Journal of Multicultural Discourses

ISSN: 1744-7143 (Print) 1747-6615 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmmd20

Issues of representation and communication in

recent translation studies: Paul Bowles’s project of
translating Moroccan culture

Abdellah Elboubekri

To cite this article: Abdellah Elboubekri (2016): Issues of representation and communication
in recent translation studies: Paul Bowles’s project of translating Moroccan culture, Journal of
Multicultural Discourses, DOI: 10.1080/17447143.2016.1251932

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2016.1251932

Published online: 07 Nov 2016.

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JOURNAL OF MULTICULTURAL DISCOURSES, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2016.1251932

Issues of representation and communication in recent

translation studies: Paul Bowles’s project of translating
Moroccan culture
Abdellah Elboubekri
Department of English, University Mohamed I, Oujda, Morocco

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

A lot of work has been done on the major turns that have taken Received 7 April 2016
place within Translation Studies. The moves from the prescriptive Accepted 19 October 2016
to the descriptive method of analyzing and conducting translation
KEYWORDS
allow for appropriating the whole process of translation to the Translation studies;
service of individual and institutional interests. These changes globalization; intercultural
have been triggered by the juggernaut of globalization and have communication;
touched upon the ethics of intercultural communication and representation; cultural co-
representation. As such, responding to the present international existence
scene, dominated with cultural paranoia and reluctance to get
immersed into the historically inevitable stage of cultural co-
existence, the present paper suggests the transcultural approach
to translation as a working alternative to the separatist and
nationalist discourses that are fraught with essentialist ideologies.
Within the transcultural dynamics of translation, the collision
between the ethnocentric authority and peripheral minority is
replaced with collaborative intersection of belonging senses and
political voices to circumvent the devastating effects of the
dichotomizing rhetoric. The American writer Paul Bowles’ project
of translating Moroccan culture in the context of his collaboration
with the Moroccan preliterate storyteller Mohamed Mrabet can
be, therefore, read through the transcultural prism, which is in this
case subtly sustained by the contact zone of Tangier.

Introduction
Only few decades ago, the theorization and practice of translation were conceived of in
terms of purely linguistic mastery of the target and source languages. However, in
response to the pressing cultural issues posed by the process of juggernaut globalization,
Translation Studies since the early nineties have been marked by a cultural turn that fore-
grounds translation as a form of intercultural communication. Scholars are today paying
more attention to the contextual factors attending to the element of culture in their aca-
demic researches as related to both the theoretical conceptions and actual practices of
translation. The translator has been required then to assume the position of mediator
who is aware of the embedding of meaning into a specific social context and values
system. These new translational impulses have raised hotly debated subjects with

CONTACT Abdellah Elboubekri aelboubekri@hotmail.com

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 A. ELBOUBEKRI

regard to the processes and ethics of representation and communication. Researchers

have contributed insightful thoughts on how translators can communicate and represent
reality in ways that do not ignore the crucial element of culture. Indeed, scholars and prac-
titioners in the field of translation (Gideon Toury, Andre Lefevere, Lawrence Venuti and
Christiane Nord to mention only a few) have started to forsake their concern with the
text as an independent entity in favor of the context of production and circulation of
the text.
Indeed, the history of Translation Studies is marked with a radical shift from the classical
concentration on the original texts to the conventions of receptor texts. This prescriptive
method targets laying down manners in which linguistic correspondence between the
translating and translated texts can achieved. The turn of the twentieth century witnessed
colossal socio-cultural and political changes at the level of international relations. Sub-
sequently, priority was given to the cultural needs of the receiving text and hence the
messages and purpose of the translation process. This descriptive approach paved the
way for rethinking translation practices and integrating the socio-cultural contexts and
the relationships of power and ideological asymmetries between both parts of translation
process. Lawrence Venuti (1995) presented the foreignization and domestication as two
strategies that accompanied the move form source text (ST)-oriented to target text (TT)-
oriented translation. However, building on the functional theories and the emerging Cul-
tural Studies, the postcolonial scholarship theorized translation in terms of transcultural
relationships whereby the discursive interaction between the hegemonic and resistant
voices are intercepted with moments for hybridized enunciations that blur all sorts of
polarities be they temporal, special or even intellectual.
Bearing in mind this integral part played by culture in translation work, this paper
attempts to read this element in the collaborative work of Paul Bowles and Mohamed
Mrabet and show how their works provide a chance not only for others to voice their
resistant stances and defy the western hegemonic discourses. The project of collaboration
constitutes a space for activating the dynamics of transcultural communication which aim
to bridge the cultural gap across the Atlantic divide. In brief, it shows how this collabora-
tive work reflects the unavoidability of cultural co-existence in a contact zone that serves
as a miniature of today’s globalized world. It is a literary initiative to relinquish the olden
antagonism and to undergo constructive steps for communication and cultural dialogue
sustained by the interstitial space of Tangier. The first part of this paper attends briefly to
the major changes that registered the move toward to the transcultural turn in translation.
In the second part, the focus will be on reading this transcultural dimension in the Amer-
ican translation of Moroccan culture taking Bowles’/Mrabet’s collaborative work as a case
of study.

A short intellectual account of Translation Studies trajectory

From prescriptive to descriptive translation
As a human behavior that is as old as humanity itself, translation has been approached in
various ways. Its theories and practice have kept on ebbing and flowing but no satisfying
conceptual framework has been uncontroversially embraced by all scholars of translation.
However, its scholarship has generally departed from the prescriptive model to the
 JOURNAL OF MULTICULTURAL DISCOURSES 3

