La traduction du dialogue dans la trilogie de Naguib Mahfouz : une déformation ou un parcours créatif?

Abstract

Translation of dialogues in the Naguib Mahfouz’s Trilogy: deformation or creative path? ABSTRACT: One of the crucial problems which confronts an Arabic writer is the writing of a dialogue. The origin of this difficulty lies in the linguistic ambivalence between written classic language and dialectal vernacular language. How should a character in a novel which is written in classic language speak? What variety of language would it be? Naguib Mahfouz opts for the writing in classic Arabic where everybody speaks the same language (tongue). And what if we translate these dialogues into French? According to Salama-Carr, the translations of the dialogues of Mahfouz into French make a sort of exotication-explanation, thus, a relief of oral appears by playing on the registers of language (tongue) where from warping tendencies owed aside cumulative. The examination of the translation of the dialogues in the trilogy imposes the question of creativity: is it a question of a deformation, a transformation (conversion) or a simple imitation? In the area of creativity which translation can reveal, there would be more an idea of a creation of another dialogue in the sense that a new reading with a world of departure more or less recreated by the recipients’ vision is offered to the French-speaking reader. The translation operation thus engenders a creative movement in several senses. Keywords Dialogue, diglossia, translation, oralisation, orientalism.