portrayed in the first translation as a woman at the bottom of the society struggling on her own for her rights in men’s world, she was transformed in the retranslation as a member of the working class fighting against the oppression and manipulation of the upper class. While in the former, she was the visible gender “other” despised and transformed by the mainstream, in the latter she became a dis-engendered member of the mainstream. The loss of her gender identity in the retranslation was related to the drastic change of women’s status in China after 1949. When Lin’s translation was published in the 1940s, Eliza was given an incompetent gendered voice, which was the very voice Chinese women had at the time. For centuries education had been the privilege of men in China and women had been encouraged to remain illiterate and submissive to keep their virtues.2 They had been the marginal, subordinate to men regardless of their social status. Chinese women from the lower class, like Eliza, were placed at the bottom rung of the social ladder. They did not have a voice. Even when they tried to make themselves heard, the only voice they were allowed to have was the one given to Eliza in Lin’s translation: incompetent, broken, flawed and constantly ignored by men no matter how hard they tried. They were the marginal “other” of the Chinese society and excluded from the mainstream and the power centre, just as Eliza was alienated from everyone else in the TT. Eliza’s visibility as an inferior engendered “other” was related to Lin’s agenda to make Pygmalion a feminist play about education. After the Xinhai Revolution

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in China in 1911, feminist movements started, although primarily among the elites, with women’s participation alongside men in political fights and challenges of the traditional patriarchal order. Education was given a pivotal status in the movement in which it was considered the only practical solution to women’s emancipation (Lin, 2001, p. 169). Lin was also one of the most influential promoters of the feminist movements in China in the 1920s and 1930s. He wrote extensively on this topic and composed novels about new women. He also translated a series of essays by Dora Russell, a noted British feminist writer, on women and knowledge, and a critical biography for Hendrik Ibsen, author of A Doll’s House, one of the most influential feminist plays in China before 1949. The Flower Girl was among his many endeavours to contribute to the feminist movement at the time. The textual and paratextual devices used in his translation were intended to keep readers from being distracted by the multiple themes of social inequalities, linguistic reforms or class conflicts imbedded in the play. By shutting off the various noises from the ST, he reframed the story as a gender war won via education to show his readers that women could change the gender dynamic of the society and their identity as the inferior “other” through hard work and education. If Eliza could gain her independence and equality in men’s world by reinventing herself through education, so could her Chinese counterparts. The feminist agenda Lin and others fought for was considered a mission accomplished when women were constitutionally granted equal rights with men after 1949. Women were no longer considered to be the “other” of the society but, rather, as an inseparable part of the working class, the alleged leaders of the Chinese society. The inequality and oppression from the male that Chinese women had confronted for centuries were considered bygone and eliminated, making any representation and discussion of gender differences and conflicts culturally “anti-revolutionary” (Dai, 1994, p.  37–8). Chinese women faced a paradox in the 1950s that they had to lose their sexual identity to achieve gender equality (Wu, 2010, p. 6). In the political climate of the 1950s when the sole criteria for the evaluation of a person was based on his or her social class origination, criticisms against the bourgeoisie became the dominant and the only legitimate theme for literature, leaving gender conflicts swept under the floor in literature. Lin’s translation was regarded as outdated and politically incorrect in the 1950s despite its canonicity for two decades and the fame of its translator, with its alienation of Eliza from the mainstream. Eliza had to be reinvented to fit the image of the ideal new women promoted by the new nation: confident, strong, hardworking and, more importantly, genderless. With the foregrounding of her social identity and the removal of her gender one in the retranslation, Yang reframed the play as a story about class conflict with Eliza’s awakening interpreted as a collective action against class oppression. She was thus transformed into role model Chinese women were supposed to follow: a genderless “iron girl” as competent and tough as men, who could join the labour force as equals.

