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Translation, Conversion and Domestication in Leila Aboulela's The Translator
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 18960403 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tamar Steinitz (0000-0002-8293-9083, Queen Mary University of London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 365-382 |
| Publication date | 2013-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Interventions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1369-801X • E-ISSN: 1469-929X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1369801x.2013.824752 |
| OpenAlex | W2314370641 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 11 |
The Sudanese-born author Leila Aboulela describes the position of the non-western Anglophone writer as a translator by default, moving 'back and forth' between languages and cultures. This essay argues that Aboulela's novel The Translator (1999) calls into question conceptualizations of translation that grow out of western religious and philosophical traditions. The central metaphor of translation seems paradoxical: the only successful act of translation in the novel is a religious conversion into Islam, and is linked with the untranslatability of the core of Islam itself. The essay shows how this process, the rewriting of a secular westerner into Islamic faith, problematizes and reworks notions of equivalence, transparency, invisibility and domestication dominant in Anglo-American models of translation. Moreover, when The Translator is considered in relation to Aboulela's other works, the popular representation of the translator as a neutral cultural mediator is subverted: this author-translator's task is not to facilitate bi-lateral cultural exchange, but to act as an ideological agent of cultural change. Her works translate Islam for the western reader while making an argument against the translation of Muslims into a western value system. Thus Aboulela, addressing the reader in English, employing the rhetoric of translation in her work, and referring to her own role as translator, undermines the culturally conditioned expectations these terms raise and challenges western paradigms of translation. Keywords Leila Aboulela, translation, Islam, untranslatability, religious conversion
Dialectic · Epistemology · Faith · Ideology · Invisibility · Islam · Linguistics · Metaphor · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Sociology · Theology · African history and culture analysis · Computer Science · Law · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts · Philosophy · Translation Studies and Practices
The Translator's Invisibility
Toward a Science of Translating
Moving Away from Accuracy
Rethinking Translation
Narratives of terrorism and security
"Translated Messages? The Construction of Religious Identities as Translatory Process Messages traduits? La construction des identités religieuses comme processus de traduction Übersetzte Botschaften? Die Konstruktion religiöser Identitäten als Übersetzungsprozess ¿Mensajes Traducidos? La Construcción de Identidades Religiosas como "Transatory Process
Negotiating Untranslatability and Islam in Leila Aboulela’s
Toward a Science of Translating
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |