New insights into arabic translation and interpreting

substan-It addresses translation and interpreting in the Arab World, translating from and into Arabic, and teaching translation from and into Arabic, with a special focus on new fields o

New Insights into Arabic Translation and Interpreting

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Names: Taibi, Mustapha, editor.

Title: New Insights into Arabic Translation and Interpreting/

Edited by Mustapha Taibi.

Description: Bristol: Multilingual Matters, [2016] |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015044279| ISBN 9781783095247 (hbk : alk paper)

ISBN 9781783095254 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Arabic language—Study and teaching—Foreign speakers | Arabic language—Translating—Study and teaching | Arabic

language—Semantics | Language and culture.

Classification: LCC PJ6066 N49 2016 | DDC 492.7/802—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044279

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A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-524-7 (hbk)

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2 Curriculum Innovation in the Arab World: Community

Mustapha Taibi

2 Social Need for Community Interpreting and Translation 24

3 The Role of Universities and Training Institutions 29

4 Criteria for Effective Training in Community

Appendix 39

3 Translating for Pilgrims in Saudi Arabia: A Matter of Quality 47

Mustapha Taibi and Ahmad Qadi

4 Interpreting Taboo: The Case of Arabic Interpreters

Mustapha Taibi and Mohamed El-Madkouri Maataoui

4 Taboo in the Context of Community Interpreting 75

5 Terminology in Undergraduate Translation and Interpreting

Programmes in Spain: The Case of Arabic as a First Foreign Language 91

Naima Ilhami and Catherine Way

3 Differential Aspects of Terminology in Spanish and in

4 Terminology Training in the Translating and

Interpreting Degree at Spanish Universities 99

5 Adequacy of the Content and Approach of the Terminology Module for the Needs of Arabic B Language Students 106

6 Towards a Functional Approach to Arabic–English Legal

Translation: The Role of Comparable/Parallel Texts 115

Mohammed Mediouni

2 Legal Translation Between Subject Field and Function 116

3 Legal Translation and Parallel/Comparable Texts 120

4 Teaching Legal Arabic–English Translation Through

5 Case Study: Translation of a Bilateral Agreement from

6 Testing the Relevance of Parallel/Comparable Texts 139

2 The Continuum: Language, Culture and Translation 162

3 Conceptual Blending of Colour Metaphors 168

Concluding Remarks: The Turn of Translating (into) Arabic 177

Said Faiq

Index 182

Contributors

Associate Prof Mustapha Taibi is Director of Academic Programme

(Languages, TESOL, Interpreting and Translation) at Western Sydney University, Australia He is the leader of the International Community Trans-

lation Research Group and Editor of Translation & Interpreting: The Inter national

Journal of Translation and Interpreting Research (www.trans-int.org) Since 2008

he has been on the New South Wales Regional Advisory Committee of the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI)

Examples of his publications are Tarjamat Al-Khadamaat Al-Aammah (Community

Interpreting and Translation; Dar-Assalam, 2011), ‘Public Service Translation’ in The Oxford Handbook of Translation Studies (ed K Malmkjaer and K Windle;

Oxford University Press, 2011), and Community Translation (co-authored with

Uldis Ozolins; Bloomsbury, 2016)

Emeritus Prof Stuart Campbell was Pro Vice Chancellor (Learning and

Teaching) at Western Sydney University, Australia During his career at WSU (and its predecessors) he held numerous management positions, includ-ing foundation Head of the School of Languages and Linguistics He has a track record of leading change and development in learning and teaching, including establishing programmes in languages, interpreting/translation and teacher education Stuart’s main research specialisation is the psycholin-guistics of translation In the field of translation studies, he is internationally known for his work in developing psycholinguistic models of translation competence as the basis for curriculum and assessment

Prof Said Faiq, FRSA, is Professor of Intercultural Studies and Translation

at the American University of Sharjah (UAE) His positions there have included Chair/Head of Department (2003–7, 2009–10) and Director of the Graduate Programme in Translation and Interpreting (2002–11) Currently

he is a visiting professor at Exeter University (UK), but he has worked in Africa, the Middle East, and the United Kingdom (Salford University, 1990–2003) At Salford, he was director of studies for undergraduate and graduate programmes in Arabic/English translation and interpreting Previously, he was a visiting lecturer in applied linguistics at Leeds University (1996–98)

He has served as consultant to private and public organizations for tional and related sectors and serves on a number of academic editorial and consultancy boards/agencies An established figure in intercultural and translation studies and allied areas, he has directed and examined graduate

educa-research (e.g Cambridge, McGill) His publications include Agency and

Patronage in Eastern Translatology (co-edited with Ahmed Ankit, Cambridge

Scholars Publishing, 2015), Culguage in/of Translation from Arabic (co-edited with Ovidi Carbonnell and Ali Almanna; Lincom, 2014), Beyond Denotation

in Arabic Translation (co-edited with Allen Clark; Sayyab Books, 2010), Cultures in Dialogue: A Translational Perspective (Ati-Academic, 2010), Trans- lated: Translation and Cultural Manipulation (University Press of America,

2007), Identity and Representation in Intercultural Communication (IAICS, 2006), and Cultural Encounters in Translation from Arabic (Multilingual

Matters, 2004)

Dr Ahmad Qadi is an Assistant Professor in Translation at Umm Al-Qura

University (Mecca, Saudi Arabia) and Deputy Dean of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Institute for Hajj and Umrah Research In 2011 he com-

pleted his doctoral dissertation, Language services for pilgrims to the holy city of

Makkah, Saudi Arabia, which is the first study on interpreting and

transla-tion services provided during the annual pilgrimage

Dr Mohamed El-Madkouri Maataoui is a Senior Lecturer in Translation

and Interpreting at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain He teaches graduate courses on translation in Spain and Italy (La Sapienza), with a spe-cial interest in legal translation and migration He has been a visiting profes-sor in Italy, Sweden, Egypt, Bosnia and Morocco, among other countries He has published more than 100 journal papers and book chapters on linguistics, translation studies, and critical discourse analysis His most recent works

include La Imagen del Otro: Lo Árabe en la Prensa Española (Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámico, 2009); Traductología y Traducción (IEHL, 2012) and Escuela

e Inmigración: la Experiencia Española (Instituto de Estudios Ibéricos e

Iberoamericanos de la Universidad de Varsovia, 2012) He is a member of several editorial boards and is involved in several research projects related to translation and international migration

Dr Catherine Way is a Senior Lecturer in Translation at the University of

Granada, Spain, and lead researcher of the AVANTI research group She has published on legal translation, co-edited several books, is a member of the

Editorial Board of the journal Puentes, and until recently was the editor of The

Interpreter and Translator Trainer (she remains on its editorial board) She is a

member of the Advisory Board of Fachsprache, ILLD, IJLTCT, and the book series Aprende a traducir and has written peer reviews for several publishers

She recently co-edited the Proceedings of the EST Conference for Benjamins

Her main fields of research are legal translation, translator training and court interpreting.

Dr Naima Ilhami is an external expert trainer in the Professional Master in

Translation of the University of Granada, Spain She has been a member of the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting at the same University, where she has taught Arabic–Spanish translation for four years She is a freelance trans-lator of Arabic, French and Spanish and a member of the AVANTI research group Her main fields of research are curriculum design, Arabic translator training and legal translation into Arabic

Dr Mohammed Mediouni is Head of the English Section at King Fahd

High School of Translation (Tangier, Morocco) He holds a doctorate in English Linguistics from l’Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV) His research interests include terminology, lexicography, legal translation, and translation studies His recent publications include ‘Can dictionaries (monolingual or

bilingual) help translators overcome collocation pitfalls?’ in Turjuman 22:1,

Actes du Colloque ‘Traduction et Lexicographie’ (April 2013).

