“My Tale Is Too Long to Tell”
The Locust and the Bird between South Lebanon and New York City
In: Journal of Arabic LiteratureSearch for other papers by Michelle Hartman in
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Ḥanān al-Shaykh’s 2005 memoir of her mother’s extraordinary life, Ḥikāyatī sharḥun yaṭūl (My Tale Is Too Long to Tell), changes significantly in its translation as The Locust and the Bird. In Arabic, Kāmilah narrates her life story through her daughter’s pen, using clever linguistic shifts of tone and register as well as a wicked sense of humor to convey her unconventional choices. It is a very local tale of life in South Lebanon. This article argues that the changes the text undergoes as it moves from Arabic into English refocus this novel and transform it into a work about transnational migration. Framing this study against the background of other Arab women’s novels that have undergone major changes in translation into English, I show how domesticating translation strategies operate to reinforce the text’s and the narrator’s difference and exoticism. While claiming to make the text “more accessible” to an English-language readership, domesticating translation moves in this novel—including a changed title, the addition of a foreword and an epilogue, and others—inscribe a deep sense of difference within this novel. More specifically, these translation changes layer emotional and physical estrangement as well as add the themes of exile and the American Dream into a memoir of a woman who rarely left South Lebanon.
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1
Ḥanān al-Shaykh, Ḥikāyatī sharḥun yaṭūl: riwāyah (Beirut: Dār al-Ādāb, 2005).
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4
Roger Allen, “Fiction and Publics: The Emergence of the ‘Arabic Best-Seller,’ ” Viewpoints, June 29, 2009, 9–12, http://www.mei.edu/Portals/0/Publications/state-arts-middleeast.pdf, accessed February 9, 2014. See also Roger Allen’s contribution to this special issue. Eds.
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7
Mohja Kahf, “Packaging ‘Huda’: Sha’rawi’s Memoirs in the United States Reception Environment,” in Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers, ed. Amal Amireh and Lisa Suhair Majaj (New York: Garland, 2000), 148–172.
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8
Amal Amireh, “Framing Nawal El Saadawi: Arab Feminism in a Transnational World,” Signs 26 (2000), 215–249.
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11
Michelle Hartman, “Gender, Genre and the (Missing) Gazelle: Arab Woman Writers and the Politics of Translation,” Feminist Studies 38 (2012), 17–49.
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14
Ibid., 199–200.
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17
Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation (New York: Routledge, 1995). See in particular Venuti’s “Call to Action” on 307.
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18
See: Roger Allen, “The Happy Traitor: Tales of Translation,” Comparative Literature Studies 47 (2010), 478; Issa J. Boullata, “The Case for Resistant Translation from Arabic to English,” Translation Review 65 (2003), 29–33; Booth, “Translator,” 199; Hartman, “(Missing) Gazelle,” 22–23. See also Allen in this issue. Eds.
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20
Ibid., 480.
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21
Ibid., 481–482. Allen has also suggested, including at the conference where this paper was originally developed, that Ḥanān al-Shaykh willingly participated in the changes to this text. This further connects to the points raised by Booth in relation to her translation of al-Ṣāniʿ’s work and to questions raised about textual ownership especially by “celebrity” authors.
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22
Edward Said, “Embargoed Literature,” The Nation 17 (1990), 278–280.
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23
Emily Apter, Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability (New York: Verso, 2013).
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24
Ḥanān al-Shaykh, Ḥikāyat Zahrah (Beirut: Dār al-Ādāb, 1980); Hanan al-Shaykh, The Story of Zahra, trans. Peter Ford (New York: Doubleday, 1986).
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27
Hala Halim, “Between Words: Living Language,” Al-Ahram Weekly 788, March 30-April 5, 2006, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/788/cu4.htm, accessed February 6, 2014.
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30
Ibid., 298.
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32
Anna Ball, “Things That Walk With Me,” Wasafiri 26 (2011), 63.
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33
Jenni Ramone, “ ‘My Mother Said, After This Book, People Would Know How to Treat Their Daughters’: An Interview with Hanan Al-Shaykh,” Life Writing 10 (2013), 225.
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“My Tale Is Too Long to Tell”
The Locust and the Bird between South Lebanon and New York City
In: Journal of Arabic LiteratureSearch for other papers by Michelle Hartman in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Ḥanān al-Shaykh’s 2005 memoir of her mother’s extraordinary life, Ḥikāyatī sharḥun yaṭūl (My Tale Is Too Long to Tell), changes significantly in its translation as The Locust and the Bird. In Arabic, Kāmilah narrates her life story through her daughter’s pen, using clever linguistic shifts of tone and register as well as a wicked sense of humor to convey her unconventional choices. It is a very local tale of life in South Lebanon. This article argues that the changes the text undergoes as it moves from Arabic into English refocus this novel and transform it into a work about transnational migration. Framing this study against the background of other Arab women’s novels that have undergone major changes in translation into English, I show how domesticating translation strategies operate to reinforce the text’s and the narrator’s difference and exoticism. While claiming to make the text “more accessible” to an English-language readership, domesticating translation moves in this novel—including a changed title, the addition of a foreword and an epilogue, and others—inscribe a deep sense of difference within this novel. More specifically, these translation changes layer emotional and physical estrangement as well as add the themes of exile and the American Dream into a memoir of a woman who rarely left South Lebanon.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 559 | 118 | 9 |
| Full Text Views | 65 | 13 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 94 | 24 | 1 |