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Concluding remarks The case study shows that, despite the applauded adequacy of the two translations, both employed textual and paratextual methods to reframe the narrative of the play for a particular agenda. In the first translation, Eliza was entrusted with the feminist task to show Chinese women the pathway to independence and equality, while in the retranslation she was transformed into a genderless role model. The cases show that identities in translation cannot be simply “reproduced” or “transplanted” in the TT. Such reproduction always involves negotiation, manipulation and reformulation in line with the cultural or political agenda of the translator or other translation agents and the mainstream ideology in the target culture. The gender, social or ethnic identities constructed in the translations are often related to the status of an equivalent community in the target culture. The transformation of women’s identity in the target culture always leads to the reframing of the gender identity in the translation and the restructuring of the power relations between different gender and social groups in the translated texts. In the case of Eliza, the (dis)engendering of her identities in the TTs were the result of the negotiation of the status and role women were supposed or expected to have in the Chinese society at different times. Translators can never be neutral in the construction of the translated gender identities with their imagination and interpretation of the gender relations being injected into the translation. This study has laid special emphasis on the intertextuality between the first translation and the retranslation. The lack of intertextuality between them in the case study reveals a change of narrative for Pygmalion in China and the complexity of the double framing involved in the retranslation. In the case of Yang’s retranslation, he seemed to be more interested in steering away from the feminist narrative of the first translation than reproducing the hybridity of the ST. Studies of retranslation from the narrative perspective can help to reveal the complicated relationships between the narratives constructed around a specific ST in the target culture and the influence of the social and political ideology on the evolution of these narratives.

Notes 1 This sentence was translated by Yang as “咱可要叫警察了。” [I will call the police]. It sounds more fluent than Lin’s with the tag omitted. It can also be translated as “我要叫 警察了，我真要叫警察了!” [I will call the police. I will really call the police], which not only sounds more fluent and but also conveys the speaker’s protest and futile efforts to make herself heard. 2 Even women from the upper class may be as illiterate as those from the lower social class, as is the case with Wang Xifeng, a powerful, uneducated, upper-class lady in Dream of the Red Chamber.

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Remapping habitus in translation studies (pp.  43–55). Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789401210867_005 Setton, R., & Guo, A. L. (2009). Attitudes to role, status and professional identity in interpreters and translators with Chinese in Shanghai and Taipei. Translation and Interpreting Studies, 4(2), 210–38. https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.4.2.05set Shahi, M.,  & Talebinejad, M. R. (2017). The ideological role of selective translation in reconfiguration of news frames. FORUM. International Journal of Interpretation and Translation, 5(1), 85–105. https://doi.org/10.1075/forum.15.1.05sha Shaw, B. (1945). The flower girl [卖花女] (Y. Lin, Trans.). Shanghai: Kaiming Book Store. ———. (1956). Pygmalion [匹克梅梁]， In B. Shaw (Ed.) & X. Yang (Trans.), Anthology of Bernard Shaw’s Plays [萧伯纳戏剧集]. Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House. Somers, M. R., & Gibson, G. (1994). Reclaiming the epistemological “other”: Narrative and the social constitution of identity. In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Social Theory and the Politics of Identity (pp. 37–99). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Staff, T. (1958). A Reference Book for Foreign Literature from 19th Century to Early 20th Century [外国文学参考资 (十九世纪—二十世纪初部分)]. Beijing: Higher Education Press. Tahir-Gurcaglar, Ş. (2013). Agency in allographic prefaces o translated works: An initial exploration of the Turkish context. In H. Jansen & A. Wegener (Eds.), Authorial and Editorial Voices in Translation: Editorial and Publishing Practices (pp. 89–108). Quebec: Editions québécoises de l’oeuvre. Wu, H. (2010). Introduction. In H. Wu (Trans. & Ed.), Once Iron Girls: Essays on Gender by Post-Mao Chinese Literary Women (pp. 1–14). Lanham: Lexington Books. Yang, X. (1956). The great playwright Bernard Shaw [伟大的戏剧家萧伯纳]. Language Learning [语文学习], 9, 12–3. Yoo, T.,  & Jeong, C. J. (2017). Consolidating the professional identity of translators: The role of citizenship behaviors. Target, 29(3), 361–87. https://doi.org/10.1075/tar get.15001.yoo