Dr Sami Chatti is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at King Abdulaziz

University, Saudi Arabia, and a certified translator in English, French and Arabic He holds a Doctorate and a Master in English Linguistics from the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle, and obtained a second Master in translation from the ESIT School of Interpreters and Translators in Paris His research interests include cognitive semantics, translation studies and corpus linguis-tics He has recently published a book on the Semantics of English Causative Verbs (Paf, 2012), and contributed several articles to specialised journals in linguistics and translation Currently, he is a member of the Tunisian Centre

of Translation and coordinator of the translation programme at King Abdulaziz University

Stuart Campbell

In London in the early 1970s I had the privilege of being taught by Safa Khulusi (1917–1995), the noted Iraqi scholar and author of the 1956 book

Fannu at-Tarjama (ﺔﻤﺟﺮﺘﻟا ﻦﻓ) [The Art of Translation] Dr Khulusi’s Wikipedia

entry notes his expertise as ‘linguist, writer, poet, journalist, translator, cographer, historian’ My recollection is of an erudite and courtly man, devoted to bridging the cultures of the Arab and Anglophone worlds; I was especially intrigued by his theory of Shakespeare’s possible Arab ancestry and his love of the Lake District

lexi-I mention Safa Khulusi in the introduction to this book for two reasons First, in the intervening 40 years, academic specialisation – including in translation studies – has sharpened to the point where few scholars can claim such a broad range of expertise Second, the exploration of the relation-

ship between the cultures of East and West – especially since Said’s Orientalism

(1978) – has become an academic specialisation in its own right, and one that

is highly germane to translation studies

Consider the Arab World 40 years on: communities of Arabic speakers are now part of the demographic profile of European cities such as Stockholm and Paris; respect for human rights in the Arab World is becoming an expec-tation rather than a forlorn hope; the Arab Spring may or may not turn out

to be the final excruciating unravelling of the Arabs’ colonial experience; Arab women show extraordinary courage in demanding equality; Lebanese pop music engages millions; social media tools are totally Arabized; Arabic literacy is now widespread in the Arab World and English is becoming a pre-requisite for advancement among the Arab professional classes; and large numbers of Arabs are studying in Western universities before returning home

to form the elite strata of their societies As all of these changes reshape the ecology of the Arabic language, they impact who uses Arabic, how they use

it, and why they use it In turn, the changing ecology of Arabic throws up new contexts or variations on old contexts in which Arabic is translated – whether they be graphic arts studios, refugee camps, boardrooms, or military interrogation cells

Despite the surge of scholarship on translation since the 1970s, European and North American voices have dominated the field and largely shaped it With a few notable exceptions such as Mona Baker and Basil Hatim, it is

only since 2005 that Arab scholars have begun to add their voices in tial numbers; on the whole, Arab scholarship has consumed rather than pro-duced new ideas in translation research As a result, teachers and students in the Arab World have largely had to depend on references that were developed for language combinations and sociocultural contexts other than their own This lack of a modern native Arab translation studies movement merely rein-forces a relationship of intellectual dependence on the ‘producer’ cultures.This book attempts to redress this imbalance by offering Arab practitio-ners and translation schools a collection of articles by established as well as young researchers from different parts of the world, including Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Australia and Spain

substan-It addresses translation and interpreting in the Arab World, translating from and into Arabic, and teaching translation from and into Arabic, with a special focus on new fields of study and professional practice, new lines

of research, and innovative teaching approaches and resources Written by Arab scholars and non-Arab authors with expertise in the Arab culture and translation from and into Arabic, this volume will be a significant local addi-tion to translation resources in Arab institutions and a contribution of fresh ideas and perspectives to translation studies in general The common thread running through the chapters in this collection is that they attempt to exam-ine Arabic translation from the inside and not from the outside

This collection demonstrates two propositions One is that research into Arabic translation is becoming an established specialisation within the broader field of translation studies The other is that scholarship on Arabic translation is inextricably tied up with how the cultures of the Arab World and the West confront each other, accommodate each other, and shape each other

The chapters by Faiq and Taibi are, in contrast to the later chapters, broad in scope Both engage with the relationship between Arabic and ‘domi-nant’ languages and cultures, but in quite different ways Faiq’s chapter takes

us to the heart of the relationship between the cultures of East and West by examining the special case of Arabic and the role of the ‘master discourse of translation’ through which the Arab World is so negatively portrayed and understood I shall not steal Faiq’s thunder here, but I shall remark on his observation about the one-sidedness of the flow of cultural information between Arab and Western cultures His statistics on the tiny number of Arabic books translated into English are depressing, just as they were 10 years ago The inequality is further emphasised by the smooth adaptation in the Arab World of Western media and entertainment formats such as talent shows and music videos It is hard to think of any Arab literary or artistic form that has survived importation into Western culture without undergo-ing stereotyping and manipulation as it is filtered through the master dis-course Faiq concludes with what I interpret as an appeal for an ethical stance for translation that works towards cultural understanding

Taibi’s chapter on community interpreting and translation education in the Arab World is essentially a call to action to ensure service provision to speakers of languages other than Arabic The author sets out from the prem-ise that for quality language services to be available, three conditions must

be applied: recognition and policymaking, appropriate training, and quality assurance He then focuses on training, argues that Arab universities need to address social needs in interpreting and translation, and describes a new initiative by a Saudi university intended to cater to social groups not previ-ously utilised as reference points (pilgrims to Mecca and migrant workers in the Gulf region generally)

Community interpreting and translation is a relatively recent non that arose in the West as a response to the needs of immigrants, and as

phenome-an authentic form of humphenome-an rights in action In Australia, which is cited in Taibi’s chapter as a pioneer in this field, it is worth noting that community interpreting and translation was the main driver for establishing professional interpreter and translation education in that country, as well as for the devel-opment of a system of training and accreditation that was quite unlike any-thing in Europe The starting point for Australian community interpreting and translation was the power imbalance between authority and client; its

aim, inter alia, was to recover that balance, whether between doctor and

patient, magistrate and accused, or finance provider and applicant The cess of the community interpreting and translation enterprise depended on government largesse, which in turn was driven by proactive multicultural policy – essentially an agreement between taxpayer and government that the powerful and powerless had an equal right to access essential services Taibi’s chapter shows how the Western community interpreting and translation model can be adapted in the Arab World to cater to three client groups: speak-ers of minority languages, migrants, and pilgrims In some respects, for example the case of Tamazigh speakers in Morocco, the model is reminiscent

suc-of interpreting for indigenous citizens in remote Australia; Taibi’s call is for the reality of everyday practice to match the guarantee of an interpreter in the Moroccan Code of Criminal Procedure The Western model takes on an original twist in its application to pilgrims in Saudi Arabia, where no inher-ent power imbalance is involved

The following chapters are characterised in one way or another by their specialisation and their location at the interface of Arab culture and the West – even in the case of language services for the Hajj, which are under pressure

to improve at least in part because of the need to adopt international ness practices Moreover, four of the chapters share two other phenomena: they are the outcome of the work of teacher-researchers and exhibit method-ologically rigorous use of data

busi-In highlighting the teacher-researcher role, I might be accused of stating the obvious, but it is worth considering the place of translation studies in the broader context of the contemporary comprehensive university, especially in

an era of international competition for research talent and an education sector in thrall to international rankings Put bluntly, one wonders whether there is a future for the teacher-researcher in translation studies, or whether

we shall see a specialisation of roles In Australia, the concept of only positions is becoming more common in universities, where research academics are expected to meet set performance targets in publications and grant income At the same time, translation programmes are relatively small and unable to achieve the economies of scale of disciplines such as business

teaching-or health studies that permit research concentration The question I pose is whether the model that has served us for the past few decades needs to evolve I leave this question unanswered, but note that the importance of collaboration and partnerships – both local and international – will become more important in maintaining the strength of the discipline This collection

is evidence that the emerging subdiscipline of Arabic translation studies is taking collaboration seriously

