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Interconnecting Translation Studies and Imagology
Edited by Luc van Doorslaer, Peter Flynn and Joep Leerssen
[Benjamins Translation Library 119] 2016
► pp. 181–200

How Algeria’s multilingualism and colonial history are obscured

Marketing three postcolonial Francophone Algerian writers in Dutch translation

This chapter focuses on filtering and adaptation in translation into Dutch by taking a closer look at publishers’ paratexts surrounding three translated postcolonial Francophone authors from Algeria. A postcolonial framework will be used to ask whether the “otherness” is blurred in the paratexts and whether the translation of postcolonial literature is “brought home” in a monolingual, monocultural context. In using the concept “paratextual framing” (Watts 2004) an attempt will be made to answer the following question: in what way does this kind of framing shape a new image of the translated author? Translations of Assia Djebar, Malika Mokeddem and Tahar Djaout will be discussed.
Keywords: Dutch publishing policies, Algerian Francophone literature, postcolonial studies, paratextual framing, multilingualism, Assia Djebar, Malika Mokeddem, Tahar Djaout
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Bilingual or polyglot writers in French
  • The language of the former coloniser
  • A literature that transcends the cultural spaces of the Maghreb and France
  • Francophone Algerian literature as a non-existent category
  • Packaging Djebar in Dutch translations
  • Algerian colonial history obscured
  • Oppressive Bedouins or oppressive colonisers?
  • Djaout ethnicized in translation
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 25 February 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.119.11sch
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