advantage of the descriptive one. The issue was no longer about prescribing method-
ologies to attain a kind of textual equivalence or fidelity or what John Catford (1965)
termed ‘formal correspondence’, which squarely caters for the syntactical and lexical struc-
tures of original and receptor texts. The concern shifted to questions about the purpose of
translating taking into account the textual contexts involved in the process of translation.
Within the prescriptive model, structural linguistics perceives translation as a form of
meaning transfer from one linguistic code to another. The main focus was to explicate
how language creates and carries meaning in order to make the operation of meaning
transfer possible. The ultimate objective was to achieve a sort of equivalence of the
thought or meaning inherent in the linguistic expressions. Therefore, linguistics was pri-
marily centered on studying the linguistic signs ‘signifiers’ that are involved in the pro-
duction of the referents ‘signifieds,’ with a minor consideration of its socio-cultural
context. It is true that some later branches of linguistics such as semantics, pragmatics
or even sociolinguistics have tried to raise awareness of the social and cultural dimension
underpinning the ‘the signifieds’. For example, attention was paid to the connotations of
colors such as the different connotations of the white and black clothes during funerals in
different cultures. Thus, beside the structural knowledge of the target/source language,
the translator has to comprehend what the producer of the ST intends to impart.
However, the linguistic approaches to the translational work remains somehow impri-
soned by the structural interpretation of language. According to Lawrence Venuti (1998,
25), driven by its scientific orientation, the linguistics-oriented approaches remain
restricted by their understanding of language as ‘a set of systematic rules autonomous
from cultural and social variation’, which extends to viewing translation as a ‘systematic
operation autonomous from the cultural and social formations in which they are
executed.’
The dependence of Translation Studies on the notion of textual adequacy between the
‘signifier’ and the ‘signified’ as theorized in linguistics was to be rethought with the
advance of the post-structuralism and its disruptive effect on Western philosophy that
is grounded on the idea of completeness and stable truth. Jacques Derrida’s (1978) decon-
structive philosophy questions the established assumption about the existence of the con-
ceptual identity between the ‘signifier’ and the ‘signified’. As such, every translated text is
seen as a new production that does not exactly reflect the original which is varied in nature
and cannot be refracted by only one version.
The transformation of ST has been seen as an indispensable process in any translational
work. In discussing the ‘the task of the translator’, Walter Benjamin (2000, 17) stresses the
inevitability of textual alteration during the act of translation. He argues that ‘no translation
would be possible if in its ultimate essence it strives for likeness of the original’. Accord-
ingly, when the translator approaches the original text he/she seeks to convert what is
comprehended in his/her native linguistic code. George Steiner (1975, 124) prefers to
see this as interpretation that is based on the reconstruction of meaning rather than on
refraction of it.
The descriptive turn in translation has engendered contentious discussion about
whether the poststructuralist transformations that accompanied translation should be
manifest, and hence increases the foreignization of the text, or invisible enough to be
appropriated and domesticated as part of the TT and culture. Indeed this discussion
dates back to ancient Cicero and Horace debates, since the first century BC, about what
4 A. ELBOUBEKRI

is described as ‘word-for-word’ literal transfer of the original text, or ‘sense-for-sense’ free

transfer of the general content of the ST (Susan Bassnett-McGuire 1980, 2). The debate
continued through the nineteenth-century nationalist writings of Friedrich Schleierma-
cher. The latter summarized the two strategies of foreignization and domestication
stating ‘either the translator leaves the writer in peace, as much as possible, and moves
the reader towards him; or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and
moves the writer towards him’ (Venuti 2000, 49). As the first case is about imparting the
‘same image’ understood from the foreign text, the second method of domestication
entails turning the writer of the foreign text into one of the target audience. However,
according to André Lefévere (1977, 67) Schleiermacher called for foreignization method
to face the French political and cultural hegemony during the Napoleonic wars. This
German nationalist politics of translation aims at preserving the foreign features that
characterize the French text. This was supposed to enrich the German language and litera-
ture ‘by cunningly stealing’ from the colonial language.
In fact, the controversies that attended to Translation Studies reflected the differing
ideological and political backgrounds of the involved theorists. Venuti endorses the argu-
ment that the choice of strategies of translation is politically and ideologically informed.
Domestication is thought to solidify the hegemony of English into which a huge percen-
tage of world translation is made. The Anglo-American tradition of translation is marked
with fluency to smoothen the process of reading in the target culture. The translator
tends to disappear as the ST is rendered identical to the cultural norms and aesthetics
of the TT. This appropriative stance presupposes texts selection and adaptation to
reduce the degree of the foreignness of the original and strengthen its conformity to
the dominant imperial language. In this regard, Venuti (1998, 11) affirms that ‘the econ-
omic and political ascendency of the US has reduced foreign languages and cultures to
minorities in relation to its language and culture’. This being the case, resistance can be
enacted within the realm of foreignization that is fundamentally anti-ethnocentrism.
Antoine Berman corroborates Venuti’s resistant position. He is against domestication
which is compatible with domination. He is for the politics of translation which retain
the otherness of the foreign and preserve the vagaries of its distinctive features. His
ethical stand in literary translation requires welcoming ‘the foreign into the mother
tongue, to recognize and receive the other as other, and ever to reinvigorate the
mother tongue through the newness that the foreign represents’ (Qtd in Kathryn Bachlelor
2009, 233). As a matter of fact, in ‘Translation and the Trials of the Foreign,’ Berman (2000,
284–297) calls for translational practice that is based on word-for-word translation. It is a
kind of foreignization which seeks to maintain the originality of the translated texts and
bolster the translating language.
Along with the dissatisfaction with the use of modern linguistics and the ethical debate
of foreignization and domestication, translation studies, in a later descriptive move,
applied the functionalist method in an attempt to cover the metalanguage context under-
lying translation. During the late 1970s there was an upsurge of interest in the social
context that surrounds the production and reception of the linguistic structures and mean-
ings. This eventually led to functional linguistics by Michael Halliday who stresses on the
significance of taking the type and register of the text into consideration and on relating
language utterances to their social contexts (1989). Christiane Nord and Katharina Reiss
drew on the functionalist and sociological frames and left a great impact on translation
 JOURNAL OF MULTICULTURAL DISCOURSES 5

theories. For instance, Reiss (1981/2000) developed a translation communicative strategy

that seeks to realize equivalence through distinguishing the typologies of the text as each
type (informative, expressive, operative …) has a distinct way of translation. For the first
type, for example, the strategy revolves around providing full and even extra explanation
of every fact. As for Nord (1997), she focuses on the notion of Skopos (aim in Greek) and
sees Translation as a Purposeful Activity.
In the German tradition of translation, the Skopos theory studies the economic, ideo-
logical and institutional circumstances that surround the processes and functions of trans-
lation. As a way of illustration, Hans J. Vermeer (2000) affirms that any translational act
presupposes certain instruction dictated by a particular institution such as the publishers
in exchange for a commission to the benefit of the translators, who are bound in several
occasions to deviate from the aim of the ST. Vermeer explains that ‘a statement of skopos
implies that it is not necessarily identical with the skopos attributed to the ST: there are
cases where such identity is not possible’ (qtd in Venuti 2000, 228). As such, knowing
the purpose of translation helps the translator decide on choices to make vis-à-vis the
process of prioritizing the STs or TTs, such as which ideas to highlight or foreshadow,
which elements to subject to ellipsis.
In his translation of the Bible, Eugene Nida (1964) redefines the textual adequacy
assumed by the prescriptive theories. He considers the goal and purpose behind trans-
lation as the dynamic determinator of the final translated product. His ‘dynamic adequacy’
allows for all kinds of modification that could result in equivalent effects of the ST. His strat-
egy of translation aims at transferring the message of God to other cultures. In other
words, it is an advocation for a sense-for-sense translation.
In striving to attain a kind of equivalence, both Nida and major linguists interested in
translation were excessively preoccupied with the intrinsic characters of the language
forms and uses that are capable of realizing the notion of equivalence. Yet, the social
and cultural backgrounds that decide, most of the time, the clarity and understandability
of the message encoded in the ST were relatively ignored. Consideration for the social and
cultural elements in translation theories is greatly attributed to the Chinese prominent the-
orist Ye Zinan, who basically implements Nida’s notion of dynamic equivalence. Hence,
research started to approach translation from a cultural perspective.
These new translational impulses have raised hotly debated subjects with regard to the
processes and ethics of representation and communication. Researchers have contributed
insightful thoughts about how translators could communicate and represent reality in
ways that do not ignore the crucial element of culture. Scholars and practitioners in the
field of translation have started to forsake their concern with the text as an independent
entity into reflecting on the context of production and circulation of the text. In this regard,
Gideon Toury (1995, 29), one influential figure in the new wave of translation, sees that
translations are ‘facts of target cultures; on occasion facts of a special status, sometimes
even constituting identifiable (sub)systems of their own, but of the target culture in any
event’. So whatever its embedding in the different branches of linguistics might be, trans-
lation activities should rather be seen as enjoying a cultural significance. As it is got from
Toury’s founding concept of norms – awareness of regular behaviors with regard to the
general values shared by a community – the translator was to assume a social role that
is conscious of the regular rules, norms and idiosyncrasies in both the source and target
languages. Hence, the descriptive studies – either with the contexts when adequacy
6 A. ELBOUBEKRI

