Issues of representation and communication in recent translation studies: Paul Bowles’s project of translating Moroccan culture

Abstract

ABSTRACTA lot of work has been done on the major turns that have taken place within Translation Studies. The moves from the prescriptive to the descriptive method of analyzing and conducting translation allow for appropriating the whole process of translation to the service of individual and institutional interests. These changes have been triggered by the juggernaut of globalization and have touched upon the ethics of intercultural communication and representation. As such, responding to the present international scene, dominated with cultural paranoia and reluctance to get immersed into the historically inevitable stage of cultural co-existence, the present paper suggests the transcultural approach to translation as a working alternative to the separatist and nationalist discourses that are fraught with essentialist ideologies. Within the transcultural dynamics of translation, the collision between the ethnocentric authority and peripheral minority is replaced with collaborative intersection of belonging senses and political voices to circumvent the devastating effects of the dichotomizing rhetoric. The American writer Paul Bowles’ project of translating Moroccan culture in the context of his collaboration with the Moroccan preliterate storyteller Mohamed Mrabet can be, therefore, read through the transcultural prism, which is in this case subtly sustained by the contact zone of Tangier.