Taibi and Qadi break completely new ground with their chapter on lating for pilgrims during the Hajj each year With well over a million foreign pilgrims annually visiting Mecca, it is remarkable that their language needs have been unresearched until recently Umm Al-Qura University does have a special mission to research the Hajj, but it is interesting to speculate on the broader motivations for the work reported here One is undoubtedly the adaptation of the community translation model developed in Europe and Australia as a response to the needs of immigrants Another might be the adoption of risk management and customer service principles from the glo-balised world of business; indeed, the translations collected for the dataset of this chapter fall well down the scale of acceptability in terms of managing risk or serving the ‘customers’ of the Hajj Indeed, some are just unacceptable The detail of this chapter is fascinating in its own right: We discover a genre that blends the mundane language of public notices with references to the Quran Among the examples cited, the Makkah Transportation Company’s promotional material must be one of the most rhetorically unusual texts one might encounter; the challenges of producing a universally acceptable transla-tion seem to be almost insurmountable The chapter concludes with a set of stern recommendations to the relevant authorities, backed up by a rigorous error analysis of public notices and online material

trans-The chapter by Taibi and El-Madkouri Maataoui on sex taboos in munity interpreting is firmly located in the zone of Arab–Western cultural mediation, specifically in public service interpreting in Spain, and underlines how translation studies has adapted to the contemporary landscape The authors note how our discipline has gradually elevated cultural transfer to a position alongside language transfer; in retrospect, it is difficult to imagine why scholars of the 1970s expended so much energy on defining equivalence Perhaps the raw material was the problem; in parallel with the incorporation into translation studies of cultural perspectives, we have seen the adoption

com-of empirical research methods (research based upon data rather than nient examples plucked from thin air) As Taibi and El-Madkouri Maataoui’s chapter demonstrates, the raw material is uncomfortable and difficult; in real life people do have to talk about sex in medical and legal situations, and translators (more often, community interpreters) have to deal with the cul-tural fallout.

conve-Two findings stand out in this chapter: One is that religion is not the prime determinant in constraining discourse practices that relate to sex in the Spanish–Arabic community interpreting setting; instead, the broader Arab culture drives these practices The other is that community interpreters are not at all unanimous about how to deal with sex taboos; indeed, the diversity of contexts and of interpreters (e.g endogroup and exogroup inter-preters) defies clear-cut solutions

Specialisation is a hallmark of contemporary translation studies, and the chapter by Ilhami and Way underscores this hallmark in its treatment of the teaching of Arabic terminology The authors contextualise their study by describing terminology creation in Arabic, the constraints on the Arabicisation movement and the history of terminology as a component of translation and interpreting programmes in Spain They then address the extent to which the Terminology module is adequate for the specific needs of students whose B language is Arabic Like so many of the advances in translation studies since the mid-1970s, the work reported in this chapter is driven by the need to improve the teaching of translation; as I have noted, our discipline is charac-terised by a strong connection between teaching and research, with teacher-researchers developing underpinning theory and teaching strategies in tandem In this tradition, Ilhami and Way round off their chapter with a critique of terminology training at their own university and a proposal for improvements to support students translating between Spanish and Arabic.Mediouni’s special expertise is in Arabic–English legal translation, a field that is developing momentum through a number of doctoral theses The theoretical insights he presents have been gained through his work as a teacher-researcher Whereas Mediouni catalogues in great detail his method-ology for teaching legal translation, the core of his argument is the efficacy

of multilingual corpora in providing ‘terminological and phraseological equivalents’ The conventionalism of legal texts, Mediouni maintains, means that parallel or comparable texts in English and Arabic will do ‘as much as 80–90% of the task’ His example of auditors’ reports illustrates the point at the level of terminology, while his case study of a bilateral agreement between Morocco and Senegal extends the point to syntax with, for exam-ple, a conventional equivalence found between English participle forms and

Arabic clauses opening with the particle ‘ذإ’ (‘id-’).

Chatti’s chapter rounds off the collection with an accomplished account

of the translation of colour metaphors The chapter draws on a number of theoretical perspectives in order to develop a cognitive model that includes

the notion of a ‘blending space’ in which different cultural perceptions of colours can be resolved On a practical level, this chapter offers guidance on getting colour translation between English and Arabic optimally right; given the ubiquity of colour metaphors, this is one area of cross-cultural transfer where translators cannot afford to be making mistakes.

In conclusion, I wonder what Safa Khulusi might have made of this

collection I think the author of Fannu at-Tarjama would have been pleased

to see the revival of a native Arabic translation discipline, and I suspect that the plentiful use of data in the various chapters would have appealed to his exacting attention to detail in textual analysis He would, I am sure, have agreed that this collection is to be commended as an example of how the longstanding power imbalance in translation studies can be corrected

Through the Master Discourse

of Translation

Said Faiq

Translation does not exist; it becomes This becoming is realized through a complex process that should be explored in a cross-cultural site of interaction Currently, globalization is the term used to refer to this site where intercultural communication through translation-becoming takes place Here, information is communicated as translation that forms or further consolidates an existing body of knowledge of the translating culture

about the translated one.

Cronin, 2013

1 Introduction

Axiomatically, globalisation invokes the existence of something else that

is not so globalised – something local It is a truism to say that different cultures have historically represented each other in ways that have reflected the type of existing power relationships between them Nonetheless, since the 1990s postcolonial and translation studies in particular have contributed

a great deal to illuminating issues of the formation of cultural identities and/

or representation of foreign cultures; in 1999, (the late) André Lefevere named this process ‘composing the other’ The conceptualization of translation involves a binarism based on conflict, as Salama-Carr puts it:

From within the discipline itself, the traditional issue of mediation linked with the increased visibility of the translator and the interpreter as agents,

a shift of perspective promoted in great part by the so-called ‘cultural turn’ in translation and interpreting studies, followed and complemented

by a ‘sociological’ engagement has paved the way for the growing interest

in the role and responsibilities of translators and interpreters in relating and formulating conflict, and in issues of trust and testimony that often arise in that context of shifting power differentials (2013: 32)

Negative representations of ‘weak’ cultures by ‘powerful’ ones – the latter mostly assumed to be Western – have been part of the scheme of history

1

(the terms ‘West’ and ‘Western’ are used here to refer to intellectual framings rather than to geographical places) However, no culture has been misrepre-sented and deformed by the West like the Arab/Islamic one Between these two antagonistic worlds, translation remains a prime medium of communica-tion/interaction Translation usually refers to the handling of written texts and spoken discourse is left to the realm of interpreting (i.e oral translation)

In addition, translation normally refers to both the process of translating and

to the product, the target text As such, the term covers a broad range of cepts and both denotes and connotes different meanings

Within this context, the purpose of this chapter is to examine the straints and pressures of the discourse through which translation is carried out Particularly from perceived weaker cultures, translations are received by audiences at whose disposal is a master discourse that animates issues of identity, similarity and difference across cultures Drawing on textual import from Arabic, the chapter shows how a culturally defined master discourse affects the act of translating at all levels

con-2 The Master Discourse of Translation

Across the different approaches/models of translation, whether named or not, the primary objective is to achieve the same informational and emotive effects in the target translations that are contained in and by the source texts Opposition and conflict between various approaches/models has been the norm in translation studies According to Salama-Carr,

Much of the academic discourse on translation and interpreting has been articulated more or less explicitly in terms of conflict Whilst some authors have focused on the tensions that are inherent in the process of translation (source texts versus target text, adequacy versus acceptability, literal trans-lation versus free translation, semantic translation versus communica-tive translation, and formal correspondence versus dynamic equivalence,

to name but a few dichotomies and constructed oppositions that pin discussions of translation and classification of approaches and strate-gies), others have represented translation as an aggressive act (2013: 31)The given that is at the heart of the dichotomies listed above, the main theoretical basis has centred on the concept of equivalence Therefore, actual equivalence in and through translation has been sought at both the content level and the expressive (form) level This search has often led theorists and translators alike to focus on aspects of either form or content But such polar-ization of what translation involves ignores two simple facts: any text pro-duced through a given language is the product of a unique union between form and content (manner and matter), and the production and reception of

under-a text under-are embedded in under-a specific culturunder-al context Seeing trunder-anslunder-ation under-as under-an equivalence-seeking endeavor has further ignored that languages and their associated cultures are different and that complete equivalence, at one or multiple levels, is impossible In the main and except for specific samples, texts cannot be accurately, faithfully, and neatly translated into other lan-guages and still be the same as their originals Linguistic difficulties (vocabu-lary, idioms, grammar, collocations, etc.) and cultural difficulties (perceptions, experiences, values, religions, histories, etc.) persist.

