The Identity Controversy in Literary Translation

Abstract

Literary texts display many linguistic features, as well as social and cultural aspects of human lives, and thus we can assert that literary translation is one of the main ways of communication across cultures. Translating literary texts has been always viewed as a hard task. It constitutes an obstacle in the translating process. Therefore, translation in this context is not just a transfer of textual material from one language to another, but rather a cultural transfer, and even more, it is a transfer of identity. It is a process of cultural transfer that involves more than simple search for a semantic equivalent. Translators, therefore, have to take the sociolinguistic aspects of language into consideration, being aware of how these concepts are manifested in each culture. It makes a great challenge to the translator who is sometimes torn between the aesthetics and cultural components of both languages. Moreover, he finds himself lost between various identities. Which one should be kept? What is the role of the translator in achieving a settlement between all identities? He may be tempted to one identity and neglect another, so translation will lose its function. Accordingly, it depends on how he decodes the original text and interrogates its meaning through his view, the target culture and his profession. To clarify the issue, the study examines a novel translated from Arabic into English, For Bread Alone by the Moroccan novelist Mohamed Choukri. It is a novel in which the manifestations of identity between religious and social are differently manifested. Consequently, by strategies of foreignization and localization, the translator attempts to achieve a correct translation that preserves some of the characteristics of the original and respects the eligibility of the target reader. Translation does not create identity, but rather seeks to create a kind of harmony between the self and the other.