Post-colonialism Theory & Case Study on Arabian Nights

Post-colonialism Theory & Case Study on Arabian Nights

Developments in translation studies have given importance to the non-linguistic factors relevant to the translation process. Indeed, since the beginning of functionalist approaches and the later ‘cultural turn’ in Bassnett and Lefevere, theorists such as Venuti, Spivak, Lefevere and Niranjana have considered translation through the discourses of post-colonialism. Such academic undertakings have seen translation framed in terms of power, hegemony, dominance and resistance.

Literary translations and cultural exchange are tightly linked to power relations and to hierarchic divisions between hegemonic and dominated societies’. Lefevere claims that translation is determined firstly by ideology, then poetics, and only then by language.

Clearly then, ideology is integral to the process of translation. The greater concerns here are the ways in which translators have used texts to construe ideological representations of entire peoples.

In 1990 André Lefevere and Susan Bassnett move theory beyond linguistic studies and ST/TT comparisons to examine the way culture effects translation. They took into account the influence of the publishing industry on ideology; examine translation in the context of colonization, and sees translation as rewriting. André Lefevere’s new approach to theory evolved out of polysystems and the Manipulation School. He examines factors that determine the acceptance or rejection of texts, moving away from universal norms to culturally dependent ones. 

In 1993 Spivak was the one who introduced post-colonialism. Post-colonialism is one of the most thriving points of contact between Cultural Studies and Translation Studies. It can be defined as a broad cultural approach to the study of power relations between different groups, cultures or peoples in which language, literature and translation may play a role. The linking of colonization and translation is accompanied by the argument that translation has played an active role in the colonization process.

The postcolonial concepts may have conveyed a view of translation as just a damaging instrument of the colonizers who imposed their language and used translation to construct a distorted image of the suppressed people which served to reinforce the hierarchal structure of the colony.

Niranjana claims that the image of the colonized created stereotypes that made the conquest process easier. Niranjana, in her study of translation during British colonial rule of India, asserts that translation served to subjectify Indians.

Lawrence Venuti deals with literary translation, and believes that translation studies needs to be broadened to take into account cultural issues. He considers the role played by publishers and editors who choose the works, commission and pay the translators, and often dictate the translation method. He also says that agents, sales teams and reviewers play a huge role in determining whether a translation will be read. 

Venuti claims that translators “should reject the external reference imposed by capitalist society that requires the translator to create a fluent text for the target reader”, because “roughness in the project is not ‘bad translation’ … but part of the project”. 

 Venuti proposes two types of translation strategy: domestication and foreignization. Domestication involves making the TT read as fluently as possible, and this involves careful text selection. Foreignization involves choosing a text that is obviously not of the target culture and rendering the linguistic and cultural differences in the translation.  

The invisibility of the translator is a feature often discussed in terms of literary translation. Another way this manifests itself is in the fact that very few translators have written about their work. Some of those who have done so often say that their work is intuitive and that they must listen to their “ear” or hear the “voice” of the ST. 

Translation then, is an ideological concern par excellence. With the above issues in mind, we will turn our attention to the A Thousand and One Nights. The Nights have been a preoccupation in the West for over three centuries.  Antoine Galland’s 1704 translation, the first, was so popular that he was mobbed in the streets by crowds demanding more of the tales.

Early translations of the tales were undertaken by Orientalists, - European scholars who sought to understand the East in academic terms. They did, however, fall victim to, and even actively spread stereotypical representations of the East. Galland’s translation is said to have ‘fed into already received Western ideas of [Arab] sensuality and male chauvinism’. The dominant stereotypical representations of Arab and Islamic culture and even the current poetics of translation from Arabic have been influenced by translations of the Nights.

Despite its many flaws, it is Richard Burton’s translation that remains the ‘gold standard’ English version. Burton’s preface presents a translation strategy wherein he claims his approach was to ‘writ[e] as the Arab would have written in English’, and to create a ‘faithful copy’. Despite Burton’s claim, his writings reveal another use for text; - he ascribes vast importance to the Nights as being “of the highest anthropological and ethnographical interest” and claims the Nights is ‘a book whose speciality is anthropology’. By this time it was widely held in Europe that the Nights was the prima facie representation of Arabs and their customs, beliefs and sentiments.