(focus on norm of SL) or acceptability (focus on norm of TL) is favored – gained momen-
tum. Moreover, Toury (1995, 61) coupled the notion of norm with equivalence, which sub-
sequently effects a concrete change vis-à-vis the translation approaches, ‘from an
ahistorical, largely prescriptive concept to a historical one’.

Toward the postcolonial turns in translation

Translation was not squarely perceived as being a channel to communicate a literal
message or a tool to serve a certain purposeful function (skopos). This approach
remains insufficient for a better understanding of the complicated intentions of the pro-
ducers of ST, especially when it comes to literary work, which is replete with slipperiness
and indeterminacies as far as the construction and deconstruction of meaning is con-
cerned. In its later development, the descriptive approach in literary translation accentu-
ates on the socio-cultural function that a translated document can perform. Drawing on
this culturally oriented standpoint, some scholars such as Itamar Even-Zohar and
Gideon Toury came up with what is called the polysystem theory, whose diachronic
way of analysis would be later developed and appropriated by the postcolonial theory
of translation. Such a diachronic view considers the position of translated texts within
the spatial and temporal contexts, and sees the texts as body, rather than as individual,
functioning within the historical, social and cultural systems of the particular receptive
readers. This being the case, the translated text should be approached as a discourse
that is, as any other discourse, institutionalized and enmeshed in the social and cultural
fabric, and is part and parcel of cultural construction.
The new trend of theorizing involves laying focal attention on the translated text’s
culture and the way its target readers perform their interpretive practice. The receptive
culture, within the polysystem framework, determines the artistic as well as the pedago-
gical value of the translated text (Qiyi Liao 2006, 61). Hence, studying the translation
decisions should take into account the social convention in the receiving culture and
socio-cultural agenda the translator has to comply with. According to Toury’s ‘The
Nature and Role of Norms in Translation’ (1978), the ‘norms’ and ‘terms of reference’
(Venuti 2000, 168) that govern the target culture determine the social role of the translator
and his translated text. Moreover, both Toury (1995) and Even Zohar (1990) refer to the
reinvigorating force of translation. The foreign text introduces new idea and forms to
the target culture.
In the American literary context, which is the focus in this paper, the fictional publi-
cations between the 1950s and the 1980s witnessed a preponderance of translated
fiction from foreign countries. Edwin Gentzler (1998, 143) noted that a ‘Mayan, Guatema-
lan or North African/Berber texts,’ translated into English through the method of foreign-
ization, achieved noticeable circulation among readership. These foreignized translations
were claimed to introduce innovation in the TC system and offer ‘remedy for the exhaus-
tion of traditional forms of storytelling, a replenishment in the shape of rigid realism and a
greater generic self-consciousness’ (Venuti 1998, 169). This view was also strongly asserted
by George Steiner (1975, 26), who considered all attempts for translation as ‘at the same
time reproductive and innovatory’. In addition, foreignization not only serves the enriching
of national language in Schleiermacher’s sense, it is also used as a means to subvert the
supremacy of imperial languages. Minor marginalized foreign texts that are translated
 JOURNAL OF MULTICULTURAL DISCOURSES 7

into English underlines the distinctiveness of the other. What Venuti termed ‘minoritizing
translation’ does destabilize the authenticity and hegemony of the American literary
canon. He (1995, 41) argues that ‘the foreign text is privileged in foreignizing translation
only insofar as it enables a disruption of target-language cultural values’.
As a matter of fact, such heightened concentration on the element of the text’s differ-
ence and specificity was encouraged by the literary descriptive paradigm and approach to
translation which emerged as a reaction to the dominant prescriptive linguistic theories.
Given its emerging function as unsettling the authority of the canonized, the minor trans-
lated text turns into an arena for the operation of ideological dichotomies and the accom-
panying of power relationships. Therefore, it has become an instrumental document for
the study of unequal relationships that usually mark the relationship between the cultures
related to the ST and TT.
The postcolonial theory of translation came as a challenge to the western totalitarian
and absolutist paradigms of knowledge production and reception. Translation was
subject to the constraints of the static canons and universal standards that the Western
humanist worldview was applying on all types of knowledge. The different cultural pro-
ducts which do not conform to the western norms are then to be excluded and denied
due consideration. The new reading framework challenges the cultural mediator in trans-
lation who acts as the only authorial determiner of meaning and interpretation. The post-
colonial rereading of translated texts is inscriptive of alterity along with the subversive
potentiality of the local to the global.
The postcolonial translation was in essence informed by the descriptive analysis of the
cultural and social skopos of the translated text and its discursive impact on both the
receptive audience and their culture. It, however, laid emphasis on the role of ideology
and power and adopts the cultural studies methodologies of interpretation. Scholars
use the term ‘cultural turn’ to refer to this new direction in translation during the 1990s.
Basnett and Lefevere (1990, xii/xiv), prominent upholders of the cultural turn in translation,
suggest that researchers on translation studies will learn a lot by going into ‘the vagaries
and vicissitudes of the exercise of power in a society, and what the exercise of power
means in terms of the production of culture, of which the production of translation is
part’. The escalating concern with the cultural factor has been as well accentuated by
the functionalist approach in translation. Christiane Nord (1991, 11), one well-known sup-
porter of the latter approach, sees the translator as ‘not the sender of the ST message, but a
text producer in the target culture’. The knowledge of ST/TT’s cultures appears therefore as
indispensible traits for the practitioners of translation. In this respect, beside the linguistic
aspects, the socio- cultural/political circumstances as well as the process of intercultural
communication (with special focus on questions of to whom, when, where, how, who
translate and for what purpose) must be considered.
Given the increasing recognition of translation as cultural exchange, there has been an
upsurge of interest in the cultural dimension of translational work. Scholars have started to
pay more attention to the contextual factors attending to the element of culture in their
academic research as related to both the theoretical conceptions and actual practices of
translation. Indeed, translation theories have witnessed radical transformations starting
from the nineties, in response to the pressing cultural matters posed by the process of glo-
balization. Although it is widely believed that the mounting sway of globalization has been
creating a culturally unified world, a deep look at the international cultural scene unravels
8 A. ELBOUBEKRI

