Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels as Mediated by Kamil Kilānī: A Bourdieusian Account of the Translator’s Habitus

Abstract

This paper is part of an ongoing Ph.D. project studying the translation of children’s literature in the Arab world as viewed through the sociological lens of Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu’s theory has been broadly applied in agent-oriented research in translation studies. The concepts developed by Bourdieu, namely field, habitus and capital, provide effective analytical models for investigations into the socio-cultural contexts in which translations occur. Bourdieu’s theoretical framework contributes toward understanding the relationship between the choices a translator makes at the micro-level, as well as stimuli at the macro-level. This paper uses Kamil Kilānī’s (1897–1959) translation of Gulliver’s Travels (1931) as a testing ground for the translator’s agency. The paper has two objectives. First, it aims to shed light on the field of children’s literature in the early twentieth century Egypt by examining the social structure of Egypt at the time. Understanding the field of children’s literature as a fully fledged field entails considering other fields with which it is homologous. The second aim of this paper is to focus on the micro-level with an analysis of the interventions of the translator at the textual and paratextual levels. This analysis will be performed by focusing on the translator’s initial and professional habitus, that is, his early socialization through to his education and professional work.KeywordsSociologyHabitusCapitalFieldChildren’s literature Gulliver’s travels