INDEX

Page numbers in italics indicate a figure and page numbers in bold indicate a table on the corresponding page. Page numbers followed by ‘n’ indicate notes. Abani, C. 71, 89, 91 Abdolmaleki, S. D. 32, 33 acceptability 17 Achebe, C. 90; Arrow of God 86 – 8; démagogue, Le 68; malaise, Le 69, 70; Man of the People, A 68 Adichie, C. 89, 91 Adnan, M. 188 African primitiveness 85 agent 33 Ajami, F. 96 Ajayi, F. 80 Al-Adwan, A. 165, 166 Al-Assadi, W. 25 Alharthi, J. 180 – 1, 187, 189 – 90 Al Jamaei, A. 180 Al-Ma’ani, M. 180 Al Qaeda 105 Alqunayir, A. 110 Alsanea, R. 25 – 6 Amanpour, C. 103 Amireh, A. 24 – 5 Amuta, C. 80, 81 Anderson, B. 91 Anglo-American cultural hegemony, transediting as communication of 110 – 12 AnimWorld 33 An’naim, A. 104 Arabia Books 27

Arabian Nights 22 Arabic metaphorical expressions, reframing in English subtitles: frame semantics 168; image substitution 174 – 5; image transfer 173 – 4; metaphors 170 – 7, 171; methodology 170; Noom El Talat 165 – 77; omission 175 – 7; reduction to sense 171 – 3; translation 166 – 8 Arabic, translation from 18 – 28 Arab Spring 108 Armstrong, K. 103 – 4 Arrow of God (Achebe) 86 – 8 Art Square Creation Sdn. Bhd. 36 Art Square Group 43 Ashcroft, B. 86 ateji 40 – 2 audiovisual translation (AVT) 165 – 7, 177; see also Bilibili Austria-Hungary 8 AVT see audiovisual translation (AVT) Baker, M. 66 – 7, 75, 76 Bandia, P. 74, 84, 85, 93n2,n5 Banipal 27 Bannon 165 – 6 Barak, E. 182 Barber, B. 23 Basi and Company (Saro-wiwa) 68 Bassnett, S. 181

224 Index

BBC Monitoring Middle East Service (BBCM-M) 110, 112 – 14, 116, 118 – 25 BBC Monitoring Service 113 – 14 Behzadi, A. 57 Berger, P. L. 50 Bermann, S. 29 Bevir, M. 18 Bezemer, J. 33, 34, 36 Bhabha, H. 84 Bhaskar, R. 50 Bilibili: audio-visual translation studies of 128 – 45; data analysis 130 – 1; editing and subtitling videos 137 – 44, 139 – 43; research method 133 – 4; selecting and titling videos 134 – 7; theoretical framework 131 – 3 bin Laden, O. 104, 105 blanc va aux sorcières, Le (White is for Witching) (Oyeyemi) 69 Bluntschli, K. 200, 203, 204 Bonsal, S. 7 Booker Prize Foundation 27 Booth, M. 25 – 7, 180 – 91 Born on a Tuesday (John) 91 Bottled Leopard, The (Ike) 68 Bourdieu, P. 1, 50, 60, 65 Bravo, E. A. F. 1 Broué, C. 76 brousse ardente, La (Ekwensi) 69 Büchler, A. 23 – 4, 28 – 9 Bush, G. W. 96 – 103 Cain, S. 183 – 4 Cairo Press 27 Caldaza-Pérez, M. 183 Camerlynck, G. 7 Cao, Q. 193 Cassava Republic 68 CDA see critical discourse analysis (CDA) Celestial Bodies (Booth) 180 – 91; data and methodology 184 – 5; rewriting and literary translation 181 – 4 censorship, structurally informed 55 – 8, 62 Cheney, D. 96 Chilton, P. 4, 13 China, women’s identity in 209 – 20 Chow, Y. F. 32 Christianity 3, 95 Citoyen de seconde zone (Second-Class Citizen) (Emecheta) 69, 71 – 2 Clark, P. 27, 182 Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, The (Lewis) 96 Clemenceau, G. B. 1 Clifford, J. 68, 72