the fact that the growing speed of globalization intensifies, ironically, reactionary dis-
courses calling for cultural diversities. Therefore, the need for probing into the cultural
dimension of translation has become urgent.
Andre Lefévere (1992), a fervent advocator of the descriptive approach and more
biased toward literary translation, argues for the enmeshment of translation in the domi-
nant social and ideological structure. Being similar to the various forms of literary pro-
duction, all kinds of translated texts are to be approached in terms of discursive
constructions in service of the ideological line of the target culture. Before Lefévere,
Toury (1985, 18/19) asserted that translation does always serve the ideologies of the recep-
tor culture. He declares that translation is
conditioned by the goals it is designed to serve, and these goals are set in, and by, the pro-
spective receptor system (s). Consequently, translators operate first and foremost in the inter-
est of the culture into which they are translating, and not in the interest of the ST, let alone the
source culture.

Those who hold power, be they professionals, controllers of the dominant literary dis-
course, or patrons who represent power from outside literary system, delineate the
ways the translation and its consumption would take. Lefévere (1992, xi) puts forward:
All rewritings, whatever their intention, reflect a certain ideology and a poetics and as such
manipulate literature to function in a given society in a given way. Rewriting is manipulation,
undertaken in the service of power, and in its positive aspect can help in the evolution of a
literature and a society. Rewriting can introduce new concepts, new genres, new devices
and the history of translation is the history also of literary innovation, of the shaping power
of one culture upon another. But rewriting can also repress innovation, distort and contain,
and in an age of ever increasing manipulation of all kinds, the study of the manipulation pro-
cesses of literature are exemplified by translation can help us towards a greater awareness of
the world in which we live.

That said, both translators and readers are subjects of ideological manipulation. Being
influenced by Habermans’ ‘School of Manipulation’, Lefévere conceives of translation in a
new web where ideology, discourse, construction, authority/power/patronage and politics
are interwoven. As such, he sees translation as an act of rewriting of literature, ‘those in the
middle, the men and women who do not write literature, but rewrite it’ (1992, 1). Such an
act of rewriting is replete with processes of appropriation and foreignization according to
the decisive dictates of the patronage which Lefévere (1992, 92) defined as ‘any kind of
force that can be influential in encouraging and propagating, but also in discouraging,
censoring and destroying works of literature’. Deconstructing and unsettling this textual
manifestation of power characterize the application of the postcolonial theory and prac-
tices to translation which reside mainly on those structures of feeling and identification
that resisted domestication and effacement. Hence, postcolonial translation is to be
marked with the ethics of difference and alterity.
Bassnett and Lefevere (1998) adopted the polysystem approach and focused on the
extra-linguistic elements that shaped the process of translation and the kind of relation-
ship that marks the source and target culture of the translated text. Additionally, they
raise attention to the ideological loads that underlie the literary process of translation.
The new turn was geared toward deconstructing the colonial cultural construction that
blurred the difference, agency and heterogeneity of the dominated. Subversion and
 JOURNAL OF MULTICULTURAL DISCOURSES 9

resistance characterize the project of postcolonial re-reading of colonial texts and retran-
slating of colonial translations in the name of reasserting the humanity and diversity of the
postcolonial.
Introducing the notion of ‘rewriting’ in translation allows different cultural and social
subjects to intervene into the hierarchical forces in the name of reshaping their position-
ality. As a point of illustration, gendered language can be reflected in translation and
women find in translation a space to highlight their underprivileged worldviews and chal-
lenge the hegemonic representation of their subjectivity. Sherry Simon (2002, 138), for
instance, believes that ‘the reconstructive and constitutive power of translation gives
way to its power to trouble and dislocate’ the discourses that deprived them from
taking on gendered positions. Thus, ethical consideration in translation studies should
touch upon the possible feminist tenor of writing.
However, the postcolonial turn in translation is not all about resistance. Translation
fosters a kind of cultural hybridity that is suggestive of mutual and collaborative creativity
of the source and target languages. This notion of cultural hybridization is deeply dis-
cussed by Homi Bhabha in The Location of Culture (1994) where he maintains that cultural
hybridization is an ongoing process of cultural translation that is conducive to a new way
of living that is free from hegemonic polarization and dichotomies. In short, Translation
Studies since the early 1990s have been marked by a cultural turn that foregrounds trans-
lation as a form of intercultural communication. The translator has been required then to
assume the position of mediator who is aware of the embedding of meaning into a
specific social context and values system. Apparently, such a cultural trend in translational
study has gone hand in hand with a salient emphasis on the inseparability of language and
its corresponding culture. Language has been seen as a carrier of culture; therefore,
language learning and cultural learning become interwoven. Therefore, the strategic effa-
cement of the translating language has not been consensually adopted. Intercultural com-
munication requires as well the dominant imported language (English) to preserve its
specificity – when translated from – rather than pressing it into local molds.
It is true that intercultural translation is characterized by the asymmetry in power
relation in the context of cultural dominance and resistance. Yet, one can approach trans-
lated text as a middle ground for transculturation and hybridized existence between
diverse locations that are asymmetrically related. Gentzler and Tymoczko (2002, xvi) do
not see translation solely in terms of ‘top-down’ operation of power. It, indeed, ‘can be
mobilized for counter discourses and subversion, or for any other number of mediating
positions in between’. It is this third space that makes interactional exchanges and dialo-
gues between cultures possible even within a context of asymmetrical relation. Appar-
ently, postcolonial translations do somehow converge with the postcolonial literary
texts written in the dominant languages. For Maria Tymoczko (1999, 23) both kinds of
postcolonial writings tend to be selective when dealing with the original cultural
aspects to be highlighted to the host readership. Nonetheless, the transposing of
foreign imageries and worldviews does not only enrich the dominant languages, but it
opens up a space for interaction between different traditions and tongues. In the words
of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1986, 85), the result is ‘a real dialogue between world literature,
languages and cultures of different nationalities’. Equally, in Moving the Center: The
Struggle for Cultural Freedoms (1993, 39/40) Ngũgĩ reasserts that ‘the different languages
should be encouraged to talk to one another through the medium of interpretation
10 A. ELBOUBEKRI

and translation … through translations, the different languages of the world can speak to
one another.’
Arguably, Paul Bowles’ project of translating Moroccan culture and minor literature is
open to a transcultural reading paradigm which conceives of translation as an arena for
power repression and negotiation, as well as a dialogue between different cultures.
Arianna Dagnino (2012, 1) defines transcultural writers ‘as imaginative writers who, by
choice or by life circumstances, experience cultural dislocation, live transnational experi-
ences, cultivate bilingual/pluri-lingual proficiency, physically immerse themselves in mul-
tiple cultures/geographies/territories, expose themselves to diversity and nurture plural,
flexible identities’. In this sense, transcultural literature as the term is used in this article
goes beyond the dichotomized understanding that Fernando Ortiz (1992) gave to the
fusion between the dominating and dominated cultures. It is tainted with the postcolonial
intellectual turns beyond dichotomies. The following section will illustrate this point
through investigating the transcultural writer Bowles and his collaborative endeavors
with Mohamed Mrabet, a Moroccan preliterate story teller. Before embarking on this
task, a contextualization of this enterprise within the American /Moroccan cultural and lit-
erary relation is helpful.

