The Identity Controversy in Literary Translation

Abstract

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