Norah Alkharashi

Arabic fiction in English translation: A case study

In an often-cited article published in 1990, Edward Said suggested that Arabic literature was being “embargoed” in the English literary market. Recently, however, English translations of Alaa Al Aswany’s 2002 novel The Yacoubian Building have enjoyed great success in the United States and England. Similarly, Tayib Saleh’s Season for Immigration to the North (1966) eventually found its way into the prestigious Penguin Classics in 2009. Yet, while academics, reviewers, critics and translators are now writing about and promoting Arabic literature in English translation, they still sometimes fail to get the attention of “self-satisfied western publishers” (Altouma 2005). How can we account for these contradictory developments? Drawing on Even-Zohar’s Polysystem theory and the sociological approaches put forward by Buzelin (2006) and Kershaw (2007, 2013), this poster presentation investigates the complex and unpredictable case of Arabic fiction in English translation through the lens of translation theory.

Norah Alkharashi is a PhD Candidate in Translation Studies at the School of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Ottawa. She works at the National Research Council as an Arabic language specialist and translator. She holds an MA in Discourse Studies from Carleton University in Ottawa and an MA in Linguistics from Imam University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. She is currently translating works of American author Edwidge Dandicat into Arabic.

Her research interests focus on the translatability of cultures, literary translations and the publishing industry.