Journal Article

Translation at the Interface of Identity and Nationalism

Abo Ali, Sherihan Medhat

2024

Overview

Controversy tends to hover about the publication of translations in Egyptian Arabic. A case in point is the 2023 retranslation of Ernest Hemingway's novella The Old Man and the Sea into Egyptian Arabic by Magdy Abdelhadi under the aegis of Hunna/Elles publishing house. By using Egyptian Arabic, the translator and the publisher adopt an oppositional stance to the mainstream norm of using fusha in the translation of canonical literary texts, producing a target text that jars with the target audience's expectations. The present study is premised on the argument that the choice of Egyptian Arabic in the retranslation is not random but rather indexes the identity politics that inform it and the nationalist cause the translator and the publisher espouse, ultimately instrumentalizing the retranslation to empower the vernacular. The study also argues that the unfavorable reception of the retranslation stems from the negative indexes of Egyptian Arabic. The study sits at the intersection of translation studies (i.e., retranslation), sociolinguistics (i.e., diglossia, language ideology, and indexicality), and reception studies (i.e., horizon of expectations) as it aims to explore the motivations behind the Egyptian Arabic retranslation under scrutiny and to explain the source of censure and furor that accompanied its publication. To this end, Genette's (1987/1997) concept of epitext is employed as a methodological tool to unpack the warring language ideologies and to demonstrate how the use of Egyptian Arabic in retranslating a highbrow literary text can entangle the retranslation in question in the thorny terrain of identity and nationalism.

• Publisher: جامعة القاهرة - فرع الخرطوم - كلية الآداب
• Subject: الازدواجية اللغوية / اللهجة العامية / النصوص الأدبية / الهوية اللغوية