Transcultural communication in the collaborative work of Bowles and

Mrabet
Moroccan American transcultural relation
American translation of Moroccan culture from the 1950s up to the 1980s can be exam-
ined within the socio-cultural contexts of its production and consumption. This period
was marked by a certain American literary interest in foreign marginal fiction, tales and
local folks, which are minor even in their native culture, for the sake of replenishing the
exhausted canonical literature. What Venuti (1998, 12) called ‘minoritizing translation’
does in one way or another withstand the process of adaptation that the translators
opted for to render the foreign images accessible to the dominant international reader-
ship. These translations coincided with American international political and economic
domination with new rising cultural needs. During World War II, the US did not aim to
have a direct imperial role in Morocco especially after the military ‘landing operation
torch’ in Casa Blanca in 1942. Instead, it had political concern in North Africa in the
context of vying for regional alliances. Therefore, no matter how critical was the US of
French colonialism in Morocco, independence was not fully supported for fear of risking
the American interest in the region. This undecided state of affairs was reflected in
Bowles’ literary writings and travelogues in Morocco, as well as in his translations of Mor-
occan tales. While he disproved of the French colonial presence, which was likely to oblit-
erate the authentic and primitive traditions in Morocco, he staunchly chastised the Arab
nationalist movements that were threatening to efface the ethnic diversity in the country.
Although the recent American Moroccan history has been marked by a certain asymme-
trical relation of power, transculturation has been the evident vignette of this relationship.
Morocco was introduced to the Americans through the prism of European Orientalism as
a romantic ‘land of the middle ages with old imperial cities, beautiful Moorish architecture,
colorful and earthy people’ (Robert Hunter 2010, 59–77). Bowles was recommended by the
 JOURNAL OF MULTICULTURAL DISCOURSES 11

naturalized French writer Gertrude Stein to visit Morocco and he eventually stayed in
Tangier for more than half a century (Brian Edwards, 2). Tangier, an international zone,
became a favorable destination for a number of American bohemians, hippies and expatri-
ate writers who did not see themselves as fitting in the American policy and literary canon.
They were attracted by the heterogeneity of cultures, languages, tolerance of difference, the
sense of orientalistic mystery and exoticism, as expressed in Edith Wharton’s travelogue In
Morocco (1920) and other British and French orientalists. The accepting ethos and liminality
of Tangier appealed to the mindsets of foreigners who longed to abandon their restricted
mode of being and indulge in novel senses of seeing and belonging to the world. The inter-
stitial location of Tangier encourages reciprocal cooperation between agents of cultural
work regardless of their unbalanced bond of power. This liminal space incited Moroccan
and American authors to create a linguistically and culturally hybridized literature brimming
with transculturation.
There is no one definite rationale and historical context behind Bowles’ project of trans-
lating Moroccan culture. During the 1940s and the 1950s he produced stories about the
Moroccan life from the American point of view as well as the American life as seen
from a Moroccan perspective. Moreover, like his contemporary expatriates such William
Burroughs, Bowles saw in the Moroccan minor tales a literary instrument to unsettle the
grand nationalist categorization at home and experiment with eccentric linguistic struc-
tures and images. Bouchra Benlemlih (2009, 64) noted in her dissertation that Bowles
‘translates realities that have been rejected, repressed and devalorized by the hegemonic
centripetal forces’. The resultant deterritorialized language was hoped to reterritorialize
American English language and literature and hence innovate the national literature.
The exile experience in Morocco sustained Bowles to redefine the American self by con-
trasting it with the other and eventually questioned the civilizational superiority claimed
by the West. His travelogue Their Heads are Green and Their Hands Are Blue (1963) is
dotted with interrogative challenges to the certainties of American cultural supremacy
and industrial materialism. Travels dislocate his belief in the integrity of the self and his
definite sense of belonging. He told an interviewer: ‘one belongs to the whole world,
not to just one part of it’ (Abdelaziz Jadir 2006, 165). This is a clear hint to the need to
learn from other non-industrialized cultures.
As for the period extending between the 1960s and 1970s, he shifted his attention to
translation of oral tales using a tape recorder. Apparently, the reason for this shift is his wife
Jane, who was sick in the hospital in Malaga and needed his care. However, according to
Edwards, the reason is much deeper. Bowles was worried about the disappearance of folk
culture on the eve of Moroccan independence. The nationalists did not care about the
popular Berber cultures because they aspired to join the Arab League. According to
Venuti’s conception of minoritizing translation, Bowles concentrated his attention on
translating the Berber culture that was a quite different minority within the mainstream
Arab culture. His translation consists of selecting foreign cultural aspects that stand immi-
nently in high contrast to the American materialist canon. His deliberate selective
approach to the STs was politically oriented. He informed an interviewer ‘I have left out
a great deal, oh yes, an enormous amount, but I do that on purpose’ (Abdelhak Elghandor
1994, 14). Furthermore, Richard Paterson (1992, 181) considered Bowles’s turns to colla-
borative translation as ‘natural development in a writer so artistically committed to the
comprehension of another culture’. Others such as Allen Hibbard (2004, 96) attribute
12 A. ELBOUBEKRI

this shift to the market demand for unusual stories from foreign countries. Translation
earned Bowles ‘one passage way through which he gained greater access to the house
of fiction’.
In the beginning, he had a financial fund to record the local music, which he saw as
fundamental to the preservation of Berber primitive culture that was marginalized by
the rising independent nationalist party that was against tribal feudalism and backward-
ness. Through recording local folk music, the Americans will be aware of ‘all corners of
the globe, particularly the now unfamiliar corners’ (Bowles 1994, 158). He thinks that
the west can learn a lot from the African pure culture he was against materializing. He
said: ‘how greatly the west needs to study the religions, the music and the dances of
the doomed African cultures’ (Edwards 2005a, 230). That said, he believes that the aware-
ness of African culture can help westerners strip away some of their materialist and root-
less tendencies.
His first attempt of translation was with his companion Ahmed Yacoubi in 1952, then
Larbi Layachi, but he started with Mrabet in 1964 and together they produced 12 trans-
lated books. It should be rather called collaboration because the work was the outcome
of the conversation between the two men. Mrabet often used Spanish when Bowles
found it difficult to translate some Arabic words. He was convinced that the tales of
these illiterate story tellers can function as a valuable repository of cultural memory.
The collaborative work ended up in a Tangierian literature which both at the level of
form and content eludes the fixed categories imposed on literature. The project radiates
the intercultural circumstance of Tangier. That is, it reflects the linguistic and cultural mul-
tiplicity and collapsed communities embodied by Tangier. William Burroughs called this
project ‘interzone’: a work that does not belong to the boundaries of identity/nation
(Greg Mullins 2002, 4). It is ‘a place of indeterminacy and ambiguity, a place that
remains outside standard narratives of nationhood and identity’ (Simon Sherry 1999,
58). However, Tangier can stand also for colonial space that involves the logic of power
relations. It can be perhaps viewed as a ‘contact Zone’, to use Mary Louis Pratt’s
coinage, ‘in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact
with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion,
radical inequality, and intractable conflict’ (Pratt 1992, 6). In short, Bowles’ cultural project,
both in the form of fiction or literary translation, instantiates a transcultural discourse that
consists of polycentric texts whereby American ethnocentric authority is contested by
marginalized voices. The contact interzone of Tangier transforms the absolute authority
of western discourse into texts of multi-voicedness.