CNN 98, 103, 104, 107 Collected Plays 2 (Soyinka) 86, 93n4 coloniality of power 111 Comics House Sdn. Bhd. 36, 42 comic story, manga and 34 – 5, 35 Confucianism 198 content analysis 99 Convention on the Territory of Memel 13 corpus inquiry, of themes and representations 114 – 16, 115 Courier (magazine) 21 creativity/orality, in postcolonial Nigerian fiction 85 – 90 critical discourse analysis (CDA) 2, 3, 5, 110, 112, 113, 119 cyberspace 49, 59 – 60 Davidson, R. 186 – 7 Dawrant, A. 6 D-discourse: definition of 19; translation as 18 – 28, 23, 24; see also discourse Defrancq, B. 150, 156 démagogue, Le (Achebe) 68 Demolon, G. 7 descriptive translation studies (DTS) 68, 185 DHA see Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) dialectic of control 49 Diaz Cintas, J. 165 Dinaux, A. 75, 76 diplomats 5 – 7 discourse: definition of 18, 19; translation as, framing 17 – 29 Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) 111 Doll’s House, A (Ibsen) 219 Doorslaer, L. van 180 dot, La (The Bride Price) (Emecheta) 74 Double Yoke (Emecheta) 71 Dream of the Red Chamber (Xueqin) 216, 220n2 DTS see descriptive translation studies (DTS) Duara, P. 193 Duhamel, J. 7 editors 65, 111 Efuru (Nwapa) 71 Ekwensi, C. 69 electronic publication 58 Ellis, L. 186 Elnaili, S. 29 Emecheta, B.: Citoyen de seconde zone (Second-Class Citizen) 69, 71 – 2; dot, La (The Bride Price) 74; Double Yoke 71

Index  225

English subtitles, reframing Arabic metaphorical expressions in 165 – 77 epitexts 66 Esposito, J. 103, 104 ethnocentric violence 111 Ettobi, M. 24 Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory 180, 181 evil 100 Faiq, S. 17, 181 – 3, 185, 187 Famished Road, The (Okri) 89 – 90 Fanon, F 81 – 2, 93n5 Feldman, N. 103 female interpreters 150 – 1, 157 – 8, 160 – 1 Fillmore, C. 168 first languages 155 – 6, 156 First World War (World War I) 1, 3, 8, 9 flèche de Dieu, La 69 Flood, A. 186 Flower Girl, The 215, 216, 218, 219 Fowler, R. 5 Fox News 98, 107 frame semantics 168 framing 67; definition of 210; women’s identity, in China 210 – 11 France 1, 7 Frazier, H. 7

habitus 60 Haddadian-Moghaddam, E. 33 Hao, S. Y. 198 hedging, in interpreted speech 147 – 62; additions 154 – 5, 154, 155; corpus 152, 152; first languages 155 – 6, 156; frequency in interpreted and original discourse 153 – 4, 153; functions 156 – 7, 156; gender differences 157 – 60, 158 – 60; gondolom (“I think”) 151 – 2; hiszem (“I believe”) 151 – 2; hypotheses 152 – 3; questions 152 – 3; research goals 152 – 3 Heffner, R. 103 hegemony: Anglo-American cultural 110 – 12; structurationist approach to 49 – 62; Western cultural, in Nigerian postcolony 80 Herbert, J. 7 Hidden Face of Eve, The (Saadawi) 25 hiszem (“I believe”) 151 – 2 Hizbollah 105 Hobsbawm, E. J. 194 homosexuality 190 – 1 Hu, K. 150 – 1, 161 Hungarian European Parliamentary Intermodal Corpus (HEPIC) 158 Huntington, S. 96, 102

Gaffney, J. 169 Gamal, M. Y. 169 Gambier, Y. 180 Gardoon Verlag 58 Gee, J. P. 17 – 19 Gellner, E. 194, 203 gendered voice 210 – 20 genericness 73 – 4 Genette, G. 66, 76n4, 181, 209 Gentzler, E. 183 George, D. L. 1 German, anecdotal presence of 7 – 9 Gibbs, R. 167 Gibson, G. 210 Giddens, A. 50, 53 – 5, 60 – 1 Gikandi, S. 93n1 giongo/gitaigo 42 – 4 Girls of Riyadh (Alsanea) 25 – 6 Golden Age of France 2 gondolom (“I think”) 151 – 2 Götz, A. 147 grammars 4 Great Britain see United Kingdom Grillo, R. 93n6 Guthrie, A. 23 – 4, 28 – 9 Gyasi, K. A. 74