Since the 1980s, translation studies has been extended to consider various and challenging issues In particular, the view of culture-modeling through translation has ushered in questions that cannot be adequately answered by the conventionalised notions of equivalence, accuracy, fidelity, or ‘sourceer

vs targeteer’ approaches to translation and translating The focus has shifted from (un)translatability to the cultural, political, and economic ramifications

of translation; away from concerns with translated texts towards treating translation as a combination of social, cultural, and political acts that occur within and are attached to global and local relations of power and domi-nance Marinetti comments:

[C]ulturally-inflected studies have looked at translation as cultural action and have developed the question of translation ethics in the con-text of political censorship, endorsement of or resistance to colonial power and gender politics, generating a substantial body of literature that has developed these ideas into legitimate sub-areas (2013: 29)

inter-It follows then that translating involves the transporting (carrying-over)

of languages and their associated cultures to specific target constituencies, and the recuperation of the former by the latter Such constituencies have at their disposal established systems of representation which include norms and conventions for the production and consumption of meanings vis-à-vis people, objects, and events These systems ultimately yield a master dis-course through which identity and difference are marked and within which translating is carried out (Faiq, 2007) In this respect, Venuti (1996: 196) succinctly sums up the nature of translation, as a particular instance of writing, within the Anglo-American tradition:

The violence of translation resides in its very purpose and activity: the reconstitution of the foreign text in accordance with values, beliefs and representations that pre-exist it in the target language, always configured

in hierarchies of dominance and marginality (1996: 196)

Elsewhere, Venuti attempts to exorcise the ideological in the process of resentation through translation Using the terms ‘domestication’ and ‘for-eignization’, he traces how, over the last three centuries, Anglo-American

rep-(by extension, Western) translation theory and practice have had ing and neutralising effects The ultimate aim of such effects has been to subdue the dynamics of texts and realities of indigenous societies and to represent them in terms of what is familiar and unchallenging to Western culture.

normalis-In intercultural communication, translation should perhaps most priately be seen and appreciated as involving interaction (communication) between and across different cultures through the languages of these cul-tures This communication means that those carrying out the acts of trans-lating bring with them prior knowledge (culture) learned through their own (usually mother or first) language In any communicative act (even between people of the same group), culture and language are so intertwined that it is difficult to conceive of one without the other (Bassnett, 1998)

appro-A culture seeks to instruct its members about what to expect from life;

by doing so it reduces confusion and helps them predict the future, often on the basis of one or more pasts Cultural theorists generally agree that the most basic elements of any culture are history, religion, values, social organi-zation, and language itself The first four are interrelated and animated and expressed through the fifth Through its language, a culture is shared and learned behaviour is transmitted across generations for the purposes of pro-moting individual and group survival, growth, and development, as well as the demarcation of itself and its group vis-à-vis other cultures and their respective members

A very basic definition of language is that it is no more than the tion of a good grammar book and a good dictionary But this definition does not explicate what users actually do with grammar rules and neatly listed words; in reality, these mean what their users make of and want them to mean So use depends very much on the user, and language as a whole assumes its importance as the mirror of the ways a culture perceives reality, identity, self, and others

combina-Because it brings culture and language together, translation requires transporting (in the literal sense, causing to travel) texts (comprised of lan-guages and their associated cultures) so that they become other texts (that reside in other languages and their associated cultures) The culture of the others (the ‘destination’ culture) usually has an established system of repre-sentation that helps define it to its members but, more importantly, helps them to define the languages and cultures they are translating from vis-à-vis their own

Thus, translation is by necessity a cultural act (Lefevere, 1998) As such, translation has a culture (politics, ideology, poetics) that precedes the actual act of translation Culture A views culture B in particular ways, and vice versa; in turn, these particular ways affect how Culture A trans-lates from Culture B, and vice versa To express this union between culture and language, perhaps one can say that translation means transporting

texts from Culguage A into Culguage B, where ‘culguage’, the blend of culture and language, is intended to capture the intrinsic relationship between the two.

In translation, the norms of producing, interpreting, and circulating texts

in one culguage tend to remain in force when approaching texts transplanted through translation from another culguage As with native texts, the recep-tion process of translated ones is determined more by the shared knowledge

of the translating community than by what the translated texts themselves contain This means that the culture of translation can be defined as affect-ing (guiding and determining) the translation of culture On translation as intercultural communication, Bassnett and Trivedi write:

… translation does not happen in a vacuum, but in a continuum; it is not an isolated act, it is part of an ongoing process of intercultural transfer Moreover, translation is a highly manipulative activity that involves all kinds of stages in the process of transfer across linguistic and cultural boundaries Translation is not an innocent, transparent activity but is highly charged with signification at every stage; it rarely,

if ever, involves a relationship of equality between texts, authors or systems (1999: 2)

The representation of (mainly external) others through translation is a powerful strategy of exclusion used by a particular culguage as normal, and even moral (Said, 1995; Venuti, 1998) This exclusion is accompanied by an inclusion process of some accepted members from the other culguage (for-eigners) as long as they adopt and adapt to the norms of the culguage that is accepting them The examples of some Maghrebi writers in French and some Indian and Arab writers in English are cases in point (Faiq, 2007, 2014) Calling for an enlargement of translation to empower translators, Tymoczko writes:

When translators remain oblivious of the Eurocentric pretheoretical assumptions built into the discipline of Translation Studies, they not only play out hegemonic roles in their works, they willingly limit their own agency as translators … [Otherwise, t]ranslation in the age of glo-balization will become an instrument of domination, oppression, and exploitation (2007: 8)

Approached from this perspective, translation yields sites for examining

a plethora of issues: race, gender, (post)colonialism, publishing policies, sorship, and otherness In terms of each of these issues, all parties involved

cen-in the translation enterprise (from chooscen-ing source texts for translation to linguistic decisions about the target) tend to be highly influenced by their own culguage and the way it sees the culguage they are translating from

3 Translation from Arabic

Almost a decade before the events of 9/11/2001, Benjamin Barber posited two futures for the human race One future is dictated by the forces of glo-balisation through

… the onrush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast com-puters, and fast food – with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald’s pressing nations into one commercially homogeneous global network: one McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications and commerce (1992: 53)

The other future is driven by what he calls ‘tribalism’ and is seen as the complete, extreme opposite of the former This future represents

… a retribalization of large swaths of humankind by war and bloodshed:

a threatened Lebanonization of national states in which culture is pitted against culture, people against people, tribe against tribe – a Jihad in the name of a hundred narrowly conceived faiths against every kind of inter-dependence, every kind of artificial social cooperation and civic mutual-ity (1992: 53)

The choice here of the words ‘Jihad’ and ‘tribe’ to describe the dangerous future for humanity immediately conjures up images of Arabs and Islam as the main causes of destructive nationalisms (tribalisms) that threaten the ways of life of the ‘civilised’ West This representation is not new, however;

on the contrary, it preceded the spread of colonialism into Arab/Islamic lands Colonialism furthered this view and augmented it with elites chosen from the ‘natives’ to act as apologists and/or guardians of its order and system of representation, both during and after colonial rule

Translation from Arabic into Western culguages, mostly English and French, has followed representational strategies within an established frame-work of institutions that has its own lexis and norms (Faiq, 2004; Said, 1993), as outlined by Barber (1992) and discussed above In a global context, translation, aided by the media and its technologies, yields ‘enormous power

in constructing representations of foreign cultures’ (Venuti, 1998: 97) Given this situation, cultural encounters that involve Arabic language (and, by extension, all language and culture that relates to Islam) that are facilitated through translation into mainstream Western languages have been charac-terized by strategies of manipulation, subversion, and appropriation, with cultural conflicts being the ultimate outcome Such strategies have become

nastier and dangerously topoied (represented) since the events of September

2001 The media have played a major role in the rapid diffusion of subverted

translations and coverage of this world – suffocating the diversity and erogeneity of different Arab and Muslim cultures, portraying them instead

het-as a monolith and a homogeneous group, and forming on their behalf a cific cultural identity that creates an otherness of absolute strangers who

spe-‘need to’ be isolated, avoided, and even abominated This pervasive practice

negates possibilities of tertium comparationis and ethical translatability.

