Othello in Egypt: translation and the (un)making of national identity

Hanna, S

Abstract

The long held view that national identities are natural
entities whose formation is not conditioned by human agency, and hence are constitutive rather than constituted, has been challenged by a whole range of scholarship which underlined the constructedness of national identities, and the role of intellectuals in their formation. The role of translators, as intellectuals, in fashioning and subverting
versions of national identity is discussed in this paper in relation to two translations of ‘Othello’ in Egypt, one by Khalīl Muṭrān (1912), and the other by Mustapha Safouan (1998). The translation strategies adopted by these two translators are deployed towards the (de)construction of the national identity of the target culture. In reading
the two translators’ (un)making of national identity, this article relates their translation strategies to their discourse on translation.

• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2005
• Deposit Date: Nov 5, 2009
• Pages: 109-128
• Book Title: Translation and the Construction of Identity
• ISBN: 9788995745401
• Keywords: identity, nation, language, (un)making
• Publisher URL: http://www.iatis.org/content/pubs/yearbook/2005.php