Two elements merge in Burton’s work to reveal his ideology. These are his translation method itself, and the vast amount of information he presents in footnotes and the preface. The latter constitute a meta-text in which he presents himself as the omniscient Orientalist scholar who must explain the tales to a western audience.

In Orientalist vein, Burton begins the Nights by inviting the reader to imagine Burton himself transported to a Bedouin camp fire. Thereupon, Burton envisages himself as the orator of the tales and the Arabs become his audience. This incredulous reversal of roles places the Nights, if not only metaphorically, firmly in the grip of the Orientalist who proposes to explain it even to the Arabs themselves, and bestows on Burton a superficial legitimacy to appropriate the tales and legitimize his interpretation. The voice of Burton as translator acts as a very prominent guide for the reader.

Another typical feature of Burton’s discursive strategy is his anthropological approach in which he often resorts to racial remarks that he justifies in footnotes.  In one tale a king discovers his wife in bed with a (black) slave. Burton unashamedly adds in the phrase ‘of loathsome aspect and foul with kitchen grease and grime’ to his translation of ‘black slave’ although it appears neither in the original Arabic nor the previous English translations, nor is anything mentioned of food. Burton indulges in explicit sexual ponderings and even links Arabs and Africans with animals, classifying them along biological lines. Europeans are spared this grotesque gesture.

A colonialist agenda can also be seen in the Tale of the Three Apples, in which a young girl is killed and the two suspects both claim to be the murderer. The Caliph’s advisor feels it would be an injustice to kill both suspects. Although Burton’s translation itself is not suspect, it is his footnote discussion of the Arabic wordالظلم   'zulm’ (‘injustice’) that manifests his ideological intent. By making reference to Islam’s holiest prophet in this footnote, Burton casually seeks to legitimize British colonial interests, interests that were of increasing importance to Britain at the time.

*The brief examples discussed demonstrate how a translation discourse served to dis-appropriate a text from its cultural-linguistic environment, to de-historicize it by shifting its literary style and genre, and seek to legitimize a colonialist agenda particularly through ‘scholarly’ foot notes. Rana Kabbani writes on Burton, “For depicting Eastern peoples… as slothful, violent and sexually obsessed and incapable of sound self-governance, made it seem justified, even imperative, for the imperialist to step in and rule them”.

It is not my contention that Burton’s translation became the ideological prompt for British colonial ambitions in the Middle East, but that it contributed significantly to the discourse of Orientalism and the proliferation of orientalist stereotypes in the English-speaking world. This discourse played an essential role in influencing western perceptions of the Arabs, and the West’s readiness to justify colonial ambitions.

Comparison of English translations of excerpt from the ‘Story of King Shahryar and his Brother’:

Arabic original

فلما كان في نصف الليل تذكر حاجة نسيها في قصره فرجع ودخل قصره فوجد زوجته راقدة في فراشها معانقة عبداً أسود من بعض 

العبيد فلما رأى لهذا الأمر أسودت الدنيا في وجهه

Gloss translation of Arabic- ‘When it was in the middle of the night he remembered something he had forgotten in his palace, so he returned and entered his palace finding his wife laying in her bed embracing one of the black slaves, and seeing this, the world became black in his face.’

Edward William Lane (1838-1840): ‘At midnight, however, he remembered that he had left in his palace an article which he should have brought with him; and having returned to the palace to fetch it, he there beheld his wife sleeping in his bed, and attended by a male negro slave, who had fallen asleep by her side. On beholding this scene, the world became black before his eyes.’

Richard Burton (1885-1888): ‘But when the night was half spent he bethought him that he had forgotten in his palace somewhat which he should have brought with him, so he returned privily and entered his apartments, where he found the Queen, his wife, asleep on his own carpet-bed, embracing with both arms a black cook of loathsome aspect and foul with kitchen grease and grime. When he saw this the world waxed black before his sight . . .’

-Burton’s discussion of the Arabic word ‘zulm’ (injustice).

“Zulm,” the deadliest of monarch’s sins. One of the sayings of Mohammed, popularly quoted, is, “Kingdom endureth with Kufr or infidelity (i. e. without accepting Al-Islam) but endureth not with Zulm or injustice.” Hence the good Moslem will not complain of the rule of Kafirs or Unbelievers, like the English, so long as they rule him righteously and according to his own law.”