While seemingly both the West and the Arab/Islamic worlds have decided

to block themselves in their own towers, media coverage has created more reasons for cultural misunderstandings Representations – translations from –

of Arabic and its associated culture(s) are carried out through lenses that fall within a situation aptly described by Sayyed:

Ghosts are the remains of the dead They are echoes of former times and former lives: those who have died but still remain, hovering between erasure of the past and the indelibility of the present – creatures out of time Muslims [including Arab societies] too, it seems, are often thought

to be out of time: throwbacks to medieval civilizations who are caught

in the grind and glow of ‘our’ modern culture It is sometimes said that Muslims belong to cultures and societies that are moribund and have no vitality – no life of their own Like ghosts they remain with us, haunting the present (1997: 1)

The caricatures depicting Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper, former US President George W Bush’s use of the term ‘shit’ to describe the July 2007 war in the Middle East, the many mistranslations (misrepresenta-tions) of concepts such as jihad and fatwa into fixed meanings and references that deform their native meanings and references, are further examples of authoritarian relationships between Western culture and how it represents – translates – the Arab/Islamic source culture Although they are not transla-tions as such, transliterations represent powerful strategies of fixing and popularizing in the target language/culture particular connotations that sustain cultural conflicts

Translation from Arabic has generally suffered from influences of the master discourse of the translating culture in terms of invisibility, appropria-tion, subversion, and manipulation Such a situation not only distorts origi-nal texts but also leads to the influencing of target readers Carbonell (1996), for example, reports that in his comments on Burton’s translation of the

Arabian Nights, Byron Farwell (1963–1990: 366) wrote:

The great charm of Burton’s translation, viewed as literature, lies in the veil of romance and exoticism he cast over the entire work He tried hard

to retain the flavour of oriental quaintness and naivete of the medieval Arab by writing as the Arab would have written in English (cited in Carbonell, 1996: 80)

Such views of translation, and by extension of readers, result in tions that imply the production of subverted texts at all levels, ‘not only the source text, but also the target context experience the alteration infused by the translation process when their deeper implications are thus revealed’ (Carbonell, 1996: 93) Such alteration ultimately leads to manipulations of the target text through the process of translation, thereby regulating and/or satisfying and agreeing with the expected response of and/or sought from the receivers of the translations, particularly given the pressures of the master discourse through which Arab and Islamic culture(s) are perceived prior to the translation activity itself In this context, translation

transla-becomes a significant site for raising questions of representation, power, and historicity The context is one of contested stories attempting to account for, to recount, the asymmetry and inequality of relations between peoples, races, languages (Niranjana, 1992: 1)

Translation from Arabic has followed representational strategies within

an established framework of institutions with its own vocabulary and scripts (Said, 1993); that is, a particular master discourse and its centripetal pres-sures In this framework of relations of power and knowledge, the West, satisfied and content with its own representations, has not deemed it neces-sary to appreciate and know fully, through translation, the literatures and respective cultures (with their differences and heterogeneity) of Arabs and Muslims (there are exceptions, of course, but they do not affect mainstream trends) Reporting on personal experience of translating contemporary Arabic literature into English, Peter Clark writes:

I wanted … to translate a volume of contemporary Syrian literature I … thought the work of ‘Abd al-Salam al-‘Ujaili was very good and well worth putting into English ‘Ujaili is a doctor in his seventies who has written poetry, criticism, novels and short stories In particular his short stories are outstanding Many are located in the Euphrates valley and depict the tensions of individuals coping with politicisation and the omnipotent state … I proposed to my British publisher a volume of

‘Ujaili’s short stories The editor said, ‘There are three things wrong with the idea He’s male He’s old and he writes short stories Can you find a young female novelist?’ Well, I looked into women’s literature and did translate a novel by a woman writer even though she was and is in her eighties (1997: 109)

Clark’s experience is not incidental His account shows that translation from Arabic into mainstream Western languages is essentially still seen as

an exotic voyage carried out through a weighty component of tion in the target culture, in which the objective knowledge of the source

representa-culture is substantially altered by a dialectic of attraction and repulsion

The Arabian Nights (a title preferred for its exotic and salacious resonance to the original (ﺔﻠﯿﻟو ﺔﻠﯿﻟ ﻒﻟأ) [A Thousand and One Nights], for instance, is more

famous in the West than in the Arab East The exotic, and often distorted, view of the Arab and Islamic worlds has led to a situation where the pro-portion of books written about this world in Western languages is greatly disproportionate to the small number of books translated from Arabic that are, in fact, about it

Centric assumptions about others – races, nationalities, literatures – has provided, in the West, the site for critiques of representations and language

as well as for ideological ‘control’ of writers from the Arab/Islamic worlds These assumptions return time and again to haunt the production, recep-tion, and circulation of Arabic texts, and in turn to complicate the issue of translation Concerning these same issues, Thomas examines the relation-ship between the Arab World and the West in general and the politics behind the awarding of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature to Naguib Mahfouz

In this regard it is interesting to consider Naguib Mahfoudh – the only Arab writer to have been given the full western seal of approval through his winning of the Nobel Prize He worked as a censor throughout the Nasser and Sadat eras, eras not noted for liberal attitudes to the arts or critical awareness … Despite what one may think of the literary merits

of his work … the fact remains that nearly all of his work has been lated, which compares very favourably with translations of other Arab writers who have been much more critical of the West (1998: 104–5)Arabic literary texts are not usually chosen for translation for their inno-vative approaches or for their sociopolitical perspectives Rather, texts chosen are recognizable as conforming to the master discourse of writing about and representing Arabs, Arab culture, and Islam This situation has led many Arab writers to write in and for translation Discussing the discursive strate-

trans-gies of the female Arab writer Hanan al-Shaykh, in her novel Women of Sand

and Myrrh, Dallal appropriately comments

That Women of Sand and Myrrh was written specifically for speaking audiences is clear in the opening chapter References specific to Western culture which would be unfamiliar to Arabs go unexplained, whereas references to customs or practices specific to Arab contexts are consistently accompanied by explanations Suha explains why ‘the [imported] soft toys and dolls had all been destroyed’ by the authorities:

English-‘Every one that was meant to be a human being or animal or bird [was confiscated] since it was not permissible to produce distortions of God’s creatures’ This explanation of a particular interpretation of Islam (or outright fabrication, as most Arab Muslims would believe) used by the

Gulf regimes would need no explanation for Arab audiences However, the narrators’ references to ‘Barbie dolls and Snoopies and Woodstocks’ would not be recognized by most in the Arab world, and yet are left without explanation (1998: 8)

Closely related to this issue is the meagre number of translations from Arabic Venuti (1995) reports that of all translations worldwide for the years

1982, 1983 and 1984, translations from Arabic into English were, respectively,

298, 322, and 536 Compared with translations from Spanish or Hungarian or even Classical Greek and Latin, one can easily notice the insignificance of the number of translations from Arabic Translations during these years from these three sources were 715, 847, and 839 (Spanish); 703, 665, and 679 (Classical Greek); and 839, 1116, and 1035 (Latin)

In an extensive survey of literary translation from Arabic in the UK and Ireland, Büchler and Guthrie (2011: 21) provide the following statistics for 20 years (1990–2010):

Figure 1.1 Most-translated Arab authors, 1990–2010

Notwithstanding this miniscule volume of translation from Arabic, the information Büchler and Guthrie provide further reinforces the views dis-cussed above (recall Thomas, 1998) This situation prompted Edward Said to publish the following conclusion, which remains apt two decades later:For all the major world literatures, Arabic remains relatively unknown and unread in the West, for reasons that are unique, even remarkable, at

a time when tastes here for the non-European are more developed than ever before and, even more compelling, contemporary Arabic literature is

at a particularly interesting juncture (1995: 97)