Ibrahim, A. 91, 92 Ibsen, H. 219 Ike, C. 68 illustrators 65, 69 image: substitution 174 – 5; transfer 173 – 4 Immigration Act of 1965 95 in-between language-culture 84, 85 indigenisation 86 informativity 17 inscriptions 44 – 5 intentionality 17 interdisciplinarity 180 International Labour Organization 5 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) 27 interpreters: data on I think 155 – 6; EP 147 – 8, 150; female and male 150 – 1, 157 – 8, 160 – 1; interwar 5 – 7; as key agents 1 – 14; as mediators 147; role in diplomatic negotiations 3 interprètes, Les (Soyinka) 69 IPAF see International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) Iranian Hostage crisis (1979–81) 95 Iranmanesh, A. 165, 166

226 Index

Islamic extremism, rise of 95, 103 Islamism, aftermath of 9/11 (2001) 95 – 108; methodology 98 – 9; moderate Muslims and neo-Orientalism 102 – 7; neo-Orientalism 99 – 107 Italy 1 ivrogne dans la brousse, L’ (Tutuola) 73 – 4 Jacquemond, R. 27 Jalali, M. 168, 177 Jalón, B. 7 Jihad 23, 99 Jingwei, W. 199 – 201 Jing, Y. 209 Jin, Q. 183 John, E. 91 Jones, Major 7 Judaism 95 Kachifo 68 Kadokawa Corporation 36 Kadokawa Gempak Starz Sdn Bhd. 32, 36, 43, 44 Kagan, R. 108n1 Kaindl, K. 33, 35 – 6 Katsunan, K. 200 Kedar, A. 18 Kramer, M. 96 Kress, G. 33, 34, 36 Kristol, W. 108n1 Kung, S. W. 69 Kurtz, J. 194 – 5 labelling 71 – 3 LAF see Literature Across Frontiers (LAF) language: first 155 – 6, 156; and power 3 – 5; and social reality 4 – 5 Lanza, A. T. 1 late Qing China, translating nation in 193 – 207; consequences of 206; historical conditions 194 – 7; Japanese connections 199 – 202; minzuguomin-guojia trinity 197 – 9, 197; re-configuration 202 – 5, 205 Latour, B. 60 League of Nations (LoN) 1 – 3, 14; first assembly of 10 – 13; and Germany 7 – 9; language 6, 7 Lefevere, A. 21, 22, 25, 111, 112, 181 – 4 Lewandowski, S. 75 Lewis, B. 102; Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, The 96; “Roots of Muslim Rage, The” 96, 104 Liang, Q. C. 199 – 201, 203, 204

Ligny, M. 70, 76n3 linguistic turn 5 Lin, J. 213, 214, 216 – 19, 220n1 Literature Across Frontiers (LAF) 23 Liu, L. 206 Lobscheid, W. 198 Locarno Treaties 13 – 14 LoN see League of Nations (LoN) López, A. M. R. 168, 173 Louis XIV 2 Luckmann, T. 50 Luhmann, N. 60 Lyotard, J. F. 3 Magnifico, C. 150, 156 Mahfouz, N. 24 malaise, Le (Achebe) 69, 70 male interpreters 150 – 1, 160, 161 manga translation, agency changes in 32 – 45; ateji 40 – 2; and comic story 34 – 5, 35; components 35; giongo/ gitaigo 42 – 4; inscriptions 44 – 5; Japanese-specific cultural elements 38 – 40; methodology 36, 37; modes and semiotic resources 36 – 7, 38; procedures 35 – 6; social semiotic multimodal approach 33 – 4 Man of the People, A (Achebe) 68 Martha, S. 167 Mason, I. 21 May Fourth Movement (1919) 195 Mbembe, A. 80 – 2 McCarty, W. 180 McCloud, S. 33, 35, 35 MCIG see Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (MCIG) McWorld 23 Meiji Restoration (1868–1912) 201 Mémoires de la Méditerranée 22 Mendelsohn, D. 183 Meng, L. 150 – 1, 161 metanarratives 3 Meyer, G. 7 Michaelis, G. 7 Miller, J. 96 Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (MCIG) 52, 54, 55, 57 – 60 minzu-guomin-guojia trinity 197 – 9, 197 Miskimmon, A. 131 – 2 “moderate Muslims” 102 – 7 Moscovici, S. 110 – 11 multicultural nationalism 92, 93n10 Munday, J. 181, 183 Munif 28 Muslims 95 – 108