Bowles’/Mrabet’s transcultural collaboration

Contrary to what Paterson (1992, 180) suggested, the collaboration under study does not
only deal with the question of ‘how to traverse, intellectually and emotionally, the distance
between the familiar “here” and an alien “there”’. Enmeshed within this hybrid dialogic
purpose, the collaboration can be read also as a tapestry whose threads alternate Amer-
ican ethnocentrism, which is sustained by the process of foreignization, with native sub-
versive and anti-colonial voices. This process of transculturation cannot be perceived
outside the cultural framework as was suggested by Dagnino (2012, 3), who sees ‘transcul-
tural thought as an alternative cultural discourse’. The dynamics of transculturation
 JOURNAL OF MULTICULTURAL DISCOURSES 13

presupposes the existence of stable cultures that are waiting to be negotiated and com-
promised. That is, the transcultural collaboration is the result of the two men’s efforts to
renovate the static fixed status of their cultures and languages. In the case of Bowles,
this is done through utilizing the strategy of foreignization that shakes the thematic
and linguistic rigidity of the American canon. As for Mrabet, transculturation is displayed
in the critique of the inflexible cultural system, political repression and social exclusion that
most of his native characters are subjected to.
The foreignizing strategy that Bowles adopted in his literary collaboration with Mrabet is
marked with historical selection of tales registering native ways of living during the pre-colo-
nial, colonial and postcolonial context. The illiteracy status of his storytellers (Mrabet in this
case) guaranteed his access to a narrative repertoire that is not affected by the rationalist
logic of civilizational literacy. Mrabet’s tales revolve around spontaneous cultural memory
that is not contained with the constraint of creative writing. They are fraught with legendary
heroes living in a mythical environment of witchcraft, trances, magic, ogres, folkloric fables and
witty vengeance, whereby the wretched overcome their oppressors and achieve ideal justice.
For instance, his popular hero Hadidan Aharam is recurrently presented as mischievous, mar-
ginalized and itinerant figure who always manages to win over his mocking tormenters.
Bowles describes him as ‘the traditional rustic oaf, who, in spite of his simplicity, and some-
times precisely because of it, manages to impose his will upon those who have criticized
and ridiculed him’ (Mrabet 1976a). In all the tales that make the collection Harmless Poisons,
Blameless Sins (1976b), Hadidan often emerges as the victorious savior of his community
after he has defeated his powerful detractors. By way of illustration, in the tale ‘The Rhoula’,
he triumphs over the ogress’s seven daughters who threaten the safety of his village. In
‘The Muezzin’ he chops off the head of the pagan Muezzin who annoys him before the
dawn prayer. In other stories especially ‘The Fire’, ‘The Saint’, ‘The Dog’ and ‘The Diamond’,
he turns into a trickster to retaliate the mistreatment of his oppressors. In ‘The Saint,’ for
example, he afflicts severe agonies on the Pasha and his soldiers who confiscated his farm
that used to be a cheap source for the peasants’ needs of vegetable and fruits. Sometimes,
his tricks emanate from a sheer tendency toward laziness such as in ‘The Hens’, where he
blows in air in the chickens and fills them with water to make easy money out of selling
them at the souk.
The outcome of translating these tales is usually a surrealist development of events
that strengthens the degree of foreignization, which deranges the receptive and inter-
pretive practice among the American readerships. While Mrabet envisages an alterna-
tive reality to the dominant forces of tyranny, Bowles actuates alterity and difference
on the body of English fiction. The narrative languages, characters, settings and plot
of Mrabet’s tales have transformative effects on the American fiction writing. He
admitted to Patterson (182) that his ‘own work has become stylistically simpler’. The
influence was typically felt in the use of language; he acknowledged that he had
learnt from Mrabet’s use of language how to ‘tell everything really, with verbs and
nouns. Simple writing’ (Claude Thomas 1999). His appreciation of simplicity stems
from his recognition of the value of illiterate orality that is not distorted by the constric-
tive methods of the modernist act of writing. Bowles strives to keep the Moroccan taste
and ambiance of Mrabet’s oral tales through preserving the structure of Moroccan
dialect, the literal meaning of idioms and using untranslated Arabic/Berber words
into the body of the stories or as titles of the tales such as ‘Si Mokhtar,’ ‘Rhoula,’
14 A. ELBOUBEKRI

‘Abdeslam and Amar,’ ‘Bahlou,’ M’hachich, ‘El Fellah,’ ‘Baraka,’ ‘Ramdan,’ ‘Larbi and his
father,’ ‘The Witch Bouiba Del Hallouf’ and ‘Mimoun and the Fisherman’ . The dialogues
are incorporated as part of the text rather than being conventionally punctuated inside
inverted commas. He was more interested in capturing the cultural concepts and reali-
ties as he received them; thus, the level of foreignization is intensified and the dislo-
cation of the American readers’ reception is ensured. In this vein, Samia Mehrez
(1992, 122) argues that the hybridized linguistic settings radiated through the trans-
lated tales undermine the method of meaning-making and signification and invite
for alternative reception that is grounded on ‘mutual interdependence and intersigni-
fication’. Such heightened textual difference destabilizes the hegemonic asymmetrical
relations of power between the self and the other. Furthermore, it challenges the notion
of linguistic faithfulness and textual equivalence that had characterized intellectual
debates about translation in the past.
In the hybrid space of Tangier, where different nationalities and tongues are brought
together, the dichotomized relationship between the self and the other is negotiated
through the dynamics of transcultural translation. Bowles’/Mrabet collaborated work reg-
isters the intersectional existence of the self and the other in spite of their inhabiting hege-
monic (Bowles) and resistant (Mrabet) positionalities.
The dominant theme of the collaboration revolves around the intertwining of the self
and other in the contact zone of Tangier. Most of the tales refer to the colonial contact of
Moroccan culture and foreign one. The pre-colonial past/ancestors and traditions are set
against the imperial western modernity. Bowles seems to share Mrabet’s conviction that
cultural authenticity is harmed by the foreign invasions and that life is insecure and one
has no choice in it. This existentialist view is artistically expressed in The Lemon (1969);
the protagonist Abdessalam told his mistress ‘If your life is going to be wrong, it’ll go
wrong and no matter what happens. You can’t escape’ (81). The protagonist grew up
torn between the centripetal force of the patriarchal tradition of Morocco and the centrifu-
gal forces of the corrupting West. His father wants him to embrace western progress, but
he rebels vehemently. For instance, when asked to kneel down by his French teacher he
retorted:
I can’t do that for you monsieur, Said Abdessalam. You’re Nazarene and I’m a Muslim. How can
I kneel in front of you? I don’t do that even for my father. When I get home all I do is kiss his
hand. (11)