Despite this interesting juncture, despite a Nobel Prize in literature, and despite the current obsessive attention, bordering on hysteria, that is given

to Arabs and Islam, translation from Arabic still proceeds along a familiar and established master discourse whereby

stereotyping, strategies of signification and power [comprise] the work in which a culture is fashioned does appear as a texture of signs linked by endless connotations and denotations, a meaning system of inextricable complexity that is reflected, developed and recorded in the multifarious act of writing (Carbonell, 1996: 81)

net-Here are some other poignant examples In his foreword to his

transla-tion of Naguib Mahfouz’s novel Yawma Qutila az-Za’ı¯m (ﻢﯿﻋﺰﻟا ﻞﺘﻗ مﻮﯾ) [The Day

the Leader was Killed/Assassinated] into French, André Miquel explains that

he kept footnotes to the very minimum (Mahfouz, 1989) Yet, Jacquemond (1992) counted 54 footnotes in a translation of 77 pages What transpires

is that the translator-cum-orientalist expert assumes total ignorance on the part of readers, and proceeds to guide them through assumed authoritative knowledge of an unfathomable world where backwardness and the assassina-tion of peacemakers are the norms But this would be acceptable compared with Edward Fitzgerald’s infamous comment on the liberties he had allowed

himself to take with his version of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which

evidently ‘really need a little art to shape them’ (Bassnett, 1998: 78)

Commenting on the kind of English used to translate from Arabic, Lewis makes the intriguing observation that

The cause of cultural communication has suffered some damage from a sort of Anglo-Arabese favored by many, particularly Victorian, translators—

a pseudo-biblical, neo-gothic, mock-Elizabethan, bogus Oriental style

which finds its ultimate form in Burton’s translation of the Thousand and

One Nights and still seems to contaminate some other translators, recent

and even contemporary There really is no need to create a special form

of English in order to translate Arabic (1980: 47)

The issue here is not language choices but rather the prior existence of a discourse that controls all involved, often including the authors of the Arabic source texts (what I label elsewhere (Faiq, 2006) as ‘orientalized orientals’)

A case in point is the 2007 novel Girls of Riyadh [ضﺎﯾﺮﻟا تﺎﻨﺑ] by Rajaa al-Sanea,

translated into English by Marilyn Booth, apparently with considerable help from the author The translator claims to have opted for a ‘foreigniz-ing’ translation to let the source shine through, but when the translation appeared, Booth found it unacceptable; leading to the situation whereby such

a translation is ‘[e]nforced by the prevailing practices of marketing, reading and evaluating translations’ (Emmerich, 2013: 200) If Booth’s translation was modified, then the modifications were prompted by the requirements

of a particular master discourse, presumably forced into and onto the English text by those working for the publishers – in short, editors with little or no knowledge of Arabic In the words of Lefevere:

Two factors basically determine the image of a work of literature as jected by a translation These two factors are, in order of importance, the translator’s ideology (whether he/she willingly embraces it, or whether it

pro-is imposed on him/her as a constraint by some form of patronage, and the poetics dominant in the receiving literature at the time of the transla-tion) (1992: 41)

In the translation of Girls of Riyadh (2007), a date given in Arabic (al-Sanea,

2005: 22) as 20/2/2004 becomes February 20, 2004 (al-Sanea, 2007: 14) Apparently, opting for such a representation was necessary because it is simply too difficult for US readers to understand the Arabic (also European) system

of day/month/year In the same Arabic text, a passage that literally translates into English as ‘Lamees sat in the passenger seat, while the rest of the girls, five

in total, sat in the back seats They all sang along with the loud music from the CD player and moved as if they were dancing’ (al-Sanea, 2005: 23), is given

in the published English translation as ‘Lamees took her place next to Michelle while Sadeem and Gamrah climbed into the backseats The CD player was on

full blast The girls sang along and swayed their abaya-clad shoulders as if they

were dancing on the seats’ (al-Sanea, 2007: 16) One can easily notice that facts are changed (the original number, five, has disappeared) and that a superfluous description ahs been added (‘abaya-clad’) Seemingly, US readers need to be reminded of how these little Muslim girls dress One also notes that the reviews of the English translation were firmly couched in the requirements of the master discourse of translating from Arabic into English Without a single exception, the excerpts that appear on the back cover of the English translation all invoke a ‘most repressive society’ and ‘a rare glimpse [of a] secretive/closed society.’ The idea of the harem, the charm of Burton, Fitzgerald’s views, Lewis, and so on (in other words, the master discourse through which Arabic litera-ture travels into English) – all are alive and well today

As a direct result of persistent adherence to the requirements and straints and pressures of a master discourse, through translation Arabic source texts become situated into ways of representation engrained in the shared experience and institutional norms of the translating community or commu-nities (self, selves, us) Source texts and their associated peoples are trans-formed from certain specific signs into signs whose typifications translators and others involved in the translation enterprise claim to know As the ant-onym of the self (Us, the translating culture), the Other (Them, the trans-lated culture) is used to refer to all that the self perceives as mildly or radically different Historically, the Other and otherness have been feared than appreci-ated, with the exception perhaps of the phenomenon of exoticism, in which the other, though often misunderstood and misrepresented, is perceived as strange but at the same time strangely ‘attractive’ (cf O’Barr, 1994).

con-4 Conclusion

In intercultural contact that occurs through translation, otherness is sured according to a scale of possibilities within a master discourse: when the Other is feared, the expected discoursal strategies (centrifugal pressures) are those that realize hierarchy (i.e dominance and subordination) Such entrenched otherness can and often does lead to the establishment of stereo-types, which are usually accomplished by representations that reinforce the ideas behind them Some critics see stereotypes as complex, ambivalent, con-tradictory modes of representation, as ‘anxious as they are assertive’, and rec-ognise that they tend to dehumanise certain groups, which in turn makes it easier for those who formulate and disseminate the stereotypes to control, appropriate, and subvert the stereotyped Other while also minimising the complex web of ‘guilt and shame’ spun by such an endeavor (Bhabha, 1994) The representation of others through translation is a powerful strategy of exclusion used by a self which is perceived as normal and moral (Said, 1995) This exclusion is further accompanied by an includsion process of some accepted members from the Other, as long as these accepted individuals adopt and adapt to the underlying master discourse and its associated representa-tional system and ideology of the accepting self (cf Faiq, 2000)

mea-Notwithstanding the complexities of intercultural communication, the ethics of translation, in theory, postulates that it should lead to a rapproche-

ment between the au-delà (Bhabha, 1994: 1), the Arab/Muslim world for our purposes here, and the Western world, as the translator of this au-delà And,

since it covers the space-between, the ‘inter’ in ‘intercultural’ translation could render the encounter less painful, less conflictual, less antagonistic, and less bloody In our age, more urgently than ever before, the ethics of transla-tion postulate that the exercise should lead to a rapprochement between different culguages to bring about both globalisation (the culguage of the

multinationals – often equated with the culguage of the US and Western Europe) and localization (individual culguages – often equated with the rest

of the world) in order to celebrate differences That is, translation should be defined within and carried out as a tool for some glocalisation objective, most often bringing the hegemonic global and the not-so-hegemonic local together in peaceful encounters

A critical understanding of the ways in which master discourses operate might contribute to more efficient self-monitoring on the part of all involved

in translation, and might lead to making it a true process of intercultural understanding rather than a way of reinforcing existing representations and images of one culture about another This can be achieved through a cross-cultural appraisal of the discourses underlying translation and translating with a view to better understanding the issues of identity (self and other), translation enterprise (patronage, agencies, translators) and norms of repre-sentation (master discourse) If we are to examine the process of intercultural communication through translation, we ought to carefully consider the cul-ture of doing translation since the culture of translation ultimately guides and regulates the translation of culture

In terms of translation from Arabic, Jraissati (2011) provides an ate framing for the scene:

appropri-Compared to other regions in the West, the Arab world is known through past colonial ties, intense media coverage and immigrated populations –

or by One Thousand and One Arabian Nights.