Index  227

Naakojaa 58 narratives 66 – 7 national consciousness, in Nigerian postcolony 80 – 93; creativity 85 – 90; implications for 90 – 2; methodology 83 – 4; orality 85 – 90; postcolonial translation 84 – 90 nationalism, multicultural 92, 93n10 National Origins Act of 1924 95 nation, as imagined community 91 Natsume, F. 34, 35, 35, 42 neo-Orientalism 97 – 107 Newmark, P. 174 New York Times 98, 103, 107 Nigerian fiction, in French translations 65 – 76; choice of material 67 – 8; data 66 – 8; methodology 66 – 8; prose construction 68 – 74; reconstruction through generic shifts 73 – 4; reconstruction through labelling 71 – 3; reconstruction through selective appropriation 69 – 71; theoretical framework 66 – 8 Niranjana, T. 21 Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman (Shostak) 72 Nogaam 58 Noom El Talat (case study) 165 – 77 Nord, C. 76n1 note-taking technique 6 Nuremberg Trials 6 Nwapa, F. 71 Okri, B. 89, 91; Famished Road, The 89 – 90; Stars of the New Curfew 72 – 3 Omar, H. C. 32 One Thousand and One Nights 22 – 3 On the Xia-Yi Distinction (Hao) 198 orality, in postcolonial Nigerian fiction 85 – 90 Orlando, V. E. 1 Oyeyemi, H. 69 Palm-Wine Drinkard, The (Tutuola) 67, 70 Pan, F. 151, 161 paratexts 66, 67, 181, 210 – 11, 217 Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Genette) 66 Paris Peace Conference (1919) 1 – 3 PCIJ see Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) Pedersen, J. 167, 170, 173 – 7 Penerbit Tora Aman 36, 42 – 4 peritexts 66, 67 Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) 5, 8, 14

Phipps, A. 61 Pipes, D. 96 PNAC see Project for the New American Century (PNAC) Portier, Captain 6 postcolonial translation, in Africa 84 – 90 postmodernity, impact on human condition 3 power 33; coloniality of 111; interwar relationships 1 – 14; and language 4 – 5; structurationist approach to 49 – 62; symbolic 1 power imbalance: prior to transediting 119 – 21; during transediting 122 – 4 Price, J. 21 – 2 Project for the New American Century (PNAC) 96, 100, 101, 108n1 publications: electronic 58; of foreign works 65; and press 56 publishers 33 – 4, 41 – 2, 45, 55, 61, 65 Putin, V. 128 – 45 Putri, S. 167 Pygmalion (Shaw) 210 – 20 Qin, H. 202 refracted texts 181 Rei, Y. F. 198 Remael, A. 165 rewriting 181 – 4 Richelieu, Cardinal 2 Richter, M. 193 “Roots of Muslim Rage, The” (Lewis) 96, 104 Rui, W. 128 Rumsfeld, D. 96 Russell, D. 219 Russia 1 Saadat, S. 49, 59 Saadawi, N. 24, 25 Said, E. 111 Salama-Carr, M. 22 Saleem, Y. 101 – 2 Saleh, N. 166 Salem, H. B. H. 95 Sapir, E. 4 Sapir-Whorf hypothesis 4 Saro-wiwa, K. 68 Saudi Arabia, domesticating 110 – 26; Anglo-American cultural hegemony 110 – 12; corpus inquiry of themes and representations 114 – 16, 115; data 112 – 13; methodology 112 – 13; patrons 113 – 14, 114; power imbalance during/prior to transediting 119 – 24;

228 Index

systematically othering women 118 – 19, 119; text selection in service of power 121 – 22; translations and ST-TET power relations, investigating 119; unusually infrequent reporting on women 116; women as acted upon and men of authority as acting 116 – 18, 117, 118 Schäffner, C. 4, 13 Schmidt, G. 174, 175 scribes 5 – 7 Season of Crimson Blossoms (Ibrahim) 91, 92 Second Gulf War (1990) 95 Second World War (World War II) 4, 6, 8 Self-Strengthening Movement (1861–95) 195 Setton, R. 6 Shamma, T. 186 Shaw, B. 211 – 20 Shigetaka, S. 200 Shogakukan Asia 32 Shostak, M. 72 Shusha, Z. 188 Sino-Japanese War (1894–5) 195 situationality 17 Snaije, O. 27 social reality, language and 4 – 5 social semiotic multimodal approach 33 – 4 Somers, M. R. 210 Soviet Union 95 Soyinka, W. 90; Collected Plays 2 86; interprètes, Les 69; Trials of Brother Jero, The 87, 88, 93n4 Stars of the New Curfew (Okri) 72 – 3 Stones, R. 61 Stresemann, G. 9 structurally informed censorship 55 – 8 structurationist approach, to power and hegemony 49 – 62; data and methodology 52 – 3; domination 58 – 60; duality of structures, dimensions of 51; exposition 50 – 2; further research 62; implications 50 – 2; resistance 58 – 60; toward 60 – 1; unintended outcomes 58 – 60 structuration theory 50 – 3, 61, 62 Structuration Theory (Stones) 61 Sun, Y. S. 196, 199, 201 symbolic power 1 Szalai, J. 183 Taiyan, Z. 201 target culture (TC) 180 TC see target culture (TC)