After being abandoned by his parents, he found himself taken care of by a Spanish
couple. The message that is conveyed here is the inevitability of cultural interpenetra-
tion. Despite his refusal to join the foreign culture, he was obliged to survive a culturally
mixed world.
The same trope of cultural encounter is repeated in Love With a few Hairs (1967). It is a
story of the protagonist Mohamed, who is stranded between his native Islamic culture as
embodied by magic portion customs and the foreign ones as represented by his homosex-
ual lover and boss David, with whom he lived happily after a failed attempt with local
marital life. The homosexual relation of love testifies to the success of the interpenetration
of the self and other. Like Mrabet himself, Mohamed can inhabit both Islamic and western
spaces and values effortlessly, though he has strong disdain of both of them. Like his trans-
lator Bowles, Mohamed stands in between the two cultures. Such interconnectedness
 JOURNAL OF MULTICULTURAL DISCOURSES 15

obliterates the polarities of identification. The same thematic concern is reflected in

Mrabet’s autobiography Look and Move On (1976a) in which he narrates his youth in
Tangier and his meeting up with foreigners who took him to the US. He narrates his
encounter with Bowles and the beginning of their collaboration. Convinced of the impossi-
bility of separating fiction from facts and hence realizing textual identity between what is
told and what is written, he stated
I began to go see (Bowles) several times a week and each time I spent two hours or so record-
ing stories. Finally I had good collection of them. Some were tales I had heard in the cafes,
some were inventions I made as I was recording, and some were about things that had actu-
ally happened to me. (91)

Bowles confirmed the made-up nature of the tales: ‘some of those tales are variation of
well-known legends, while others are fabrications’ (qtd in Patterson). The combination
of fairy-tale scenes and banal realities interrogates the notion of equivalence and penetr-
ability of the storytellers. This issue of cultural incomprehensibility and untranslatability is
evoked in the short story ‘What Happened in Granada?’, where Mrabet’s protagonist told
the British anthropologist ‘you think you know something about the Riffians? All you saw
of them was their teeth when they smiled at you. They never let you find out the important
things’ (Mrabet 2004, 4). Moreover, Mrabet the character and narrator uses plain way of
narrating simple happenings in his life in the interzone of Tangier. The lack of centering
the events on clear self-brimming with feelings raises the reader’s attention to the differ-
ence from western texts where the self is likened to the hinge around which everything
else revolves.
Interconnectedness between the minds of Bowles and Mrabet does not suggest that
the collaboration was free from the problematics of authorship. Bowles’ intervention in
the narrated stories was made easy unlike in the case of Mohamed Chokri, who stands
firm against the total control of the process of translating his novel For Bread Alone.
Bowles (1979, 8) himself concedes that ‘After Chokri, it was a relief to return to the
smooth-rolling Mrabet translation.’ However, The Boy Who Set the Fire (1989) exemplifies
the discursive and narrative testimony against Bowles’ alleged attempt to shadow
Mrabet’s existence as an author. The book consists of a collection of tales about Moroccan
life colored with allegories, the grotesques, the mingling of the supernatural and real
scenes, the mixture of the social and political issues. The unfamiliar uncanny sphere
that the stories mediate entails adopting another worldview in order to fathom them.
Mrabet’s different identity is clearly inscribed in the text both at the level of content
and form. The stories ‘The Hut’ (lethargy and kif- smoking), ‘Bahloul (careless elusion of
loans)’, ‘The Saint by Accident’ (belief in sorcery and superstition), ‘The Dutiful Son’
(hostile patriarchy), to mention only this few, plunge the reader into a world of
unfathomed fairy tale no matter how the translator had struggled to grasp and realize
some equivalence. The borders between the mythical world and rational reality are
blurred by the recurrent reference to the use of a certain drug ‘kif’ which has the effect
of emancipating the minds of the characters from the taboos of the lived world and the
materialist requisites of modernity. The ‘Maktub’ (literally translated as what is written) sig-
nifies that the destiny of the characters is controlled by Allah and they have no choice over
what happen around them. Bowles (1962, ix) affirms that in his fictitious narratives: ‘the will
16 A. ELBOUBEKRI

of Allah/or fate rule the characters’ lives with an arbitrary and somewhat surprising sense
of rightness.’
The trope of otherness is dramatically restaged in The Big Mirror (1980). This story is
about a young Moroccan Ali and his new wife Rachida, who is terrified of the otherness
she sees in the mirror. This otherness turns out to be the cause of her madness. She
kills her baby and some of her male neighbors whom she took as alien threats. Ali
moves away to his farm and gives in to the solace of dreaming rather than encountering
in the mirror his wife who has eventually committed suicide. Rachida’s madness and
schizophrenic acts of murder emanate from failure to deal with alien others. By contrast,
her husband is able to control his other. His dream self, stimulated by ‘kif’ smoking, as
opposed to Rachida’s mirror self, keeps his white Christian wife on the other side of the
border and contents himself with visiting her in his nightly dreams. Thus, the integrity
of the self-demands placing the alien danger within the realm of dream.
Clearly, the tales of Mrabet/Bowles are animated with the tension/contact between the
self/other, present/past and here/there. It is, actually, a transcultural discourse that is
tainted with a sense of alterity and more importantly is allowing of the dynamics of resist-
ance. The narrative collaboration culminates in a contact/de-territorialized literature, a
term which Deleuze and Guattari (1987) used to describe written work in western
languages about outside non-Europeans. This work consists of a counter-hegemonic
rhetoric which questions the orientalist supremacy. The translated texts are replete with
linguistic items that are specific to the Moroccan cultural context and are kept un-trans-
lated sometimes. Moreover, the sense of Moroccan style of orality is quite dominant.
Such persistence of cultural difference destabilizes the essentialism and monolithic self-
centrism within the orientalist discourse. Indeed, resistance is not only enunciated at
the level of form, it is also expressed within the content and plot of the narrated tales.
Such sort of discursive resistance can be illustrated in two short stories. The first one is
‘What Happened in Granada?’ that brings together a multiplicity of nationalities (American,
Spanish, Moroccan, British). The story is mediated by a Riffian chauffeur who took Mr
James to Granada to visit his sick wife. The narrator was aware of the Moorish historical
presence in Granada. In so doing, he spoke out his ancestors’ invisibility as it is expressed
in the colonial discourse. Besides foregrounding this cultural memory he is presented as a
powerful and rowdy figure that exalts his race and openly insults the white one. He inso-
lently told the English lady during their conversation: ‘I shit on your ancestors and your
whole race … a Christian pig’ (Mrabet 2004, 14). He uses his native language un-translated
to insult: ‘I looked at the house and said: inaal din d’babakum’ (Literal translation: your
parents are damned!) (21). Being proud of his racial belonging, he unseats the supremacist
rhetoric of westerners. He told the English lady: ‘you’re only an English whore and I am a
Riffian!’ (19). Furthermore, he challenges the easy conceptualization of the other by the
self. He assumes a position of the unfathomed/undefined subject in face of his boss the
anthropologist.
The other example is ‘the Woman from New York.’ Again the story reflects a multicul-
tural gathering in Tangier as a contact zone and destination for eccentrics. It revolves
around an American bohemian lady who came to Tangier in search of drug addiction.
The narrator is again a Riffian through his point of view all the events are narrated. In
his turn he interrogates the supremacy and civilized profile of the west by means of high-
lighting the madness and insanity of American expatriates he contemplates in the hotel. It
 JOURNAL OF MULTICULTURAL DISCOURSES 17