It seems that the current situation of translation from Arabic remains faithful to its master discourse

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This association between community language services and mainly European and North American immigration settings is solidly entrenched – as

my own experience attests During much of my time as a community preter and translator in Spain in the 1990s and, subsequently, as a lecturer in the field in Spain and Australia, I gave little thought to the situation of the

inter-2

same professional services in the Arab World Nor am I alone in this: during

a meeting held at a Saudi university in 2014 to discuss research and training

in community interpreting and language services for pilgrims, a Saudi MP commented that this was the first he had heard of community interpreting and translation and noted the attendant need to recruit qualified profession-als to guarantee quality services Effectively, working with Arabic in domi-nant Spanish- or English-speaking cultures can foster a unidirectional view of Arabic speakers as consumers only, simply because in (for example) Europe and Australia they are usually migrants or refugees who need interpreters to communicate with/access mainstream public services Yet this paradigm must clearly be inverted in many other parts of the world: in Arab countries

it is Arabic speakers who provide the respective public services and, generally, speakers of other languages who use them

These anecdotes are mentioned to stress that there is always an initial stage of awareness and that, once needs are recognised, action is likely to follow In my case, after I relocated to Australia in 2006, I began to consider the situation in Arab countries and analyse social contexts in which commu-nity interpreting and translation services are needed In Taibi (2011) three situ-ations were identified: autochthonous language minorities (e.g the Amazigh

in Morocco and other North African countries), migrant workers (e.g South Asian workers in the Gulf States) and pilgrims visiting Saudi Arabia In this new social and cultural context, the focus of community translation and interpreting is still language minorities and migrants, but the perspective has changed From this new angle, Arabic is not approached as a migrant language but as a mainstream one: Arabic speakers are mainstream public service pro-viders, while public service users are non-Arabic speaking migrants, visitors,

or local minorities The findings in Taibi (2011) painted a bleak picture of the language services available to migrants, pilgrims, and language minorities in the region However, confronting that image is necessary to raise awareness

of community interpreting and translation in the Arab World, prompt change

in the language services available to these social groups, and promote ing and professionalisation in these areas of professional practice

train-To achieve the desired change, three cornerstones are proposed by Taibi (2011: 119–142): (1) recognition and policymaking, (2) appropriate training, and (3) professional accreditation and quality assurance This chapter focuses

on the second of these, namely training in community interpreting and translation as a means of ensuring quality professional services It com-mences with an overview of the social needs warranting innovation in the translation and interpreting curriculum in the Arab World Subsequently, it outlines the quality requirements for teaching to be effective in community interpreting and translation Finally and most importantly, it discusses an initiative at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia, which demonstrates that change is desirable, possible, and already taking place The initiative, pro-posed in 2014, consists of an innovative programme in community (public

service) interpreting which will likely be a significant contribution to ing in community interpreting and translation and curriculum innovation in the Arab World.

train-2 Social Need for Community Interpreting and

As Pöchhacker’s (1999) and many other definitions suggest, public vices are closely linked with community interpreting and translation Indeed, what distinguishes these from other types of translation and interpreting services is that they bridge the access and equity divide between public ser-vice providers and community members who do not speak the mainstream language(s) Communication between these parties normally involves ‘an

ser-information gap’ and a ‘status differential between the clients’ (Gentile et al.,

1996: 18); that is, between public service providers vested with institutional power and access to information, on the one hand, and lay (usually disadvan-taged) users on the other Community interpreting and translation enable language minority groups to participate in society; therefore, these are ser-vices with a social and empowerment mission, especially in contexts that include sociocultural and educational disparities (Lesch, 1999, 2004)

Multilingual countries have responded differently to social and sional needs for community interpreting and translation Whereas some (e.g Australia, Canada and Sweden) have instituted organised services, training opportunities and quality assurance measures, others are still lagging, with responses ranging from ad hoc measures to neglect (Ozolins, 2000, 2010) Pioneering countries adopted what Ozolins refers to as a ‘comprehensive approach’ that ‘involved not only widespread provision of generic or special-ised language services, but also a certification system, a training regime, and

profes-a degree of policy plprofes-anning profes-and evprofes-aluprofes-ation’ (Ozolins, 2010: 195) Austrprofes-aliprofes-a, for instance, has adopted a number of measures since the 1970s Public organisa-tions and services such as the nationwide Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS) and the Community Relations Commission (CRC) in New South Wales

have long been catering to the communicative needs of the linguistically diverse Australian community (Community Relations Commission, 2014) Public services can also engage accredited interpreters and translators through private agencies The National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI) has been an effective instrument in establishing and maintaining professional standards for translators and interpreters as well as relevant training programmes This accreditation body runs certification tests

in more than 50 languages and has a recognition system in place for many others (NAATI, 2014) Australian universities and institutes of higher educa-tion have been offering courses which are characterised by a clear community focus, not only in terms of the range of community languages available but also in terms of contents and learning resources

By contrast, the countries where community interpreting and translation are still developing either accord little official recognition to the need for these services or have only begun to grapple with multilingualism since the 1990s Southern European states such as Spain, Italy and Greece have evolved from emigration sources to immigration destinations Other countries (e.g South Africa) began to recognise their citizens’ linguistic and communicative rights as a result of political change In all of these cases, community inter-preting and translation are still far from being professionalised Services are not widely available; recruitment processes are not rigorous; and, as a result,

it is not uncommon to find relatives, friends or unqualified bilinguals acting

as interpreters (Cambridge, 1999; Martin, 2000; Pöchhacker & Kadric, 1999; Taibi & Martin, 2006)

In the Arab World there is also a strong need for community interpreting and translation services, but little has been done to provide them or to ensure appropriate training and certification for future professionals (Qadi, 2011; Raddawi, 2015; Taibi, 2011) At least three major community groups have been identified as in need of interpreting and translation assistance: domestic language minorities, migrant workers, and pilgrims (Taibi, 2011)

2.1 Language minorities

The Arab World is usually portrayed as a large group of countries unified

by a shared religious heritage (Islam) and a common language However, the individual sociolinguistic situations are much more complex and varied than this picture suggests Multilingualism is a reality in many of these nations, where different varieties of Arabic coexist with minority languages (e.g Berber, Kurdish, Pulaar, Wolof, etc.) as well as colonial languages (e.g English and French)

Speakers of minority languages are usually able to acquire or learn Arabic through interaction with Arabic speakers, the media, and/or the education system However, this is not always so: there are also linguistic minorities that have not had access to formal education (in Arabic) or have little contact

with Arabic speakers and are, therefore, unable to communicate effectively

in the mainstream language Illiterate Amazigh people living in isolated enclaves in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco are a case in point It goes with-out saying that when these community members need a public service (e.g

a medical consultation or civil registry procedure), either the service provider must be from the same speech community or an interpreter must be engaged

to facilitate communication Local public services are usually equipped with bilingual human resources, but in some situations monolingual Amazigh citizens seek the assistance of relatives or acquaintances to facilitate their communication with Arabic-speaking service providers It is clear that the use of non-qualified interpreters in such situations impinges on the quality and effectiveness of both the communication and desired public service (Cambridge, 1999; Pöchhacker & Kadric, 1999; Taibi & Valero, 2005).The need for community interpreting and translation in Arab countries with language minorities raises questions about the responsibility of the state and its public services, the role of professional bodies and educational institutions, and the extent to which communication rights are recognised

as part of human rights It appears that many Arab countries approach the issues of ethnic and language minorities from a political standpoint only Advocacy for language rights is treated as a demand for political power, regional autonomy, or secession (Ennaji, 2005: 183) As a result, little has been done to ensure language minorities’ access to public services and their right to communicate effectively with them In Syria, for example, Arab nationalism has led to Kurdish being banned in schooling and publications,

as well as for use as place names and even for personal names (Spolsky, 2004: 136) In Morocco, Berber was systematically marginalised for centuries (Ennaji, 2014: 98) and only achieved recognition as an official language in

2011 Yet, despite its newfound official status, the language receives scant support in public instrumentalities, and monolingual Berber speakers have

no access to professional interpreting assistance This situation belies Article

318 of the Moroccan Code of Criminal Procedure, which clearly recognises the right to an interpreter when a party or witness does not speak the lan-guage of the Court:

The presiding judge shall order that the defendant be called in If the latter speaks a language, dialect, or tongue that the judges, parties, or witnesses are unable to understand, or if written evidence needs to be translated, the presiding judge shall automatically appoint an interpreter, failing which the procedure will be null and void (Moroccan Ministry

of Justice, 2005, author’s translation)

As a matter of course, speakers of foreign languages such as French, English, and Spanish are normally able to assert their statutory right to an inter-preter, as recognised in the above legal instrument This is not so with

speakers of Berber, which is neither addressed in the accreditation system

of ‘sworn translators’ nor accommodated by translation and interpreting programmes

