The (un)translatability of translational literature: Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love between English and Arabic

ABSTRACT

Through a comparative reading of Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love (1999) and Fatma Musa’s translation, Kharitat al-hubb (2004), this article considers whether the translation from English to Arabic captures the translational elements of the original text. It is argued that a comparative reading of the two texts renders visible the translation’s pattern of muting the linguistic interplay between Arabic and English that is integral to the English text. The article suggests that by making exclusive use of Modern Standard Arabic, Musa’s translation recuperates Soueif for an Egyptian readership by bringing her back into Arabic and by obscuring the linguistic ambivalence of the original. In the absence of the translational aspects of the original text, it is argued that the effect of a consolidated Arabic language in Kharitat al-hubb overshadows the more nuanced linguistic trajectory of The Map of Love.

KEYWORDS:

• Translational
• untranslatable
• English literature in Arabic
• Arabic translation
• tri-consonantal roots
• Egyptian literature

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the hard work and patience of Michelle Ohnona, whose thoughtful feedback and support allowed me to finish this article. I also appreciate the comments of the anonymous reviewers. Sincere thanks to Michelle Hartman and Elliott Colla who read and commented on an earlier draft, and to Usama Soltan for his feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on contributor

Dima Ayoub is assistant professor of Arabic at Middlebury College in Vermont. She specializes in modern literature with an emphasis on translation, postcolonial and feminist studies.

Notes

1 In his essay “Embargoed Literature”, Edward Said (1990, 278) relates a conversation with a New York publisher who justified the exclusion of Arabic titles from translation into English, claiming that “Arabic is a controversial language” – and a decade later, Hosam Aboul-Ela (2001) takes up this question in “Challenging the Embargo”. More recently, Robyn Creswell (2016, 449) argues that while the embargo has been lifted since 9/11, the Arabic language “remains controversial”. In the Anglo-American imaginary, Arabic is “reduced to the lexicon of sectarianism (Sunni, Shia, Alawi), religiously inspired violence […], and female subjugation” where its complex traditions are “cartoonishly misrepresented” (ibid.).

2 For a quantitative study of Arabic words in The Map of Love, see Albakry and Hancock (2008).

3 The reception of The Map of Love in the British press triggered enduring discussions about the Englishness (or not) of English literature. Andrew Marr, a commentator from the Guardian, laments that “the superstars of contemporary English literature aren’t English and haven’t been for years” (1999), while John Mullan (2008), also a writer for the Guardian, claims that the English reader “needs help” deciphering words in Soueif’s novel. These reactions from the British press are indicative of concerns about Soueif’s blurring of the categories of English vs. world literature.

4 From the distinctive “spoken Arabic of Upper Egyptian peasants (rendered in literal translation of their idiomatic expressions and turns of phrase), to middle-class Cairene speech (translated into standard English peppered with literally translated expressions), to classical belle-lettristic and Modern Standard Arabics; and from Anna’s Victorian style to Isabel’s American English to the clipped syntax of internet communications, all of which is interspersed with French and Italian” (Hassan 2011, 171).

5 Mehrez (2008, 41) uses the formulation “scribes of the alley” as a reference to the Arab world’s first Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz’s 1959 novel Awlad haratina – in English, Children of the Alley (1996). The term also refers to the Egyptian literary establishment that looks to Mahfouz as the “first scribe of the alley”, where the alley signifies the nation.

6 For more on this topic, see Tageldin (2013).

7 For an exploration of the competing dynamics between French and English in Egypt, see Tageldin (2011).

8 Sharif’s stance against English recalls Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s problematization of the language question in the debate about the use of the English language in postcolonial literary production. Ngũgĩ states: “I believe that my writing in Gikuyu language, a Kenyan language, an African language, is part and parcel of the anti-imperialist struggles of Kenyan and African peoples. In schools and universities our Kenyan languages […] were associated with negative qualities of backwardness, underdevelopment, humiliation and punishment” (1986, 28). Ngũgĩ’s position is often contrasted with Chinua Achebe’s approach, which emphasizes the use of an English language that can reflect the African experience.