The Translation of Arabic Fiction into English as Reflected in Translators’ Paratexts (1947-2016)

Scholars of Translation have recently started to turn their attention to literary traditions beyondWestern traditions of translation, acknowledging the need for translation between the Arabiclanguage and its cultures, and the languages and the cultures of the outside world. Arabic has along history of translation, reaching back to the Golden Age of Arabic civilization, known inEurope as the dark ages. This study is an attempt to bring the Arabic translation tradition to thediscussion around translation theory. It covers seven decades of literary translation activitiesfrom 1947 to 2016. The scope of this study encompasses the translations into English of worksof Arabic literary fiction during three distinct periods: 1947–1967; 1968–1987; and 1988–2016.The first period marks the first noticeable attempts to translate modern Arabic literature; thesecond period witnesses the expansion of translation Arabic literature due to political unrest inthe Middle East; and the third period marks a global recognition of Arabic literature with theawarding of the Nobel Prize for literature to Naguib Mahfuz in 1988. This project entailed thecreation of a comprehensive bibliography of translated works of Arabic fiction published from1947 to 2016. This bibliography provides information not only about the translation flows ofArabic novels and short stories, but also about the authors of the original works and thetranslators of these works, as well as the date and place of publication. This project also entailedthe compilation of comprehensive corpus of all of the paratexts written by translators thataccompanied the published translations of works of Arabic fiction published from 1947 to 2016.The corpus underwent extensive thematic analysis facilitated by the electronic qualitativeanalysis tool NVivo. The study’s quantitative findings reveal that translations increased innumber over time, with nine translations published in the first period, 83 in the second period,and 454 published in the third period. The qualitative data findings in the translator’s paratextsshow that Arabic translators generally focus on conveying the works in the target language withminimum disruption to the source culture as represented in those works. In other words, theyview translation as a means to communicate literary and cultural subtleties. Analysis of theparatexts reveals that although the themes discussed by translators do differ across the threeperiods, the data indicate that translators predominantly view translation as a means tocommunicate literary and cultural subtleties during the period from 1947 to 2016.