Understandably, where formal status (interpreter/translator accreditation) and preparation (training programmes) are lacking, non-qualified interpreters

or mediators are called in – if at all Article 26 of Royal Decree No 1.01.127, promulgated on 22 June 2001, states that ‘only an accredited interpreter is qualified to translate oral statements and written documents presented before the courts’ (author’s translation) However, Article 27 leaves the door open for non-accredited interpreters in some cases: ‘Exceptionally, the Court may seek the assistance of a non-accredited interpreter’ (Moroccan Ministry of Justice, 2001) As Berber is not covered by either the professional certification system

or interpreting and translation training programmes, it appears that gual speakers of this language can only avail themselves of the assistance of bilingual relatives, acquaintances, or non-accredited interpreters

monolin-2.2 Migrants

Although some Arab countries (e.g Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco and Algeria) are well known as emigration sources, others, especially the Gulf States, experience large immigrant intakes The economies of affluent coun-tries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates rely heavily

on migrant workers – who in some instances outnumber native-born zens, both in terms of population and labour market share (Abdullah, 2009; Al-Najjar, 2009)

citi-The importance of this manpower to the Gulf economies is widely ognised (e.g Abdullatif, 2009: 49) However, much remains to be done in terms of recognising and respecting these migrant workers’ human rights (Human Rights Watch, 2010: 485–573) and, in particular, their communica-tive needs Little has been done toward facilitating effective communication between migrant workers and public services and, by extension, enabling full access to healthcare, legal, social, and other services As some academic litera-

rec-ture and media reports show (e.g Fatani, 2010; Gulf News, 2007; Mahmoud,

2010; Raddawi, 2015), the need for quality interpreting and translation vices is generally underappreciated and qualified interpreters and translators are scarce; consequently, there is widespread use of ad hoc measures to facili-tate communication between non-Arabic speakers and local public service providers

ser-Speakers of international languages such as English may be in a tively better position, as many public service staff are able to communicate

rela-in English to some extent But many other lrela-inguistic groups (e.g Urdu, Pashto, Malay, Bangla) lack full access to information and services due to language barriers Migrants may occasionally encounter bilingual or multi-lingual public service staff conversant with their language, but even this is

no real guarantee of effective communication Public service interactions (e.g healthcare consultations, court processes, police interviews) are so com-plex, specialised, and challenging that only appropriately trained and accredited interpreters can ensure quality interpreting services.

2.3 Pilgrims

The third case where a social need for community interpreting and lation is evident is the Hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage Every year, millions of Muslims visit Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia, to perform this religious obligation and its attendant rituals They come from a large number of lin-guistically and culturally diverse countries (see appendix) Statistics provided

trans-by the Ministry of Hajj show the annual pilgrimage alone (Umrah, the year optional pilgrimage, not included) is made by over 1.5 million non-Saudis (Saudi Ministry of Hajj, 2009; 2013) This group clearly includes Arabic-speaking pilgrims However, as shown in Table 2.1, a statistical snapshot

all-of the principally represented countries (those contributing over 20,000 grims) in 2012 reveals that non-Arabic-speaking nationalities predominate over Arabic-speaking ones (11 and 7, respectively) Based on the totals for these major sources alone, non-Arab countries account for 1,069,248 pilgrims –roughly triple the contribution from Arab countries (321,679) Considered separately, only four nations contribute pilgrim numbers in excess of 100,000 each: Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, all of which are non-Arabic speaking

pil-The pilgrimage sites consist of various open or closed spaces of religious significance, all concentrated in a relatively small area As pilgrims come from practically every area of the globe, the result is a unique multilingual and multicultural gathering that shares the same limited space and available

Table 2.1 Arab and non-Arab countries that contribute more than 20,000 pilgrims per

year to the annual Hajj (Saudi Ministry of Hajj, 2013)

Arab Countries Non-Arab Countries

religious and non-religious public services (e.g transport, accommodation, food outlets, healthcare, etc.) Effective management of this temporary community – and of the Hajj event itself – requires, among other things, effective communication: between local and international authorities, between service providers and pilgrim representatives, and between service providers and individual pilgrims.

However, a number of studies (e.g Al-Hariri, 1422 H; Al-Sharif 1425 H; Al-Shafie & Al-Sharif, 1424 H; Al-Sharif & Khidr, 1425 H) suggest that infor-mation and communication are areas in dire need of improvement Al-Shafie and Al-Sharif (1424 H), for instance, report gaps in the information available

to pilgrims and a shortage of translators and interpreters In their study, 85.3%

of the pilgrim participants were not aware of the locations of religious advice services Of those who managed to locate religious advice, many (44%) faced communication barriers due to the unavailability of interpreting services Al-Sharif and Khidr (1425 H) acknowledge multilingual initiatives such as Radio of Hajj Awareness, but their research suggests that Arabic is still domi-nant in Hajj education and awareness programmes and that other languages are not given the attention they require As the statistics above suggest, a number of languages should be covered by translation and interpreting services

in Saudi Arabia to ensure both effective response to the Hajj language diversity and adequate communication with major pilgrim collectives Before this can occur, however, translation and interpreting programmes must provide appro-priate training in numerous language combinations or at least the major ones (e.g Indonesian, Urdu, Bengali, Malay, Pashto, Turkish and Persian)

Regarding the three major groups identified above (language minorities, migrants and pilgrims), it is clear that Arab states, instrumentalities, and relevant professional bodies have a major responsibility to provide commu-nity interpreting and translation services and to ensure that these are of an adequate standard The principal argument for this provision is that com-munication is a basic human right that is neither dissociated from nor less important than all others Additional supporting arguments may include

‘quality of consumer care, cost effectiveness, legal obligations, avoiding practice, marketing and competitive pressures’ (Puebla Fortier, 1997: 176) In addition, by doing so Arab countries would improve their images and human rights records, create new employment opportunities, and increase the effi-ciency of their public services

mal-3 The Role of Universities and Training

Institutions

As is argued in Taibi (2011), change in the situation of community preting and translation in the Arab World requires three building blocks: political goodwill and favourable policies, effective training, and

inter-quality-assurance measures The first step towards these changes is to raise awareness of the needs outlined above Awareness will gradually lead to rec-ognition of the problem and thus to favourable policies Another essential step is the establishment of an accreditation system to make sure that only competent translators and interpreters are employed.

Nevertheless, political goodwill, effective policies, and quality-assurance measures cannot be effective in any field without one essential precondi-tion: appropriate training Policies and good intentions implicitly rely on – and would yield little without – a corps of capable professionals Quality education for translators and interpreters is therefore the cornerstone and only real assurance of delivering full community access to public services, whether for local language minorities, foreign migrant workers, or pilgrims (annual or perpetual) This need presents a challenge but also an opportu-nity for Arab universities to make a major contribution to community engagement, community-engaged learning, service to the community, and service to the profession of interpreting and translation

The notion is echoed by Maurasse (2001: 8) who, under the title ‘The Mission of Higher Education’, observes that ‘Higher education, the commu-nity partnerships movement suggests, must as a part of its mission take ownership of its broader environment; the institution must see itself as a citizen with a responsibility to its neighbors.’ This idea of universities as institutions with a connection to their environments and a social role to play has been reiterated by Arab scholars and education leaders Sharqi (2008), for instance, argues that universities need to study the needs and problems of their societies and contribute to addressing them He believes that, when designing education programmes, priority should be given to assuring qual-ity, fulfilling labour market needs, and creating conditions not only to equip students with knowledge and skills but also to connect them to their local and broader environments Al-Obaidi (2009), the Secretary General of the Supreme Council for Educational Planning in Yemen, reviews a number of studies that suggest poor correspondence between the programmes of Arab universities and societal and market needs He links the quality of higher education outcomes to community needs and recommends, among other measures, both conducting studies on the qualities and competencies needed

in professional markets and promoting new specialisations that match social and professional realities

In terms of interpreting and translation programmes, Arab universities and translation schools have contributed to creating and/or consolidating links between their local societies and the surrounding international envi-ronment (e.g through programmes related to trade, diplomacy, literature, science, and technology) However, in terms of social mission and service to the local community, much remains to be done There are practically no translation or interpreting programmes with a community focus; most remain limited to major European languages (English, French and Spanish)