is a kind of reversing the colonial racist discourse. He subjects the white to his racist stares
that depict the savagery and darkness of American civilization. He poses derogatory ques-
tions that deflate the American hegemony: ‘are all Americans like the ones inside Tangier?
… Most of them are’. Sometimes he feels pity for their immaturity and helplessness, ‘I feel
sorry for them … they all got some diseases … you live with them you catch some dis-
eases’ (2004, 62). The other is, by contrast, depicted as superior to the Americans. For
instance, he said: ‘I am Moslem. The poorest Moslem is cleaner than most Americans.’
This is actually a blatant enunciation of resistance. In addition, he defies the historical
pejorative conception of the Moors as related to the sexual seduction and wickedness.
He does not give in to the American lady’s sexual approach and thus does not confirm
the white biased stereotypes. As in the autobiography Look and Move on, the westerners
are seen through the Moroccan eyes and they occupy peripheral place in the narration.
Patterson interprets Bowles’ focus on Moroccan perspective and the relegation of
Western self to the margin as an attempt to restore ‘the Moors to their rightful place in
western consciousness’ (181).

Conclusion
The trajectory of Translation Studies seems to halt smoothly toward a cultural grounding
which apparently responds to the pressing demand of globalization. Theories pertaining
to postcolonial translation have redirected the manipulative nature of western knowledge
production, including translation literature, to recuperate a sense of cultural difference for
the silenced source cultural texts. They provide new discursive tools which aim at unearth-
ing the hegemonic structure inherent in the translational production undertaken by
western authors. The reaction comes in the form of advancing reading strategies that
either optimize the unraveling of subversive voices within those hegemonic discourses
or underscore the inescapability of engaging into transcultural communication that the
act of translation endorses. The postcolonial translation scholarship, therefore, has made
the search for cultural recognition and enunciative agency possible. Through unsettling
pedagogies, micro interpretive practices come to undo the monolithic constructions
and thus open possibilities of cultural acceptance. Succinctly, transcultural dynamics in
translation permit cultural communication between unequal power relationships and
help liberate the reading process from the bifurcating rigidity that is originated in the cul-
turalist discourses and supremacist trends within postcoloniality.
The emancipatory prospect of the transcultural perspective in reading translational
work has the benefit of highlighting the experience of cultural mingling and mixture
instead of inciting one-sided identification and cultural isolationism. To read Bowles’/
Mrabet’s cultural collaboration as unilaterally out speaking American imperialist hege-
mony or transgressively counteracting the western impulses for domination is to fall in
the trap of essentialism that breeds only antagonism and cultural hatred. The collaboration
tends to collapse all dichotomies between ‘here and there’, fictions and truths’, ‘now and
then’, ‘powerfulness and powerlessness’, ‘modern and traditional’, ‘rational and irrational,’
‘culture and nature’ the ‘written and the oral’, which have been the result of a long tra-
dition of culturalist and nationalist paradigms of thought. In place of cultural exclusion
and categorization, the transcultural alternative is built on the intermixture of bipolar
opposites that works of literature are usually subjected to. Just as literary writings and
18 A. ELBOUBEKRI

translation cannot achieve a certain degree of linguistic and conceptual equivalence as

advocated within the structuralist prescriptive model, so Bowles’ written words cannot
share textual identity with Mrabet’s tales; therefore, meaning is open to multiplicity of
readings as there is no one center or definite truth, and the transcultural interpretation
is the most suitable prism to approach Bowles’ and Mrabet’ literary project. This reading
framework is sustained by the contact zone of Tangier, where all kinds of centers and
streams are forsaken to the advantage of interpenetration. Edwards (2005b, 321)
described Tangier as a space
suspended between nations, cultures, and languages, the interzone is a place of intermediacy
and ambiguity, Bowles announces that Tangier was ‘a pocket outside the mainstream … after
you’ve been to Europe … and you come back here, you immediately feel you have left the
stream.’

In brief, this cursory investigation of Paul Bowles’s translation of some of Mohamed

Mrabet’s oral tales suggests that such collaborative work displays the inescapability of cul-
tural co-existence in a contact zone, Tangier city, which serves as a miniature of today’s
globalized world. Besides, the narrators/protagonists in both Bowles’ fiction and translated
stories unmake and remake the subjectivity of the self/other and open new avenues for
rethinking the colonial dichotomies and prejudices. In a nutshell, the collaborative work
is seen as an attempt to relinquish the historic animosities that split the West and the
East, in the hope of undergoing some constructive steps for intercultural communication
and cultural dialogue supported by the interstitial space of Tangier.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Abdellah Elboubekri is a researcher in Moroccan cultural studies. He got his Master degree in colo-
nial/postcolonial discourses from the University of Mohamed I, Oujda, January 2007. He got a doc-
toral degree in Moroccan cultural studies from the University of Mohamed Ben Abdellah, Fez,
Morocco, November 2013. He is a former Fulbright FLTA at Drury University, Missouri State during
2007/2008. He is also a former full-time trainees trainer at the Teacher Training Center (CRMEF)
2014/2015, Oujda. Currently, he is a full-time professor of humanities at the University of
Mohamed I, and a part-time instructor of English at the American Language Center, Oujda. He has
published two books – The Dislocation of Home in The Diasporic Literary Writings (2014) and Pluralism
and Secularism In Cunningham Graham’s Mogreb-El-Acksa (2015) – and many articles in a number of
international and national journals. Besides, he has participated in editing several books. He is a
member of a research group Identity and Difference, based at the faculty of letters, Mohamed I uni-
versity. He is also an active member of a research unit Cultural and Art Studies, based at CERHSO.

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