TETs see transedited texts (TETs) Thawabteh, M. A. 165, 166 Things Fall Apart (Ligny) 70, 76n3 Toury, G. 185 transduction 34, 39, 42, 44 transedited texts (TETs) 111, 121, 124 transediting: as communication of AngloAmerican cultural hegemony 110 – 12; power imbalance during/prior to 119 – 24 transeditors 111 transformation 34, 61, 169; guomin and 199; occurrence of 42, 44; partial 39, 41, 42; of social order 60 translation: from Arabic 18 – 28; audiovisual studies 128 – 45; as D-discourse 18 – 28, 23, 24; as discourse, framing 17 – 29; literary 181 – 4; manga 32 – 45; Nigerian fiction, in French 65 – 76; structurationist approach to power and hegemony 49 – 62; studies 180 Translation as Reparation (Bandia) 84 Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame (Lefevere) 111 Translation Studies Bibliography 165 translators 1, 5 – 7, 28, 41, 65, 176, 182 – 3, 188 – 91, 220; actions/decisions 50, 52, 54, 55, 61, 62, 167; agency of manga 32 – 3; censorship and 55; constraints on 54, 58, 183; dialectic of control 49, 52, 57; interactions with translation technology 62; knowledgeability 52, 111; as mediator 177; news 111; practices 60; recreating variation 213; sociology of 52; in structural context 52; utilising multimodal resources 42, 45; see also interpreters transmutation 35, 36, 85 Treaty of Mutual Guarantee between Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain and Italy 13 Treaty of Peking (1860) 195 Treaty of Tianjin (1858) 195 Treaty of Versailles 2, 3, 9 – 10, 14; lexical choices 12; misrepresentations 11; verbal coercion strategies 12 Trials of Brother Jero, The (Soyinka) 87, 88, 93n4 tribalism 23 Tutuola, A.: ivrogne dans la brousse, L’ 73 – 4; Palm-Wine Drinkard, The 67, 70 UNESCO 21 United Kingdom 1, 2, 7, 111, 183, 185

Index  229

United States 1, 2, 7, 95 – 108, 111, 183 “us” versus “them” 101 Van Dijk, T. A. 2, 4, 5, 19 van Leeuwen, R. 22 Venuti, L. 21, 111 vernacularisation 86, 87 videos: editing and subtitling 137 – 44, 139 – 43; selecting and titling 134 – 7 violence, ethnocentric 111 VIZ Media 32 Wang, K. 201 War Council 6 Wehr, H. 187 – 8 Who is a Dictator (1999) 58 Williams 181, 183 Wilson, W. 1 Wolfowitz, P. 96 Woman at Point Zero (Al-Assadi) 25 women’s identity, in China 209 – 20; (in) equality 218 – 19; gendered voice

210 – 20; methodology 210 – 11; Pygmalion 211 – 20; theoretical framework 210 – 11; (in)visibility 218 – 19 World War I 1, 3, 8, 9 World War II 4, 6, 8 Wretched of the Earth, The (Fanon) 81 – 2 Xing, Y. Z. 206n3 Xinhai Revolution (1911) 195, 199 Xueqin, C. 216, 220n2 Xun, L. 216 Yang, X. 216 – 20, 220n1 Yes, Prime Minister 167 Yukichi, F. 200 Yutang, L. 213 Zabus, C. 86, 93n2 zhandou minzu (fighting ethnic group) 135, 137 Zheng, B. 151, 161